[romwell]

They will come.

In a the world of music equipment (synths in particular), it went like this:

--70s: twisty knobs and flicky switches.

--80s: We got CPU's now! Forget knobs, we got button arrays now.

--90s: We got LCDs now! Forget buttons, here's one rotary control and menus on menus.

--00s: If you pay us a lot, your menus will be on a touchscreen! Neat? No?

.....No?

:(

--10's: twisty knobs and flicky switches.

Walk into Guitar Center synth section, it's all about spaceship-kind of controls (one physical component for one parameter, and tons of blinkenlights).

It turned out (suprise!) that all those menu-driven controls are cheaper and easier to make, but were not what the users needed nor enjoyed.

These days, it's all about the analog equipment having digital control with a physical, tactile user interface (and no menus except for some niche parameters).

It really looks like cars are following the same path.

[elihu]

If cars are to follow synthesizers, the next step is a Eurorack-style modular dashboard where you can fit instruments and controls from a wide variety of vendors that adhere to some basic standards and interact mostly via analog voltages.

Re-patching your dash while you're driving is probably taking the metaphor a bit too far, though.

[alex7o]

This sounds awfully lot like the car stereos from the 90 that you can change with aftermarket ones, and you can remove the front part so nobody steals it from you.