A sarcasm tag helps… like thus:
/s
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It’s intended as the second backup for the drive shifter. Primary method is using autoshift, which is pretty simple: if the front is clear but the back is blocked, drive forward, and reverse for the opposite scenario. If both the front and the rear are clear, go in the opposite of the direction you were going before you pulled in. And if both are blocked, go to the first backup. Which is to use the big touchscreen.
The windshield shifter is only intended to be there if the cybertrukk thinks the front and rear are both blocked AND you can’t use the touchscreen for some reason, so it’s not illuminated until you touch it.
With all that in mind, the reason it’s designed that way is to make the interior look futuristic by eliminating as many mechanical controls as possible.
That said, your first sentence is still true.
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It’s because in the Eastern Bloc, in Czechoslovakia the brand of electronics supplies was Tesla.
There are some more or less enterprises connected to the original Tesla and one of them sells chargers too…
https://www.tesla-electronics.eu/en/chargers-and-usb-devices/
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There are a lot of very good electric cars on the market now. Tesla Y and 3 are still good cars (despite quality issues). Tesla could be flourishinf considering that they still sell a lot of cars and were the first to bring out a really desirable electric car. However, Musk has flushed all of their first mover advantages down the toilet. All of Teslas problems can be put down to desiscions made by Musk. No wonder so many experienced senior managers have left Tesla, including JB Straubel.
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What the hell? A well-designed control system doesn’t have “backups” for common and critical functions. We don’t design cars with backup steering wheels and backup accelerator pedals and such because any scenario that renders the primary controls unusable pretty much guarantees you have an undrivable car.
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If you have quality issues, how is it good?
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… they would be good, if they didn’t suck 
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This is what you get when your primary motivator is not good design, it’s just DISRUPTION!!!
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That’s a bit less true with drive by wire components instead of physical linkages. We don’t design cars with backup steering wheels because on every non-cybertrukk vehicle the steering wheel physically moves the front wheels, with power assist when the vehicle systems are working. Since EVs are required to use drive by wire for some critical applications, the lack of backup controls is mostly down to user unfamilarity and space in the driver’s seat. I don’t think their auto-shift is inherently dumb, and you need a backup system for that. But I completely agree that when somebody said “hey, how do they shift the car if the entertainment system is offline and the autoshift doesn’t know what to do?”, the response should have been to reconsider putting the shifter into the entertainment system instead of making it a dedicated control. But that’s how Elon wants it, even though it’s a terrible design/UX.
That’s one of the reasons Tesla would be off my list even if Elon wasn’t a shithead; I like having control stalks and physical buttons for as many common operations as possible. But this is an area where a lot of non-Tesla EVs are also struggling, because they want to look futuristic and take advantage of drive by wire, so they put in dumb electronic controls and don’t think about UX. I went to test drive an Ioniq 5 and couldn’t figure out how to get it out of park, because the shifter didn’t do anything, and the dashboard didn’t indicate the problem: you have to have your foot on the brake, because the Ioniq 5 always starts in two-pedal “creep” mode, which I’m used to on ICE but not on EVs. UI on the vast majority of EVs in the US market prioritizes being cool over UX/functionality, and it’s super frustrating.
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Yeah, well, maybe Tesla should have.
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We also don’t design cars with backup steering wheels because there’s no scenario in which a driver would seamlessly switch to a backup system if the primary control failed. It’s just another thing to go wrong.
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Form over function you say?
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This is true. The Volkswagen EV platform which now supports the ID3, ID4 and the camper van, is based on virtual controls. IDK if it was designed to be cool, but it’s an idea which has had its day and been found wanting. Lots of manufacturers didn’t buy into it at all.
An amusing tangent: Neal Stephenson’s “In The Beginning Was The Command Line” describes how it would be entirely possible to design a control interface for a car based on drop down menus for things like |Turn/Right/Left/Harder| and it would be terrible.
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As a previous owner of a Fiat Panda mkII I could assure you you can have a good car with quality issues. Not to mention old Alfa Romeo cars that tended to become a pile of rust too easily.among other issues.
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I’ll admit automotive controls aren’t my specialty. But I’ve done a lot of industrial controls. In the industrial case, any backup systems are usually invisible to the user - they just see one interface. The only way they know they’re on backup is an alarm indication that the primary failed. They don’t have to change what they do or the way they do it.
I was just about to ask “but why?”. That actually clears it up.
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