What is the point of the GPL if companies aren't going to respect it? Personally, I was about to comment that this letter seems way too charitable.
If Tesla was using a closed source OS like Windows, and wasn't following the terms of that license agreement, do you think Microsoft would write a letter to Tesla owners politely asking them to get involved in the conversation, or do you think Microsoft would bust out some lawyers and tell Tesla in no uncertain terms exactly what was going to happen if they didn't immediately get their act together?
If anything, an article like this makes me more likely to use GPL code, because apparently I can deliberately violate the legal terms for years and get off by just ignoring a few cordially written letters. I guess it was foolish for me to be so worried about its viral nature, since that part appears to be optional.
And even if it was, Elon's companies have some experience with rocket science.
They wouldn't be having these issues if they just did the right thing to begin with for all of their users.
While some of us might not care that much, others might come to miss the days when GPL was actually relevant.