[Summershard]

You actually don’t need any data plan to call emergency services, 112 is literally baked into the GSM standard. As long as the phone (or car) can connect to a network, it can call 112. It doesn’t even need a SIM card.

A side note, though. This SIM-less emergency calls are blocked in some countries because there were a lot of fake calls. Some other countries put such calls on a less important list of calls. Many countries in EU do allow them, though.

So, car manufacturers could just put in the cellular capabilities without connecting to any network. They just don’t want to.