Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that Tesla didn't want to deal with the NTSB in good faith. My opinion? They were in a really big hurry to try to divert and distract public opinion from potential liability. It's always an advantage to publish your "story" first because that's what sticks in the potential customers' minds. I learned in industry that if you have a conflict with another worker or another group, get to your Department Manager before they can.

@William Hitchens

"Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that Tesla didn't want to deal with the NTSB in good faith. My opinion? They were in a really big hurry to try to divert and distract public opinion from potential liability."

The problem is that without factual information being released, the general public just speculates endlessly and come up with all sorts of non-sense.

The NTSB is an agency famous for taking a minimum of a full year to issue any information in their "reports" and by then the damage is done to any company.

Why should the public be kept totally ignorant of the available facts for up to 2 years before the NTSB issues it's official report?

The news media make huge headlines for weeks about anything related to Tesla, but 2 years from now when the NTSB finally gets around to publishing their report, I would BET MONEY that the news media will at best put it on in some short story one day and then it's not covered again.

For a number of reasons, the media love to talk and mostly speculate about Tesla.

I see no problem with Tesla (or other companies that operate on rapid market trends and gets loads of new coverage) publishing factual information as long as this release does NOT actually prevent the NTSB from finding of all the facts and eventually publishing their report.

The NTSB has stated that the release would NOT hinder their investigation and is still working with Tesla cooperation on digging up any additional facts.

I seriously doubt any other car maker could withstand the sort of extreme scrutiny that has been heaped on Tesla from day one.