I have bad news for you: Modern society not only allows business and individuals to take actions that will kill people, but it quantifies to what extent in dollar terms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

Scroll down for a country-by-country breakdown.

I personally don't pass judgement on it.

I'm not sure of your point here? Presumably Tesla's capital position is still significantly smaller than VW? I do not know this, though, as I am not as familiar with VW's capital structure.

TBH, I'm more worried about what will happen with Ford or GM if they have even a short outage. GM has massive ongoing obligations and a relatively weak balance sheet, afaik.

It was. The recent damage to the price puts it closer to $80B today.

Market cap is a psychological construct. It will not help you when you're already bleeding cash and your cash flow suddenly goes sharply negative. It's entirely possible that this calamity will kill off some very large companies (by any metric) that have been operating in the margin.