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A Grain of Salt

teslamotors.com

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Some of Edward Niedermayer recently written article titles in bloomberg [1]:

- Worker Discontent Makes Tesla a Union Target

- Tesla Needs More Than Elon Musk

- Tesla Will Get Trampled by the Mass Market

- Tesla's Radical Update Is Just More of the Same

- Tesla Has to Start Acting Like a Car Company

- Tesla Stock Shifts Into 'Insane Mode' [negative]

- The Empire Strikes Back at Tesla

- Why Tesla Has a Target on Its Back

- ...

And the original cited in teslamotors.com:

http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage-not...

It seems that yes, we should take a grain of salt and a lot more. There's definitely something fishy going on here.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edwar...

Thank you for posting. Reminds me of the NYT article that bashed Amazon and Bezos a while back. Didn't take much digging to conclude the author/organization has a preconceived bias against the subject.

>Didn't take much digging to conclude the author/organization has a preconceived bias against the subject.

Doesn't every journalist when reporting on any newsworthy item? Everybody has their biases, and they'll naturally come out in reporting. There is no "fair and balanced", it's just a matter of what extent these biases are hidden in the work.

I think the onus is on us, the consumers of this media, to take every piece as only part of the whole truth, and make up our own minds about the subject.

You are surely correct, however, I think there is a difference between a reporter recognizing their own biases (to the extent they are able) and striving to write objective, fair pieces that are properly sourced, fact checked, and give both sides a fair hearing.

It is impossible to completely escape one's own unconscious biases but this particular example is a blog post written by someone in an obvious attempt to put forward a personal (or business) agenda.

If you are a reporter who has identified a bad company, how are you supposed to investigate them publicly without writing articles about how 'bad' they are?

Writing a string or articles about the same topic, shouldn't instantly mean you get extra scrutiny. That scrutiny should be on everyone, since sometimes the most biased are those who care the least to write and have done the least groundwork.

The bias is an opportunity for robojournalism ..

Garbage in, garbage out.

Robojournalism might be even more ripe for bias, but from its sources rather than the journalist itself. Theoretically part of a journalist's job is to get valuable sources from each side of an argument/story and present them equally. The journalist's footprint should be minimal. As we all know, that is increasingly less the case.

To me, this is simply one of the risks that companies who trade entirely on sentiment have to deal with.

I hope it's obvious to anyone that Tesla's (and to a lesser extent, Amazon's) massive valuation is not based on bedrock fundamentals but on perception and expectations. Baseless hit pieces that knock a few percentage points off your stock are part of the game at that point.

It seems to me that sometimes it's not even about what the company is or does (like being a car company or supplier/whatever Amazon calls itself now) but just purely motivated by the market prices. Like the motivation is to affect the stock price, everything else is just tangential.

>Reminds me of the NYT article that bashed Amazon and Bezos a while back.

This case seems a bit different. In the Amazon case there were lots of employees that agreed with the article hinting that it had a lot of truth to it.

I'd like to point out that Amazon, as an employer, had a negative reputation in tech circles well before the NYT article. Read between the lines of Steve Yegge's accidentally published rant from 2011 about platforms and focus on how he describes Amazon.

http://lazytechguys.com/featured/google-engineer-steve-yegge...

I'm shocked that this man's blog has received the attention it did in the first place. It's a bit of an accidental straw man for any real Tesla-related concerns that should come up.

I think Tesla has enough controversy disrupting one of the most deeply entrenched industries on the planet. They don't really need to drum up anymore.

That's not what "straw man" means.

You're probably thinking of the term "false flag".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

In an attempt to appear balanced, the press sometimes presents an opposing viewpoint, no matter what their whacko factor or agenda. In this case, it's kind of like giving a flat earther airtime to respond to a Mars rover landing.

This fellow is editor in chief of an automotive blog, which offers advertising and sponsorships, "gives marketers access to xxx car buyers and shoppers.." etc. Their review board lists 45 makes including some minor ones. Tesla is notably absent. There is a missing FAQ question for "why haven't you reviewed ___".

My take is that automakers are squirming with angst and demand their media outlets agree.

No reason to send them traffic for bad behavior.

Incisive post, thanks. More nails for the coffin.

You might be right, but I doubt there is any explicit demand. I suspect he is just immersed in car culture and genuinely has internalized the anti-electric sentiment. Negativity is a common tactic in punditry, and I'm sure he profits handsomely just from the controversy. I don't think any conspiracy is necessary for this kind of thing to happen.

I say this not to defend automakers, but to keep focus on realistic root causes.

I don't think conspiracy is the right phrase... more like the media understands their advertiser's needs.

Negativity is one thing, which would be shown if they reviewed it and wrote a bunch of gripes.

But a comprehensive car blog omitting a Motor Trend car of the year from its reviews is a glaring omission that speaks for itself. That's not a little slant, that's draping an elephant in the room.

Huh? Enthusiast car blogs routinely ignore Motor Trend's car of the year picks. It's rare to see any crossover between MT and what enthusiasts actually drive, though it does happen (contrast with the Car and Driver 10Best list, which is much more representative).

They're talking about The Truth About Cars, which is actually a very good autoblog (and much better in his forced absence - 2011), but Ed definitely has an anti-tesla agenda and so does much of the site.

The site's authorship and commentariat are dominated by car dealers and financing people.

(source: TTAC reader for 6 years or so now)

Wow. A Tesla owner's complaints on the unofficial Tesla forums were reposted by an apparently-unrelated blogger who complains about Tesla a lot. Clearly this proves that the blogger "fabricated this issue" and was the one who "caused negative and incorrect news to be written about Tesla by reputable institutions" by doing so. I mean, it's not like this argument could be used to discredit any issues customers have with Tesla no matter how genuine - that'd require this anti-Tesla blogger who supposedly latches onto any perceived failure to write about them, after all.

You didn't read the blog post

Sounds like he's short

(for anyone downvoting because they think this comment is claiming the man is vertically challenged, it is referring to him being in a financial position that will gain value on the decline of the Tesla stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance) )

thanks, lol

Honestly, I upvoted because my first thought was picturing him as some angry vertically-challenged fellow with a comb-over who is just spiteful because he's vertically challenged. lol

Well it works, because I'm 6' and long on TSLA!

The antonym is long. E.g.: I am long on GOOG, short on AAPL, etc.

Speaking of that. The Tesla stock has dropped from 240 two days ago to 218 now. A 10% swing would make some put options lots of dough.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=TSLA+Interactive#{%22rang...

Remind me again why I ignore traditional media, or at least consider it no better than "some guy's blog"?

The difference is, traditional media normally holds itself to a higher standard and is tasked with filtering out or at the least refining the typical "some guy's blog" content. But "some guy's blog" will always be just that.

OK, not as tech as many on here, but I've spent the last 25 years as an amateur mechanic, and spent 10 preparing and driving my own rally car, right up to World Rally Championship level, as well as having owned more cars than most people have had hot dinners, and fixed even more than that (sadly!)

The balljoint in question has failed because the rubber boot on it has failed, allowing water/dirt in, and it's rusted out from there. This is nothing specific to Tesla, it can happen on any car - I've seen it on quite a few FWD cars, but never to this degree (total failure) - they will go on for a LONG time with play in them, and take a LOT of abuse before failing.

To have failed in this manner, it would have needed to go un-noticed for some considerable time - I've had ones which have had a year of abuse in extreme circumstances and still been nowhere near as bad as this, so I think you have to ask about the servicing that had been done on this car - whether or not it had been inspected. In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road, and easily noticed during any kind of worthwhile inspection (such as the MOT in the UK) - not sure if the state in question has a mandatory inspection?

Yes, being on a dirt road could have exacerbated the problem, but it's not something that a "normal" car can't take - you'd be amazed the amount of physical abuse a mechanically-standard car can take on rough gravel roads at speed.

Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me.

As has been said elsewhere here, if this had happened on a Ford Focus, no-one would give a monkey's, it's only because it's a Tesla and this guy has an axe to grind.

[In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road, and easily noticed during any kind of worthwhile inspection (such as the MOT in the UK) - not sure if the state in question has a mandatory inspection?]

True. I've had to replace a few lower control arms on various cars due to loose ball joints. In all of the cases, the car made terrible sounds during normal driving long before the ball joint was actually loose enough to pop out.

It was always very evident that something in the wheel was loose.

Of course, anything can happen...

[Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me.]

I agree. I doubt that Tesla is making their own ball joints. It seems like to much NRE considering there are tons of off-the-shelf options available.

Nice write up! Makes a lot of sense, your perspective. While I don't have nearly the same credentials with car racing and breaking, I did drive a heavily modified Volvo 850 T-5R back in the day, chipped from 240hp (peak) to 285hp (excluding 1st gear). The car was designed just fine from the factory, but the limited change I made would cause nightmares with the CV boots/joints. The forces would lead to leakage which meant failure not far behind, and, if I remember correctly, it was pretty easy to tell when things were going south.

Ragging on Tesla is not new to me, but I do think it's important to at least try to be fair about it. I mean, this case? Not quite a good example to me. Like you said, not a specific thing to a manufacturer. Now, seeing about 3 Model Xs in the wild so far, two of which had obviously troublesome door alignment (un-matched latch) fit & finish, that's fair game.

As someone who has done mechanical work though you're well aware that average car owners can and will ignore all the warning signs of problems.

