Tesla’s had the EV market majority for awhile now. They’re the poster child of more tech in cars, especially when all the other EV’s on the market are following suit to try to play catch-up. Although I agree with you that paywall of car tech that we have had for decades absolutely is not an EV thing, more sensors and cameras specifically is. The other stuff is just terrible marketing firms trying to force subscription services into things that didn’t ever have them before.

Tesla in particular has spearheaded this movement with the self driving car angle and it’s been Ford trying to catch up ever since. All kinds of correlatations between the Ford Mach E and the Tesla models to start with, and that stuff has absolutely followed in the electric Escapes and F105 lightnings. The larger screens, the 360 cameras, the mountains of sensors and LIDAR, Ford’s Blue Cruise nonsense.

Ford wasn’t putting random 15" screens in the dash of their cars before Tesla did it and I’d hazard that most other car companies weren’t either. It’s gotten to the point where it seems like the whole EV industry is trying to imitate Tesla and as far as Ford is concerned I can’t say I’m surprised that they came up with the ads nonsense specifically because that’s par for the course for a company that’s been plagued by the most recalls of any automaker 3 years running or more.

If I’m honest it’s gotten to the point where I’ll pay to fix my decade and a half or more old ice vehicle before I’ll buy any EV. Mini’s got problems with their batteries now, from what my brother tells me a lot of EV’s go through tires and brakes at an accelerated rate and at his dealer it costs something like $500-700 per axle for brake pads and machined rotors. This is on top of the number of electric vehicles being marketed today that have significabt problems that require whole modules or internal battery components to be replaced which is great under warranty but isn’t likely to lead to these vehicles lasting 50-70 years.

I hear about this stuff all the time from the people who fix these cars and a lot of what I hear just makes me not want anything to do with any cars. Unfortunately I don’t have another reliable mode of transportation that I can afford and will allow me to have free time so there’s that.