Placing all automotive controls within the touchscreen is no longer just an obsolescence issue, but a reliability and failure issue, and so it is a safety issue.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the USA recently forced Tesla to recall 2012 to 2018 Model S and 2016 to 2018 Model X vehicles to replace the infotainment touchscreen, which could fail (the failure of the touchscreen is caused by failure of memory chips).
The automaker confirmed all its touchscreens will "inevitably fail", says the NHTSA
driving.ca
The agency said touchscreen failures posed significant safety issues, including the loss of rearview or backup camera images, exterior turn-signal lighting, and windshield defogging and defrosting systems that “may decrease the driver’s visibility in inclement weather.”
Many Tesla vehicle automotive controls are only accessible through the touchscreen -- and in the latest, proposed update of the Model S, even the transmission control is now on the touchscreen. Imagine if the infotainment touchscreen were to suddenly fail in a new Model S -- the driver would not even be able to shift the transmission out of gear.
I am not familiar with how automakers source and produce their electronics but I am familiar with how the aviation industry does it. Aviation electronics (avionics) producers use electronics chips and components that have been proven reliable (the risk is then that the components are not the newest, state-of-the-art electronics) and then stock large quantities of such components to lessen the risk of such components suddenly going out of production, allowing for a stock to produce replacements before a completely new design must be produced.
If the automotive industry is not already following the aviation industry model, it is perhaps time to do so, to avoid the obsolescence and sudden failure issues.