>In any even remotely sane universe... Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War.

While I generally agree with the author's sentiment, I think part of the difference with why Tesla is getting so much flak instead of praise is because the pioneers of yore were astronauts, scientists and soldiers who took risks they understood, and did it willingly.

But with Tesla, the intrepid pioneers of autonomous driving are everyday people who are engaging in behavior that is probably more risky than they realize, and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that.

At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development.