In what way would that have benefited Tesla more than the current situation?
Now they get more bad news "rental company dumps Tesla because of XYZ", the used market took a big hit as well pissing off existing owners, and I feel like this pushes newer buyers even more away.
Tesla doesn't believe in PR[1].
[1]https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-dep...
Elon does that. Tesla doesn't have a PR department to spend the time thinking about the things that the OP suggested they should consider.
Also, look at website content like this: https://www.tesla.com/about
That is PR, regardless of whether you want to call the people doing it "PR" or not.
An "about" page is bog standard stuff and a pretty paltry effort in the grand scheme of the things a PR department at a company the size of Tesla would otherwise traditionally be doing. It's like, yes, technically that's a form of PR, sure, but it ain't much.
That's why if you're involved in a Tesla accident, even a fatal one, Tesla will have no hesitation holding a press conference, pulling vehicle telemetry, to make sure that (rightly or wrongly) blame goes to you as the driver and not Tesla.
They'll make statements like "Autopilot wasn't to blame here. The vehicle had warned the driver of his inattentiveness", and the Tesla fans will nod their heads, reassured.
What will later come out will be that Autopilot was active, and that while a driver attention (steering wheel) warning had occurred on the fateful trip, it had happened ONCE, and that that one time was EIGHTEEN MINUTES prior to the collision.
But there won't be a press conference to correct those details.
"Autopilot crashes car, kills family!"
to (with much less fanfare):
"Actually, it was a drunk dude driving manually and wrapped his car around a tree at 120mph in his own driveway"
You know, it's hard to know what sources other people consider to be "reputable" these days, so perhaps you could put on your big boy britches and google the subject to find a source you like rather than expecting us to know what you trust and don't trust? I mean, shit, if you bothered to look at the Verge article you'd have seen the link to the NTSB report. Here ya go...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/09/ntsb-finds-no-evidence-tesla...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-crash-spring-texas-deaths...
https://fortune.com/2024/03/17/ntsb-fatal-crash-automated-dr...
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/02/autopilot-had-no-involv...
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-pro...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/driver-was-behind-wheel...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/automobiles/tesla-texas-c...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/driver-was-behind-wheel-...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/autopilot-engaged-texas-tesl...
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36387950/ntsb-investigati...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2021/05/10/ntsb-p...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39933859
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34731013
Would you like some more?
So, Google's results only seem interested on showing the articles about the NTSB's ultimate findings, not the ones that were originally reported immediately after the crash. I then assumed that some of the articles I had linked in that post would probably link back to their own previous articles about it, and figured I'd just start by going through that list from the top down.
Sure enough, the second one I linked, from CBS News, linked to their older article on it, entitled, "No one was driving Tesla before fiery crash that killed 2 passengers in Texas, authorities say".
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-crash-texas-no-one-dirvin...
Edit:
>The assertion had two parts and these stories only reflect the latter.
They don't, actually. Take this line from the Ars piece (though Ars isn't the only one that says something like this - most of them do! :D), for instance:
>The possible involvement of Autopilot was suggested in the wake of initial reports that one of the two occupants—specifically the driver—was found in the back seat of the car.
If you click the Ars link, you'll notice that the phrase "initial reports" also links to their own article written immediately after the event, titled, "Cops 'almost 99.9% sure' Tesla had no one at the wheel before deadly crash".
Oh no, poor wealthy Tesla owners loosing value on their car. /s Since when are ordinary cars appreciable investments?
It's been well known cars tank in value, especially when you're an early adopter of new tech in a market that's in constant disruption. Your 1999 GeForce 256 also lost most of it's value in a year compared to other later GPUs, it's the nature of tech in a rapidly changing market.
People who expect cars to hold/go up in value need to buy limite edition exotics, not mass produced commodities.
EVs tanking in value on the used market is good for EV adoption as non wealthy people can afford them.
The sticker price isn't the issue. The issue is ironically fuel costs. Anyone who doesn't own their own house will rely on commercial chargers. In many circumstances a commercial charger can cost more per-mile than gasoline, and certainly they take much more time. So the non-rich, people who rent apartments and don't generally have spare time, cannot afford a used EV despite the sticker price.
Not-rich people also generally own only one car. They cannot "afford" a vehicle that is expensive to fix, both in time and cash. A couple days waiting for a part is a couple days missed work. A few weeks without a car (ie most any Tesla repair) could mean a lost job.
Cars are commodities, like microwave ovens or washing machines, not houses. You won't get any sympathy because your risky economic bet didn't pan out the way you expected it to.
If a value of a vehicle can drop $40k over a period of a month, it is too volatile and I will never purchase such brand.
And why is this bad? Who said a brand/company is entitled to a certain amount of sales just because they exist? Aren't we in capitalisms where it's sink or swim and the market/customer is right? If a product is volatile maybe it's not good and people should orient to other brands, no?
If Tesla bins it, other better manufacturers will pick up the slack if the EV demand is there according to market forces. If the EV demand isn't there, maybe the EV hype was a bubble that was gonna pop sooner or later?
It's not bad that it happens, it's bad for Tesla if they are marketing their product as high-end/luxury while their product very obviously lacks the attributes, such as a stable/predictable value over time, that competitors' luxury products have. Someone deciding not to buy a product, for whatever reason, is the system working as intended. If Tesla can't produce a product people want to buy, Tesla will suffer the consequences, as they should. If they don't change their marketing or improve their product in the light of low sales, that's on them.
No one is offering sympathy, we're just saying that when buyers are considering a car, depreciation is a consideration.
Because, you see, no one simply burns down a 3 year old car when they want a new one - they use whatever equity in their existing car as part of the payment of the new car.
They depreciated like a rented Uber, which seems entirely predictable.
-Elon Musk, 2019.
Whether you believed him or not is a different matter but that's what he said at the time.
Depending on when they negotiated the relevant stuff, Tesla might have thought they needed to contribute more to the deal to sell even the cars they ended up selling already.