Oh god. You're right.

The issue involves defective inflator and propellent devices that may deploy improperly in the event of a crash, shooting metal fragments into vehicle occupants.

HOW DID I MISS THIS PART

For its part, Toyota said it would begin to replace defective passenger-side inflators starting October 25; if parts are unavailable, however, it has advised its dealers to disable the airbags and affix “Do Not Sit Here” messages to the dashboard.

That one had me cackling, I'll admit. OH HOLY FUCK you ain't kidding. That right there is the mark of an industry caught flat-footed.

Something I think needs to be said here - dealers are detrimental to brands. When we set out to buy my wife's Fit, the first place we went started the negotiation at $4k over MSRP. When I said "why are you offering to charge me four thousand dollars over the sticker in the window?" they said "because we have costs to cover." When I said "so am I to believe that the price in the window is the price you pay?" they said "that's a nice watch. How much does a watch like that cost?"

That's something I think Tesla is absolutely doing right - i suspect Elon Musk made the calculation that dealers could only hurt his product and decided that the only people who would be selling Teslas would be Tesla employees on salary.