According to statements from the company, the media coverage after the fires last year caused a sharp decline in the rate of Model S reservations. It has since recovered, but after these events Tesla started viewing poor public perception as an existential threat. The reasoning is that new and unfamiliar technology (battery propulsion) is scrutinized very, very closely and held to a much higher standard than the status quo. This is evident from the ridiculous headlines every time a Model S is involved in a fire. (Garage fires, house fires from unrelated accidents and the two floorpan fires + the high-speed crash referenced in the article). Poor public perception equals lower sales to an already skeptical public, and perhaps the second demise of the electric car.

A different strategy than the one Tesla is pursuing, would be to not change anything and just repeat the (correct) message that their electric cars are statistically much less likely to catch fire than a gasoline automobile. But this leaves them wide-open to PR attacks from skeptics and the established auto industry the next time an inevitable fire occurs. It's already been firmly established that there is a big PR machinery which will jump on any opportunity to call Tesla's technology into question - and there will be plenty of competition from the incumbent manufacturers. They're playing it safe.

(Tl;dr: Yes.)

This is how media bias works. They take something trivial like a car fire and make it the most important news item of the day. People start to think it's happening everywhere. There are billions of "newsworthy" things happening all the time. The selection of stories and insinuation layered on top of them by the news media can easily drive agendas and influence the public.

Edit: I see, someone else has quoted Schneier exactly on that already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7487144

I personally would love to see normalized fire figures for other manufacturers like Ford, Chevrolet, Honda, etc.

Considering that a "random mp3 player" costs $6 on Amazon and that an Apple iPod costs over $200, I'd say people are totally justified to get upset. They spent the extra money expecting a product whose quality matched its price.

I'd say this is true of cars as well. When your used Ford Escort breaks down, you're hardly going to be surprised. When your exceedingly expensive Tesla breaks down and/or catches fire, you're going to be a tad upset.

That said, I'd say people lose all rights to be upset when they are the cause of the malfunction. You can't be too upset at a broken iPod after you drop it down a flight of stairs, and you can't be too upset at your Tesla catching fire after you ran it into a tree at 110 MPH. (I'm not saying the Tesla driver was upset mind you- I think all the Tesla hate is just coming from frightened car manufactures and the media.)

Actually the doctor who owned one of the Tesla cars that caught fire said the car saved his life. He was happy to have been in a Tesla and was going to buy another one (before Musk actually gave him a replacement).

Yes, the payment is higher, but I'd have no fuel expenses (currently ~$350/month), so technically its only $450 more a month (3 hours of my time).

http://www.teslamotors.com/true-cost-of-ownership

I'm not worried about going with the smaller pack; it only takes 90 seconds to swap it with a new, higher capacity pack down the road.

What do we consider affordable? I haven't had the time to do this, but you could take US Census data (average/median income per zip code), derive a formula for percentrage of income someone can spend on transportation, and thereby determine what affordable is.

A Model S is definitely a luxury item at this time; on the other hand, if it was self-driving, and could roll into bays to recharge all in software, with access being on-demand (Uber, with no drivers), they wouldn't be expensive. It would be the same as a company buying airplanes and selling seats on said expensive aircraft.

Maybe we're looking at Tesla wrong. They're not selling luxury cars; they're bootstrapping a mobility company by selling to the wealthy.

I would agree with this statement 100%.

Model S vs the new Corvette Stingray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VOqW...

If you need more power than that, you might as well bolt a turbine engine on your car.

"1. Build sports car

2. Use that money to build an affordable car

3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car"

That sounds significant to me. It might be worth it but there are other ways to spend that time and money.

The high valuation of this company is equally irrational. It's a massive speculative play, so there's a load of volatility.

A plane? How about a plane with 200+ innocent, unsuspecting people on board goes missing, and all are now presumed dead? It's woefully ignorant to think the story is about the plane.