[tlrobinson]

"C'mon, the entire response is a joke."

If Musk could really back up all of his accusations, why would he be "satisfied" with this "joke" of a response?

It seems Musk prematurely accused NYT of "faking" the review, then realized they couldn't back up that accusation, and are taking this opportunity to back down.

[cwp]

Yeah, it looks to me like, after the Top Gear thing, they ascribed to malice what could be explained by stupidity.

But, they made a bunch of noise, got some more headlines, cast doubt on the negative review, and gave their fans a good story to use at the water cooler. Time to declare victory and drop the issue.

[emn13]

Musk comes across as somewhat delusional. Or really dishonest - but I suspect he really sees the world this way.

In no way shape or form did Musk's claim turn out to be true, which indeed is just like the Top Gear thing.

I particularly love how Musk seems to blame the choices of the reviewers - i.e. selective reporting, cherry-picking - for the car's undenied failures. And of course that can be entirely reasonable; if you make the wrong choices things won't work. But then he turns around and does exactly the thing he's accusing the reviewers of: he cherry-picks his data, and selectively interprets it to present it as some kind of conspiracy.

I can excuse an individual reporter for experiencing something in typically human fashion: i.e. colored by preference and ignorance, somewhat muddled and poorly remembered, and certainly not necessarily representative of the experience of others. On the other hand; Musk doesn't have those excuses. He has tons of quantitative data that he can review as often as he likes, in whatever detail he likes. He's presumably an expert on the car and knows of plausible explanations for various observations to be found in that data. He and this team have reviewed such data many times before. And yet, nevertheless, he chooses to cherrypick his observations and read into them what he'd like to see - namely that the failures are entirely the reviewer's fault and in no way the car's. (I mean, that whole driving around in circles thing... or the exact moment the temperature changed...)

Worse, the test occurred in cooperation with Tesla, so they could have predicted at least a few of these issues. Why in the heavens did Musk agree to this review in this form when it was obviously not going to be an easy drive? Didn't they look at the weather forecast and know this was going to be a problem? Isn't it obvious that a reviewer accustomed to convential cars won't be an expert in electrical range-maximization?

I'd love to see electrical cars work. It's a shame that Musk seems to think (self-)deception is the way to convince the world that they're ready for long-haul travel.

[dechols]

> If Musk could really back up all of his accusations, why would he be "satisfied" with this "joke" of a response?

Frankly, he's probably still not satisfied. But he realizes there's no point in trying to slay the New York Times. That's not his dragon to kill.

He's got other things to do, and the NYTimes writing terrible articles is not his interest or priority. Write a witty blog post and declare victory is the right choice here.

[emn13]

Perhaps it's right in the sense of good PR. But is it right in the sense of honest?

[ainsleyb]

As a founder your job is to take the high road as much as possible while still pushing through the strengths of your company. It seems pretty obvious that NYT won't be changing their opinion, and maybe even reached out to Musk to confirm this suspicion. If Musk were to reply to this negatively he'd essentially be feeding an ever-lasting flame. He's taking the best parts, spinning them to those who care about his product, and is continuing on with building out a great product.

Not to mention, he's gotten a lot of good press from other media sources since (as he points out in his blog post).