Question 1: Did no one in the entire auto manufacturing industry world wide ever stand back and say "That is the most ugly ass car accessory ever thought of by the human mind"?
Styles change. I think cars from the 70s look wretched but the 40s/50s 'futurism' looks pretty cool.
Question 2: How can looking at this and scrolling thru menus while driving be legal but looking at a cell phone not be legal, there is no difference?
Sometimes they lock features while driving. In theory if you can identify the control you want in your peripheral vision you can press it without loosing awareness of your surroundings as opposed to a phone which has small text and requires your iris to change focus.
... but irresponsible people can crash anything if they want to and the cell phone laws are obeyed about as much as the speed limit.
My objection to doing the entire control system digitally is that these people suck as software. Every car I've ever seen has had a disappointing computer system. It's slower than it should be, clunky UI, has tons of hidden diagnostic data that should absolutely be available, complete lack of API or OS behavior.
Over half of the problems I've ever had with trucks and cars have been a sensor error followed by a computer overreaction, and if the software had been written correctly it would have known the sensor data was outside of physical possibilities and thus indicated a bad sensor.
It's the worst of all worlds. Lack the reliability of mechanical or analog electrical control systems, still too crappy to have interesting things like installing custom software.
But I haven't bought a vehicle in a while. Maybe it's better now (doubt it).
I really like the idea of the cybertruck. Electric pickup and stainless steel structural body, but I think it was a total failure to follow through and think about what people actually need out of a vehicle like that. It's basically an ultra expensive off-road->camp thing which isn't even specialized for that.
We need a full size bed, we need to actually be able to use all that power for towing, and we needed a sit-in-bed diesel generator module in case of range or power issues.
