From what you say, apparently my 90D, produced in early 2016, is a bit unique. Other than a minor squeak in the dashboard, it was clean when I picked it up at the showroom, and it has stayed that way. Over 55k miles now, just shy of three years on the road, and the car has been the most trouble-free vehicle I've ever owned.
"Early adopter car"? Mine has never appeared to be such. In terms of reliability, trouble-free operation and quality of build, it far outshines any other new car I've ever owned, which has included Japanese products, Detroit big iron, Korean cars and BMW's.
I've had the headaches with software updates that weren't thoroughly regression tested, or sometimes seemed to be pretty ill thought out (like that time a few years ago when autopilot on non-freeway roads would go the speed limit and no faster - which they reversed post-haste after an owner uprising), but I don't think that's the same as the "early adopter" issue you're talking about. Or am I missing the thrust of your point? Let me know...
You apparently got lucky. If you're looking for examples of how it's an early adopter car, let's look at the last 2 cars I got - 5 years after the first one, so the experience should not be "early adopter" right? Picked up 2017 Model S, at delivery we discover that one of the mirrors will not fully unfold, it just flops around, after a few tries we can lock it in place, just have to make sure you disable the auto folding (which as we found out, also doesn't always persist, sometimes just enables itself - I'm sure someone's idea of "convenience"). We are told, "software fix coming next update". Two software updates go by, mirror still flopping around while driving, now I'm annoyed and insist of new mirror, so they put it in, problem fixed, for 2 weeks, back to the exact same problem, so we go for another mirror assembly, another 2 weeks of proper operation, then mirror goes limp again. 3 mirror assemblies and 4 months later a bulletin comes out, turns out only mirror assemblies produced after some date have a permanent fix. We were the early adopters of brand new mirror assembly design by Tesla - maybe testing it out for upcoming Model 3's?
While owning the 2017 car, we experience weird issue, car turns on while parked and stays on and unlocked. Service tries to repro, it's an intermittent problem, no fix. It took us few months to track down what was causing that one, turns if you get into the car on the front passenger side, but exit through a different door (or if you put a duffel bag there by opening the door, but take the bag out from the driver's side, it confused the software and cause the weird car staying on, unlocked and driveable without a key(!) problem.
Few months went by, one of the updates Tesla decides they have a genius idea - force unfold mirrors as soon as the car starts moving. Car auto-updates, my wife missed that burried in the release notes. She drove somewhere where she parks next to a concrete pillar. She's parked there many times before, and she knew to manually fold the mirrors before attempting to back up. So she folds the mirrors (as she has done many times before), starts to backup up, mirror unfolds just in time to get broken off by the pillar. $600 early adopter fee to replace the mirror (and a over a week wait, would have been longer if we needed new painted cap, so I just used some epoxy to fix it so we could reuse it). Tesla fixed the problem by the way, now auto-unfold happens above 15 or 20mph, not above 0.
A year in, the 2017 Model S got hit a a DUI driver. It took over 2 weeks before the one guy in an entire Seattle area qualified to estimate Tesla damage has a chance to estimate it. I heard the wait surpassed 3 months not long after we were done, and insurance will do nothing until they can get an authorized estimate. If our car wasn't totaled, the wait it to be fixed, which was a combination of both qualified techs and parts waits was going to me months.
So we get a new 2018 Model S. No issues at delivery this time, progress! We take it home, it won't charge. Hmm... WTF? Service takes our car in, gives us a loaner of similar production date. Turns out the loaner doesn't charge either. Charger works just fine up to 80A on the older Model S we still have. Luckily on forums I find the new cars are not compatible with Gen1 Tesla chargers. Even SC didn't know. Got a new HPWC, but still had to install it, so still an inconvenience (and a cost if you have to pay an electrician).
I call issues like the ones I just described early adopter issues. Maybe you call it expected ownership experience, I don't know, but I never had this type of experiences with other manufactures, and I've owned many cars from Hyundai to Porsche. While I expected some of this with my earlier Teslas, I figured by 2017, 5 years in, they would have figured things out. Throughout all this, the one thing which kept me with Tesla was the service people, they always did their very best identifying and fixing issues, even if Tesla parts took forever they did everything they could to find workarounds. What has changed since the flood of Model 3's is the service is now so flooded, earliest appointments are a month away. When I did service last year, they were so swamped I felt sorry for them. They would love to go above and beyond like in the past, but there is only so much you can do when you're so overloaded.
So, I hope your car keeps on working and never requires service, or accident repair. Our 2 Model S "knock on wood" are good now (other than things like V9 experience, or browser on 2015 car not working for months now, I gave up on that one), and I'm hoping they'll stay that way for a long time.
