Your views are spot on, just one thing: Tesla is out of startup mode for like what, 10, maybe even 12 years? They are just another seasoned manufacturer stringing along, well, with rock-bottom 'quality'.
It is just that his highness, greatest pretengineer of recent times, SEC-convicted fraudster, CCP-affiliated (some say owned) dude whilestill holding US security clearances, documented drugster and potentially affiliated too with Mexican cartels, has a strong NIH syndrome, and thinks he's smarter than decades of engineers contributing their discoveries into our human knowledge pool. Constantly overruling the more sensible people still working for him by authoritarian decrees.
OP is comparing them against the legacy car making industry - they are still a 'young' player by a long way, and a relative newcomer.
Besides, the SEC scandal is pretty small-beer in terms of auto industry scandals - see the VW emissions scandal, the safety scandal of Toyota which is only just kicking off, General Motors ignition switch scandal, going all the way back to the classic defective gas tank scandal from Ford...
It is just that his highness, greatest pretengineer of recent times, SEC-convicted fraudster, CCP-affiliated (some say owned) dude whilestill holding US security clearances, documented drugster and potentially affiliated too with Mexican cartels, has a strong NIH syndrome, and thinks he's smarter than decades of engineers contributing their discoveries into our human knowledge pool. Constantly overruling the more sensible people still working for him by authoritarian decrees.