Cellular connectivity is something I would rather cars not have.

E911 is mandatory in cars in a lot of countries. So you have it or not, even if it not used for data transfers.

That's one of the reasons CarPlay is non-negotiable for me: It limits the automaker's ability to enshittify the ownership experience.

Nothing prevents them from removing CarPlay in an update, though? Unless you make sure to never connect the car to the internet. Some garages will update FW for you unasked I hear.

This would not fly in Europe. You would be able to return the car for having lost crucial functionality, at least within 2 years of the sale (in some jurisdictions, 5 years). They could do it after that, but functionally forcing a subscription to get back a worse version of the functionality one already had for free sounds like a bad way to encourage sales of said subscription.

Removing an advertised-at-sale feature in an update wouldn’t fly in the US either.

Sony is deleting 551 movies from customer accounts, movies those customers paid for. Nothing digital is ever truly yours. They can and absolutely do take things away after advertising them at sale. This is actually quite common.

I’m not sure it would be legal for them to remove something they actually advertise as a feature to sell the car.

Also I’m sure they’d be hit with a class-action lawsuit immediately if they tried it. Manufacturers sell a lot of cars which would lead to a lot of pissed off owners.