And as a reminder, cars only became computerized to allow car companies to harvest vast amounts of data on the users. Car companies haven’t been true car companies for about a decade; They’re data companies that sell vehicles as their primary data collection tool. Toyota knows more about you than you do. They know where you work, who your friends are, what your racial background is, who you’ve slept with, where you shop, whether or not you’re likely to break the law, how likely you are to get into a car wreck, etc…

Blocking unauthorized repairs is a happy side effect. Car makers realized that if they consolidate every single system into the infotainment center, then they can prevent users from swapping the head unit with an aftermarket one. You can’t just swap your radio head unit out anymore, because it’ll kill your AC/heating, GPS, traction control, etc… Again, this is primarily to allow them to harvest data, because they need the unit to remain intact so it can keep phoning home to the manufacturer.

Giant touchscreens are also cheaper and easier to assemble than old school analog control systems; Plugging a ribbon cable into a screen then snapping the screen into place with plastic clips is easy, but having a team of techs wiring a console together is hard and prone to manufacturing errors. But this also means the driver has to take their eyes off the road to make adjustments, because they don’t have any tactile feedback from a fan speed knob or AC button.