Elon Musk fires back at media over negative coverage

The CEO argues that media was wrong about hydrogen and autonomy.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has fired back at the media for negative coverage of the company in the wake of the Autopilot investor event.

Yesterday's announcement included several bold claims for Tesla's proposed ride-sharing network, including an optimistic launch projection of next year and an estimate that a Model 3 could generate $200,000 in revenue over little more than a decade.

Some of the claims were immediately met with skepticism. During the Q&A section of the event, Musk admitted that he has been overly optimistic about product launch timing but always delivers.

The executive took to Twitter to broadly criticize media outlets, referencing his 2015 prediction of full autonomy in "five years or less" and getting regulatory approval in another two to three years.

"Almost all coverage back then said hydrogen fuel cells would destroy electric cars & autonomy was between 10 years & never," he wrote today. "Those who predicted Tesla & EVs would be dead & autonomy would never happen are same people attacking Tesla today for 6-12 month delays, while ignoring major automakers 5+ years late. Why the double standard?"

Musk has previously referred to fuel cells as "fool cells" and has been correct so far in believing the technology would fail to gain traction amid exponential growth of pure battery-powered EVs. He also pointed out yesterday that Audi is now having the same troubles manufacturing EVs that Tesla had encountered, despite being an established automaker with some of the highest production experience in the industry.