Note that Chrysler sold the first generation Jeep Liberty with mediocre ball joints. They had a big recall and never did fix the flaw. I know because my dad owns such ca. Ive replaced them more than 5 times

>To have failed in this manner, it would have needed to go un-noticed for some considerable time - I've had ones which have had a year of abuse in extreme circumstances and still been nowhere near as bad as this, so I think you have to ask about the servicing that had been done on this car - whether or not it had been inspected. In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road...

Take a gander at the carnage over at reddit's /r/justrolledintotheshop . You'll see a complete ball joint failure about every other day, and that's faaaar from the most egregious offenses.

There is a segment of the population that is some combination of amazingly ignorant, lazy, and/or cheap. Don't underestimate people. ;)

"Recently, a Model S was in a very high speed accident in Germany that caused it to fly 82 feet through the air, an event that would likely be fatal in vehicles not designed to the level of safety of a Tesla. All five occupants were able to exit the vehicle under their own power and had no life-threatening injuries."

That is a pretty impressive feat for a car. Also, the voluntary recalls are an interesting case because to me they did something positive in doing a recall before any injury happened. When the news of the recall broke though, people were complaining about the recalls. Part of the problem is that any announcement by Tesla makes the news round while a similar recall by Toyota or anther company, that would affect many more people, wouldn't get a tenth of the attention.

One thing that helps Tesla cars out in comparison to most other cars is that there is no engine in the front, so it's all just a huge crumple zone.

The four wheel drive models do have an electric motor in the front as well but since it's small most of that benefit should still be there.

Why? Motors can be part of a crumple zone, too. Look at e.g. the Smart – its engine gets pulverized in heavier crashes, and absorbs lots of the impact energy.

Presumably there are mechanical (heat, pressure, shock etc.) limits to how you build an engine that limit what you can do to improve safety? As light and small as modern engines are, they're still a big lump of iron/steel/aluminium.

Sure, but how is an empty space better at absorbing impact energy than that?

Placing an engine in that empty space means that there is less space available for the car's crumple zones to deform before the engine intrudes into the passenger safety cell.

A tesla can have its entire front concertina'd down to nothing without anything entering the safety cell. A front-engined normal car cannot do this; typically 50 to 60% of the length of the front of the car is engine. While external parts of the engine may crumple, the cylinder head and main section of the engine by necessity need to be milled from solid metal; These will not crumple, they will be pushed into the safety cell if the collision is energetic enough.

In modern cars the design is such that the engine is pushed under the car if there is enough energy in the collision.

In addition to the engine going under the vehicle (even at fairly low speed crashes; just watch NHSTA videos on YouTube), the front motor in a Model S is more dense and weighs about the same as a 4 cylinder engine, transmission and accessories. I'm gonna call that a wash until I see evidence to the contrary.

Straight on collisions aren't even the toughest ones to pass. It's the small offset tests that really seem to give manufacturers a hard time. And no engine there.

When empty space gets pushed into the cabin it doesn't amputate legs. When an engine gets pushed into the cabin it might amputate legs.

This isn't what happens, though. As others have mentioned, the engine ends up under the car.

You want the front of the car to absrob the energy. When it crumples, it absorbs the energry and lesser energy is transferred to the passengers. The Engine is tough and will not crumple. It will thus not absorb the energy but transfer it to the passengers.

And as I already mentioned before, this is simply not true, you can make engines that crumple extremely well.

Could you provide some evidence/ examples?

https://youtu.be/mnI-LiKCtuE?t=265

Seems I remembered it the wrong way round – it was the Corsa that held up and crumpled well enough to not have significant intrusion even at 110 km/h (70 mph).

There was no engine in the front of that car.

This isn't really evidence that it's possible to make an engine that can crumple. In fact, quite the opposite.

This particular Corsa B (93-2000) was a 1.4i (1.4L engine) - the physical dimensions of the engine are extremely small[1], and there is a lot of empty space in the engine bay that isn't taken up by the main engine block (excluding various plastics, wiring, etc - actual metal). I don't think it's so much the case that this engine "could crumple", rather that there was a lot of space for the front to crumple into, before there was none left and the engine was then pushed into the cabin.

Engine blocks are, well, blocks of metal. They're not going to crumple in any meaningful way.

[1]: http://iheartautos.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/engine-b...

It might be possible, but is it common? Is a Honda Accord going to crumple politely?

This is untrue. ICEs are designed to be dimensionally stable and withstand a lot of mechanical stress due to operation.

So I just checked out some crash videos on YouTube. The Model S appears to have a surprisingly small crumple zone.

That's just my layman's perspective, but take a look and see if you don't agree. The front readily collapses, but just past the center-point of the wheels (presumably about where the motor area starts) it's a brick wall and the whole 2+ ton vehicle just stops in it's tracks.

Compare that to Volvo crash tests, especially the Euro NCAP Small Offset. The front fender of the Volvo disintegrates, but then the wheel actually flys off and the front of the cabin even appears to absorb some energy. It looks like a much softer landing. The interior shots are even more impressive with less deformation and a lot more padding with a lot less slack in the airbags.

Taking a look at the XC90, it's probably no surprise then that it achieves significantly higher ratings, despite having a 4-cylinder ICE in the engine bay. (see http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/volvo/xc90/20976 and http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model-s/7897)

I didn't run across any Model S tests where it looked like that long hood was actually doing much for it since it appears to hit some sort of impenetrably stiff wall halfway through. You can look at the crash test video during a Musk demonstration and see the same thing. There's some sort of structural member there in front of the motor that just doesn't seem to give way.

BTW, it actually appears the Honda Accord mentioned is slightly safer (except for pedestrians) despite the tested model being 5 years older.

The Model S is no doubt a very safe vehicle overall. But it's not the second coming, and Musk's talk of crumple zones appears to be more Marketing than Truth (and the ratings bear that out).

That "Tesla Model S breaks roof test" for example? Not the strongest. Not even at the time of testing. Here's the current generation XC90's results for example: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/volvo/xc90-4-door.... Over 10 tons. The previous generation was off about a ton. As far as I can figure out both figures are greater than the Model S's despite the fan-faire.

Well the engine doesn't compress smoothly, it mostly translates into the cabin with high probability of partially crushing the people on the front seat. I believe Tesla layout just makes it 'easy' to let the frame dissipate energy internally by bending much more than any other ICE based cars.

Ever do an egg drop? http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/projects/eggdrop.html

The engine in a Smart is in back, behind the occupants. In general, the most important crumple zone of a car is in the front.

Yes, but it's just generally the laws of physics. If you have 600lbs of metal in front of you there's a lot more energy that has to go somewhere (the cabin).

Or, (under the car).

Having weight in front of you will help to push away the object you are colliding with, rather than having the same weight under you or behind you. That inertial energy is not relevant to what enters the cabin.

The forward inertia of the engine isn't the problem if you're hitting a wall (though it is in a head-on collision), the cabin area is much squishier than an engine — so if the car is stopped from the front fast enough the cabin will enter the engine. More crumple zone and less engine is better for the inertia behind the engine (the passengers).

The motor is behind the driver on a Smart car...

Recent discussion regarding the german accident with pictures in the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11650967

The cabin looks still intact and the outcome would would probably be different, if there was an engine in the front of the car. Still I believe those 5 peoples were very, very lucky. In my opinion this is just PR. You'd probably find examples like this for all car manufacturers.

http://gtspirit.com/2012/04/20/car-crash-bmw-m5-crashes-with...

> dog in the backseat

Now that is impressive. The safety systems are all designed for humans and yet a dog in the backseat, who could probably not be properly secured, survived.

A dog can be fairly well secured on the backseat. A proper harness and a short leash that clips gets attached to the seat belt works perfectly fine.

We do this whenever our dog is in the car. This is nowhere near as good as what we have for human passengers. One of the reasons is that dogs hate to be restrained. So there's a leash. In case of a frontal collision, this would prevent her from flying out of the window.

In the case of the car itself flying, and possibly tumbling on impact, I don't think the odds would be that good, as the dog would likely impact against hard surfaces. Or other passengers. That's maybe the least of the problems though, if the car's structural integrity is compromised...

Yeah, plus the leash (if it's a neck one especially) could end up causing harm to the dog.

oh yes, please don't ever restrain a dog with a neck leash in a car. It's better to have the dog fly off the car and take their chances, than to risk a broken neck.

I bought a new harness, with the largest contact area I could find, specifically for car usage.

Actually, not really. Subaru sponsored tests on these harnesses, and nearly all of them failed, except for one:

http://www.sosubaru.com/dog-safety-harness.htm

Dog safety harnesses don't get anywhere near the scrutiny seat belts do.

This looks like thinly veiled marketing, preying on the unreasonable lengths that dog owners will go through and the expenses they will incur for their animals...

...and yet I see those little dog test-dummies and I want to shove money through my screen despite the fact that I don't even own a dog.

Humans are silly...

How big was the dog?

Serious question. Smaller animals have less momentum and are more robust to a large deceleration.

Sorry, but this part of the blog article is completely PR BS.

This car was speeding but not "very high speed". The car crashed into a field. This is flat. Every other comparable car like Mercedes E class, Audi A6, Volvo S60, … would have provided the same level of safety.

Here the original reporting with images: http://www.tz.de/muenchen/region/schwerer-unfall-icking-18-j...

