My wife’s car is a Hyundai Tucson, which is a touchscreen. Mine is a Mazda CX-5, which is a touchscreen, but one which is disabled when the car is in motion. Instead, the primary mode of input is a set of buttons and a wheel. I much prefer the buttons and wheel. I feel like I can safely navigate both the native and CarPlay UI with the wheel while my eyes remain on the road. In my wife’s car, I’m extending my arm and trying to counter movement from bumps in the road, while trying to tap small touch targets. That said, my wife isn’t a fan of the buttons and wheel in my car, so it might be more of a case of what we’re used to. But even then, if it is easy to get used to a mode of input that keeps your eyes on the road, I feel like that is a good thing.
The button/wheel combo in my CX-5 is fantastic. You can develop actual muscle memory for the most important tasks: switching to/from currently playing song, and switching to navigation guidance.
This mostly comes down to the fact that Mazda has buttons for those right alongside the wheel.
