The car industry is not as advanced as the aviation industry. It will come a time, where the level of complexity of a car means that in order to build and test it properly, it will be a ever-increasing easy business decision to take shortcuts.
And we have already seen glimmers of such behavior with all the emissions scandals around diesel cars... the outcome is not immediate death of passengers, but car companies were/are skirting health regulations to increase profits.
The world is full of examples of companies maximizing profits while screwing over their customers. Is that what was happening here? What's the alternative answer? They just didn't think it through? They rushed because of FOMO?