In my last article, I gave a brief summary on the pros and cons between the Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model Y, and between the Standard Range and Long Range options. I hope it helped people. I had a comment from Barry asking if I could summarize the debate in a decision tree.
Full disclosure: I’m a Tesla shareholder, and I did not feel misled by Tesla statements regarding Model 3 production, so I did not think a class-action lawsuit against Tesla on that topic made sense.
Tesla does a lot of things superbly in the world of communications. However, Tesla also has a lot of room for improvement, as some recent news about stores and the Model 3 shows.
Following certain topics professionally, or just obsessively, you can pick out patterns in messaging. The important thing about messaging is that it’s deliberate. It’s repetitive, frequent if possible, and focused on achieving a desired result that is influenced by image or perception. The target audience may be the whole population or it may be a specific subset of the population. Heck, it could even be one person (if you’re simply aiming to send a message to the president through the TV).
The goal of this series is to examine current topics being written about Tesla [TSLA] that appear to be stirring up “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” (or FUD). The plan is to try to provide reasonable analysis about the validity of the claims. I generally do not link to the articles that “inspire” me to write this, as I do not wish to reward analysis I feel is poor with increased traffic. However, I will freely admit that my analysis may contain incorrect assumptions, and will do my best to acknowledge them in future articles.
The most popular CleanTechnica stories last week had a bit of a surprise — two solar panel stories were in the top three. The other story on the podium was a breakdown of Tesla Model 3 specs versus the specs of 21 competing models.
Having a sociology background, I have to say that the whole Tesla short seller drama is fascinating. In the year 2019, that includes flamewars on social media, paid trolls & misleading message makers, ties to mainstream media, fanboys & fangirls fighting back, and even a legal battle between the SEC and Twitter-loving CEO Elon Musk. Oh yeah, and billions of dollars on the line.
Some of the most interesting shifts in our lives come through odd luck — or fate if your brain works how mine does. Believe it or not, I didn’t plan to land in the career of “blogger” when I went to college in the year 2000.
Just sayin’
The Tesla Model X is a faberge egg of a car, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the Q4 2018 earnings call, but while it may have one-off features like pedestal seats and falcon-wing doors, its DNA has always been that of a Tesla.
