TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Michael Degusta on Tesla Motors’ response to reports of “bricked” Tesla Roadsters:

Why not say how many bricked Roadsters there’ve been? Tesla doesn’t even make this car anymore. They’ve made it clear their next cars will be better. Why not just disclose this so that customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders can have peace of mind on the matter — “Only seven bricks? Well, that was just 0.3% of the cars after all, and they’ve made a lot of strides on the matter since then.”

They need to figure this stuff out, both how to handle their batteries completely discharging and their response. They’re doing great work, but it’s hard enough to convince consumers to switch to electric cars, and such terrible customer service is going to make it even harder. Why should I switch to a completely new technology with limited availability for recharging around the country when the company is so opaque about such a big problem?

Tesla needs to bend over backward to support their new customers. Note that this does not mean paying for the cost of installing a new battery pack in bricked cars. It means being completely honest about the risk, what customers should do to prevent it, and transparent about what they’re doing to reduce the risk in current and future models.