It's insane that this keeps happening. Computers can remember BIOS settings for probably 40+ years now.

They use a battery backup. The main symptom of having a dead cmos battery is that your computer starts loosing it's cmos settings, it's a feature not a bug. I have a system where it keeps the cmos config on flash. the only system I managed to brick(almost). I put a bad config in(never disable usb on a laptop where everything is usb) and there was no easy way to reset it. I had to buy a sioc clip and a chip programmer to reflash the thing the hard way.

The point is all cars have a wonderful battery backup system, and resetting the computer when power is lost is also a nice feature.

it’s a shame that cmos battery technology has remained out of grasp for car radio manufactures these dozens of years

I know they use a battery.

Yeah, there are lots of ways cars could store such settings that wouldn't be cleared when main battery power is disconnected (which is something that regularly needs to be done when the car is serviced). Flash storage would work too.

But this is usually done on computers with a battery too?

I know.