The last image here shows why this car flew: http://electrek.co/2016/05/06/tesla-model-s-crash-large-crum...

What exactly is the difference between 'speeding' and 'very high speed'?

In Germany those two things are distinct. 250 km/h is very high speed but not necessarily speeding.

Speeding = you are to fast according to the allowed speed

High speed = anything above 130 km/h (about 80 mph; because that is the recommend speed on an Autobahn)

Very high speed = anything above 250 km/h (about 155 mph; because that is where normally the limiter kicks in)

Just, yesterday morning I drove my self at about 200 km/h (124 mph) because I was in hurry, because I had some unexpected road-construction work before.

This was an 18 year old girl, who just had her driving license (18 is the minimum legal age for driving here in Germany; 17 with governed driving by an adult)

Here an comparable accident who lifted for 40m (131ft) and crashed in a field with some rollover and it does not look that different from that Tesla accident: http://www.swp.de/heidenheim/lokales/polizeibericht/Auto-lan...

BTW: Are there any international news on how the safety cell of this BMW protected this 51 year old guy?

How would you classify Formula 1 cars' speeds? (320 km/h or 200 mph)

Racing speed?

plaid?

The gap between speeding and high speed is only 10mph or so but very high speed is nearly double? I don't think that's a reasonable definition. Most people rarely or never go over about 110ish? That would be my definition of very high speed. Even on the Autobahn - where presumably there are sections where a greater proportion of the population have done higher speeds - the rest of the world's perception and the kinetic energy doesn't decrease.

It's not an ordered system where speeding < high speed < very high speed.

You can be going at high speed, but not speeding because you are not breaking any law about going 'too fast'.

On the other hand, you can be speeding at 20mph because you are inside a public garage and the limit was actually 5mph.

According to the pictures / reports this car was driving on a normal road, not the Autobahn.

Outside of cities you're limited to 100km/h (or less ofc - but 100km/h is the maximum you'll get if we ignore rare cases with 4+ lane roads and a solid barrier in the middle → 120km/h). Speeding means that you drive reckless and/or cross the (low-ish) legal limit and/or the limit that common sense dictates.

"Very high speeds" over here refer to the Autobahn and I'd be quite hesitant to label anything below 180km/h as "very high speed".

Just so that you can chuckle a bit: My company car (A3 SportBack quattro 2.0, 110kw) was returned this week. Due to rather .. special circumstances I'm currently driving a Toyota Prius Plugin Hybrid instead. I reached 190km/h on todays morning commute a couple of times (late, after most commuters - very low traffic).

> Outside of cities you're limited to 100km/h (or less ofc - but 100km/h is the maximum you'll get if we ignore rare cases with 4+ lane roads and a solid barrier in the middle 120km/h

That's not quite correct. The speed limit is generally 100 km/h outside of cities, except when there are either two lanes (or more) per direction and a line between the two different directions or if there are less than two lanes per direction, but there is a sold barrier between them. In those cases there is no speed limit, just like on the Autobahn.

Thanks a lot. I learned something new today, after driving for nearly 20 years. That was suprising..

That said: The road in question certainly wasn't one of these - it looks like a random road between tiny "cities" (villages?). So 100km/h or less seems quite right here.

Yes, into a field. From the air. It literally flew through the air and crashed down onto the ground. Doesn't matter that it was a field, the ground is still the ground, and if there was an engine in the car the passengers probably would have been killed. But you make it sounds like it merely drove off the road and into a field.

Here is a video of a similar crash, probably not driving as fast but still doesn't look very dramatic too me. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KqIZiASGa0g

I doubt it's claiming Tesla cars are safer than every other car. It was just to highlight that their cars are very safe.

How is that PR BS when it actually happened?

That is a pretty impressive feat for a car

Long ago I was a passenger in a similar accident with a VW Golf that looked very much like this one after the dance. We walked out, just a little scratched and a lot scared.

The jump distance itself is not impressive, I've seen longer without consecuence.

I enjoy the irony of using an anecdote to imply something meaningful about a car's safety in the same article that decries the use of an anecdote to imply something meaningful about a car's quality.

In total, a good response from Tesla.

Crazy how Tesla as an entire company is scrutinized for car incidents that no one would even remotely care about if it was any other car manufacturer. If this guy had a range rover, or even some other electric car this would be a nonstory.

(Most* ) shorted stock means a lot of people would like it to fall. Can't hurt to help.

(*edited, not the most)

Most shorted? Really?

I guess it is Most (shorted stock) means [...] not (Most shorted) stock means [...].

I actually meant the latter, but I think I was wrong as I can't find any reliable source. Just found one weird that placed Tesla in the top 10. I must have read it in some discussion I guess.

Now I realize that the first one would have to continue with mean not means.

Or worded more clearly...

"Most of the time, shorted stock means [...]"

It's the same as with Apple. If you put out so much marketing about how your products are perfect every little flaw will be hyped just as much as you hype the positive traits.

A broken iPhone is not international news.

Does Bendgate count?

Well, not exactly ONE broken iPhone, is it?

When Tesla owners start wrecking their cars on day one of release to make YouTube videos it will be more similar.

It really ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/26/apple-ben...) was ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29349998 ).

Not even remotely the same. Tesla gets into international news when one guy has an accident. Apple got into international news when they made a design/manufacturing error for an entire generation of phones.

The whole question here is IF Tesla maybe did the same. That's why the NHTSA is looking at it.

Didn't the linked post explain that the NHTSA is not looking at it for that reason, but part of routine screening? Or do you think that's a lie?

An "entire generation"? Really? Can you provide some totals of bent phones? What percentage of sold phones from that generation failed by bending?

There was also the antenna issue on the iPhone 4, which was patched by giving away the free bumper cases and redesigning with the iPhone 4s. One would call a design issue with all iPhone 4 models an "entire generation", no?

The bumper cases weren't given away because Apple did something wrong, they were given away to try and counter the bad PR that other companies were drumming up. The antenna "issue" that the iPhone 4 had was also an "issue" for every other smartphone.

That's not true. If you went into an Apple Store, you were told it was for possible effects with signal strength.

This was easily demonstrable, and lead to Jobs' infamous "You're holding it wrong" deflection.

To say that nothing was wrong and Apple was just managing PR from those pesky other companies badmouthing it is... the RDF in effect.

Sure, the bumper cases helped, because they moved your hand away from the antenna area. But bumper cases would also help every other smartphone. It was provably not an issue specific to Apple and affected all brands (often to a larger extreme than the iPhone), but there's not much press value in pointing out a common problem for all smartphones whereas there is a lot of press value in manufacturing negative stories about Apple.

The only reality distortion field in effect here is the one that causes everybody to intentionally ignore the fact that every other smartphone had the same problem, and refuse to even acknowledge that fact when other people point it out.

The free bumper program started in July 2010 and ended in October 2010. The iPhone 4 then sold for 3 more years without free bumpers.

It was a PR program.

No, the iPhone 4 sold extremely well, and so did the 4s, which had the same hardware design.

Edit to add: I had a 4 sans bumper for 2 years and it worked great.

Apple's actual marketing budget is famously modest compared to their competitors. I believe their spending has increased in the last couple of years though.

http://www.cultofmac.com/252918/apples-advertising-budget-is...

The best marketing is that which does not require a huge budget -- when Apple stores are pilgrimage destinations, when you can get millions of people to actively tune in to watch a two and a half hour long infomercial every year, you don't need, say, million-dollar Super Bowl ads. That does not mean it's not very intentional, and it's definitely still marketing.

Their marketing budget is $2bn. About 0.85% of revenue.

And people have been saying exactly the same things about Apple back when their marketing budget was a tenth of that. The amount of marketing Apple puts out just isn't relevant to this issue.

Yup. Honestly, I find it as a nice balancing act.

The positives are often hyped up so much, not just by the company itself, but the media as well, that some negative, no matter how small, ought to counteract those with almost as much force.

Action and reaction and all that. There has to be an equilibrium.

How much of that attention is caused by the original incident/reporting and how much comes from Tesla's decision to publish an overly defensive response on their blog?

Well, it made it into the NYT [1], which I saw on the HN frontpage yesterday, before the blog article showed up, so I'd say not too much.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/business/tesla-model-s-nht...

For me it was the NDA, and Tesla's attempt to brush it off in this latest statement has not improved things. The agreement they sought was far broader than they now claim.

The NYT article implies Tesla is not acting like other car companies.

>Ford, General Motors and Toyota all said they did not have customers sign confidentiality agreements in exchange for fixing cars that have broken down.

>Joan Claybrook, a former head of N.H.T.S.A., said requiring customers to keep quiet about repairs aroused suspicion. “I don’t know why they’d do that,” she said. “It makes it seem like they want to cover something up.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/business/tesla-motors-mode...

Because like I said, if this happened to a Ford, GM car or a Toyota, this would be a nonevent. They don't need them. Tesla going for confidentiality is a consequence of their every move being scrutinized on an entirely different level then anyone else.

Hmm. http://cdn.dailykanban.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TeslaG... (via https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/06/09/2122208/tesla-suspen...)

On it's surface, that definitely looks like a full NDA: "don't speak of this" (IANAL)

However, I can see Tesla's interpretation/spin: "It just means: we aren't admitting liability, don't sue us for this, and don't say we paid for part of the repairs" -- which doesn't include "don't report a safety issue". Still, it seems rather strongly worded for that...

