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Toyota, quite famously, was ordered to pay a $1.2 billion fine for the unintended acceleration issue.

How much more liable for you want?

Go ahead and nitpick how it's not strict legal liability.

This is a different situation, the car can drive itself (supposedly). If the car could drive itself perfectly, then it would make 100% sense for the manufacturer assume liability for autopilot driver accidents under its own insurance. Eventually this will become the case - disengaging autopilot will automatically increase your monthly insurance premium.

Presumably a car manufacturer would be liable if a safety-critical part malfunctioned, say the brakes.

Autopilot is like brakes that the maker says "they usually work but no guarantees". A higher autonomy level system would be like brakes that actually are guaranteed to work.