The story is a little bit different, since it involved a third-party sale. A CAR DEALERSHIP sold a Tesla car with autopilot advertised to the end buyer. It was disabled by Tesla who had sold it to the dealership apparently without that advertising (the dealership presumably checked the car over, and sold it in the state it was in; not an unreasonable thing to do). But that's besides the point. No one is arguing your Tesla overlords are unkind right now.
The difference between a license/lease and ownership is who has that power.
Yahoo was an awesome company for the first few years. Companies change. Amazon and Google are not exactly in an upwards trajectory right now either, although for many years, they could do no wrong.
I 100% believe Tesla will treat its owners well while it's in the exponential growth startup phase, and doing well. It's counting on word-of-mouth for continued growth. If I buy a car which I have licensed from Tesla, I'm hedging on that continuing. Once growth stops, companies enter the phase where they start to milk existing customers. If a company runs into financial problems, it enters a phase where it needs to exploit existing customers.
That's for one person. If we all buy a car from Tesla, we're all giving up power as consumers for the long haul.