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A beef we read fairly often on this thread runs "Tesla comms are terrible. Tesla can't even answer the phone in a timely manner. The other day I was on hold for xx minutes".
In over six years, I've yet to be put on hold for any length of time. Now admittedly, I don't call that often because little goes wrong, but the times I have called I've gotten right through--and I'm in an anti-Tesla state where every call has to be routed through California.
 
To improve EV coverage I suspect ultimately requires figuring out why the people in editorial/publishing make the decisions they make and then figuring out a way to help them make better decisions about how they cover EVs.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
--Upton Sinclair
 
Lol, homologation-gate Part Deux. These toolz neva quitz. SSDD.

Cheers!
Yes, I’ve been lurking here for 6 years waiting to spring this on unsuspecting bulls to scare you all away. It won’t be a tragedy, but obviously they are not delivering Raven or SR’s to Norway and apparently the rest of Europe. I’d guess it wouldn’t delay more then 1000 or 2000 cars. Disappointing because I’m reluctantly hoping for a 252 million profit and getting delayed with a couple thousand cars could derail the top line surprise.
If anyone in Europe has any real info, I think we’d all be interested. It’s enough to keep me from buying lotto calls on August 2nd when earnings are likely released.
 
When dealing with Tesla's abysmal communications, lately I've been very politely waiting a week after first contact attempt, so that when I spend 4 hours on the phone the second time I have justification to yell at anyone "I've been waiting a week to get a call back, do not dare hang up on me!"

Since I have no idea when Tesla will send me a front license plate bracket, I ordered a third party bracket at four times the cost. Just because Tesla can't be trusted to actually do anything. Isn't that lovely?

I can't recommend Teslas to anyone until they start answering their phones.
Don't doubt your experiences. I would just like to point out that my experience is 180 degrees opposite on the service side.
Tesla mobile usually responds within 24-48 hours to schedule a mobile visit. If they can't fix it (in the case of my dashboard rattle) I get a quick appointment at the service center 2 hours away. But they gave me a Model S loaner and while it did take 6 days to fix the issue, it was fixed. Meanwhile I drove a car with free supercharging and spent zero on fuel for that week.
Moral of the story: This is most likely a regional and not a global issue.
 
Just a note for this quarter's results:

I've been using ev-cpo to browse used teslas for the past 4-5 months. I've seen the stock of used teslas go from very plentiful to practically nil. I was seeing 4-yr warranty CPO model S selling for as low as $35k back in march/april. The lowest is now $45k. I saw used AP 2.0 hw vehicles selling for as low as $47k. The lowest is now $64k (!!).

Is it normal for Tesla to not restock their used tesla inventory until after the quarter ends so that they can focus on deliveries of new ones??
The inventory situation for S/X is different from the situation for Model 3. They don't manufacture S/X for inventory. What I believe happened is that they flushed all the showroom and test drive and loaner S/X by selling them off when the new Ravens began production, but of course they had to be replaced (with Ravens). But those are too new to go into inventory yet. Pretty much this is what happened to the S inventory when the nose facelift happened.
 
This girl of 1.1 million subscribers called Tesla to have someone drive a car over to her place just to test out if the car will scrap on the bottom actually dispatched someone out in 20 mins and beat her to her house. I have also experienced great customer service from Tesla, both the car side and the solar side. Solar people sent someone over to my house in under 2 hours due to some weird water leak.

 
While I think in general this is ignorance being exploited at every opportunity, there is conscious intent when an article explicitly excludes the common, normal driving experience in order to pretend that driving electric cars is difficult. You can't do that by accident.
I think the issue is that what most of us understand as "normal" is completely foreign to the general public, including reporters. Of course "tech" reporters should have a better grasp of what's possible than the general public, but that is obviously not always the case.
 
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There is a difference between the individual journalist and the publication or media outlet that puts out the story. We too often forget that. There are also editors, copy editors, headline editors, web producers, and all sorts of other team members who are editing, guiding, cutting, pasting, rearranging, A/B testing of headlines (once again, I learned that the reporter had no say or input or anything as to what the headline of the story was: that's done in NYC, and this reporter is LA based), and packaging the final product that readers see in print or online.
But all those editors hide in the background. That is why we need to exert pressure on reporters - who will convey that to editors. Otherwise nobody is responsible for the content of the articles.
 
There are mentions of Tesla but only to say that John DeLancie stopped in his Tesla at a charger which said it would take 5 hours and complained (following which he moved to a charger which worked.... and the article does not say how quickly that charged).
I haven't read a single article about how gas cars take forever to fill because a person stopped in front of a busted gas pump and couldn't figure out why it didn't work.
 
