That sounds intentionally deceptive / deflecting. Makes it sound like Young People broke into the R&D labs and rewrote the blueprints, and forced the manufacturers to remove physical buttons, without their consent or ability to say NO.
This isn't about them being responsible for it, it's about car marketing analysts doing research on their customers, and coming to the conclusion that this is what they will buy, while paying little to no attention to what they really want or need. Without thinking about how this will pan out down the road. And now they're seeing all the backlash and pushback and are hunting for someone to blame.
It's like the parents blaming their kid for his cavities, while ignoring their parental responsibilities. "We gave him the candy because he liked it, so the outcome is all his fault!"
Nobody wants to take responsibility for the state of modern car interfaces, because they're all doing it, and the first one or two that accept responsibility are going to take a temporary hit to their image. They all want to change back, but instead they're all standing around looking at each other, "well, c'mon, you do it first!" so they can all quietly make the same change in a year or two and escape the hole they're in. They all want to change back, but nobody wants to be first.
Reminds me a lot of headphone ports on smart phones. Pretty much at once everybody added a headphone port to their phones. It was a bit of a design nightmare, being physically tethered to your phone, but everybody went "all in" on it, and nobody could give it up because they knew their rivals would all jump on the opportunity to lambast their rival for dropping such a mainstream feature. Finally, after bluetooth was starting to mature, Apple finally bit the bullet and removed the jack. And just as expected, multiple big names dragged them through the alley in their marketing, for having gotten rid of a feature that "everybody loved". They kept up the gas-lighting while their designers quietly erased the headphone jack from their next design. Then like a switch, they quit panning Apple's lack of headphone jack as they released their next model that didn't have one either.
I expect the same thing's going to happen with car interfaces. A few manufacturers are going to bite the bullet and make the necessary changes, get slammed in the media for a year or two, and then everybody else is going to quietly make the same change.