I'm a sane world, removing the brake pedal (etc) would only occur after extended disuse. When the technology is mature enough and so reliable that it's a wasted feature that never gets used, and hasn't been used in a long time.

Not when the technology is brand new and this is something still needed on a regular basis.

I would call a working brake pedal the single most critical safety feature in cars today.

To be fair, it says brake pedal - there are other possible means of activating a brake such as an old school emergency brake lever.

The "benefit" is, of course, money saved for their own pockets.

If nobody is in the driver's seat, then it doesn't matter if the brake pedal exists. If someone does happen to be sitting there, but isn't paying attention to driving, they might accidentally hit it. And it would be in the way most (hopefully all) of the time.

Sounds like this doesn't include it, but I think it would be better to have some centrally accessible thing to manually activate the brakes. Then you could do it regardless of where you sat.

There should be a mechanical override emergency brake. However it need not be a pedal. The typical use should be the mechanic verifying it works at the yearly inspection

It saves like $20