in a room full of experts, sometimes it takes an idiot to point out, really none of these things requires Ford to store data in a way it can access

The technology required to make it possible for you to send a remote HVAC command to your car without Ford necessarily being able to tell that you did that is complex enough that I expect most FAANG companies wouldn't pull it off successfully.

It takes someone to store some of this data somewhere. I'd prefer more choices on how this data is handled, no doubt. See the last sentence of my previous comment.

But yes, generally speaking and replying to your original question of "requires telemetry to remotely access certain features on their car", yes it takes some kind of access to telemetry data to access telemetry data. The whole feature is access to telemetry data in the end, presented in useful ways. Whether Ford uses some kind of homomorphic encryption to handle that data or sets up end to end encryption between your phone and the data receiver from the car or allows you to configure third party telemetry retrieval services is a whole different question to ask.