Everyone I know, across any age spectrum, hates using touchscreens in the car, especially as the driver. With a touch screen, you have to directly look at the screen for longer periods of time to ensure you touch the right 'button' and that the screen reads it correctly. Not only that, but you have to navigate through more menus and screens to get to the thing you need to change.

With older cars, using real buttons for radio, climate control, etc, you can largely navigate by feel and barely glance down at what you need to change, finishing it out by feel. This is obviously much safer, faster, and just easier to use even if you aren't having to deal with driving at the same time.

So why do the manufacturers keep using the touchscreens? Is it cheaper? If so, and the demand/desire for analog buttons is as high as I anecdotally see, why doesn't one of the manufacturers get smart and sell us a car we want to use? Surely the extra demand would outweigh the very slight cost of extra buttons. Plus they wouldn't have to pay to design a horrible UI!

I guess I'm just confused as to why they insist on this horrible idea. (If there's a better place to ask this let me know)

Edit* some people are pointing out that backup cameras are required on all new cars, which helps explain why all new cars have screens in general. But it doesn't really answer my question.

Sure it may be cheaper to throw all the rest of your interface buttons on the screen, but personally I would pay more for a car with analog buttons for everything else besides backup camera. My desire anecdotally represents demand for this, so I imagine a profit can likely be made on it, why are none of them doing this?