After John Broder's scathing review of the Tesla's Model S last Friday, the New York Times and Tesla Motors have been lobbing accusations back and forth about the validity of the article. The Times reportedly stands by it, releasing a statement earlier stating that Broder's review was "completely accurate."
Wednesday, Tesla released data that contradicted a large amount of the information contained in the review. Tesla personnel advised him to stay under 55 miles per hour but electronic driving records from the Tesla's logs say he drove at speeds ranging from 65 to 81 mph. They also instructed him to turn the climate control system to low, but logs showed that he kept the cabin temperature at 72 degrees and even occasionally cranked it up to 74, while in his article he claimed to have turned it off entirely. "All the while," he wrote, "my feet were freezing and my knuckles were turning white."
Snide remarks abound in Tesla's riposte. Elon Musk said in a blog post that logs show when Broder first reached the Milford, Conn. Supercharger, despite being nearly out of batteries, he drove in circles in a parking lot to run down the battery. "When the Model S valiantly refused to die," Musk wrote, "he eventually plugged it in."
Records also show that on the first recharge, Broder filled the battery up to 90 percent, let it almost run out of battery on the second leg of his trip, recharged to 72 percent, and then when he claimed the car did run out of power on the last leg, he only recharged to 28 percent. "Despite narrowly making each leg," Musk wrote, "he charged less and less each time. Why would anyone do that?"
Musk also cited an article Broder wrote last year as an example of possible bias against electric cars, in which he stated, "Yet the state of the electric car is dismal, the victim of hyped expectations, technological flops, high costs and a hostile political climate.”
Musk ended his post with a request to the New York Times: "Our request of The New York Times is simple and fair: please investigate this article and determine the truth. You are a news organization where that principle is of paramount importance and what is at stake for sustainable transport is simply too important to the world to ignore."
