I think this is Elon's one blind spot. For a engineer he's awfully "salesy" at times. The whole lease thing was really distasteful. This less so; but still a bit awkward. Why not just end with "Fires are unfortunately a risk for electric and gasoline cars. Each year in the US there are more than 150,000 fires. As more and more Tesla's enter the world we're going to experience all manner of events" That would be the right way to put this in context. However, I suspect that to overcome the naysayers and truly change a market (electric cars) requires an almost insane love for what you do - which makes you sound a little too defensive when something goes wrong.
I have no idea how Tesla operates internally, but I wouldn't be too surprised if, like at most companies, letters that go out under the CEO's name are vetted by both the legal and PR departments, and possibly written or edited by them. If that's the case, then "Elon Musk" is a sort of composite entity, which includes a human named "Elon Musk", but not solely that human.
I would agree. But there's nothing in here that's cause for concern legally. And PR folks are going to have a tough time overruling Elon based on "style" points. As I mentioned he probably sees nothing wrong with his approach and thus any PR comments would fall on deaf ears.
It's unfortunate that our current media climate requires it, but a straightforward, "accept the inherent risks" approach to the problem would be massacred by news outlets. Were Musk to say something like this, headlines could read "Tesla's Billionaire Owner Disregards Model S Fire Hazzard" and not suffer libel.
Particularly for people such as Musk, who are doing so much to advance the expectations of consumers and raise the bar for what is possible with new technology (and here I'm speaking as an un-abashed Musk supporter), I can't help but support his rigorous defense of his projects. Whether it's the NYT "review" that attempted to slam the Model S mile range or the astonishingly good crash ratings for the same car, I think it serves us all to let Musk use his soapbox to be an advocate for his work at Tesla, SpaceX, etc.
