And yet if you loan the car to someone who gets into a serious accident, it is you who gets sued, not the lienholder. Likewise, if the car appreciates in value

And yet if you loan the car to someone who gets into a serious accident, it is you who gets sued, not the lienholder. Likewise, if the car appreciates in value you are the one who benefits. Concretely, your citation only shows that the owner-lienholder distinction is small for one specific aspect. And even with the law you cited there are still significant differences - for example, a traditional tow truck is unable to force entry into your garage and take the car, while a backdoored self driving car can open the door and drive itself away (it would necessarily be integrated with the door opener so you can summon it from elsewhere). Ultimately, talking about concepts like "ownership" is only useful as a lemma (I often call home mortgages on bubble prices "renting from the bank"). The larger argument here is the desire to keep ownership (aka capital) distributed throughout society rather than concentrated into a few centralized administrators. And yes, it's a quick hop from the trend of most people mortgaging capital goods, to most people leasing capital goods. But that's all the more reason to emphasize the distinction to keep it from being further eroded.