I'm getting the impression that all the freaking out is coming from non-techies. People that have been in the industry for a while are just shrugging and saying "Yeah, that's professional software development for you.".

I'd be more comfortable with that explanation if it was from people in the auto industry. I'd like Tesla to have better QA than developers normally do.

Even software has to live by the laws of economics though.

Or Musk suffering from the Dunning–Kruger effect.

In the big picture of things, it's still early days. Tesla's only been around for less than a decade and their model 3 only recently became available. They'll get things sorted out over the next 10 years, I would imagine.

Once their reliability goes up, I'll consider purchasing a used model S. The model S costs a lot to fix, so I wanna make sure I'm getting something that's not broken. I think the incentives are in place to create a car that lasts a long time. Unlike some others. BMW and mercedes, as far as I know, have terrible reliability after the 10 year mark: they kinda self destruct. Mechanics are always telling me how they see nothing but BMW and mercedes in their shops.

I'm sure, given a decade and unlimited money, they will sort it out. But they have to sort it out before their investor money runs out and the banks stop loaning.