Having interacted with him a few times online (if he was alive he would be on this comment thread right now, and would probably have been banned at this point) - he was severely mentally ill. I’m not sure if he had any form of political ideology that was coherent enough to be “theocratic.”
Like, when you run TempleOS, the majority of programs on there are about using random number generators to “talk to” God. There are keyboard shortcuts for this purpose. I don’t think he was fun to be around - I imagine that his parents were at the end of their rope by the time they kicked him out - but Davis spent the last ten years or so of his life completely untethered from reality.
Touch screens also seem like they would be easier to integrate with subscription services. Auto manufacturers are looking to make things like heated seats a subscription.
Cars have been getting steadily worse. There doesn’t seem to be any enforcement of recalls (has anyone satisfactorily had the Honda Civic 2016-2021 air conditioning resolved? How much did you spend?)
If they can take cars away from us entirely, and move to us renting self driving cars, that’s what they would really want to do. Pay for your radio, pay for heat and AC…