Companies break the law all the time. You'll recall VW got nailed recently for lying about their emissions, and whole industries (AirBnb, Uber, and all derivatives) have been built on flagrantly ignoring the law.
Between the endless examples of corporate crimes and the obvious financial incentives to keep doing them, the presumption should be that every company is breaking the law.
Apples and oranges. What vw did wasn't a safety thing and they were trying to fool the emissions system testing. That's not something you can pull off with an airbag. It's dumb you'd even think that.
You're an idiot that doesn't know car history. Cars advertised (still do) being safer and better than their competitors for the last 75 years as a way to drum up sales. There's plenty of safety regulations that are their and enforced but it's completely common for automakers to go above and beyond that. Side curtain air bags aren't required, for instance, but good luck finding many cars today that don't have them. Auto makers also redesigned how their cars crumple in accidents for safety, and the 3 point safety belt used in virtually all the worlds vehicles was created by Volvo who decided it was such a leap in safety for everyone that they made it public domain so all auto makers could use it.
You never know, Musk might have ordered his engineers to "replace the airbags with fart noises 😂🤣" despite every single one of his engineers telling him it's a bad idea.
Teslas are already loaded with regulation-defying jank and have been produced in factories that were supposed to be closed during covid lockdowns. You're imagining a fantastical version of laws and regulations that actually stop billionaire assholes from just walking over them.
With the systemic structural failures and shoddy workmanship of Teslas so far, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a grudging performative presence of airbags that fail to deploy under intended conditions.
You could have asked the same question about whether a company like Uber would really be allowed to run an illegal taxi company. Or if AirBnb would be allowed to run an illegal hotel company.
I'm not saying it'll happen for sure, just that it's not as far outside the realm of possibility as you might think. Breaking the law but being too big for it to really matter is a business strategy.
If it doesn't, there's an extremely funny scenario where Tesla tries to sell it as an off-road vehicle, which don't have the safety requirements, but can't be issued a plate in thr majority of US states.