Yes and no. The buttons that are relegated to the singular line in VW cars are buttons that you don't normally need to interact with. Things like climate control (it's 2025 guys, if your car can't maintain a perfect temperature in all weather conditions automatically then you bought a shit car, I haven't touched a climate control in my car in 2 years now, summer or winter, fogged windscreen or not).
VW got exceptional flack for their design because their steering wheel "buttons" were capacitive touch sensors. They actually had all the right buttons in all the right places for look free control of everything, but they lacked tactile.
The exception was the windows. They had two switches for opening and closing windows and a touch selector for "front or back" which made it impossible to open or close a window without physically looking down. They fixed that too now going back to 4 buttons.
The designers are absolutely prioritising form over function, all these years after Jobs's famous quote that design is how something works.
Only partially agree. While some cars went too far, the "function" is not your ability to play with something, but rather your ability to not need to. This comes up in climate control over and over again. Climate control is one thing you should be able to set once before starting to drive. If you ever need to touch it on the road, the designer fucked up.