Automotive Electronics and Quality
I've worked in Automotive Electronics for over ten years and I can tell you these memory cards are necessary. Automotive is an extremely harsh environment, and electronics in the cabin needs to be qualified over extremes of temperatures from -45°C to +105°C (up to 125°C in the engine compartment). There are also tests for vibration, high humidity, and long life.
For automotive semiconductors the specification is AEC-Q200 - look it up.
Maybe your commercial-grade USB stick is serving you well in your car, but consider that a failure rate of 5% is considered high and completely unacceptable in automotive electronics. If you have 50,000 vehicles that means 2,500 failures you will read about on the internet.
I can tell you that, in the early mad rush to connect cars, many car manufacturers were only using commercial-grade connectivity products (WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, etc). Watch how many of these cars have failures four years after they were sold.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