That agreement is completely unreasonable.

"In accepting the Goodwill, you hereby release and discharge Tesla and related persons or entities from any and all claims or damages arising out of or in any way connected with any claims or incidents leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill." (etc, with similar language concerning talking about incidents.)

in other words: we'll fix your car for you, but only if you keep quiet about a broadly and unclearly defined set of events, oh, and only if you agree not to hold us accountable for any wrongdoing on our part that's in any way "related or leading to" this agreement.

That's absurd, and shameful, especially the excessively broad scope of the incidents and the fact that even actual wrongdoing by Tesla is protected.

Your quote and your statement don't make sense together.

> but only if you keep quiet about a broadly and unclearly defined set of events

Where are you reading that?

Read the rest of the agreement; the quote is merely an excerpt (which is why I followed it with "etc, with similar language concerning talking about incidents.") - similar language to that of the excerpt restricts other activities, not just claims.

AFAIK that is pretty standard "We'll fix it for you if you don't sue us" language.

Standard doesn't mean it's right - and note that it's not just excluding liability over the repair but over a really broad and unclearly defined set of events.

we'll fix your car for you

*for free. The customer can always choose to pay the standard repair cost and not sign any Goodwill waiver.

And that's really sleazy. Tesla may well have done nothing wrong, in which case this is a good deal. But they may also have made a negligent mistake "leading to" the repair, and Tesla might know that - the customer does not.

So by using this excessively broad disclaimer, they gain the flexibility to escape liability not just where they're in the right, but also where they may have made costly mistakes - since clearly the it's in the best self-interest of the customer to accept the deal usually, and by the time they find out Tesla may have tricked them, they've already signed.

we'll fix your car for you, but only if you keep quiet about [it]

I think you're confused about the meaning of 'claims' which in this context means a legal claim; it's not referring to a blog or freedom of speech in any way preventing you from claiming things, just that you won't sue them over it.

What's shameful is that they need to protect against people taking advantage of their good will in the first place.

If you were the customer in the absence of the agreement, after everything that Tesla had done at no cost, would you have taken them to court? In this case it's arguable that they would gone to court: the troll took to social media only because the agreement disallowed legal action. The troll used every possible tactic to his advantage, including an extreme degree of omission.

This whole ordeal has inadvertently proven exactly why Tesla has this agreement. Lose when you do; lose when you don't. The agreement isn't there for people like me and you, it's there for people like Niedermayer.

Not taking them to court is one thing, not being able to talk about the agreement is another.

I haven't seen the full agreement, but grandparent's quote contains no language that prevents the customer from talking about it.

The agreement has this passage in it:

"The Goodwill is being provided to you without any admission of liability or wrongdoing or acceptance of any facts by Tesla, and shall not be treated as or considered evidence of Tesla’s liability with respect to any claim or incidents. You agree to keep confidential our provision of the Goodwill, the terms of this agreement and the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill. In accepting the Goodwill, you hereby release and discharge Tesla and related persons or entities from any and all claims or damages arising out of or in any way connected with any claims or incidents leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill. You further agree that you will not commence, participate or voluntarily aid in any action at law or in equity or any legal proceeding against Tesla or related persons or entities based upon facts related to the claims or incidents leading to or related to this Goodwill."

Which could easily be interpreted by a consumer as barring them from discussing the whole affair, even with the authorities.

Which led to:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/safety-agency-chides-tesla-...

> interpreted

There's the kicker: it was written by a lawyer for legal purposes. I could interpret that as Tesla promising me 5 cars; that doesn't change what it legally says.

> You agree to keep confidential

I agree that this is bad. I assume it's there to prevent all of their customers expecting this treatment (which they might not be able to do forever), as well as carefully constructed half-truths appearing on social media (which occurred in this case anyway). Maybe a "full disclosure agreement" would be more appropriate: where you agree that you must disclose all details if you decide to disclose.

This is what I think as well. If Tesla banned the troll from speaking, where is the Tesla lawsuit against the troll for speaking?

They can't sue him because he refused to sign the NDA they were trying to get him to agree to, incurring extra cost and hassle just to preserve his ability to talk about what happened. In fact, fans on the Tesla forum have been taking this as proof that he's really just out to destroy Tesla, arguing that if he wasn't just an anti-Tesla troll he'd have taken the 50% discount on repairs and associated gag agreement and that the fact he was willing to pay an extra grand just to be able to discuss it proved this.

This is also why this sentence from Tesla is incredibly dishonest:

"It is deeply ironic that the only customer who apparently believes that this document prevents him from talking to NHTSA is also the same one who talked to NHTSA. If our agreement was meant to prevent that, it obviously wasn’t very good."

Of course it didn't prevent him from going to the NHTSA, because he refused to sign it in order to preserve his ability to talk about it, paying an extra $1,500 to Tesla for the privilege. Anyone who did sign it in the belief that it prevented them from going to the NHTSA is also forbidden from talking about that by the NDA, so we're obviously not going to hear anything from them. Really sleazy, and seemingly par for the course for Tesla PR these days.

Anti-Tesla trolls would normally not go through the trouble of buying a model S and having two model 3's on pre-order.

The reason someone could interpret it as forbidding them from telling the NHTSA is because that's what it purports to do - it's worded as a blanket ban on discussing the failure. The only reason it doesn't is because that would almost certainly be illegal. Thing is, most customers don't know that and don't want to be sued, which makes writing contracts that appear to do so a sleazy and somewhat effective way of stopping them. That's why the NHTSA is pissed: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/business/tesla-model-s-nht...

Speaking of sleazy and dishonest, this part of the Tesla blogpost is both: "this agreement never even comes close to mentioning NHTSA or the government and it has nothing to do with trying to stop someone from communicating with NHTSA or the government about our cars" It doesn't mention either because it's a blanket ban on talking about the failure. If Tesla hadn't wanted to make people think they couldn't talk to the government, they'd have specifically permitted it. This is a common enough issue that I doubt their lawyers would've missed it when drafting the NDA.

I agree that the confidentiality agreement was poorly structured. Really the whole fiasco indicates that this agreement was badly worded.

The intent of the document was clearly to prevent the document itself from being used as a weapon against the company. Nevertheless it was used for that purpose.

It's standard practice for out of court settlements to be in full and final settlement and require confidentiality.

Also, note that it's not just a restriction on taking them to court about the repair, but also an indemnification against any wrongdoing in "related" incidents and incidents leading up to the repair - i.e. suppose a known manufacturing flaw results in an accident which appears to be the drivers fault, and Tesla's offers this free repair, you also can't claim any medical bills later when the truth emerges.

It's way too broad.

In other words: you should read more carefully whatever you quote given that the meaning is pretty clear. There is nothing in your quote about keeping quiet and, most importantly, if you don't want to accept the free repair you can still pay. It's really incredible how people pretend to have everything for free, and even when they can actually have it for free they manage to find a reason to complain. I have never ever seen any other car manufacturer paying for the suspensions repairs on a out-of-warranty 100k car.

> have never ever seen any other car manufacturer paying for the suspensions repairs on a out-of-warranty 100k car.

It happens a lot. You could have just Googled. Manufacturer would pay for the repair, warranty or no warranty, if there was a defect. For example almost all of those 690000 cars were out-of-warranty at the time of the recall:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/toyota-recalls-690-000...

Tesla using NDA to prevent such situation is so childish. I hope Musk would fire that a-hole who came up with the idea (i really hope it wasn't Musk itself).

Simple Google search brings this by the way, so there are definitely issues:

https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-pulls-le...

What important here is that it is not the issues itself that are main risk to the company - after all it is a young car company - it is how the company reacts to them, and such rotten actions like NDA is a really bad style which would cost a lot in the long run. `

Your example is completely unrelated. This was not a recognised defect. If you really think that every car manufacturer does it then it should be trivial for you to find some source where a single car was repaired for free after 100k km for something that was not a recognised defect. You have plenty of time to prove your thesis.

>Your example is completely unrelated. This was not a recognised defect.

Many defects before becoming recognized are just some accidental occurrences. Like Tesla suspension issues.

>If you really think that every car manufacturer does it

of course i don't think every car manufacturer does it. Good ones do though.

>it should be trivial for you to find some source where a single car was repaired for free after 100k km for something that was not a recognised defect.

my wife's Honda had paint unusually strongly faded (no rust or any corrosion nor surface damage, just paint itself) at some spot which was repaired for free at low 60K miles (the car was 6 years old at the time, so well out-of-warranty anyway). There is a reason Honda is a top dog in reliability and quality. Such standing behind their own product is a big part of it.

repaired for free after 100k km for something that was not a recognised defect

Not entirely sure what your definition of "not a recognised defect" is if the Tesla fixes aren't one. Nevertheless, many manufactures do similar things:

Chrysler minivan owners may notice that the front wheel bearings on models from 2008 to 2010 are subject to premature wear, so dealers will replace them for free during a vehicle’s first five years or 90,000 miles.

Honda, however, and its upscale Acura division stand out with a half-dozen or more. Because CR’s survey data show that Honda and Acura vehicles, in general, are among the most reliable on the road, the company’s high number of service campaigns suggests it’s been unusually generous to customers

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/11/get-your...

Someone I know had a Dodge which burnt to the ground after the seat caught fire whilst filling with petrol. The car was a couple of months old and in warranty. It took a threat to go to the papers for Dodge to agree this wasn't really ok, and replace the car (who'd want a replacement? Id want my $).

