Regardless of the usage of the term Sprite, the real measure of how appropriate it is to use the term for something else is how many people get confused in this manner. I can't really tell what the average reader would think because my background is in game development, so my view is not representative.
I think people can get bogged down in the technical weeds over what a sprite is in graphics. Historically it started out as mini graphics overlays in hardware. There was a transition period motivated by Amiga documentation to have Sprites and Bobs, to distinguish, and perhaps advertise, the use of the Blitter. When software or Blitter Sprites became nearly ubiquitous, they returned to simply being called Sprites, the fairly rare use of the original form became known as Hardware Sprites. Usually it was only mouse pointers that remained as Hardware Sprites
Obviously the term Hardware Sprites is not strictly a distinguishing label either. They are all controlled by software using hardware with some degree of balance between the two.
Most Android devices have hardware that's capable of rather interesting version of hardware sprites. Hardware real-time compositing with scaling and colorspace conversions.
Where are they going to go? Honest question, because capital flight is always a threat that never materializes. Turns out the actual pillars of wealth can't easily be extracted out of the country.
At 8 MHz, a 68k can execute at most 2M instructions per second. So the answer is going to be yes, if this manages to execute one 68k instruction per ~200 cycles.
I think executing an instruction is going to be closer to 20-50 cycles than 200, so it should be much faster than a real 68k CPU.
I think performance is likely to be in the ballpark of a 68040 @20 MHz, but that's just a guess. This would leave 20 cycles for each emulated instruction. With JIT you could reach 200 MHz+ comparable speeds.
Agreed about the signal stalk. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last I've seen the signal stalk is back in Teslas, at least in Model Y, but I believe in newer Model 3s as well.
But "gear shifter"? It doesn't really require a stalk.
When you start, you select either D or R. Not a big deal.
And when you stop, I think most (all?) EVs even automatically go to P and apply parking brakes when you stop.
I think that already covers 99% of driving for 99% of people.
(Or in other words, a graphical object on screen that is not present in a framebuffer of any kind.)
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