Obvious false assumption is false: while crappy brands have to pay for product placement, premium brands like Apple, frequently featured in movies, didn't pay for most of their product placement - they at most paid for the device - and Apple is obviously mass advertising while Elon is against deceptive advertisements.

I'm pretty sure that for many of those movies Microsoft would have paid a pretty sum to see a Windows laptop, a Windows phone and a Zune instead of an iPhone, in addition to a free device for the whole cast and their family members, but Apple products are shown so often because they are status symbols and are indicative of a cool lifestyle.

Just like Tesla cars.

Disagree with the Zune, at least these days ;)

Reportedly they were less than happy about the Zune reference at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, both because it was sort of making fun of them and also because they really wish everyone to forget they failed in that market.
 
Update:

What follows is my personal opinion only.

So I had a great call with the NYT reporter. We spoke on the phone for nearly two hours (really). Covered a lot of ground, got a lot of context, learned a lot -- I suspect both of us; l know I learned a lot. Ivan is a good guy, he's not a bad guy. Suffice to say, he's heard a ton from Tesla owners since the article came out. :)

No time to write up a longer summary now -- it's midafternoon, I'm starving, and haven't had lunch yet -- but suffice to say there is no great NYT conspiracy to screw Tesla. I just don't see it. There is no Broder, the secret puppeteer, controlling everything from behind the curtain. Hell, these reporters don't even know nor have ever communicated with Broder. Forget Broder. We really as a community have to put that theory to rest for good. Broder has become to Tesla what Soros is for the GOP: the bogeyman. Same goes for Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of LA Times: he is not dictating what Russ Mitchell or other LA Times reporters should write. These theories are not going to move things forward constructively. Time to retire them.

A lot gets cut from news stories and a lot got cut from this one. He did the EVgo/Chevy Bolt drive from LA->Vegas sometime in April, two months ago. He did not pick EVGo, they reached out to him. They offered the car; he did not pick the car. He rode with EVGo reps in the car, I suppose he thought it was worth a try, he might learn something about the charging infrastructure available to the public. There is so much context that gets lost by what winds up in the few words that survive to print. He did all sorts of research for this story which was ostensibly about charging and charging networks--not about the cars. He covers alternative energy and has an interest in EV charging networks and in battery storage. There was a ton more about Tesla in the article originally that didn't make it into the final piece (Tesla gave him a Model 3 to drive for a weekend--he thought it was a great car, no complaints, though he did have some interesting charging experiences, which is the thing he was mainly interested in). But still, I learned that apparently Tesla's PR team is generally happy with the resulting story, and is not bent out of shape the way many in the Tesla community have been since this story came out. Something to think about.

There is a difference between the individual journalist and the publication or media outlet that puts out the story. We too often forget that. There are also editors, copy editors, headline editors, web producers, and all sorts of other team members who are editing, guiding, cutting, pasting, rearranging, A/B testing of headlines (once again, I learned that the reporter had no say or input or anything as to what the headline of the story was: that's done in NYC, and this reporter is LA based), and packaging the final product that readers see in print or online.

For now I'll just say that I suspect a lot of the dissatisfaction many of us feel in terms of how the EV phenomenon is being depicted and covered in major media actually stems from how the stories are packaged by the publication, not from the reporters themselves. But we tend to direct our unhappiness solely onto the name of the reporter attached to the article. On social media, the reporter gets the brunt of the grief, the attacks, the ad-hominems. If we want to move media coverage of EVs forward we have to figure out a way to constructively engage at the editorial level; reporters in general are not the enemy. (Yes, yes, there are writers out there who genuinely don't like Tesla, and have a bias, I will stipulate. Ivan isn't one of 'em.) Tweeting flames to NYT editors isn't the answer, unfortunately; I suspect they a) just tune that stuff out and b), worse, it all just fuels a view--deserved or undeserved--that Tesla owners are elitist and reactionary. (Perhaps a bunch of brief, respectful, thoughtful letters to the editor would be a better approach at engaging with higher-ups in the press. If only the New York Times still had an ombudsman/public editor.)

I think the EV crowd sometimes views news articles like this latest NYT piece as massive tsunami waves, wreaking destruction on the public's understanding of EVs. The more I discuss the articles with journalists at these media outlets, the more I start realizing that each article is indeed a wave, but just one ordinary wave, and it is the lapping of many waves over years that will ultimately cause the shape of a continent to change.

