Seeing a borderline hustle culture article illustrated with AI slop in the style of Bill Watterson, who famously opposed commercial exploitation of his work, is deeply saddening.
Maybe not the answer you are looking for, but rumor has it that engineers at VW were well aware of points like those you raise.
However the CEO at that time, Herbert Diess, outspoken admirer of Musk/Tesla, pushed for touch interfaces anyways.
Interesting thought. In the end, this is an ethical question: How much pressure is justified to put on the general population for supporting their leaders?
My feeling is that your perspective, likely shared by people like Bomber Harris or Netanyahu, does not match most peoples intuition nowadays.
historically german railway had a track record of treating people like cattle, but one would expect that not even institutional culture changes would take that long