I think Tesla eventually has a catastrophic accident and is sued and/or criminally prosecuted into oblivion. I feel sorry for the people who are going to have to die for this to happen. This trope that humans are bad drivers is, in general, crap. Humans are very good drivers. The US has 7.3 deaths per billion km driven. This means if you drive 50km a day, every day, you are (essentially) guaranteed to die... after 75…
Having commuting time available as what amounts to "free time" is an insane boost to daily life. A quick google says Americans spend 12.2 days per year in their cars. If 300 million people can save 12 days' time per year, you're freeing up ten million years of time every year.
I'm not advocating for throwing everyone in self driving cars untested and who cares how many people die, but if, on the journey to saving many millennia of time every year, a person is killed, why should the company be sued into oblivion? If we're going to sue everyone into oblivion whenever anything doesn't go quite right, why would any company ever try to take on difficult problems?