This is good news, though some (mostly higher-end) carmakers are addressing this by having high-quality natural language voice commands. I look forward to having a vehicle like this someday, but in the meantime I'm glad that there are mainstream carmakers that are keeping physical buttons.
I personally don't enjoy voice commands, they require all passengers to stop talking, and it interrupts the radio, podcast, or music, and generally it's awkward to use voice commands during a phone call. Well placed physical interfaces are unbeatable for their input reliability, which translates to less time spent distracted from the road.
I don't have a high-end luxury car, I've only used Android Auto / Apple CarPlay through the car's microphone system.
Even if we assume a sophisticated system that can triangulate your voice, trying to talk to the car while driving, and having other passengers talking seems like a recipe for distraction.
Perhaps! I was imagining that it would work at least as well as a HomePod, which can pick up very quiet talking even when music is playing. Since the car knows where your head is located, I assumed that it would perform even better. I don't have a problem talking while there are others in the car — I often have kids in the car and use an AirPod to ask Siri to send text messages. I find it to be less distracting than reaching for knobs (and I've driven knobby cars since the 90s, so am well-practiced at that). I find steering-wheel controls to be the best, but anything that makes me reach into the center stack is less preferable (compared to voice interface) for me.
My experience with Siri when I've lost a remote has been more than enough to tell me that trying to control volume with voice is just a pain in the ass.
