I haven’t ever been afraid of those things, I see more likely scenarios of them having it disable the O2 sensor to cause the check engine light to come on and depending on the vehicle cause sputtering and other “serious issue signs.” To convince drivers to take it in for repair. Then just re-enable or replace the sensor for dealers to make a quick hefty buck.

You can steer someone’s car once and when it hits the news people would freak out and the companies stock would crash. You can send 500,000 people to the shop for a sensor malfunction and charge them $200 to repair it make an extra $100,000,000 and fly under the radar pretty easily I imagine. It would be hard to prove that “reseating” the old sensors cable didn’t infact fix the issue