Interesting concept but I am concerned about using multi-touch to select devices. First off it's hard to remember, and secondly, if I am missing a finger, I can't set the air-flow rate in my car? Also the differentiation between close and spread fingers is going to be tricky for a lot of people to remember.

Edit: Another thought... the UI for many funtions needs to provide visual feed back... say for what system I am selecting or what station I am tuning. The text is quite small which would cause even more of a distraction to try to read. Yes I can begin the selection process without a visual cue, but I still need to look to see what I'm selecting. Not sure I see a large improvement in driver distraction there.

Slick for users like us? Definitely. Intuitive for the average Joe out there? I don't think it would fly. Too much to remember and too much dexterity required. My Mom could never use this. At best I see this as an alternate UI the driver could select over something more conventional when they feel comfortable with it.

Kudos for thinking outside the box though, there are definite UI gems here that could be leveraged.