All of the elements of the Tesla business model like no repairs, no dealers, etc are all about maintaining that control.
Also Full Self Driving is extremely deceptive name for feature that does not do that
Is this even a real question? The product acts on it's volition! Ofcourse it's different.
Imagine you buy a crate of crate of C4 - well, its super dangerous, but it does not have a mind of it's own. Untill you touch it, it stays put. So long as you store it properly, it doesnt go off. If you kill someone with it, you go to jail.
But with a car, it can suddenly decide to kill you because of bad code. It could allow someone else to take control and kill you. It could kill someome else and make it look like you committed murder.
The fact that it has a computer and follows someone else's orders is a foundamental difference.
The question is whether or not the murder robots are a real thing or just a meme. And I think we all know the answer. Look, the cars are safe. Another story on the front page today noted that the Model Y is currently the best selling car on the market. If they were dangerous in any measurable way, we'd know. They aren't. They just aren't. But sure: if they do decide to kill their overlords, it's 100% on Tesla.
I mean, what you say is sorta specious. Of course that's true, it's always true. The interesting question is "are the cars dangerous?". And the answer seems to be a pretty emphatic no, at this point. So instead everyone wants to argue about abstractions ("they're still liable") or absolutisms ("no failure is acceptable").
And that seems increasingly counterproductive, and frankly to have more to do with the somewhat questionable mental stability of the CEO than to the behavior of the actual products.