Modern software works like that.

I resto-mod EFI onto old carb’d vehicles and I wish it had wireless updates. When you scale to Toyota’s size, it makes very little sense to require a service tech to perform software updates manually.

I sort of support the idea of selling a car with components disabled. It costs more to re-tool the assembly line than it does to build it all the same. For instance, many trucks have wiring to support towing but it’s not plugged in.

This is because there are additional costs such as warranty repairs for those types of components.

If a seat heater stops working, but was never enabled, it doesn’t need to get fixed under warranty. You also don’t need to worry about software code causing problems with that module since it’s disabled.

I don’t support anything that obstructs someone from turning that feature on though. If you can wire up a switch to heat your seats then great. I can understand why you shouldn’t expect to be able to hack the ecm or module to make it work though.