It is indeed scary that even car manufacturers are moving towards central control of every little thing in your car.
The last thing I want to see with all these tech companies following Apple's footsteps in a lot of things, is to see the auto industry becoming like Apple.
Media systems locking due to the lack of power is not a new problem. I do remember having the exact same problem on my 1994 Passat, where the radio would lock itself and you had to go to the dealer to have it unlocked.
>>And we do not have the pin, we were never given a pin
Literally the same problem, except 25 years later :P Manufacturers almost never issued these special pins to unlock radios.
And like, disconnecting the battery has always been a problem in cars, BMWs, Mercs, Opels, Peugeots, Fiats - I've had them all and they all did something weird if you disconnected the battery - more often than not, a check engine light would pop up and you had to bring it to the dealer to clear it. This is not new.
The best example of this that demonstrates what you'd end up with is the cost of key fob programming. The actual cost of the hardware is trivial but a dealership will charge you $250-500 to program a new one because they have a monopoly on programming the fobs for their brand. Those things should cost $50 max IMO.
The scary thing is the vehicle industry is moving this way for everything and if nothing changes it's eventually going to become extremely difficult / expensive to own a vehicle that's not under warranty. I wouldn't be surprised if they start serializing parts and then sell service plans that increase in price as your car ages. You'll pay forever.