Hacker News Reader

Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me that this is standard practice in the industry (solar panels/batteries, HVAC, boilers, heat pumps, etc). And, yes it leaves you at risk if the supplier decides to cancel the product(s) or if they just go bust.

Electrek has a bias against Tesla/Musk, IMHO and so tend to paint everything in a negative way. You need to take what they write with a grain of salt.

View on HN

> Electrek has a bias against Tesla/Musk, IMHO and so tend to paint everything in a negative way.

I would say Tesla and Musk are a little bit worse here than Siemens or Honda or whatever. Usually the manufacturers don't lie quite as loudly about the future of the product.

I'm sure Tesla has been more opaque then other manufacturers, but I agree that the consequence here is just normal course of business stuff.

I've never seen a person have such a frothing-at-the-mouth hate for any company as Fred Lambert at Elektrek has for Musk/Tesla.

Just filter for his posts, it's kind of crazy. After a few posts I started noticing a while back. Lambert writes like Elon Musk killed his puppies with his bare hands.

It causes Lambert to have nearly zero credibility in anything he writes about Tesla. It doesn't come from a place of good faith reporting.

I do agree that Lambert's coverage of Tesla appears to be pretty one-sided, and that the company has provided significant benefits to the world, but I also think there's a reasonable case to be made that Musk himself is a uniquely deleterious figure, even if the harm he brings isn't with his bare hands.

That may be true, but I feel that is a separate conversation (whether Elon Musk and his companies, taken whole, have had net good or net bad contributions to the world) from Lambert's coverage, which seems to pick any single _event_ and select the most heinous, corrupt, version full of malicious intent when often unwarranted, extremely bad faith and never adds informational value to that larger debate.

I can't speak for everything the author has written about Tesla, but I don't see any intent stated or implied in this particular article. Instead it seems to mostly be accurately describing an action taken by Tesla that doesn't cast the company in an especially good light. That's not bad journalism just because some people might like Tesla or Musk and want to give them the benefit of the doubt or downplay anything negative they might do.

It's there via omission. Others have said in these threads that the concept of an HVAC company or others investing in a particular manufacturer, does cost them money, and that can change over time. It's not unique to Tesla, but the writing, by way of omitting this.

"That is the bind Tesla’s certified installers are in: dependent on a brand that just walked away from a product line they built a business around, while still needing to sell its remaining hardware."

there is _nothing_ unique about that situation. That could happen with any company.

It's the cost of doing business. training your workforce, etc. Clearly these companies are happy to sell other Tesla products to the point where they don't want to jeopardize those relationships.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com