They are looking to buy new, and need Android Auto and CarPlay
I was active on an automotive forum around the time when that sort of thing started to be seen as a "need" by car salesmen and some of their more enthusiastic customers. The big new thing was "infotainment" and it seemed like the whole industry was insisting we'd all soon see how essential this stuff was. I was disdainful of the idea then, and have only become more so. Cars should have an AM/FM radio receiver, and aside from lights and a horn that's all they need for communications.
That's not the answer you're looking for, but it seems reasonably on-topic here. If you must get a new car, the easiest route to having it not spy on you as much as it can all the time is to make sure it doesn't have a SIM card (or remove the one it does have) and never connect your phone to it in any way except perhaps via a 3.5mm audio jack.
A quick look at the documentation seems to indicate that they have not removed or officially deprecated the feature, only made it more complicated to configure it.
Yeah, you are doing it wrong. As I am guessing you already know, even if you haven't fully admitted it to yourself yet. All telemetry should be opt-in.
That's because you're just far too old, and not down with the zoomers and their extremely flurgid memes. Or possibly you're not a paleontology enjoyer.
When it comes to location tracking and many other things, data retention and use policies are just a useful distraction from the real problem which is that they're able to collect the data at all.
It's too bad you couldn't find a link to somewhere other than x.com. Just going by the headline though, this could lead to great new career opportunities for Irish black market contraband meme dealers.
Sure, it's inevitable. China is so great and prosperous that one day the people of Taiwan will see reason and enthusiastically petition to join it. This will obviously happen some day, so there's no need to do anything but sit back and wait for it, President Xi.