[mirashii]

Tesla didn't break this any more than any other car manufacturer. The model year hasn't been tied to the manufacture year for a long time. See https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/why-doesnt-cars-model-ye... for instance.

[hakfoo]

I think the difference is more "model year no longer reliably indicates feature set", not "model year no longer indicates date of manufacture."

This may make finding and pricing spare parts difficult, or categorizing safety and performance metrics.