So, according to a few articles I've read recently, this being one of them, with the introduction of hot spot they added a second eSIM to the car. The primary eSIM is for the connected drive stuff and the second eSIM is for the hotspot. That's why the Connected Drive stuff worked but the hotspot didn't. The eSIM for the hotspot wasn't provisioned properly.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcru...r-car-key/amp/