This is a strange week for Tesla.
On Tuesday, CEO Elon Musk responded to a third incident in which a car from his company caught fire.
Musk asked on Twitter why the accidents had been reported so much, and in fact the accidents were only further proof of how safe the cars were.
In a few days, however, the company again made headlines, with a consumer report saying the model had the highest owner satisfaction.
The media, which caused him so much consternation, now began to praise his products, thanks to a group of people --
There is no doubt that this report proves that people who buy Tesla like Tesla.
But Musk will not be interviewed by the media.
On Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement basically telling the company not to suggest any more that it earned £ 5.
Four stars in the crash.
Test rating: "NHTSA rewards no more than 5-star rating. . .
The advertisement should not claim that the rating of the vehicle is higher than 5-stars.
"While Tesla did not post the claimed AD, it did issue a statement when the test results were released, and NHTSA wanted you to know that it had enough.
The media loved the stories: "nhtsatelleslato has already used 5.
4 stars and Sh @! "From Jalopnik.
Even the good news can be overturned: The "TeslaModel S tops satisfaction survey, despite the security investigation" of NBC News ".
By the end of the week, it was reported that Tesla's retail director, George brankenship, had apparently left the company, and if you believe what you saw online, it would be another one of Tesla's.
Can't we just leave this poor company alone?
The consumer report measures something very simple: will you buy this car again?
For Model S, 99% of respondents expressed their willingness.
To know how good this is, there are only four cars in the post-90 s: Tesla, Porsche's Boxster and 911, and Chevrolet Volt. Wait, what?
A limo, two sports cars and a political sandbag?
The interesting thing about Volt is that it has won the survey in the last two years.
Volt and Tesla have more in common than the battery pack.
If Musk thinks his company is beaten by the media, he should go out with the Chevy players and ask what the defense feels like.
The car was developed long before GM went bankrupt, but was wrongly accused of being an evil stepson of the Obama administration.
Fox News has been reporting for the most part of the year that it is "Fred fleston car", "toaster oven" and "crappy ".
Still, Americans use Volt as part of their buying portfolio.
It has been in the middle of sales (currently 135 of the 262 cars sold in the United States)S.
£ 2013), and those who did buy one obviously enjoyed it.
(Disclosure: we have one since May.
If the consumer report asks us, we will join 91% at this point.
Poor Tesla?
So what is the deal?
If people like green cars-
Consumer Report data show that as a group buyer,-
Why is the media reporting so ruthlessly? Or is it?
Tesla has long been an incredible story.
Since Forbes last year, I have posted dozens of times about the future.
It represents more than 10% of all the content I wrote for the site. Why?
Because the company has made great achievements that many people think impossible.
It launched a start-up car manufacturer.
It's made of batteries. powered cars.
In the process, these cars become objects of desire.
In the process, until recently, its stock price has barely risen.
Whether Musk wants it or not, he has become the real --
The embodiment of Tony Stark's life
Our own Iron Man, no superhero costume, but with his car company, his rocket
Launching SpaceX is often his candor and emotion.
There was an extraordinary moment at Tesla's shareholders' meeting, where he was discussing efforts to stop Tesla from building its own dealers, saying: "I think they will scream for the perversion of democracy, which is outrageous.
It's just wrong.
I think they made a big mistake.
What is actually going to happen is that customers will cause resistance in this regard.
"His voice is a bit cracked and you can't help but see and feel his emotions when he holds it together.
This is a person who lives and breathes his company.
He gets hurt when they get hurt.
The human side does not necessarily appear on Twitter.
So when Musk asked why the media didn't report a lot of gas
The electric car caught fire and instead focused on three incidents involving Teslas, it was difficult to know if he was serious.
The Atlantic questioned whether Musk understood the media.
It provided him with a lecture on news coverage and then suggested that he have an option: "Musk is right to hate 'sensational' coverage.
But given that for the rest of his career he will undoubtedly continue to face extremely harsh scrutiny from the media, he also faces a major choice.
Will he continue to reject the law of the logic of the news, react as a victim, argue with the mandatory haters about the facts, and attack George kloniye with a scathing tweet?
Or will he offend others by driving a story that makes these news laws useful to him, not against him?
"Maybe the Atlantic is right in a way, but I think they're missing something subtle.
This is not to say that Musk does not understand the media, but that he is passionate about what he has done.
Surrounding the development of the original Tesla sports car, there are anecdotes that his perfectionism has led to the car being more expensive than planned.
He could not let the car be anything less than he thought it was ideal;
He will solve the problem.
Earlier this year, Tesla launched a financing plan, received some criticism, and almost immediately changed some parameters to meet people's concerns.
Musk not only announced it all himself, but also personally guaranteed the resale value of the car.
His name appears in a blog post that addresses concerns about the recent fire.
It is clear that no matter what went wrong with the incident, he was particularly proud and gratified and more correct: no one was injured or killed.
Things can be replaced, even things the owner likes.
But Musk must also accept the fact that people will pay attention to his and Tesla's every move.
It's not just because he's on Twitter a lot.
Because whether it's SpaceX launching a new rocket, everything he has is greater than life, or Tesla plans to produce the world's largest battery factory in the next 3 years --4 years. Charged up?
When several Chevrolet Volts also found themselves on fire, the car was brand new and had not yet gained much popularity among the buying crowd.
Volt has been and is now more hated by the media than Tesla.
But it survived the safety investigation and eventually cleared any specific systemic risk of the vehicle.
While it's too early to say what NTHSA will learn from studying Tesla, the same is true, so far the Model S has done a fantastic job of protecting occupants in all types of collisions.
Most of them will not be news.
In the end, media coverage of burning Teslas is only certain at the company --
Become a buyer away from the vehicle.
But at the same time, it is unrealistic for the media to pretend that there is no concern.
In today's news cycle, once a photo of the first fire hits Instagram, it ends up being picked up and running.
If this is the last fire, maybe the story will end there.
However, statistical opportunity is such a strange thing that we do not know whether the recent incident is a more serious problem or an abnormal coincidence ---
At least not for a while.
So the role of NHTSA is actually to help Tesla by determining what risks, if any, exist in the vehicle.
Two weeks after Musk hoped it wasn't news, there wasn't a tow hook on the road ahead of a Model S, which divided the lower abdomen of one of his cars and led to all these reviews.
It is not clear whether Volt has really overcome the negative publicity surrounding its release.
Despite the love and price cuts of car owners, sales have declined this year amid soaring auto markets.
On the other hand, Tesla's first-year sales in Model S have increased, and the company is currently expanding its distribution worldwide.
Whether these negative news will curb economic growth remains to be seen.
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