[aspensmonster]

As of starting to write this comment, there are more comments on this submission bickering about Tesla's PR than there are about the actual merit of the matter:

  * "Aren't people starting to get tired of Tesla's constant defensiveness?"

  * "something about the tactics they use seem... off."

  * "It's almost like they're bullying people they don't like..."

  * "But. What happens in 5 years when Tesla is 10x bigger than it is now..."

  * "this blog entry leaves a sour taste with me."

  * "Yeah, this does not feel good to me. I get the PR angle but this feels not right to me."

  * "Thank you HN for hosting another Tesla public service announcement."

I think the amount of flak Tesla gets on a constant basis from numerous entities that want to see Tesla dead more than justifies their aggressive public stance on these kinds of matters. The lawyer involved is apparently a self-proclaimed "Lemon Law King," which should raise a red flag all by itself. Litigious opportunism isn't usually celebrated by the HN crowd and I don't see why an exception should be made here. HN user yock has also pointed out that the lawyer involved in this suit is making a claim that the lack of franchised dealerships strengthens his justifications for opening a case, in that a lack of a dealerships for Tesla vehicles makes invoking Lemon Laws harder for consumers. Given Tesla's recent battles with states over having to sell their vehicles through middle men, I agree with yock's assessment that this is the real motivation for the suit --to add ammo to the case that Tesla must submit to the dealership franchise model-- rather than a genuine concern for a customer's rights under Lemon Laws to reverse a purchase of a vehicle.

But if none of that is enough, there's these gems:

>Ultimately, Tesla service applied non-tamper tape to the fuse switch. From that point on, the fuse performed flawlessly.

>After investigating, they determined that the car's front trunk had been opened immediately before the fuse failure on each of the three occasions.

I'm all for stomping on double-speaking weasel-wording bullshit. It's not OK when the NSA does it, or the State Department does it, or anyone else does it. That goes for Tesla too. But for some reason it seems a good chunk of the readers here are stomping on what is absolutely the wrong target. Tesla is speaking truth to power and attempting to disrupt a dinosaur of a market that is pulling out all of the stops in a truly glorious effort to kill Tesla off. Could we all drop the pseudo-skepticism act and take note of the plain truth as it is?