I’m trying to figure out what the connection is between the driver assist features and the phoning home behavior. Are they just two systems that new cars are likely to have, or are they actually integrated?

In Teslas, my understanding is that the driver assist features also judge your driving quality in real time and send them back to Tesla as a score. And, of course, they use the same sensors and processing hardware. So they are related in that it tends to be the same cars using the same hardware powering both.

Some driver assist features probably need to have map data that has to stay up to date, but probably don't need to send any data back to the manufacturer in order to function.