No, I don't know anyone with a Tesla. I do know people with Hondas, Beamers, Nissan Leafs, and I own two Toyotas and a Mazda.
Definitely no Chryslers, Dodges, Fiats, or Rams. They are very limited in market reach indeed in NZ, unless we're talking vintage cars, then there's a few more.
I also had the, ahem, "privilege" of owning a GM built "Toyota" previously[1]. It was... shall we say, a cacophony of interesting and bemusing engineering choices - the boot/trunk lid was incredibly heavy, yet the latch mechanism was made entirely of plastic, and to turn on the interior lights, you had to turn the dashboard brightness dial all the way up, and then a bit more, and then the interior lights would turn on. Only took me 3 months to figure that out. Admittedly, was handy for turning on the interior lights without looking away while driving, but was not at all intuitive.
Oh, I do know someone with a couple of Jeeps though, the poor bastards.
I guess you could rephrase my statement as "I don't know anyone with a car built after 2016", although as far as I can tell in NZ, Toyotas, at least, ship with telematics as an option for fleet management, rather than a default.
I guess I've lost track of your point. You were trying to suggest cars don't phone home, based on your experience and assumptions, but the fact is that nearly all major manufacturers are selling cars today with systems that phone home for various reasons, whether you're aware of it or not. How does you not knowing anyone with new cars meaningfully inform this thread? The manufacturers are becoming aware of privacy issues, and trying to make some kinds of collection and access opt-in, but basically all of them now offer some services that phone home by default and are opt-out or not optional. Hopefully that data is reasonable and private and protected... hopefully.
A lot of consumers (I would guess most) prefer to have default-on connectivity to provide services like theft protection, automatic emergency support in case of accidents, and up-to-date navigation maps, among many other modern conveniences.
You don’t know anyone with a Tesla? https://www.tesla.com/support/connectivity
Or a Honda? https://hondalink.honda.com/#/
Or a Bmw? https://connecteddrive.bmwusa.com/app/index.html#/portal
Or a Toyota? https://www.supraconnect.com/app/index.html#/portal
You don’t know anyone with a Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep or Ram brand vehicle? https://www.driveuconnect.com/
You didn’t hear about the remote control vulnerability 6 years ago? Chrysler recalled their entire fleet to fix it. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...