If the added expense is so onerous to the automaker, then they can raise the price of the car to make up for it. I'd buy that, where I won't buy a car that has inferior controls. Why would I, when there is still a plethora of older cars available that better meet my needs?
I don't think I'm alone in this.
I would definitely pay an extra $1,000 for a version with actual buttons... and a smaller screen.
But it doesn't matter how many are willing. All I'm saying is that this is a thing that matters a great deal to me. It's pretty close to a dealbreaker. Even if I'm the only one that feels that way, it's still how I feel.
The auto industry appears to not want to make cars that I'd actually want to buy. Fair enough.
But I do find it interesting that one of the things that I was always taught was a strength of our economic system is that it will produce a wide enough variety of goods that pretty much everyone will find a version of a product that they'd actually want. That it appears that it can't looks like a kind of failure to me.
heck, finding a sub-6" cellphone is next to impossible, outright impossible if you want high end features. and phones are way easier to create in different configurations than cars are.