Just a note to explain my intention - it's not intended to be a personal statement or attack, but rather one of marketing angle. In other things, I'm a technical geek that obsesses over a lot of details as well and I would hate to be the company that markets to me in those veins.
Apple doesn't have the strongest hardware on the planet. They don't expose all the tweaks and knobs that can be done in a far more technical platform (although sometimes, strangely, they expose "good enough" because of their underlying platform). Yet they clean the clocks of their technical competitors in the experience department for most consumers. This is where Tesla excels, and very well.
In many ways, I think Tesla needs to figure out how they're going to approach these customer bases. And the techies are tough - very tough.
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Hmm, see I wish they'd still do the just plain straight talk like they did back when they won me over in the 07 timeframe. They always has their moments of going silent, but it feels like they are happening more often and for longer , and it seems to me that more and more they are using "straight talk" as a marketing tool, or just Elon speaking off the cuff. Both of which is fine by me, *when followed up* with honest plain spoken communication, even if something they claimed has to be backed off of.
I think two things about this: first, in those days it was all engineering, all the time, and that won't last through scaling the company. There are many times I do wish Tesla would expose their engineers directly to technology oriented customers more often. Why not allow someone like sorka and/or lolachampcar to engage on the occasional details when it's clear that he has the expertise to do so? I've seen this work in my field; I've seen it work in satellite broadcasting; I've seen it work in other deep technical forums. Perhaps Tesla learns the best way to communicate in that model, except we know it's not a strong suit of theirs - and it doesn't help when there's a group of people who threaten to "sue sue sue!" when Tesla uses one standard and they use another.
The second, related thought is that - and we've seen it in this forum - the moment Elon says something that should/would/could be possible in the future, that little nugget is saved and dragged out constantly as the word of God, as opposed to something that may have to be walked back. Some in the 90 kW supercharging thread obsessed over whether Tesla disclosed the 90 kW limitation or not as part of the announcement and argued that because he didn't list it as an exception during the introduction, that everyone should get a free battery pack upgrade. That type of behavior only pushes Tesla to become more quiet.
We have a bit of responsibility here too.
