Any rational marketer or PR officer would gladly give up that $4,500 to avoid this HN post.
Either there are a ton of Tesla fanatics out there who will put up with a lot of dubious behavior, or Tesla is severely limiting its upside with all of their anti-customer service antics.
I think it's both. There are a ton of Tesla fanatics who think Tesla can do no wrong. Some of them are commenting on this article here, others in the Twitter thread.
But there are also people like myself, who will probably never buy a Tesla due to current and past behavior like this. And there are probably at least a few people reading this who were on the fence, but for whom this battery kerfuffle pushed them over the edge.