You know, my decisions on things are mostly based on the product...
But if I know I'm going to enrich someone that I find completely obnoxious, it gives me pause. (Of course, dealing with an organization helmed by someone obnoxious tends to have its own costs: they tend not to be super laser-focused on the customer experience).
Ordinary political disagreement isn't enough to do this for me. But seemingly systemic wanton disregard for others gets me to the point that it's a lot harder for me to justify buying that product.
There's a pizza place in my town co-owned by a notorious jerk. They have pretty good pizza. I still don't go there anymore (even though he is generally not there and the risk of running into him is low).
It seems that 5% or more of the country views everything through a binary lens of "Is this something my media and political group will be upset about or not" so if you are a Republican/Fox News person you feel that you should buy a "MyPillow" when buying a pillow.
and if you are part of the Democrat/NYT group buying a "MyPillow" is a bad thing.
To your point, this is crazy because both sides probably buy the exact same Tyson Farms chicken and have spent zero time learning about Tyson's business and labor practices and Tyson executives political beliefs. They are just thinking about which businesses Fox News / NYT has told them to care about.
Ever since Madison Avenue taught the postwar consumerist middle class to consider purchases as buying into aspirational lifestyles, tying it into personal identity, the same process has shifted from simply patronizing businesses all of the way to political choices. Thus, charismatic and attention-seeking CEOs no longer sell their businesses simply no the basis of the quality of their goods or services, but buying into entire constructs of Zizek voice ideology. Thus, perhaps paradoxically, consumer individuals, craving belonging, are buying their way into tribes of like-minded individuals with similar convictions.
In short, don't blame the country themselves; these businesses and their management are pushing politicizing as a tactic to sell, sell, sell. As we in tech know, everything is ads.
I've not studied this specifically but I do have a general interest in the complex control systems now in cars —and I try to avoid them.
I think that, from watching the likes or Rich Rebuilds, who ostensibly operates without any approval from tesla, the cars will run without the internet but I guess they'd become "feature complete" and when modules die it will be on the car hacking community to pick up the mantle.
Traditional cars aren't in a much better position as somewhat superfluous modules (think a radio head unit) can take down one of the many CANbus networks in your car and leave it a brick.
Many (most?) auto techs are not well versed identifying these types of low level problems and will fall back to firing the parts cannon at the car rather than identifying the issue definitively. Just like in Battleship you can get a hit by random guessing but this is a waste of money and resources.
The random superfluous modules also become unavailable and if they're critical to making the car start then your car might be out of commission for the foreseeable future. GM and Ford just don't have as much of a social media halo around them.
You do see a few headlines around particularly egregious money digs, like one company making remote start a subscription feature. That module and the car it's in is not built to last in my view.
Sorry to be so blunt, but I find this level of online political attachment to be completely deranged. Either it's a good car or not.