Skip to main content

Reality Checking Elon Musk's Model 3 Production & Quality Updates

During a week in which Elon Musk battled the media over the facts surrounding the Model 3's production and quality, we look back at what Mr. Musk discussed via Twitter.

Elon Musk has concluded a week of battling the media. On May 23rd, Musk tied what he sees as media falsehoods to the 2016 presidential election. That kicked off a fun firestorm in which the media punched back with facts and opinions.

The main theme behind the whole clash is that the media is reporting that the Model 3 is not being produced in the numbers that Elon Musk promised (in Tweets) and that there appear to be quality issues. One quality issue relates to the brakes. Both Car and Driver and Consumer Reports tested production versions of the Model 3 and found the brakes to be seriously problematic.

So, what facts did Elon Musk tweet this past week regarding the Model 3? None that we can find. Let's take a look at exactly what he did tweet or re-tweet. By our count, there were 32 tweets or retweets by Mr. Musk.
Here's a quick breakdown of the subjects Elon Musk tweeted about:
Tweets about the media: 24
Tweets about Tesla Superchargers: 1
Tweets about Teslas hypermiling: 1
Tesla Model 3 customer delivery image retweet: 2
Tweets about science: 1
Music Tweets (Nat King Cole, Flight of the Condor): 2
Solar roofing subjects: 1
Nanotech and related tweets: 2
Tweets stating how many Tesla Model 3 cars were built: 0
Tweets About How many Model 3 cars were delivered: 0
Tweets about Tesla Model 3 quality or related subjects: 0

You be the judge. Based on Elon Musk's public twitter account, how many times did he tweet facts to counter any media stories during the week between May 23rd and May 29th??