Usual disclosures: We own Teslas and TSLA.
You absolutely can and should expect good behavior of corporations. You can't rely only on that expectation so agree if it's important, legislate it.
If you don't like the outcome, change the people.
In this case, though, I don't think the rules should be changed. I'm fairly certain that Tesla is not the first automaker to have come up with this kind of money-saving idea. This has to be well-trodden ground in consumer rights.
In this case, people should vote with their wallets, and the occasional class-action lawsuit, or, if things get too far out of line, expect the same kind of regulator intervention that would happen against any other car company. If regulators would not intervene against any other automaker trying this sort of thing, then I don't think they should intervene against Tesla.
If you expect (in the first sense) benevolent corporate behaviour, in the absence of incentives that align benevolence with self-interest, you're generally being naive. But if you expect (in the second sense) benevolent corporate behaviour, and act accordingly, you may be helping to create that alignment -- because corporations and the people who control them usually care about their public image (certainly when it directly affects consumer behaviour), and legislators are usually at least somewhat responsive to public pressure.
So having the first kind of expectation leads to unhelpful complacency; but lacking the second kind of expectation leads to unhelpful cynicism, cashing out as acquiescence to the status quo.
Thnx.
Note that many electronics are designed to last 10 years (i.e. electromigration). Obviously, use cases matter (24 hour use, high temp or lots of heat cycles).
"His vehicle had warned him about having hands on the steering wheel" (... fourteen minutes prior to the accident).
Leave aside the fact that if you have an accident in your Tesla you will need to go to court to subpoena telemetry data. But they'll happily publish your telemetry data without your (explicit, I know, I know, TOS) agreement if they think they're being painted in a bad light.
And if you disclose information about the vehicle, they'll happily force push neutered/old firmware to your vehicle to hide or prevent such activities, lock you from future upgrades, and disable ethernet and OBD ports in your vehicle.
Or a Douglas Adamsesque approach to right-to-repair, where there's a website with parts you can "order" (except everything down to the most commodity bolt says "Call Tesla" and they will tell you its unavailable to order via the website), that's if you know what parts you need, a process which required making an appointment with Tesla to look at the service manual, several months out, which required a fee, had a time limit, and put you in a room where you were not allowed a computer, phone or camera, just a notepad and pencil), all the while touting their "corporate commitment to transparency" as they pulled out of NHTSB testing.
Is this your idea of responsibility?