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I would also like to find out what happened here. Here's a video with a BMW designer where they're asked point blank about some design aspects of their new iX3 (which seems like an impressive car, total clean sheet EV design) and when asked about the door handles - which are flush, but pop out, which isn't too bad IMHO - basically said they do it because it looks cool, any aero benefits are just the cherry on top.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irPxEW0_dbQ

I blame Musk. Maybe I'm way off base, but most of these trends were first highly visible in Tesla products. They may not have created each dumb UX decision, but certainly were one of the first to put them all into a single car.

I remember the first time I tried to go to lunch in a friend's Tesla. I couldn't get in or out of the stupid thing without instructions. And getting in would be next to impossible for somebody with bad rheumatoid arthritis and bad fingers - the "push with thumb, while pulling with fingers" is awkward at best.

> I heard an add for a car a few days ago on NPR that was literally just "it has 30+ inches of screens!" But perhaps the story is more about consumers who just want new, exciting things like weird door handles and 30 inches of screens

Be careful not to confuse what consumers want with what marketers try to make customers care about. Nobody cares about screen footage, but the ads will still push that as something that their car has over others or because they want to shift how consumers view the product. Convincing customers that a cheaper/worse design is actually a feature they should find desirable is an age old trick, so ads aren't a good indicator for what consumers want, at least not until they become successful enough that consumers start blindly requesting what the ads have trained them to look for. Then you get an "it's got electrolytes" situation.

> But perhaps the story is more about consumers who just want new, exciting things like weird door handles and 30 inches of screens

We should never underestimate people's weird desires but this is mostly not it IMO. There was a new generation that felt the need to rebel against old established stuff and of course is now painfully rediscovering why this stuff was established in the first place.

Infuriating to watch, mind you. But also predictable, like watching bots play StarCraft against each other.