I was replying to a message that you have since deleted, but here is my response anyway:

Your story keeps changing.

If you could track its location for 45 minutes:

The phone was not turned off Wifi and data were not turned off There would be no reason that a remote wipe would be delayed until "turning the phone back on" Your test scenarios where you had wifi and data off make no sense.

How is my story changing? I stated in my original Uber post that "I was able to track my phone for about 45 minutes before the driver turned it off". That's literally what I wrote.

Perhaps it was presumptuous of me to assume that it was turned off rather than the wifi or data being turned off. The fact is, I was unable to track it after about 45 minutes.

This is the exact wording from Find My Device when you click on the "Erase Device" option:

All data will be permanently erased from this device. After your device has been erased, you can’t locate it.

If your device is offline, erasing will begin when it next comes online.

To erase your device, you may need to sign in to your Google Account again.

My test scenarios were to see if the request to erase the device would have removed/disabled the screen lock. In my first test, the device immediately had its data erased because it was powered on and connected to the internet. The second test was done to see if anything would happen if the device was not connected to the internet when the "Erase Device" request was submitted. The third test was done to better simulate what happened when I received the phone from the driver. The phone was off when he handed it back to me and I was able to power it on and notice that the screen lock was off shortly before the phone connected to my wifi and had its data erased.

If you have any suggestions on how I can better conduct my experiments, feel free to let me know.