Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also presumably further discourages theft since it negatively impacts the ability to “part out” stolen devices to work around activation locks. Basically once the owner remotely locks the stolen device, it becomes almost worthless until it’s back in the owner’s possession.
This looks to me like a tradeoff we collectively haven’t agreed upon for any other device. To take the perennial car analogy, car theft is a widespread enough phenomenon, but we haven’t settled on breaking central functionalities each time a repair is done outside network. To push a bit further, steeply lowering phone price would also critically deter theft, why not go that option if it’s that important ?
Well, imagine Tesla implements a feature to put a car in lost mode and it suddenly can't be driven, even with a key. At that point, the only thing the car thief could do is strip it for parts and sell them on ebay or the like.