Google integrated its assistant into millions of vehicles in the period, with persistent concerns about the data collection defaults adopted.
A car is one of the most sensitive environments for collection, for a simple reason: it knows where you've been, when, how often and at what speed. A vehicle's location history describes a family's routine with a precision few systems match.
The concern about factory defaults is the same one that would appear weeks later with analytics components inside apps, collecting location even when the app had no need for it. The problem isn't that collection exists, it's that it ships switched on without the user deciding.
An in-car assistant has a strong safety justification, because it replaces screen interaction while driving, which is exactly where distraction is expensive.
The question left for anyone buying a vehicle with such a system is the familiar one for connected products: what's collected by default, what can be switched off without losing function, and how long the history is kept.