The dictionary lists three meanings for exploitation. Your examples are all for meaning 1—the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit fr

The dictionary lists three meanings for exploitation. Your examples are all for meaning 1—the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work. But there is also another one—the fact of making use of a situation to gain unfair advantage for oneself. Making use of people's optimism and warped perceptions about the imminentness of autonomous vehicles (warped perceptions which were formed in a large part by none other than Tesla itself) to part people from their money would fall under this definition. And just to humour your point, let's say it's not exploitation. So what? It still would be deception, shameless lying, snake oil salesmanship, etc. etc. It's not like corporate actions are binary: exploitation and totally OK. Even if Tesla's actions were not exploitation, they would still be as wrong.