You kid, but at some point over the years, I had that same epiphany: If you want a built-in justification to play with any new toy, pursue a career in test automation! (I don't have a Tesla, yet, but I'd be happy to be invited over to the test track to talk shop... But seriously folks... I'm very curious how they test the software running on their dashboard and center console.)
Google's advice was always emulation--the tests running on dozens of Dell servers were faster and more reliable at bug hunting than physical hardware. Obviously there are limits, but the advice in 2013 was to prioritise automated tests in simulators instead of on real devices. Note the emphasis on automation, though -- you can totally expense that Tesla for the manual/acceptance testing ;-)
This is why there's a market for robots for testing -- real robots hitting real buttons. Especially in the automobile industry, no company wants to be hauled in front of the oversight committee in Congress after some horrible accident and when asked how they tested everything, they're only able to say "Well, all the tests passed in the simulator, so we went straight to production..."