I've always wondered how these things happen. Clearly a massive car manufacturer should have some kind of a feedback group about what will potentially go into new vehicles, right? I can't imagine anyone enjoying getting distracted from the road, to navigate between piano black plastic, and laggy nested touchscreen buttons
Car manufacturers are the epitome of slow ass waterfall product development. They commit to a dashboard / infotainment solution that will last for 4-5 years. VW basically started following Tesla in 2019-2020, and realized it sucked, and they’re now going back. Changing course in 3-4 years is actually pretty “quick” for a vehicle manufacturer.
They just copied everything Tesla did when they decided to start making electric cars, including the really idiotic stuff. As to why Tesla did that, Musk probably fired anyone that dared question his ideas.