I guarantee this will never happen. Manufacturers picked touch screens and capacitive buttons because they are cheaper to produce. There is no way they’re going back to physical controls.
Well, if your vehicle can't be sold in an entire economic zone because you aren't complying with safety regulations, that's a pretty big incentive to change your design.
I don’t really believe for a moment that a company would care really. They exist to make profits by any means necessary, legal or not. Changing designs requires changes in tooling, processes, and design. That all costs lots of money.
If any design is changed as a result of gov regulations I’ll eat my entire dick.
So, uh, have you heard of a guy named Ralph Nader? He wrote a book called "Unsafe At Any Speed" in the 60s about how auto manufacturers were selling cars that they knew to be dangerous, and how they resisted changing in order to make vehicles safer. It resulted in the US DOT and eventually NTHSA, and a whole bunch of new regulations that auto manufacturers were obligated to comply with.
You also have things like the Consumer Product Safety Commission that can force companies to recall products--at their own expense--to fix products with health and safety defects. The results of recalls can be fines, as well as the product being entirely removed from the market, which can easily end up costing more than has already been spent on tooling and processes.
So, yeah, companies can, and do, change designs as a result of regulations.
Now, how were you planning on eating your entire dick?
Everything you listed happened in the past in different political and economic climates. Those changes would never be able to be implemented in today’s climate.
And if you think that they EU won't regulate companies and force them to change their business practices in order to do business in the EU, well, you haven't been paying attention.
]I see your view as jaded not wrong. Don't want to gaslight you and say things are like they were, your view is valid through your expereinces, but Apple was forced to change a charging port to the cost of god knows how much. Also we can only list things in the past, if i try and list a now its already past, semantics I know but language is powerful in teaching your brain what is possible.