Tactile input is very very useful when you're piloting a complex piece of machinery at high speeds and need to keep split second awareness in all directions. Ha

Tactile input is very very useful when you're piloting a complex piece of machinery at high speeds and need to keep split second awareness in all directions. Having turn signals be a pinkie flick for example is a major reduction in cognitive load. Having door handles be mechanical and within normal reach is an ergonomic and cognitive load reduction, because you can feel when the door handle disengages and the mechanics of your wrist facilitate your ability to feel that change. Same with having the speedometer be in front of you. The further your eyes have to travel from their current point of focus the more mental effort it takes to readjust, and with the majority of your vision now being entirely new elements your brain takes longer to search within those elements for what you need. It works the same way as reading, where your brain positions itself in relative space according to the direction you're reading and where elements are on the page. Words are arranged in a straight line to facilitate fast consumption and understanding with minimal effort, even in pictographic languages. Speedometers are below the windshield and framed by the steering wheel because your peripheral vision already rests on the edge of the steering wheel, meaning your eyes travel in a single line and interpret very few new elements. This is why the speedometer, tachometer, charge indicator, and lap number on an F1 car are on the steering wheel, directly at eye level with the driver. >What they were selling was the proper user experience for a device that transports me from a to b What they were selling you was a lifestyle device, no different from an iPhone or a Pebble watch. That was what catapulted Tesla in front of Nissan, Renault, and General Motors, despite the fact that all three had electric vehicles on sale in 2012 when the Model S stopped being an experimental model and entered widescale production. Nissan, Renault, and General Motors all used their EVs as compliance devices and expected for governments to get off their back about emissions. That's why the Leaf, Volt, Spark EV, and ZOE were all Class B economy hatchbacks. Tesla came in and Steve Jobs'd what was in reality something no different than an Impala or a Taurus with a different drive train. However as their competition caught up, such as with Lucid, Karma, and the multitude of Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi in range, or the automatic steering and parking from even basic manufacturers like Ford, Tesla sought to try and keep that lifestyle device differentiation by making changes that were objectively worse for the end user, like moving the gauges to a central touch screen, removing the turn signal stalks, and turning the steering wheel into a yoke. In other words, gimmicks.