One thing that would really help is for the people in the press to begin owning EVs, so they have personal hands-on day-in/day-out experience with them. But realistically the industry isn't quite there yet. Early adopter Tesla owners, of which I am one, often easily forget that. Teslas are still pretty exotic/expensive vehicles, and EVs, be they Tesla or made elsewhere, are still out of reach economically and practically by many people for all sorts of reasons we often don't think about. So sure, there are Tesla superchargers all over, but to the ordinary public who doesn't own a Tesla, they mean nothing. I suspect this reporter was more interested in the state of charging for everything non-Tesla. Furthermore, I suspect EVs in general, and definitely Teslas, are still not even on the purchase horizon of most people who work at news-gathering organizations. As a consequence I suspect editors are cutting stuff from stories that might have helped the overall context, stuff existing Tesla owners would have seen as no-brainers and crucial for increasing the public's understanding. I really think this is where the disconnect is. Sadly it's not going to get fixed overnight, or even in a year. But I am hopeful it is going to get better over time as EVs become more mainstream.

So, I suggest we all take a deep breath and work to find constructive ways outside of swift social media reactions to get better media coverage of the EV revolution. Ideally everyone ought to pitch in: owners, EV-makers, editors, and reporters. I suggested to this reporter that we ought to have a conference and hash these issues out constructively. Maybe that would move the needle forward a little bit. It's a dream, anyway.

I am sure you are a pleasant person to have a conversation with Tim, but did it occur to you at any point how odd it was for a NYT reporter to spend 2 hours talking to you on the phone for no reason? Did you happen to tell him you were a member of a large Tesla investor forum by any chance?

The NYT has proven to have a strong anti-Tesla bias. It might be like you claim that it wasn't the reporters fault - but that doesn’t change the reality that every story mentioning Tesla has a negative slant. The reporters name is on the story, and even if it is his editors who are applying the anti-tesla slant, the only way to push back on the FUD is to call out the only person associated with the article: the author. To let off the author because he said he didn’t write what it says in his article is exactly what the FUD-preachers want.

To me, It is beyond weird to be on a tesla investor forum, and seeing a fellow investor say we should give writers of FUD filled articles in one of the worlds most read newspapers a break from any sort of pushback because they are well meaning.

FUD is FUD. all of it. fight it tooth and nail. feel no sympathy for those writing and distributing the nonsense. they made their choice by letting their names be attached to such drivel. if they do not like how their writing is edited they can grow a backbone and do something about it.
 
This is *worse*. If it were the individual reporters, we could educate them. If it's the editors of the NYT deliberately hacking paragraphs out to turn a good article *into* a hit piece -- and it absolutely is a hit piece the way it came out -- then:
(1) how do we figure out who's *doing* this? They're hiding their names
(2) They are making Ivan Penn look bad. They are being unfair to him.



The problem is that this was a hit piece the way it came out. If Mr. Penn released his original draft, that would be lovely to see. But when Kathy Christianson drives her Bolt between LA and Las Vegas on a regular basis and says that the article is totally unrepresentative of her experience -- then what ended up being published by the NYT was a hit piece.

If Mr. Penn really did his research, he'd have talked to someone like Kathy who does the LA - LV trip routinely in an electric car. Maybe he did do his research and it was cut from the article... if so, the people who cut it have a *lot* to answer for.

What IS a constructive method of dealing with corrupt, clickbaity editors?



Which, according to the woman who drives between LA and Las Vegas in her Bolt regularly... is just fine for her. But you wouldn't know that from the piece which got published.



This is wildly unacceptable. How can we get through to the editors?

I'm going to warn you: if it's the editors messing with the reporters' articles, well, that is traditionally where corrupt pressure is applied to newspapers, at the editor and publisher level. So what you've told me makes it more likely that big money is "leaning on" the editors to eliminate any positive reporting about EVs.

I previously thought Ivan Penn's article was just ignorance, not a conspiracy. You're telling me it was a conspiracy, of editors, headline writers, and whoever leans on them to cut text.



A conference would be helpful; maybe it would be possible to figure out who is actually turning these articles into hit pieces.

Oddly, I fully agree with both of you.

I'd just add that the "corruption" on the editor end might be simple personal bias. Remember, if they don't have an EV, they probably don't think an EV makes sense. Why that is can vary greatly.

The issue of horrible media coverage is something we've been trying to deal with for years. I think it was actually the original Broder story that really got me covering Tesla. (Guess we can thank Broder for that.) I'm not thrilled with the approaches we've taken and I'd rather not be too combative, but we also have to call *sugar* out (neroden style).

I think Max does a great job of polite but sharp. But any further suggestions for what we can do at CleanTechnica are welcome from everyone who has an opinion.
 
Gali has a new vlog on GF3/Shanghai: "Made In China Model 3 Coming in ~6 Months" HyperChange TV • 2.9K views • 18:35


"Tesla's Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai continues to make rapid progress. Now the shell is complete, and production/tooling has begun. The facility is on track to produce cars in late 2019, and begin customer deliveries in December of this year. My estimates show China could be a $10B business for Tesla in 2021, if things go well."​
 
Nooooooooooo.... what I am trying to say is, directing hate does not work. We have to find ways of being constructive, not simply attacking.
As much as I disagree with almost everything that @tinm says, I agree with this.

