I assure you that “old cars costing as much as new ones” isn’t the result of the market force of people reading contractual fine print and/or freaking out about telemetry. Concentric circles of echo chambers over here.
The main reason is more tangible to people. It is more reliability and simplicity. For instance the Toyota Tundra used to have a V8 that was pretty bomb proof. But over the years, manufacturers put in more efficient but more prone to problems turbocharged smaller engines. The bearing clearances went down, thinner oil then can be used which is also more efficient. But the margin for error when you are putting what used to be a performance engine in a car is much smaller and there have been issues. As car prices have gone up, people value a time tested drivetrain. There have been a lot of problematic CVT transmissions too.
The Chinese government banned Tesla vehicles from entering (Chinese) military bases. This is due to the prolific number of cameras streaming live video to a hostile (to China) organization/government. One can find blogposts by analysts who show that the upload stream from Tesla vehicles includes cabin audio.
I’m not worried even a lick about what cars cost electronics or otherwise. My primary factor in selecting a vehicle is my physical safety; after that it’s electronic surveillance.
> I have never met anyone in real life that's concerned about telemetry on their car
You mean you've never had a conversation about it. You can't know if you've met somebody that has that concern unless you've broached the subject explicitly.
