The regulation calls out 19 vehicle functions which must have physical controls inside the vehicle, with additional requirements about size and usability of the buttons.
Those functions include:
Turn signals
Hazard lights
Horn
PRND gear shifter
Driver assist function, if present
Windshield wipers
Windshield defroster
Power windows
Emergency call system
Power off switch for EVs
I think car manufacturers don’t care about the 0.000001% of people praying out SIM modules out of their cars that much.
Teslas hang a significant amount of their MCU functionality on the built-in SIM. Assuming the system doesn’t glitch out completely, you’re going to be staring at an arrow on a big gray box in the middle of a big tablet screen while it fails to load map data. They explicitly did not build Android Auto or Apple CarPlay into their vehicles because they wanted you to drive everything from the MCU itself. It would occasionally pop up reminders at me when I switched to Bluetooth Audio because I was using it to stream an app that was already native to the car (Audible kept glitching out and losing my place when I resumed on different devices).
I’m sure there are other auto makers that are happy to follow suit. I just switched from a Model 3 to a Hyundai Ioniq5 and it feels like much of the user interface was locked down until I subscribed to BlueLink.
I’m starting to get way more interested in the concept of a super basic, modular vehicle with only doodads you build onto it attached. I hope the Slate truck can make good on what it’s promised so far.