Cars are not inherently tools of government, it's just they've been regulated such that that is their direction of development. Personal computers were similarly not that way either.
The key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement to be connected to the internet, after which it's game over.
My point is we can do this for anything. Clocks enabled capitalists to exploit workers. Lights took the night from rebels. Steam engines took farmers out of the daylight and put them in mechanised factories. Hell, agriculture enabled modern civilisation but also created such a wave of oppression and anxiety we're still worshiping the gods we invented to save us from it.
None of those statements is wrong. But they're also incomplete.
Conversely, if you are of no use to such a regime you will not get very far. The only meaningful question here is how organic this phenomenon is.
nVidia - existed for years before most people noticed just what they were up to, and their change in valuation reflects that. For them AI was the point from the start, games was just the bootstrapping mechanism. Prior to the AI explosion they were a decent business but not a spectacular success.
Facebook - succeeded where almost every other social media app failed before by enabling data gathering and narrative control for the most important demographics in society (MySpace, for example, did not)
Google - a gov funded research project to organise and index information
Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.
And despite the fact that OpenAI has incredibly low adoption everywhere outside of that, it is still worth tens of billions of dollars. Do you really think that valuation comes from being able to remove people from fuckin cellphone pictures with a tap, or generating royalty free images?
> Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.
I'm sorry, your tinfoil hat is slipping.
That's Google.
I live in Quebec where the gov electricity monopoly (Hydro Quebec) now insist that new homes have smart meters in, where they can remotely control your thermostat, while simultaneously campaigning to make all alternatives illegal. Curiously we're also a big Tesla market because of the cheap electricity, which is also the reason for the thermostats: they want to turn the heating down in Quebec so they can sell the same electricity for more south of the border.
Where do you think gasoline comes from exactly? I can rechange an electric car completely off grid with solar/wind. I'm still working on my off-grid oil drilling and refinery operation.
If you try charging a car from a solar panel you aren't going to be going very far in a hurry.