Tesla's Musk says NY Times review led to a 'few hundred' cancellations | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's Musk says NY Times review led to a 'few hundred' cancellations

foxnews.com

18 pointsjosephby6 comments

How many of those cancellations were due to the way Musk chose to comport himself in his response to the article (rather than as a direct result of the article itself)? I'm just wondering because, as someone who very much admired Musk in the past, I have to admit that, if I had a Tesla on order, I would be reconsidering my decision (and it would have very little to do with the article itself).

What exactly was bad about his behavior? Most engineers I know cheered that the scummy newsies who are always trying to twist things into a story to get attention got shown for what they are. He's seen as kind of a brilliant techie that managed to win over the system of fake articles starting another wave of fake articles ad infinitum through dint of technology and foresight. Although in reality it is more like experience since Top Gear pulled the same thing on him so he just knew to expect it.

While it is clear that Broder exaggerated some of his claims, Musk also made several baseless and misleading claims in his responses and then threw a bunch of plots at people to "prove" his points. Most people cheering him on just didn't read carefully enough to notice.

Except this wasn't a 'fake article' (whatever that means). Sure, there were some valid criticisms over the accuracy of the reporter's notes, but overall the conclusions seemed valid. They weren't even overly negative; just that the car doesn't quite compare to cars with petrol (or diesel) engines for long distances in cold weather.

I found Musk's reaction overly aggressive and coming off as petty. He pointed out inaccuracies, though none seemed to contradict the conclusions of the article. What's more, his accusation of malicious intent was very serious and completely unsupported. It's nice to see a CEO that's emotionally invested in his company's products, but he'd might be better off with a cooler head handling PR.

Most engineers I know

He's trying to sell cars to people you do not know, not engineers you know. Maybe Musk was reading HN and was encouraged by reading what his fanboys and Musk wannabees were writing. Huge mistake.

"No one I know voted for Obama, how did he win?"

This is a duplicate from yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5281453

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