It's sort of funny that you have very nearly the sum total of human knowledge at your fingertips, the ability to communicate with people over thousands of miles (or hundreds, or dozens) instantly, and all the news about every place in the world you could possibly want to hear about... And the first thing you think about someone else doing with that ability is "play Candy Crush." Yes, it really does matter.

You need a lot fewer solar panels to power an internet-enabled device than you do to power a welder, or even a well. Incidentally, most of the world doesn't worry about DMV regulations. Places that don't have a well for water very often don't. They might worry about gasoline, but it's just as likely that neither thought will even occur to them. On the other hand, the internet contains a lot of useful information, which is often in even shorter supply than water in places like that. It is, after all, a lot more than a repository for cat pictures.

With as much money as they've got? Probably. At this point, they just sort of make money off of people being on the internet without having to do much else, so they've got every reason to. Hells, they may just up and decide to give everyone on the planet the equivalent of 56k for free with equipment, or something like that.

Psh, everyone knows that the Sheriff's Secret Police can mind-scan you from their blue helicopters through five miles of solid lead. Tinfoil hats are just tacky.

I think we're all forgetting something here. Even if an autonomous car is advanced enough that it can tell the difference between a bus and a semi truck (based on what I've seen, most current prototypes see other cars as shapes with velocities), it's not going to be able to figure out whether that bus is full of children, nuns, convicts, migrant workers, or nothing. Autonomous cars aren't likely to meaningfully tell the difference between a Ford Pinto and a Rolls Royce for a very long time, if they ever really do. The decision the car makes in such a situation will be based on whatever factors it can actually determine, without trying to poll a remote database about who's driving what and why over unreliable cellular data links. Likely, if it's completely boxed in and there's something coming towards it, it will just try to stop dead, which I'm pretty sure is what I would do too. Honestly, I don't want to live in a world where my car knows enough to even be in the position to make an ethical decision about whether I live or die. The place you all seem to be postulating in sounds like even more of a ludicrous surveillance state than we already live in.