Ludicrous

Niedermeyer, an automotive journalist who covered Tesla critically for years, wrote a sceptical account of the company arguing that the gap between its public narrative and its operating reality is the central fact about it.

The manufacturing chapters are the strongest. Niedermeyer argues that Tesla repeatedly attempted to solve production problems through automation and vertical integration in ways that established manufacturers had already tested and rejected, most visibly in the Model 3 ramp where the highly automated general assembly line had to be partially dismantled and replaced with manual work in a tent outside the factory. He documents quality problems including panel gaps, paint defects and service delays, and argues that the company's service capacity did not grow with its fleet.

Other chapters cover the Autopilot marketing and the gap between the driver assistance system's actual capability and the language used to sell it, including the full self-driving claims and the fatalities in which the system was engaged. He covers the direct sales model and the dealer franchise law fights, the regulatory credit revenue that supported reported results, the relationship between Tesla's share price and its ability to raise capital, and Musk's use of announcements to move the stock.

The book is a critique and does not pretend otherwise. Its main analytical weakness is that it treats the automotive industry's accumulated manufacturing knowledge as settled in a way that assumes Tesla's approach must fail, and the company subsequently reached sustained profitability and production volumes the book implies it could not. The specific criticisms of quality, service, autonomy claims and communication have held up better than the general prediction. Readers should treat it as the prosecution case, worth reading alongside more sympathetic accounts.