In the wake of Consumer Report’s assessment of the Tesla Model 3, and its withholding of that coveted “recommended” stamp of approval, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter (naturally) to respond to the critique. Proof that he’s an engaged executive? Sure. But the responses themselves were revealing: They highlight some key areas where Musk’s vaunted Silicon Valley mentality clashes with car-building convention -- with potentially troubling results.

In one statement, he claimed that CR’s car was an early production model and that any build flaws it may suffer from have since been resolved. In another series of tweets, he suggested the inconsistent braking that raised CR’s red flag was caused by its “ABS calibration algorithm” and that the issue could be fixed “with a firmware update.”

A Tesla spokeswoman elaborated on that latter claim, telling CR that “Unlike other vehicles, Tesla is uniquely positioned to address more corner cases over time through over-the-air software updates, and it continually does so to improve factors such as stopping distance.”

Let’s look at Musk’s statements individually. First, assuming Tesla has fixed the Model 3’s early build problems, this means that some of the most dedicated devotees of the automaker -- those who reserved their Model 3 as soon as they could -- are rolling around with cars that are (by Musk’s own admission) not quite up to snuff.

Here’s where I diverge from the bulk of Tesla critics: This doesn’t really bother me. Many Tesla owners wear their early-adopter status proudly. Tesla was quite open about its plan to diverge from convention and skip several development steps in order to leap into production. They knew what they were getting into, or should have.

This isn’t the sort of relationship the average consumer wants to have with an automaker, but the first Model 3 buyers aren’t average consumers. Maybe they’re blinkered True Believers; maybe they really are getting in on the ground level of the Next Big Thing. Either way, they’re adults, and if they want to be Tesla’s beta testers, more power to them.

Besides, the Model 3 I personally inspected (albeit not with a caliper in hand) and the one we managed to score a quick test drive in seemed to be well put-together. Maybe the panel gaps have indeed been banished; maybe they are, to use a word that seems to come up often in Model 3 discussion, inconsistent.

The bigger problem here is Musk’s -- and by extension, Tesla’s -- attitude toward something as absolutely critical as vehicular braking. Musk claims that, despite the reports, the braking of all Model 3s the company has sold fall within acceptable, safe parameters, and the upcoming “firmware update” will be rolled out to address the inconsistency problems.

Never mind that he wants to have it both ways here (“the brakes aren’t broken, but we’re fixing them anyway”): That he believes a system as important as brakes can and should be fiddled with from afar is telling. This is Silicon Valley’s iterate-toward-success/ship-it-and-we’ll-fix-it-later mentality on full display. Outsiders (and Tesla fanatics) can’t get enough of it -- it proves, to them, that Tesla is receptive to criticism and nimble enough to change in the face of it. Automotive insiders, on the other hand, hold up behavior like this as evidence of Musk’s lack of experience in the field, and of Tesla’s potentially dangerous approach to car building.

The important thing is that fixing -- er, optimizing -- the Model 3’s braking system is not like updating a smartphone OS or an app: This is about altering the performance of a system that, for the safety of those inside a given vehicle and on the roadways around it, should perform reliably and consistently for the life of a vehicle (assuming it has been maintained properly).

Brakes are something that should have been nailed down before any Model 3s made it into consumers’ driveways. If Tesla can figure out how to modify, for example, battery-cooling algorithms to eke better range out of cars it has already sold, great. Unpredictable emergency braking performance, whether caused by some bunk ABS code installed at the factory or an automaker’s own over-the-air vehicle software update, can conceivably get people injured or killed.

And no, a little popup warning on the car’s touchscreen notifying drivers that their vehicle has been updated and that braking characteristics may have changed overnight (surprise!) is not enough. If the brakes need to be fixed because they’re potentially dangerous, that warrants a technical service bulletin (if not a recall). If they merely can be improved, perhaps that’s something that should be done during an at-home visit with a Tesla Ranger technician or -- if you want to feel really old-fashioned -- at a dealership, with someone representing the company explaining what is happening and how an update will impact the way your vehicle stops.

In a recent informal conversation with representatives of a major automaker, the growing role of onboard technology and the use of over-the-air updates came up. One rep suggested that there would always be a hard divide between systems that aren’t essential to the vehicle’s basic operation (navigation and entertainment systems, for example) and those that are (steering, braking, powertrain control systems, etc.). The former can and will continue to be updated remotely, but the latter are perhaps better left disconnected from the wireless world.

This is an old and boring way of looking at how to build, sell and support consumer vehicles. It’s not as much fun as promising that better performance -- or, as Musk has suggested before, new and exciting autonomous features -- are just a download and a reboot away. But given how we own and operate vehicles circa 2018, the old and boring way makes sense. You would want the systems that govern the life-or-death operations of a vehicle to be relatively isolated from outside influence, whether malicious or well-meaning.

Unless, apparently, you’re Elon Musk.

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