I kinda sit in the middle. We need this technology, and people like Musk pushing and investing in it. But equally, his attitude to criticism borders childish and is very off putting.
What I don't get about any of this, from both sides, is that this is the early days of the technology and its clearly work in progress. As usual, early adopters pretty much know what they are investing in and expect and accept that there are going to be problems and that the systems are far from perfect. I mean, imagine a review of the first petrol engined cars, a few years after initial conception. Musk should be constantly reminding people that problems will happen, and this is the beginning of decades of development and evolution, while motoring petrol head journalists need to stop trying to pretend Musk is selling a perfect petrol car replacement, and that it is indeed work in progress at a relatively early stage.
To me it is clear that the Tesla car is still problematic, but it is also clear that its improving at a decent rate. In a decade, I imagine the whole system will work flawlessly, ish.
Sadly all I see are two camps, Musk supporters and petrol heads almost raging at each other like political parties, while Musk stirs it, resulting in non partisan parties look on aghast, keeping wallets well closed.
As for the idea that this CNN review, just after a controversial one, would be anything other than perfect is a delusion. Even if we bin foil hat theories that CNN were soft on Tesla for what ever reason, Tesla would have done everything to ensure this test went perfectly and contradicted the previous one. What ever we are up to, if a test goes wrong, we would all make sure the next test was an improvement. If not, then we have no business in any form of development.