I know of select shift Ford fusion that had a transmission slip problem (spoiler: later fixed by a software update) but Ford refused to acknowledge it as a problem that their own dealership's mechanic acknowledged until much later when they came up with that fix.

Pete didn't want to return the car. He didn't want to sue Ford. He kept getting non-answers for months.

You should read more completely. As a service to lazy readers such as yourself, I quoted one sentence to illustrate the kind of restrictions imposed, but as you apparently missed, I explicitly mentioned it's just an extract: "(etc, with similar language concerning talking about incidents.)"

The free repair is gracious gesture. But the restrictions imposed in return are nevertheless unreasonable - it's one thing to explicitly note that Tesla is doing you a favor and that the favor is not an admission of guilt, it's quite something else to weasel out of responsibility even if you do turn out to be guilty of something.

That's a disclaimer of liability, not an NDA. It says "you can't sue us", not "you can't talk about it".

This is specifically to avoid court arguments that the free repair is an admission of guilt (which, yes, is the kind of thing that happens in civil cases).

If you read my comment, you'll note that I'm merely quoting a part of the agreement. The full agreement is linked in case you're curious about the NDA terms.

There have been quite a few commenters that haven't bothered to read even my short comment, let alone the (also rather short) agreement, yet still felt qualified to determine that the NDA clauses aren't present. They are.

Personally, due to the overbroad scope I find these liability limiting clauses at least as objectionable as the NDA clauses.

"You agree to keep confidential" is the key phrase.

"You agree to keep confidential ... the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the good will" certainly implies that I'm agreeing not to talk about the incident.

> With respect to the car that is discussed in the blog post that led to yesterday’s news (more on the blog post below), the suspension ball joint experienced very abnormal rust. We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in this post, but a dirty car has nothing to do with a rusty ball joint. Dirt doesn't cause rust. It means, as they note, the owner lives on a dirt road. The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring - nothing to do with the issue at hand.

quite right, i live in a rural area and drive extensively on dirt roads every day and have for decades across maybe a dozen+ vehicles, i have never had a ball joint failure, nor have i heard of one.

I bet that you chose all of your dozen-plus vehicles knowing that you'd be driving extensively on dirt roads every day for the life of the car. I also bet that if you tried it with a $70k luxury sedan it'd have a major mechanical fault within a year traceable directly to it not being an off-road vehicle.

dirt road is not "off road", ive owned minvans, and compact cars that have had no issues with suspension.

And I've seen broken suspension in 4x4 car driven for 3 years on 2km of dirt road, then 20km normal paved roads. One sample is not enough.

You'd lose that bet: people I know who drive a lot on dirt roads use just normal cars. VW Golf or Ford Mondeo or Toyota Yaris or a BMW 5 series, and for those who do most km, a Mercedes E-class.

Thank you for your anecdata.

An influencing factor I can think of is that a dirt road will kick up debris such as small rocks, which will in turn potentially chip any passivation layer (chrome treatment, paint, etc.) on a metal component. This could accelerate corrosion by allowing moisture ingress if subsequently driven through puddles.

Specifically, chipped paint is doubly bad as moisture can ingress and then flow underneath the paint, trapping it in there and not letting it dry out, so it continues to corrorde.

> Dirt doesn't cause rust.

Dirt can contain salt, iron and other rust-promoting particles. And a caked layer of dirt can hold water against the metal part for extended periods of time.

> The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring

That depends if the fault ultimately lied with the customer or Tesla. More broadly, it demonstrates the company's willingness to assist, to go beyond what most people would reasonably expect a company to do to help resolve a problem, even when it's possible the problem was caused by the customer.

> Dirt can contain salt, iron and other rust-promoting particles.

When I read the title and the paragraph referencing the rusted ball joint this was the first thing I thought of. The whole post I was waiting for that title reference to be worked in, but was surprised when it was finally used in the metaphorical sense one usually hears.

>> The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring

It would have made for a great counter example for the range anxious if it wasn't for the suspension failure.

So don't buy a Tesla when you live somewhere where it snows?

"We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt."

Which is not nearly as bad as the systematic, repeated adverse conditions testing they did on these cars in development and continued to do into the present.

Right ? Right ?

You mean like most customers in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland experience several days each winter?

To get to a cabin here in Norway I might have to drive 20km or more on a dirt road covered in snow and ice. When 4x4s first became popular here in Norway they were conspicuous by there absence in the mountains; most of the vehicles I saw at that time were Volvo estates (245) and Mercedes saloons (both rear wheel drive of course).

I don't recall broken suspension or steering joints being an issue here with any brand of car (including Tesla) and the Norwegian roads authority (Statens Vegvesen) puts a lot of salt on the road.

Do people in Norway do some kind of underbody anti-rust spray in their vehicles? like this? http://www.wheels.ca/guides/how-to-protect-your-car-against-...

A dirt road will work the suspension a lot harder than paved. Combine that with stones pitting the ball and allowing moisture behind the seal, and it all comes down to the S not being an off-road vehicle.

Off a paved road is not exactly off-road. Over here, many roads are not paved - even my home street. Still I would expect to drive any regular car there; if the suspension can't take it, it's faulty.

Your un-paved road isn't the same as all un-paved roads. This Tesla didn't fail on your road.

Yes, but overall dirt roads are no problem for cars. The Tesla blog writes "The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car."

That doesn't make sense: what has the length of the dirt road to do with needing two tow trucks? One truck runs out of fuel on this long road?

Tesla may be perfectly right that the car has been used on bad roads, and perhaps in unreasonable ways, but them being long dirt roads can not and must not be an issue. Standard cars will do hundreds of thousands of km on dirt roads.

Speculating: One that can haul the car over a dirt road (off-road tyres / suspension?), and one normal one (road tyres?).

Sure, but that does not have much to do with the length of the dirt road.

But once again, driving on dirt road is not off-road. Dirt roads can be somewhat bumpy, but on the other hand they typically do not have such sharp-edged potholes that paved roads may have.

You say typically, but Tesla has sold over 100k cars and has never seen anything like this before. It hardly sounds like a typical situation.

It's also not clear what is meant when the road is being described as a dirt road: often people will describe a gravel road as a dirt road, but I think this is an error. A gravel road of several inches of 21A, properly graded, compacted, and maintained, has little in common with a dirt road.

It's not possible to know without seeing the road. I have relatives that live several miles down a dirt road that gets corrugated as a way of grading the road, and to prevent runoff. It beats the hell out of the suspension. In fact, I should give my family a call to tell them to have their equipment checked.

This is called Washboard Road, and is a result of erosion. It's very common in the desert and the Midwest.

Since I've seen this mentioned a few times in the comments, it's worth noting: Tesla did not expose the identity of the customer who had the suspension problem. Edward Niedermayer is a blogger who uncovered a post on a car forum[1] and then made hay out of it[2] causing some national media to report about it. Tesla was merely commenting that this blogger has a pretty clear anti-Tesla bias in his other writing. If anyone's responsible for exposing the customer to scrutiny, it's Niedermayer (who linked to the semi-anonymous forum post and turned it into a media story).

1: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/suspension-problem-o...

2: http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage-not...

I have a first-generation Honda Insight. It's sixteen years old and still going. At about 110K miles, the power pack failed, someplace in the Central Valley of California.

Honda (I guess some zone office) had it towed 50 miles to the nearest dealership, which happened to be in Bakersfield. They then replaced the power pack without charging me for it.

Now, I knew I was an early adopter. I knew this could happen. I was prepared to pay for it. And Honda decided to treat me like an early adopter. (They sent the old power pack back to Japan; I suppose they wanted to inspect it.)

It never occurred to me to slag them in the media, or try to get a class action suit going, or some such foolishness. I was stuck in "the desert" for a few hours. But it might have made a good story. The media love stories about design defects in cars, and the big car companies' coverups play right into those stories. If it bleeds it leads.

These EVs don't need oil changes. So the temptation may be to treat them like Soviet tanks and never maintain them. That seems a bad idea. They still have rubber seals on ball joints. They still have pads on the disc brakes. All that stuff is expendable, and needs to be looked at.

Tesla is right to debunk this "big story." One guy who could have been using a 20-year-old jalopy pickup truck experienced a typical failure and turned it into his fifteen minutes of fame.

> They still have rubber seals on ball joints.

Do they? I seem to remember Musk saying they motor brake (picking up the power to charge the batteries) to brake.

Maybe secondary brakes.

Those two things are unrelated. The ball joint lets you position the wheels (ie steer).

I would be monumentally shocked if Tesla didn't put rubber seals on the ball joints.

You can judge for yourself[1] whether the joints are sealed with rubber or not; it appears to me that they are.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgdKZMlzQog

Thanks. I don't know why I misread that.

Of course Teslas have spill-brakes (brakes that convert kinetic energy into heat and then spill it into the atmosphere). Regenerative braking is great, but safety still requires disc brakes.

And Mr. Musk will sell you red ones for a couple of kilobucks. http://shop.teslamotors.com/products/performance-red-caliper...

Looking at all the blog posts that blogger Edward Niedermeyer wrote on his blog [1] I can't find a single positive thing he ever said about Tesla, it looks like he has some obligation to just write all the negativity he can come up with.

[1] - http://dailykanban.com/author/bjorn/

NY Times says..

