I agree with the overall focus of your post, and pretty much everything except this bullet. Do you have a source, or other reason why you think Tesla has the best internal software systems in the world?
My personal impression, as a customer since 2013, is that Tesla has some of the worst internal software systems in the world. As a data management professional, it seems to me that Tesla doesn't know what a data model (3rd normal form), good database design - it's as if they've only hired software engineers and no data management people. It's manifested in such simple problems as service being unable to update my address (back in 2013) because that was the sales system, and it kept pushing the previous owner's address into the default page that service would get.
Marketing db that couldn't keep track of whether to send me invites to launch events (not sure I'd have gone, but as a signature Model X reservation holder, there were a couple of events over the years I'd have at least liked to get an invite).
I can't remember the recent issue somebody else ran into, but I commented along these lines, and let him know that at least he could be comforted by the idea that their basic db design problems change over the years.
They might not be easily the worst, but for a company of Tesla's scale, I've been left feeling like it's amateur hour on this front over the years.
This is actually very informative and surprising in a negative way. I also know this is serious knowledge when you mentioned normalization in there.
How would you explain this? They do have the best software systems that they design for the cars/self driving/etc. but crappy DBs in there?