Keep in mind a license is NOT ownership. It's just a limited right, under a number of clauses, to use something. Pretty different.
The point is that Tesla is selling licences, not whether they can legally do this or not.
Everybody is selling licenses these days. I don't see the link with ownership.
A license is again NOT ownership. You don't "own" a license. You're granted one, with contractual clauses. True ownership usually doesn't have any clause; once you own something, it's yours forever until you pass ownership to someone else. In that respect, a license is closer to renting than to ownership.
Is licensing a proper model for cars, and for hardware devices in general? Probably not. Is it legal? So far, I think so. It's just a contract. You accept it or you don't. If you buy a Tesla car with some parts that are licensed to you (which means you don't "own" those parts), you are warned when you sign. Of course if those licensed parts are *essential* to the use of the bought item, then you could reasonably sue if you stop being licensed for any reason. But if those parts are "accessories", then I don't think you'd really have any ground to sue. You just accept it when you sign. And in the case of resold used cars, it's the responsibility of the reseller to warn you that some licensed parts are or are not transferable. So for the OP's case, there is likely ground to sue - probably for wrong description of the good.
Of course it's a landmine.
Note that we're mainly talking about (embedded) software here, but with electric cars, for the time being, you will NEVER be sure you can keep using the car for as long as you keep maintaining it. Batteries are the first culprit. You're totally tied to the vendor. When you batteries die, if the vendor doesn't exist anymore, you're basically screwed, all the more that there is no standard that I know of so far, so you can't just replace them with equivalent parts. If electric vehicles are getting more pervasive, this is likely to change - we'll probably start seeing standards and laws to protect the consumers - but for now, you definitely never really OWN an electric car in the true sense. You just own the hardware of the car (usually except the batteries), and nothing much else. So whether this is for the batteries or for software licensing reasons, the car can just eventually become a pile of dead shit - even if it's in perfect condition.