"The nation’s top auto safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said on Thursday that at least some Tesla customers who experienced suspension failures with Model S luxury cars were asked to sign confidentiality agreements about the issue."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/business/tesla-model-s-nht...

They were asked to sign agreements if they wanted a free repair from Tesla. If these customers didn't want to sign the agreement, they could have just paid for the repairs, so I don't see the issue here.

The fact that they felt the need to tell NHTSA about it is proof that the agreement is a smart move on Tesla's part.

You are making it sound like that's just fine.

Most people would sign something like that over spending thousands of dollars for a repair. Just imagine it is the battery and they choice is like "well, you can pay $20000 yourself or sing this paper and we take care of it".

Of course it's fine. They are doing you a favor, and in exchange would like you to sign an agreement. Remember, we're talking about out-of-warranty repairs here. But if you don't like the terms of the agreement, you have the choice to fix it on your own dime.

Again, it's your problem if you can't afford to not take the offer. You should be thankful that all you need to do is sign some kind of NDA.

What I find hilarious is that people sign the agreement to get the free repairs, then go ahead and complain about the agreement anyways. Well next time you need an expensive out-of-warranty repair, you're not getting a free pass :P

What other kind of favor you can expect from a monopolist? You're not going to have your car repaired anywhere else and they know it So you're getting a 'favor' only because you're doing even a greater favor to them

50% discounted repair, according to someone who refused the offer and could therefore disclose the terms. (From what I recall Tesla doesn't supply parts to third-party repairers, so that's 50% off a payment to Tesla at a price Tesla themselves have set.) We don't know what Tesla offered all the other people who took the deal since they're forbidden from disclosing the terms.

That ball joint is in miserable condition. How had the owner not noticed any problems? The ball joint would be visible to anyone who would have had to replace the tires, which should have happened before 70K miles. Something feels off about this story.

And about the $3k repair bill: You will see that with any luxury car. Low number of cars means a smaller market for used parts, so what usually happens is only the manufacturer sells used parts. When they're the only supplier, they can charge whatever they want for the parts, and they often do. Maybe the owner did know about the problem, but chose not to replace it because it was too expensive.

It doesn't sound like Tesla is at fault at all, but I suppose they feel the need to protect their brand.

"the blogger who fabricated this issue, which then caused negative and incorrect news to be written about Tesla by reputable institutions, is Edward Niedermayer. This is the same gentle soul who previously wrote a blog titled “Tesla Death Watch,” which starting on May 19, 2008 was counting the days until Tesla’s death. It has now been 2,944 days."

I, too read the article.

Material science lifecycles are measured in decades. Just because you "haven't seen it before" does not mean it can't happen. It means you're not testing well enough, or that your data sample is not good enough. Noone is clairvoyant, and excuses such as "dirt" and "70000 miles" don't make you either. Why automatically attack the victim? Is it not remotely possible, that the fault lies with Tesla?

"remotely possible" and "beyond reasonable doubt" are not equivalent.

Just because you had a problem, once, with a product doesn't mean the manufacturer made a mistake. Isn't it remotely possible that it's your mistake instead?

Yes, the fault may lie with Tesla. They fixed it! I bet they also put the failed part on a test bench to figure out what happened.

What strikes me about this whole saga is that if the dealership had simply recognized that those joints should not have failed this early in the vehicles life and fixed them it would have ended right there.

Also I think that to have a 'will not sue' clause in the agreement to fix issues that are out of warranty is fine but the explicit consent not to talk about it is the kind of thing that will make your lawyer happy in the short term but that will damage your reputation in the longer one. Manufacturers should never try to control the speech of their consumers, even if it benefits them in the short term. It will look like you're trying to cover something up, even when you don't.

70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long.

I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I will make you agree to not thank me with a lawsuit. It's very simple, really. The customer gets a free repair, Tesla does not have to deal with lawsuit-wielding psychopaths.

Agreed. Drive a Mercedes or BMW for 70k miles, with a decent portion of that on dirt road, and a ball joint failure will be the least of your worries.

How come? Brother-in-law has been doing 30-40 000 km per year on a Ford Mondeo for years, much of that on dirt roads. It is of course to be expected that worn-out parts have to be replaced, but we should not need to worry about road safety based on mileage, even if driving on dirt roads.

Luxury cars are a lot heavier, putting more strain on the suspension on rough roads. Also, a bad ball joint would have shown up as loose steering when the tyres were being changed - I'm surprised it wasn't picked up earlier.

What if the luxury car is a Jaguar X-type?

Not that much heavier. Current Ford Mondeo, the boring, economical workhorse, has curb weight ~1550 kg, MB E-class is 1600-1800 depending on model (engine and drivetrain). Tesla Model S is further away at 1960-2240 kg.

However, what's essential is that in car design, you of course dimension the parts so that they match with the expected load. It is totally not acceptable if the parts cannot take normal use and become dangerous, and driving on dirt-surfaced roads is normal use.

that's assuming the tires were changed.

Off topic, but I'm always surprised by this kind of considerations. Over here, cars have annual inspection similar to the British MOT test (except new cars only on 3rd and 5th years) and there the engineer checks anything that has to do with traffic safety. Americans drive newer cars (average 11.5 years compared to our 13.5 years), but apparently maintain them less as there are no mandatory inspections in most states, beyond some smog tests.

Over here, people change tyres twice per year (winter/summer wheels) so there's an opportunity to look at brakes and suspension.

Lolwut, what kind of cars do you drive that them lasting 70k is incredible?

was thinking this too. i have a 2005 mazda3 with 165k miles on it that i bought for $18k at the time. still on stock clutch, stock engine, gets 27-30mpg on cheap gas. great ROI.

with some new shocks and wheel bearings it'll probably make it another 70k or more.

Before my volvo v70 went, it was just a shade under 250000 miles, and got 53mpg (UK gallons) not bad for a 2002 diesel car. Almost entirely original parts, only major thing that broke was the aircon and you can get by without that in the UK. Stupidly comfy to drive and a bargain at £2000, shame it lasted only 2 years.

So you've paid more in gas than for the car over the life of the car.

i bought the car to go places, not because i wanted to own a car. fuel is what makes everything go places. is it that shocking that the propellant itself (a consumable, as opposed to a rapidly depreciating asset) would be the main expense?

> 70,000 miles is an incredible distance

Is it though? That's a third of my car's, and it has not had a suspension issue yet.

Maybe it's different in the US, but as far as I know, at least French diesel cars are usually expected to go at least to 70 000 miles (100 000 km) without a major issue. Gasoline engines are supposed to have a lower life expectancy, but I don't know what's a reasonable expectation for those.

Now, it's still impressive that Tesla fixed this problem for free and that old a car (but they're under more scrutiny than other car makers, so they don't have much choice). But to me, considering 70 000 miles "an incredible distance" means having quite low expectations.

What would be a non-incredible distance for you?

I have a land rover discovery 3 with 180k miles on it(4.4L V8, 2005 model) that I drive daily and it has absolutely no issues. Having said that - I guess what OP meant was that if the owner drives the car through dirt every single day, that reduces the longetivity of a car VERY quickly. In most car manuals you will find a "service" section which will very often say something like "full service is recommended every 20k miles, unless the car is used in difficult conditions, then full service should be done every 5-10k miles". Maybe this Tesla was serviced that often, maybe it wasn't - but 70k miles with a lot of use in "difficult" conditions is quite a lot for a production vehicle without uprated suspension, mud guards etc etc.

No, most people in the US would expect a decent car to last at least 150,000 miles.

Define "to last". Having one part needing to be replaced is not a total loss of the car.

I think the point that many are glossing over in their anecdata is that those cars they got 100k+ miles on where likely a decade old. The Model S in question is probably under 3-4yrs old, likely much less. 70k miles isn't much, yes, that's true. 70k miles in 1-2 years is however a very different scenario than 70k miles in 4-5 years.

How do you see the timeframe effecting wear and tear on a car? (In a general situation, I mean; not necessarily down a dirt road every day.)

Take 2 cars. They each drove 70k miles; car A took 1 year, car B took 4 years.

It seems to me that car A will have less wear and tear simply because it's much more likely they were putting highway miles on their car. Aren't highway miles easier on all the components?

> I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I will make you agree to not thank me with a lawsuit.

That's not the wrong part. The wrong part is the "don't talk about the defect" NDA. Transcribed from [1], italics is the NDA that I find unacceptable.:

> You agree to keep confidential our provision of the Goodwill, the terms of this agreement and the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill.

[1] http://cdn.dailykanban.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TeslaG...

Most cars from Volvo and Mercedes can drive at least 300,000 miles (500,000 km) so 70k is nothing.

But on the other hand suspension problems like this are also nothing. Drive into a hole hard enough and something breaks. Just happens.

>70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long.

Huh? Nothing unusual at all about that. I'm sure others will chime in with even higher numbers, but I sold my last car after I put 200,000 miles on it. It was still working, but did have some miscellaneous issues by that point (no suspension issues though and I did have a gravel driveway for 2/3 of my ownership of the car). Buy a reliable model and you'll find 70,000 to be only middle-age.

(To back this up with some sort of data--a quick search of cars.com for Toyota Camry's (since it's a fairly popular, quite reliable car) shows 4,837 for sale with over 100,000 miles right now. I see pictures of some of those odometers with over 350,000 miles on them. While that's unusual it is FIVE TIMES the 70,000 miles you thought was an incredible distance.).

