They sell the car and the software. You can resell it. In this case Tesla disputes that the dealer bought the software in the first case, otherwise the dealer would be able to resell it, as all Tesla owners who sell their cars are doing it.
At some point you'll probably want to replace it with something newer. The distinction becomes very important when you sell it. If buying a used Tesla means features are disabled then the resale value is going to be lower.
As the case in the article shows, this hurts the resale value of the car. If I spend $10-12k on software upgrades for a vehicle, and can't recover any of that money upon resale, I would call that a material distinction.
Does the feature get attached to the car, or is it associated with the first human licensee?
If the car had the license, and the car was returned and transferred to a third party dealer. Then the OEM decided that the entitlement no longer existed.
I'm not aware of any other scenario where a core component of a car isn't linked to the car. If Tesla didn't fuck up, they are applying Microsoft/Oracle software license terms to the car.
The license is attached to the car. According to the article, Tesla claims the car didn't have a license (but the software activated) when being sold to the dealer.
Every other car loses a high double-digit percentage of it's value the second you drive it off the lot. Resale value of cars doesn't seem to impact much in the consumer's mind