I'm sure than there are indeed problems here, but I agree, it's weird - every time I read one of these vehemently anti-Tesla/-Musk blog articles, I can't help feeling like I'm somehow in an episode of Billions - and this is all negative publicity deliberately generated by hedge funds, or big oil, or big auto, or whoever.

It's not that I'm drinking the Musk Kool-Aid (I think/hope) - but it just feels like there have been so many relentlessly negative and apparently biased anti-Musk articles out there over the past year or so --especially related to Tesla, as they're struggling but eventually managing to up their Model 3 output-- that they're far outweighing any positively-biased content his PR machine can generate.

(That said, he doesn't always make it easy for himself...)

I don't think that it's unreasonable to worry about that sort of news-manipulation (after all, all these negative articles are accusing Musk of doing that very thing...).

However, I tend to believe these negative articles; mainly because they tend to be from individuals knowledgeable in a particular field, while the vast majority of positive articles are fluffy and poorly researched, created by journalists who likely don't understand the nuances of the specific industries in which Tesla is claiming to be innovating.

I think in his eloquent essay "Short much?", OC wuschb referenced the recent development on the wall-street.

(where people crashed betting on Tesla shares going down, when Elon rose the price by pondering about a $42*10 re-privatization)

So go watch the Falcon block 5 landing simultaneously on 2 pads reducing the cost of space launch by an order of magnitude, and call him a fraud. He modern Howard Hughes