If something fails on your car after the warranty period, should it be replaced for free then? It's great that some parts last for much longer than the warranty, but don't kid yourself in thinking that Toyota would honor a ball joint or suspension piece for 200,000 miles or more.

If anything, you should be comparing similar vehicles. Compare the Model S to a Mercedes S class, or a BMW 7 series car. For example, a common complaint of these cars is the air suspension goes bad and has to be replaced for $2000/wheel. There's a warranty, and if it happens in that warranty it's covered for free. But if the air suspension goes out after warranty, no one bats an eye and expects it to be covered for free.

Isn't that usually the air suspension though, a item known to go bad and a reason many people opt not to get one?

Yes, that's true a lot of people opt to not get it because of the cost to fix it. But, a lot of "packages" will require it. Like on the Model S if you get the fastest option you can't unbundle the air suspension. (Update: it used to be the case where they made you get that, but now you can unbundle it.)

> If something fails on your car after the warranty period, should it be replaced for free then?

Nope. I didn't say nor imply that. I was expressing surprise that someone would think it unusual for a car to last 70,000 miles, nothing more.

It's a remarkable thing that even as the complexity of vehicles has risen over the years, (I think) the data shows overall longevity and reliability has increased (on average for the whole fleet). Auto engineers and manufacturers are doing something right!

I put 50K on a 16 year old car in the last 6 months or so, it had 70K (kilometers) on it in when I bought it. I would be very disappointed (to say the least) if a suspension component as critical as this had failed in spite of the vehicles age and the number of miles driven. It's being maintained very well and I totally rely on it taking me all kinds of places and back again without breaking down, especially without breaking down in such a catastrophic way.

Control arm failure is a great way to wind up dead and it should not happen on a well maintained car unless the car is already involved in an accident.

> 70,000 miles is an incredible distance

Erm, maybe 20 years ago.

I actually killed a car with a broken drive-shaft jamming the wheels (it got wedged between the inside of the wheel and brake disk+calliper) and that happened at about 116K...and that was a 1997 Peugeot!

I sold a Honda a couple of years ago that had about 160K on the clock - zero mechanical or electrical defects and still drove like new. I now have a Toyota on 85K and a Mazda on 75K - the only mechanical issues I've had on either of those is 1 of the 7 exhaust hangers rusting off of the exhaust pipe on the Toyota which is trivially minor point.

Not even 20 years ago, executive cars of the time (e.g. Saab 9000, Mercedes W124, Peugeot 605, …) were fully expected to and routinely going multiples of that distance.

Twenty years ago is just... the mid nineties. You'd expect any Japanese economy car of the era to last some decent multiple of that as well, with the expectation that you would eventually see some body rust in a northern climate.

> 70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long.

I gave away my first car at about 300.000 km to my brother who drove it for another 100.000 km before passing it on. That's german roads, so well. My mother lives in Africa where road conditions are comparatively bad (as in gravel/dirt tracks most of the time and potholes you could park a tesla in) and her cars usually last about 300.000 - 500.000 km before she sells them off. That's mostly 4x4s, so rugged cars, but her husband has a BMW that's like 20 years old and coming close to 1.000.000 km. Friends of ours have a Landrover that is older than my mother, it dates from around WW2. It's their primary farm vehicle (in Namibia). I doubt this car has ever been on an asphalt road, there are none within a 100km radius around the farm.

70,000 miles is just about nothing for a car. Some people drive that much in a year.

Let me add to the anecdata: my family has a Corolla that's still working after 14 years with well over 250K+ km city driving on it. Yeah, the AC's a little janky, and some of the plastic bits are brittle, but...still going strong. Modern engines are pretty superb; I'd be surprised if any of them tank before 100K. It's more likely all the other stuff in the car that falls apart (I'm looking at you - fuel pump on a Dodge Caravan).

Big fan of Tesla and their achievement even thus far, but perplexed that they didn't take the high ground, and decided to call out the individual by name in a derogatory and spin-like manner whilst still hiding behind the anonymity of authorship attributed to "The Tesla Team".

This is their standard M.O of late. Remember the misfeature where depending on the Summon Mode settings, accidentally double-tapping rather than single-tapping Park would cause the Model S to start driving forward a few seconds after leaving and how Tesla blamed the driver after this caused their car to crash into a truck, obfuscated how easy it was to activate, and made it sound like they'd deliberately activated it.

Every time there's a Tesla PR flare-up, it risks damaging the company disproportionately, both immediately (stock price) and long term (public perception). They respond swiftly and directly.

This was perhaps not the best phrasing:

"A few things need to be cleared up about the supposed safety of Model S suspensions:"

Maybe it's just me but it seems to imply that Model S suspensions aren't safe. The whole post is written in a pretty aggressive tone as well. Not your run of the mill PR piece that's for sure. If what Tesla states about this case and about the blogger is true I can see why they would be angry about it though.

>The whole post is written in a pretty aggressive tone as well.

Well they (the team) obviously feel like they're being victimised here. And given the Tesla Death Watch thing I'm inclined to say they might be right.

I always find Tesla's responses like this astonishing because they are clearly not written by a traditional PR team. In fact, they always read to me like they are written by Mr. Musk himself. Like the stereotypical CEO gone wild who writes from his heart and doesn't care what the guys in suits want him to say.

Which makes the byline "The Tesla Team" always so strange to me, as I never quite believe they were written by a team.

I'd actually suspect it's a content team that ghostwrites for Elon. So they're probably intending to use his tone while also keeping relatively minor things like drafting PR off his plate.

So are the documents customers were allegedly asked to sign real, or fabricated? This post calls Mr. Niedermayer everything short of a liar, and yet they didn't answer the obvious question. I am still withholding judgement.

I agree, if it is true they executed even a soft-NDA in exchange for repairs (ala hush money), regulators rightly need to start looking alot closer at Tesla.

Nothing illegal about it but it would definitely be a symptom. Fanboys will be fanboys, and haters will be haters but auto safety is not something to take lightly.

We have had auto manufacturers and parts suppliers outright lie to regulators and the public about safety issues. It seems to be a recent pattern in the industry.

The post claimed that such documents exist but do not contain language preventing the signer from contacting government regulators.

Looking at Mr. Niedermeyer's linkedin profile[0] and what he's doing/where he's worked was kind of enlightening as to his purpose and motivations.

It probably works for him, though. I think 99+% of people, myself included, do not often look at who is writing what they read online. And I'd guess a majority percentage don't think about the fact that they are reading opinion vs. news.

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-niedermeyer-35942261

Please explain how it was enlightening. I do not have a LinkedIn account, so I might not be able to see his while profile, but it looks fine to me.

I was going on the public profile as well.

The profile notes that Mr. Niedermeyer works in the PR and Communications industry, and the bio blurb says he has written Op/Ed for several major publications. His listed work history is at TTAC, followed by Argot Industries and, mostly concurrently with Argot, an unnamed startup. He founded Argot, which is an automotive industry research/analysis/communication/consulting firm serving private clients. His startup promises to redefine strategic communications.

I came away from this thinking Mr. Niedermeyer's work is more about influencing readers than informing them; that he is more PR flack than journalist.

It's not always clear what a blog or blog writer is all about. A lot of sites I read are literally subject enthusiasts recounting personal experience, testing something and reporting on the result, etc. You can often just take that information at face value: this is what this does, this is how this works, I did this and/or this happened, etc. Based just on work history, I don't think Mr. Niedermeyer falls into this category at all, which is what I meant by enlightening.

Thanks, I obviously didn't go deep enough into it. Yes, he is definitely not trustworthy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edwar...

A list of articles by said Edward Niedermeyer. There definitely are a lot of anti-Tesla articles.

What a coup de grâce this blog post is! I have never read any corporate communication that pushed me to finish the whole thing, enhanced my perception of their brand, increased my desire to own one of their products and become a shareholder.

Edward Niedermayer seems to be more concerned with click bait and controversy than really promoting discourse. The Truth About Cars has almost become readable since his departure, but its still a car tabloid at best. The dude is young and was given a pretty good sized platform, decided he didn't like Elon Musk and has now spent a significant percentage of his time to prove Tesla is a scam.

I wouldn't call myself a die hard tesla fan, and Im not willing to spend the kind of money required to own a model s or x. But I would certainly call them compelling reasons to look into an electric car and they are easily 10-15 years ahead of the entrenched auto makers.

I think that Tesla definitely has challenges ahead as well. The biggest is that they need to have cars fully baked and delivered on time. They need to start showing positive balance sheets regularly and they need to get the gigafactory done. I dont see them failing in the near term but their balance sheet and stock price need to reconcile eventually.

As to the claims of reliability, Ive not seen anything that looks to be egregiously worse than cars in the target market. Ive yet to own a single car that has never had a defect or something break that required a warranty/out of warranty repair. I have had cars that were better than average (My current 2014 A4 has had one thing break in 55k miles) and some that were much worse (2009 Chevrolet silverado - everything electric broke, power rear glass, power windows, cruise control, fuel pump, power seats; 2001 VW GTI vr6 had the check engine light on every 6 weeks after I exceeded the ridiculously short 24000 mile warranty- I think they knew that was all that car was good for. I replaced the MAF twice, several other engine electrics as well)

Whatever happens I have to give Tesla(not just Musk) a lot of credit for taking on a hard problem and creating a credible product.

