Someone who's so deeply embedded the the industry should know Toyota Connect is the same story, installing hardware in all models but only enabling it for subscribers.
is it a 7 series or some Japanese SUV?
Also, if you're as experienced as you claim; You'd probably BMW does not make any transmissions. They've forever outsourced that to ZF or Getrag.
This is a feature of all recent VAG cars. Nothing quite like your navigation and climate control freezing on a 1000 km road trip but there's no way to reset the computer so you have to wait a hour for it to fully crash and reboot.
But yeah, just traded that car in for a Mercedes, and the infotainment is night and day. I basically don’t use CarPlay anymore because the built in stuff actually works better.
Mercedes rolled out the 250 largely because biturbo has been a loss leading qc dumpster fire for the last decade. Audi can barely handle infotainment that doesn't brick and reboot on a road trip and BMW has turned their technology package into a monthly milk truck that fleeces people for basics you get out the door from Toyota. if Tesla were to hit the ground with a car thats 10k less than the 3 in 2022 it would bury these gilded Lillie's from across the pond faster than the m5pvl gear in a 7 series punches out and seizes a 20k transmission.