Well yeah, we don’t need all that electronic cr*p.
But I still want it.
And I want it well integrated.
Making it possible for the screen to hide itself might be a better solution than just gluing a pad to the otherwise nice dashboard. But the movable screens seem to give Audi a lot of hassle. And I personally almost never drive without navigation on, because we live in a densely populated area and whenever I go without I tend to run into a traffic jam. (Which partly has to do with relegating “thinking” to the “systems”. When I jump into the E30 I might put a little more thought into the route before taking off.)
Then in a modern decked out car like an E-Class you “need” the screen for even more tasks, because you have endless possibilities of interacting with all of those gadgets. Might wear off after some time, but I constantly fiddle with the sound system, the ride control, the phone and If I could I’d probably even post on core while running a red light… 
The placement of gages within the new fully Digital E-Class Instrument cluster looks very intuitive and natural to me. I’ll love to try it out.
But the base model. Well that is not acceptable answer to the questions asked towards a car in that price range in my eyes.
mo-i