I was talking about efficiency and range, which typically falls pretty short of cars intended to be EVs. But there are also other changes like wheels being closer to the front ends of the vehicles and not needing the transmission hump in the floor, giving more passenger and cargo space.
All new cars are terrible for privacy, EV or not. Small shops doing conversions on older cars will absolutely be better in that regard. But as soon as you make it a mass market thing, the same incentives to invade the privacy of their consumers will end up with the same result. Better privacy and data protection laws are the only way to stop that, I think.
It probably happened when the tensioner failed and the belt flew off.