Great news. Still Tesla obviously expects this type of news to break and it will be an ever constant duty for them to refute or acknowledge issues.

They must also understand that eventually some customers will want to work on their own cars, do preventive service and the like. They need to accommodate them as well.

It is one thing to be serving almost exclusively early adopters, when the III comes along its going to be very interesting to see how they handle it. There will be a whole lot of people who simply don't know how to treat their cars well combined with many who are louder about issues simply because its a bigger investment to them

"That said, sometimes Tesla does make genuine mistakes. We are not and have never claimed to be perfect. However, we strongly believe in trying to do the right thing and, when we fall short, taking immediate corrective action."

This is what makes me feel confident about a company. Doesn't ring like false humbleness or a disclaimer, just something that you'd hear on a open conversation, where the other party is being sincere.

And the worse thing about the whole situation is that damage is already done. Because people will believe anything they read.

This is what caused Tesla to dip so much yesterday?

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA

I'm no expert on the subject, but unless something else happened at Tesla yesterday, this was indeed what caused the dip.

About a year ago a youtube video popped up of a Tesla caught fire after it hit a metal object which pierced the battery pack. The stocks immediately plummeted, even though car fires are a common thing.

Like the article states, it is likely the negative news story was fabricated to drive prices down, to gain profit for those selling short on tesla stocks.

Tesla stock is absurdly fickle.

Ok, someone has an axe to grind and there is a blogger with an vendetta. But at the end there was this surprising update:

    Of greater concern: 37 of 40 suspension complaints 
    to NHTSA were fraudulent, i.e. false location 
    or vehicle identification numbers were used
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2016

If true this goes beyond telling blown up stories and may cross the threshold over to criminal behavior.

Musk tweeted that "37 of 40 suspension complaints to NHTSA were fraudulent, i.e. false location or vehicle identification numbers were used"[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/741411531582115841

I love how non-corporate the Tesla blog is: "It is deeply ironic that the only customer who apparently believes that this document prevents him from talking to NHTSA is also the same one who talked to NHTSA. If our agreement was meant to prevent that, it obviously wasn’t very good."

I think it's worth noting that Tesla models seems to have issues with leaks and water infiltrations that can explain the rust. Anyway, if they beleive in stock manipulation, they should sue.

Edward Neidermeyer is a douchebag. Look at all the articles he wrote. http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edwar...

The real crime here is Tesla dangling repairs in front of owners only if they sign an NDA.

Very interesting Tesla's response: 1. The car was not brand new and was actually driven, which is horrible. 2. NHTSA did not investigate anything, they just asked us for the documents. 3. We don't ask customers to sign anything, just demand that they sign "the agreement". 4. We're the best. Customers are idiots. 5. We'll even publicly expose the identity of the customer for you to hate. Here is his name, address, and SSN. Have fun!

You must have read a different article than I.

1. Every manufacturer will point out that extreme conditions affect the performance and life of a car. I don't remember Tesla marketing the Model S as an off-road vehicle. I think it is fair for then to point out how different the driving conditions where in this case.

2. Cooperating with federal regulators is what we want, right? NHTSA hasn't opened even a preliminary investigation. Surely the agency talks with car manufacturers on a regular basis.

3. "When [we discount or conduct the repair for free] we sometimes ask our customers to sign a “Goodwill Agreement.” The basic point is to ensure that Tesla doesn’t do a good deed, only to have that used against us in court for further gain. [...] this agreement never even comes close to mentioning NHTSA or the government and it has nothing to do with trying to stop someone from communicating with NHTSA or the government about our cars. We have absolutely no desire to do something like that."

4. What? How are you even pulling that from the article. The fourth point was about Tesla's record of addressing safety concerns before customers experience problems.

5. First, they never said he was the owner of the car, but maybe that's obvious of you read his blog. But if that is true, then Tesla didn't expose him, he already exposed himself. Second, I didn't see any addresses or SSNs in the article, so you are exaggerating to the point of lying at this point.

Though all other points in your comment are quite juvenile, I think the first one is valid.

>the suspension ball joint experienced very abnormal rust. We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt.

So what, Tesla? Cars are meant to be caked in dirt, sand, water, whatever elements they may encounter in the course of use by people who buy them. Most people drive on roads but some do go off-road and the cars should be able to handle it. Just the information provided here does not indicate misuse. It may still turn out that way, but not right now. It is more likely, IMO, that your engineers failed to consider some particular scenarios and the suspensions in your cars are a bit less rust-resistant than they should be.

If a car is frequently driven in abnormally severe conditions, perhaps by a bad driver, for many more miles than a routine service check would warrant, it may be useful to point out the irregularity of the circumstance.

> we believe in putting our customers’ happiness ahead of our own bottom line.

Fuck off with this shit. Your customers happiness IS what defines your bottom line in the long run. Can we stop with all this fucking corporate lies.

I think we need a new trend. Blunt honesty. I'd trust a company far more if they just came out and said yes, we're here to make money and expand. If this means treating you well as a customer, we will do that, but at the end of the day, we make money for our shareholders and to fund other crap we want to do, and we provide you with a thing you are cool with paying for and give you good service in order to do that.

A whole company going after one person. Whether they are right or wrong makes is irrelevant compared to the door to company bullying it opens: if a customer speaks against a company right or wrongfully the arsenal of legal retaliation a company has against him/her is disproportionate (libeling, doxing, mass PR/reputation, secrecy of affair new laws), resulting in de facto possibility for companies to control public space communication.

Government are just giving the key of censorship to corporation. Private owned interests that do not represent the people.

Tesla and its owner's arrogance are creepy.

> A whole company going after one person

What do you mean by "goinf after"? Shouldn't they be able to defend themselves?!

And this should also be read in the context of a whole industry going after one company... Tesla's PR often seems slightly combative, but that's because the company is engaged in a never-ending fight for its life against an array of deep pocketed interests that are not at all afraid to play dirty.

To be honest it feels like a lot of this stuff is their method of resolving difficult issues with customers. If somebody makes a serious complaint about their Tesla and Tesla disagrees with them about it then it has become standard for the customer to be personally attacked in the media by Musk.

It doesn't make me want to buy a Tesla. I'm sure we've all experienced situations where we had to argue strongly with a company to get a repair or refund over something. I wouldn't want to buy a product where arguing with the company ends up with me getting attacked in the media.

Isn't that exactly what this is about though? They don't take these issues to the media, the customers/reviewers etc do. And when that happens, Tesla simply can't afford to take it lying down.

Where it jars for me is that if I publicly complained about treatment from a doctor or a hospital I'm fairly confident they wouldn't just produce my medical records and splash details that support their position all over the web. Tesla's approach is a little too close to doing this for me.

I have a hard time imagining how you got all that from the article. Bullying? Legal Retaliation? Doxing? Companies "controlling public space communication"? Censorship?

Not a single one of those things have come close to happening here.

well, there is an asymmetry that is obvious to me: it is easier for the PR of tesla to make its voice overpower the voice of a consumer (promoted links, using the crowd of the company to upvote on HN or /., paying community manager to do damage control).

And random rightful consumers may just remember that before daring to voice a concern.

I call it bullying because like in school, it it the tallest and strongest against the isolated weak ones.

And yes Tesla so far has used yet no legal means, but they have a better arsenal to harm a consumer than a consumer has to fight the company, especially if you have NO lawyer to support you.

So, it is a new prototype of censorship by bullying resulting in people potentially shutting their mouth in fear of the harm for their cyber reputation or liability.

Most people think we should fear government and need more secrecy, I say we should begin to fear corporations and need more transparency from these legal entities.

I don't know if the consumer is a fraud (maybe he is) but I find the tesla PR pretty disproportionate.

We should certainly be watching for abuses of power like you describe, no question. But let's be careful not to cry wolf lest we hurt our own cause. Let us save our outrage for when a real abuse has occurred.

In this particular case, we now have both sides of the story and are able to form our own opinions based on the presented information. I think that's as close to an ideal situation as you're ever going to get. Were this to happen in the 1980's (or earlier) we wouldn't even be discussing it.

What a great time to be alive :-) And yes, we should definitely remain vigilant against corporate/government abuse and control.

> A whole company going after one person.

No, just their PR department

> Whether they are right or wrong makes is irrelevant compared to the door to ...

I vehemently disagree. Being wrong or right is probably the most relevant part of this.

> ... company bullying it opens: if a customer speaks against a company right or wrongfully the arsenal of legal retaliation a company has against him/her is disproportionate (libeling, doxing, mass PR/reputation, secrecy of affair new laws)

As far as I know, Tesla has not filed suit, or in any other way bullied Mr. Niedermayer.

> resulting in de facto possibility for companies to control public space communication.

Again, I see nothing here that indicates Tesla controls the public space. Quite the opposite. They have to publish on the same playing field as their detractors. The field has never been so level as it is now on the Internet.

> Government are just giving the key of censorship to corporation. Private owned interests that do not represent the people. Tesla and its owner's arrogance are creepy.

That may or may not be true, but this blog post is hardly the hook to hang your point on. It sounds more like you have an axe to grind here with that last sentence. But that's just my personal reading of it.

Then again it wouldn't be the first time when journalists end up captured and writing negative stories that fit the interests of short-sellers:

http://www.deepcapture.com/wp-content/uploads/story-of-dendr...

http://www.deepcapture.com

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