Doesn't matter. It was reasonably foreseeable that they would need to coordinate with law enforcement or other emergency services at some point. They should either have had a dedicated emergency centre like other services such as OnStar [1], or at least better training for their first-line representatives.

Luckily the child was unharmed. This situation could have ended up so much worse.

[1]https://www.onstar.com/public-safety/emergency-situations

Should the police be able to enable the tracking of my car without an order from a judge?

This clearly falls under exigent circumstances, so yes in such a case.

They already have that power (or at least in my jurisdiction). Similar to being able to arrest you without a warrant if you are currently committing a crime.

VW is almost certainly outsourcing this to SiriusXM, and SirusXM has a fuzzy marketing oriented first responder page too: https://www.siriusxmcvs.com/safety-security/acn-plus/

And they train and provide the same resources as OnStar: https://publicsafety.siriusxmcvs.com/acnplus-training

And they have a number specifically for LEOs... just like OnStar: https://publicsafety.siriusxmcvs.com/vehiclelocationpolicy#S....

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But the reality is, this was an exceptional case with a system that's probably weighted towards the opposite: people falsely trying to get location info.

Honestly while Sirus/VW screwed up here, I'm surprised with an entire child missing no one would have managed to dig up the LEO hotline...

Impersonating law enforcement is a trivial way to steal data from LE-friendly vendors, because the police care more about buying weapons than setting up competent IT processes.