In another comment you said they're "fighting for trust" and here you say they've just started to get the public to trust them. What is this referring to? In terms of safety, Tesla seems to be extremely trusted, and has been for a while now.
Well I think they are fighting for trust, and they will be for a long time.
As the other commenter says, in these circles, Tesla is very well trusted. Out in the world though, there are still a lot of people who associate Teslas with spontaneous combustion. Even if that same person would say that they're "probably safe" or some similar hedged assessment.
I think I've heard people mention the fires once or twice, but they also seem to be aware that it involved exceptional circumstances and that no lives were at risk. And yes, I've talked about the car with a lot of people outside the tech community too.
I think in terms of safety, Tesla is more associated with things like blowing out the NHTSA rating system.
Tesla has a big and very vocal group of fanboys (of which I am one!), many of whom are also part of the "tech crowd" - therefore it may seem, from reading HN or Reddit, that Tesla is universally loved. But for GenPop, it's just a new car company making these weird things that are "electric cars", led by some guy they probably haven't heard much about. People don't trust electric cars yet, and don't consider Tesla to be a trusted brand.
