> What was even more surprising, to me, is that Mercedes had this amazing nice center console unit to control things with your arm in a rested position. They removed that piece of brilliance!
Mazda also has this beautiful dial-joystick which we can operate in a rested position. It is so intuitive that I stopped using the touchscreen console itself.
On the other hand even when we operate using a dial and buttons we take our eyes for an instant to look at the screen to check the changes. Now imagine looking away at a touchscreen just to see what operation to perform etc. This is a major distraction.