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Forbes reports on Tesla's reaction to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's crash test safety rating for the Tesla Model S:
Tesla does not take criticism well. Tesla has long had an attitude that anything said about the company, its products or CEO that isn't absolutely hagiographic is tantamount to heresy and anyone who disagrees hates humanity and the planet. Thus I was disappointed but not at all surprised to see the company's official, dismissive response this morning to the latest batch of crash test results from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which didn't reinforce the company line that everything it does is the best ever.
The Tesla Model S received only an "acceptable" rating from IIHS on its small overlap frontal crash test, a notch below the top rating of "good," with slack in the seat belt allowing a crash test dummy's head to hit the steering wheel despite the cushioning of the airbag. The less than optimal result comes after Tesla had said it had corrected the problem in the wake of a similar result in an earlier test.
A Tesla spokesperson's response was to besmirch IIHS. "IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes." Yes they do. IIHS's purpose is to protect drivers and of course, in turn, reduce the payouts for insurance companies.
Also at CNET and Business Insider.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Sunday July 09 2017, @12:46PM
I don't have a problem with Top Gear showing, say, a 1 day journey by James May from A to B, but including footage filmed the next day with a different driver, on a stretch of road that May didn't even use. IIRC, what they actually did with the Roadster was show a scene of it running out of energy mid-lap. This gave the impression that charge levels could be a surprise to a competent driver (as if you could be driving in the outside lane of a motorway and suddenly come to a halt or something), and furthermore that Tesla as a company was incompetent enough to provide Top Gear with a test vehicle with a certain level of charge and not properly communicate how much driving footage Top Gear would be able to obtain with that much charge. The reality is that these impressions are false, and (IIRC) the test vehicle provided by Tesla never ran out of charge; the scene was faked. I do have a problem with that, and I consider it to be either malicious, or so bad that we should treat it as such anyway.
But so what? I don't consider it the job of any court to prevent a TV show from maliciously misleading its viewers. Honesty is a moral imperative. It should only be a legal imperative in very select circumstances (contracts, under oath, etc.). I am British and I gave money to the UK libel reform campaign that achieved some success earlier this decade. I think further reform is needed. I am glad Tesla lost their case against Top Gear. But I think JNCF's point stands ... well, sort of. On reflection I note that s/he used the word "conspiracies". AFAICT, there is no evidence that the NYT or Top Gear incidents were conspiracies, and I think they probably weren't.
(What does irritate me is that whenever I find myself cheering on a court for refraining from overstepping what its mandate is / should be, my 'tribe' seems to lose out. In this case my tribe is pro-EV. Another example would be decriminalizing assisted suicide - which is something I very much want to happen by the time I might need it myself. Reading the words "that's a matter for Parliament" coming from a judge is like music to my ears. But the one time it happens, why does it have to be the one time that I disagree with parliament on one of these matters?)