I think you overestimate the quality of "made for automotive" and underestimate the importance that SW has in cars. These were essentially SW issues. This kind of SW fuckup can will and does happen for bigger OEM's all the time.
Tesla definitively has a problem with hardware design decisions. Remember the Model S touchscreen issue? Somehow their designers forgot that cars heat up in summer and instead of automotive used consumer grade hardware!
Meanwhile companies like Garmin and Magellan manage to build GPS devices that work just fine even though they spend their whole lives in the passenger compartment. They did this since the beginning, I never heard that you should stay away from this or that manufacturer of GPS units because the touchscreen fails.
They're options where: Ship a 17" LCD display (a key feature not the Model S) or don't ship one at all, because there were no 17" capacitive touch display certified for automotive use. Sometimes you just have to ship, especially if your touchscreen is the main interaction component of your product.
The first iPhone didn't have 3G while other phones had it. In order to do something new, you need to cut some corners. It's not like Tesla shipped non-automotive breaks.
My first touchscreen Garmin unit, circa 2007, definitely suffered from reliability issues in FL summer heat. Just keeping it on the dash in direct sunlight while driving was enough to affect its operation.
I’m guessing it didn’t effect their brand much because other companies like Tom Tom were aggressively targeting the entry-level market segment, and then the iPhone came out the same year.
The number people who had these higher-end units in hot southern states was likely just too small to significantly tarnish Garmin’s brand goodwill.
Soon enough most people switched to using their phone once the software was good enough (circa 2009 IIRC).
