That's a fair point.

Not least because this is why I wouldn't consider buying a Tesla. It feels too much like dealing with software: it isn't your car. It is Teslas car. And maybe paying a bunch of money for it means you can drive it, but sometimes, when you hit some corner case, it doesn't.

As a Tesla owner, I would love to know what corner cases you are referring to.

I've been a tech at a Ford dealership, and I'd say that the incidents which render the average Ford undrivable are far greater than the incidents which render the average Tesla undrivable.

This is a much hairier and more nuanced conversation for a different thread, but second-owner (used) FSD comes to mind as an example of not truly owning the car.

Second hand Teslas represent a challenge as someone pointed out. You also can't necessarily modify or inspect the car without Tesla getting their panties in a twist (I dare you to connect to the network inside your car and try to get access to the onboard computers and then try to have the discussion with Tesla about who's car it really is).

The there are the massive privacy issues and the fact that you can't do anything about that: your car is spying on you. (I know consumers don't care enough about this in the US to elect politicians that take privacy seriously, but in Europe we do. Which is why Tesla is under scrutiny for not only collecting massive amounts of invasive data, but also for not being able to adequately safeguard the data they collect).

I'm not in the US. My Tesla has an option to disable data collection. You could argue that the company might not honour that option, but that argument then opens a very broad subject across many industries.

Here's a test you can do: try to access the ethernet inside your car.

Still think it's your car?