Aaron Robinson's column in December Car & Driver

[GSP]

Titled "Will the real Government Motors please stand up?" on page 38 of the December C&D, this column takes a negative view of the company.

Aaron sounds like a grumpy old man, whose glass is always half empty. He gets some facts wrong, and twists others with the most negative possible spin. If this were 1913, he would definitely be shouting "get a horse."

GSP

PS. It looks like C&D columns are not available on line until two months after publication.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Of which company? From the Government Motors I'd conclude GM, vut because you are posting jt here I assume Tesla is meant?

 

[AndreN]

This is exactly why I canceled my Car and Driver subscription. (That and the fact I had planned to let it just expire but they force-renewed me somehow.) When they did their review of the Model S last year, it was lukewarm at best. At the end, in the sidebar where they normally compare the car they're reviewing against two other cars in the same class, guess which two cars they compared the Model S to? Two luxury sedans from BMW and Mercedes, perhaps? No, the Leaf and the Volt. Two economy cars? They just totally don't get it. And since then they've never included the Tesla in any multi-car comparison articles. Good riddance, C&D!

 

[artsci]

Having breathed gasoline fumes and CO2 emissions for all of these years, Robinson and many of his C&D compatriots are brain dead. I cancelled my subscription 10 years ago.

 

[GSP]

Of which company? From the Government Motors I'd conclude GM, vut because you are posting jt here I assume Tesla is meant?

Sorry for not being clear. They called Tesla the "real Government Motors," just because Tesla received a DOE loan and they earn ZEV credits. Never mind that Tesla paid back the loan, and the ZEV credits were earned the hard way, fair and square.

GSP

 

[neroden]

Having breathed gasoline fumes and CO2 emissions for all of these years, Robinson and many of his C&D compatriots are brain dead.

Many are probably old enough to have been breathing LEADED gasoline fumes.

 

[Cameron]

A lot of these car magazines are quite biased based on who they are getting their advertising dollars from. Considering a majority of the ads are for other various manufactures it probably wouldn't turn out so well if Tesla got too much positive attention.

 

[alextheukrainian]

How did this get printed?? I understand opinion, but the article has blatant lies. For example, "All of which means that the company is going to have to earn more dollars making cars that currently don't generate profits on their own." WHAT?? In the 3rd quarter, Tesla made 21% profit margin excluding ZEV credits. With the credits? 22%. Government credits are a tiny fraction of the profits. They are on track to have 25% profit margin without any ZEV credits by the end of this year! But wait, it gets better: GM's current profit margin on their cars? 4.4% (four point four). I mean, how insane is it that Car and Driver allowed this to be published?

Not to mention all the manipulative language, like "some state legislatures not in California’s mental orbit” to imply that California lives on another planet, and all the sensationalist BS like comparing a price of one share between companies. I mean, price per share is such a meaningless thing - Ford has 3.94 BILLION shares outstanding, Tesla has 121 MILLION. So if you account for that, Tesla's share price is actually 4 times lower than Ford's. Not mentioning that and only showing $178 vs $18 is extremely misleading and manipulative - just wow. Yes, Tesla IS valued high for a company it's size and production capacity, but comparing just the share price suggests that it's valued higher than Ford, which is total baloney.

 

[spleen]

Yeah, I've been a long time fan of C&D but the recent slant of articles has really been turning me off and this latest incident will probably get me to finally cancel my subscription.