Some of the newer auto manufacturers do that. Telsa, Rivian, etc. Those companies all have good in-house software developers. Almost everyone else farms this stuff out, which is why it’s never updated.
AP is supposed to disable itself if a fault or abnormality is detected. Pretty much all advanced cruise control systems do this.
I don’t think it’s fair to say the car was hiding evidence of AP being used unless it was intentionally logging the data in shady way. We’d need to see the logs of the car, and there are some roundabout ways for a consumer to pull those. That would probably be an interesting test for someone on YouTube to run.
Or we could hire professionals with experience that don’t have to “learn lessons” with national security intel.
Trump hired amateurs and fired staff that had experience. This is a federal government run like a school project.