Tesla Ending 2018 With The Most Positive News Week Thus Far — #Pravduh About #Tesla Report 17

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Intro

This last full week of 2018 was a lot more positive than the previous week when it comes to Tesla coverage in major media outlets. In fact, percentage-wise, it’s the most positive week since we started tracking in September. Two new board members greatly contributed to this, as did the cumulative effect of the Model 3’s amazing success story.

When we take a deeper dive into the headlines regarding the new board members, we find that there were a total of 23 headlines on that subject. Out of those headlines, 9 mentioned the SEC; and 6 mentioned each of the following: reining in Musk, that Ellison is a friend of Elon, US charges, regulators, tweets, or other skepticism about the appointees. Then there were also 9 headlines that don’t mention anything negative.

Since it is mostly a positive topic, we decided to rate almost all of them as positive even though many could have been rated as sneaky or even attributed to negative. The only 3 we rated as negative were:

• “Why Tesla’s Biggest Bear Is Skeptical of Ellison Addition” (Bloomberg)
• “Tesla Taps Ellison, HR Expert to Prove Musk Is Reined In” (Bloomberg)
• “Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Walgreens Executive Join Tesla Board To Fulfill SEC Settlement Over Musk Tweets” (Forbes)

In total, Bloomberg posted 4 articles on this topic, and the one from Forbes was rated as negative because it was the only headline that contained both the SEC as well as another negative element.

Furthermore, in a peculiar turn of events, the stock market was offered some good news this week but then reacted negatively to it. Tesla cut its prices in China and announced that it would pay the tax credit difference to those to whom Tesla was unable to deliver a vehicle before 2019 years. Tesla stock [TSLA] slumped following that news. The announcement is positive, the stock market reaction was negative, and whether to label it as positive or negative is a little bit complicated. In light of this, 4 headlines were rated as neutral.

Well, that’s basically it for 2018 other than the December/ Q4 report, which will come out next week. Starting next year, we will also include some more news sources and all their headlines from September 1st 2018.

Remember that each week we share the raw data (headlines and scores). You can scan through yourself if you want to double check our findings or just see the headlines for yourself. And you can check out our own Tesla stories for more context and comparison. For details on our methodology and broader context about this weekly analysis, see this previous Pravduh About Tesla report.

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#Pravduh About #Tesla
Report #17 (December 22–28)

 

 

The next matter on our itinerary is tracking the authors who covered this news. While the whole list is too long to put here since there are many authors who have written just one piece about Tesla, here are the authors who published more than 9 articles about Tesla since we started tracking on September 1st, ranked from least positive to most positive:

For this entire section, note: At major media outlets, there are often headline writers who control this part of articles. Nonetheless, we find tracking the authors is interesting and potentially useful for considering what kind of stories the authors tend to write.

What Changed With Tesla Last Week

Adding onto the summary in the intro, here’s a list of Tesla news and potential news ordered by day. You can consider for yourself what were objectively the important updates in the “Tesla story” last week.

• Elon tweets Tesla will cover the tax credit difference if Model 3 not received before year end (22 Dec)
• Tesla reduces the price of the Model 3 in China (24 Dec)
• Elon tweets Superchargers coming to 100% of Europe in 2019 (26 Dec)
• Tesla registers financial leasing company in China (27 Dec)
• IIHS confirms Tesla improved Model 3 headlight hardware (27 Dec)
• Tesla starts testing Autopilot Hardware 3 chip in employee cars (27 Dec)
• Tesla announces two new board members (28 Dec)

Some Sneaky Headlines Last Week

• As far as years go, 2018 was a wild one for automakers as Tesla, Nissan, GM investors hope for peace and calm in 2019 (CNBC)
• Thrills, Frills And Foibles Of New Mid Range Tesla Model 3 (Forbes)
• Tesla: Buying Opportunity or Falling Knife? (The Street)

The more these #Pravduh About #Tesla reports get shared online through social media, the more people will take notice. If there is an ongoing heavily negative slant about Tesla in certain outlets — even as Tesla has so much positive news to share — people should be aware of this and approach each new story with that context in mind.

Again, here is the data from this past week in case you want to have a closer look at the raw data.

For details on our methodology and broader context about this weekly analysis, see this previous Pravduh About Tesla report.