You call it vendor lock-in, I call it avoiding dealships, eliminating shady warrantee programs, and eliminating the hassle of finding reputable 3rd party servicers
anticipating the reasonable response to this question -- i'm guessing if you own a tesla and you don't live near a service center you know what you're getting yourself into.
reno only recently got theirs, for instance, and they're just a few miles down the road from the gigafactory. but reno was full of tesla's even before the service center opened.
EDIT, cause downvoting: my point is, i wouldn't lease a toyota, with its free/included oil changes, if i didn't live near enough to the toyota dealership to show up every 10K miles easily. i may, however, buy an older used toyota if i was happy enough going to jiffy lube (or similar). applying same criteria to tesla and proximity to their repair locations.
To take an example from the IT world, PCs and their OSes stayed so open because that's how they evolved when the industry first appeared. But phones and tablets offered the opportunity to lock down everything.
So I'd say that the future path of the connected smart car is closer to that of phones today.
But I think you may be onto something. Tesla is setting a bad example for other car makers. They can point to it and say, why can they do it and we can't?
Brief jump into the future. I get to see my new BMW default skin package expire and car turn dull grey, lights losing its exclusive green sheen, and warmed leather seats fold in to be replaced by, the horror, standard seats with warmers firmly shut off. They may as well brand me cheap.