Is that unique to the German car industry? Outside of a few tech corps or some small startups, mainly in the US, most shops seem to 'run' their tech function more like buyer/seller e.g. "here's some Euros in exchange for [thing] we'd like" instead of the traditional employer/employee dynamic where your boss can evaluate your work to some degree.

Arguably they'd be better off actually doing that as a true buyer and just engaging B2B for their easily solved CRUD variants than this weird go-between that combines the negatives of managing employees with the negatives of buying unknown solutions.