Niche vehicles like Roadster and Semi just apparently aren’t a priority in their current business model, and they don’t have the batteries to spare.

Tesla has always said since launch a small number of Cybertrucks from Austin in Q4 2021 with ramp up in 2022, soooo Thanks for reporting click bait  2 year old “news”??

Jalopnik Drive EV or Die

Tesla grew by 35% in 2020 while legacy OEMs were down 35%. I used to love Jalopnik, but I’m beginning to see this venue as yet another outlet of FUD spinning for legacy fossil fuel based propulsion. Reminds me of FUD claiming there is no climate emergency. Shameful.

Don’t forget to blame “Big Restaurant” for the obesity epidemic.

Big oil doesn’t need you to be an apologist for it. They have an immense history of knowing about climate change then denying it and actively working to oppose it. Don’t simp for a billion dollar industry that doesn’t care about you.

All of what you said could be applied to smartphones circa 2011-2012.

I remember reading a line in a Greenpeace pamphlet sometime in the 1980's that said something to the effect of “big companies will do something about global warming when it becomes more profitable than ignoring it”. Even as a kid I realised that was true.

Nice to see you drop by, Ed.

That was my thought while reading this. How many people actually care about panel gaps in their car? I mean, sure, Jalops do, but if we were a meaningful percentage of the market there would be a lot more brown, manual, diesel wagons on the market.

The zealous haters came before, mainly for financial reasons.

I’m not sure if the Tesla zealots came before the Tesla haters. I think it’s more that extreme positions on both sides tend to form at the same time. Either way, the problem is you have people invested in a narrative much more than they are invested in the facts that support or interfere with that narrative.

When this blew up, I was reminded of what happened a couple of years ago with WSJ’s auto writer Dan Neil after his positive impression of the Model 3

A massive majority of people that buy Teslas don’t care about, or even see, things like panel gap. If it results in water leaking into the vehicle or wind noise, that might change. But the average Tesla buyer wants a connected device that they can drive. As long as the infotainment is on point, they’ll be happy…

Found Ed Neidermeier’s Jalopnik account.

What’s worse is that they probably can’t fix it. The unibody is probably slightly out of spec. As we all know, a mm here, a mm there, eventually you’re talking real gaps.

Yeah, but a TTAC blowhard is also barely a journalist.

If Sandy was really trying to pump up the stock, wouldn’t he have given it a more positive review than “Tesla is doing the bare minimum to improve their quality?”

“Man who wrote book about topic starts internet drama over someone else’s conflict of interest, fails to see how doing so exacerbates his own conflict of interest. News at 11.”

Am I reading this right? Niedermeyer has issues with Munro being critical of Tesla but also owning Tesla stock? How was he ‘pumping their stock’ by saying “The new Tesla is less shit than the old Tesla”?