Air-con conclusion
The first reason for the difference in the quality of the user experience on these two Toyotas was the difference between mechanical controls and GUI controls. The second issue was the treatment of the individual settings and considering whether a setting is set as an absolute value or as a relative setting that is being incremented or decremented. There is an opportunity here to reduce the user's workload a little--and every little bit helps.

Hard versus soft option
Once a design reaches the point where it has been agreed that the product will include a GUI, there is usually a debate as to how much or how little goes in the GUI and how many controls should be dedicated mechanical controls outside of the GUI.

It's very tempting to put all control inside of the GUI. The advantages to the design team are huge. It allows the hardware to be constructed before the final family of settings have been chosen, since software can add or remove new controls later on.

Since there are no off-screen controls, there is no need to put permanent labels on those controls. This allows the manufacturer to build units without concern for which country will eventually receive them. Once a single permanent text label is added to the device, that text will need to be translated and then all inventory has to be managed to ensure that each market receives the unit that has labels in the correct language. This is a headache that the manufacturing facility would love to avoid.

Manufacturing cost per unit is lower if all controls are left in the GUI since the sliders, dials, and buttons increase the bill-of-materials for the product. They also increase the number of moving parts in the system, which usually means a shorter product life.

There are many advantages to the design team of putting all of the controls in a GUI, but you have to remember that the goal is to make the user happy, even if it occasionally causes a little extra work for the engineers. In any debate about which controls are on the GUI (soft controls) and which are mechanical (hard controls) be sure to factor in usability as a concern, as it's sometimes traded off against cost and manufacturability.