Some people called Linette fat during the famous twitter kerfuffle. Not helping the cause there, brother. Channel your hatred into making sarcastic comments at the reporters and even some friendly banter (NYT Neal Boudette's CelloGate comes to mind) :D
 
All this hand wringing about bad press will be just a footnote in a few years.
The cars are fantastic and they can't build them fast enough.

The fools who stand in the way in an attempt to slow this train are getting run over. The NYT and it's ilk...do not have the reach to stop the inevitable.

It is sad they feel the need to sit on toilets with a toothbrush instead of joining the winning team.

It's as obvious as the double chin on Jim Chanos.
 
To me, It is beyond weird to be on a tesla investor forum, and seeing a fellow investor say we should give writers of FUD filled articles in one of the worlds most read newspapers a break from any sort of pushback because they are well meaning.

Sad thing is, it is not beyond weird for me to see reactions like this here. And I never said “we should give . . . a break from any sort of pushback . . .” That is an invention on your part as worthy of criticism as any “FUD-filled articles.”
 
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Judging from EV-CPO, the S new inventory (pre-Raven) is pretty much cleared in the US; there's still some in Canada, the Dubai inventory is still stitting, and there's 221 in Europe (which is an addition I think, so perhaps they were released from loaner duties or something). There's still still no pre-Raven X inventory visible to speak of (43 worldwide), none in the US.

FWIW, there appears to be only one Raven S or X in inventory (it's an X in Europe).
After watching EV-CPO for a while, I've noticed at least 2 increases of S inventory in Europe. After the first time, I hoped that these were simply released from loaner/showroom duty after being replaced with Ravens. However, I've now seen two similar increases of 100-150 units each time, with both occurring when EV-CPO inventory had dropped to only around 100 units. So it makes me wonder if there is still significant hidden inventory in Europe, and if just a small fraction of that is added to public-facing inventory each time it drops.

So the inventory S in Europe are definitely selling, as the numbers keep going down after each increase, but it's very difficult to tell how many remain, and it could be much larger than indicated. This is in contrast to the US inventory, which has just been going down gradually with no increases of more than a handful of units while I have been watching in the last few weeks.
 
So, I suggest we all take a deep breath and work to find constructive ways outside of swift social media reactions to get better media coverage of the EV revolution. Ideally everyone ought to pitch in: owners, EV-makers, editors, and reporters. I suggested to this reporter that we ought to have a conference and hash these issues out constructively. Maybe that would
Great Jim tinm. This is the way to make friends and influence enemies. I’m sure the obvious story is often the negative and getting the positive story will take more time.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day and being ambassador of the brand and cause.
 
More conspiracy-thinking. Sigh. This is not constructive. Very likely a VW ad showed up there because VW wants to appear there, your cookies made whatever ad network NYT uses think you might be receptive to that ad, and so VW paid whatever ad network NYT uses to appear there. Gotta stop the knee-jerk conspiracy theories.

I am with @tinm on the unpopular idea that editors don't worry about who runs ads in the paper. I honestly don't think the editorial side messes with that — probably a good firewall between it. Furthermore, these are people who have risen to the top of their profession, which values objectivity above practically all else. Yes, corruption can seep in everywhere, but I wouldn't assume it.

I DO, however, assume that they don't understand EVs, don't understand the market, and have illogical personal biases against EVs & Tesla that they can't or won't recognize. How to tackle that is the most important question, imho.
 
I am with @tinm on the unpopular idea that editors don't worry about who runs ads in the paper. I honestly don't think the editorial side messes with that — probably a good firewall between it. Furthermore, these are people who have risen to the top of their profession, which values objectivity above practically all else. Yes, corruption can seep in everywhere, but I wouldn't assume it.

I DO, however, assume that they don't understand EVs, don't understand the market, and have illogical personal biases against EVs & Tesla that they can't or won't recognize. How to tackle that is the most important question, imho.
I’ve been a technology change agent for 30 years. I’ve often been stymied by how obtuse smart people could be. The thing is, people who lack a passion about a topic typically won’t get it, until after it’s moved past early adaptor. Early adapter tends to be 17%, and I’m not sure why that is so precise. It would imply Russ Mitchell is a late adapter and won’t be won over until ICE cars are museum and Saturday at the mall only cars. Most of the rest will be won over when EVs are in the 15-20% of the market.
As a long term early adapter I’ve gotten thicker skin over time. It gets easier over time.