Anyway this argument is stale and irrelevant, unless you’ve found a way to make oil renewable.

The point is that the NYT article has now been shown to be an exception and not the rule (via a handful of rebuttals).

Accept it and move on.

From what I’ve heard of the phone support though that’s definitely on Tesla’s hands – unless he was making that up as well.

Why not charge at another station? That is what would be done in the real world. I understand it wasn’t within the parameters of the test, but neither were the speeds nor the high heat. You can still fail the test by saying the car could not make it to the next Tesla charger. But if you do that, you don’t end up with the towed car or the photos.

I think the writer, in the name of “realism” made explicitly poor decisions. I think that invalidates the test. I don’t think Telsa is entirely in the right here (putting stations nearly your max range apart? That’s just foolish), but I don’t think the writer in any way shape or form recreated a realistic scenario. 

This (tongue in cheek) response sums of my feelings pretty well. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/02/14/inspired-by-nyt-tesla-test-here-are-my-consumer-trials-of-some-products/

So we must test all products now based on someone half-assing it and making clear mistakes they were warned not to make?

Unless Tesla wants to be the car company that forces buyers to attend a training course before purchase, then yes.

I disagree that it was anything like a “real world” test. It might have been what the writer THOUGHT was a real world test, which would show poor judgement on his part. 

I expect to need to have it fully charged in the morning as well.

If I had the reporter’s notes, along with his long form birth certificate, I would hope that would be enough to prove to you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he is telling the truth, or at least a heavily annotated version of it.  

Broder does not like electric cars and wanted to make Tesla look bad.

Evidence of past animosity to electric cars or Tesla?

Also note that your hotel room has outlets that can be used to charge your phone; finding an outlet in your hotel’s parking lot may be trickier.

I think the biggest issue was the author not having a great understanding of electric cars, how they charge, efficiency, etc.  But I doubt most vehicle owners do.  So maybe it was more a review of basic science literacy than of Tesla.

Neither I nor Edward Brennan said the  guy was lying so I’m not sure how you get to a ‘specious allegation that Broder’s a liar.’ The allegation was that he relied significantly on his recollections and had done a poor job of documenting his trip. Your rebuttal? Exactly one datum the reporter claims to have documented with notes. Nice.

Someone did the same thing, but refueled the car properly, experiencing none of the same issues. The only difference between the reviews is that one is far more boring.

I bet he charged his cellphone.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s/

The critical difference here is that the amount of gas you have left doesn’t fluctuate based on temperature or whether or not the car is being heated.

Not the amount, no, but your mileage does.  Internal combustion engines are considerably more efficient with cold air coming in than with hot.

For his part, Broder should have been a lot smarter and more patient about charging the car.  Why didn’t he do a full charge before the trip?  After all the charge worries on the first leg, why did he do a “should be enough” charge on the second leg instead of a full charge?  His original article left me with the mistaken impression that had HAD started with a full charge, and he HAD fully charged it for the second leg.  Also, the “downtown Manhattan” thing:  If you take the Lincoln Tunnel, you are driving in Manhattan.  I doubt Musk was referring to a specific “downtown” district.  And while the mileage might be close between the tunnel/bridge options, it’s quite possible that travel time could be quite different due to traffic speed differences.

For Tesla’s part, their phone support seems to have been giving out some really terrible advice – esp.  the stuff about braking to save energy, having him “wing it” on the 32 mile charge hoping it’ll go back up, the “warm-up” than ran the battery even deader.  And the unreleaseable parking brake issue is disastrous.  They also completely fail to address why the battery lost so much power overnight (from 90 miles to 25!).  This is dramatically more than the 10% cold factor they expect.  It almost seems like an overt failure happened here.  How could all those owners in Sweden or Norway or wherever deal with that on a regular basis?  My guess is they don’t and this is not normal and so should be addressed.

I do wonder about the 47 vs 58 minute charging.  I really doubt Tesla is making up what their logs say, and Brder seems quite specific about the charge times.   But again, why didn’t Broder just let it charge fully – or even for a full 60 minutes - after his earlier worries and miserable slow unheated drive?

It’s really a matter of “he said / she said” and in this whole back and forth it strikes me that some people heavily align with Musk because he’s a “fellow geek who tries to save the world, oh and spaceships!!!!!” and on the other hand you have a bunch of die hards who don’t like electric cars and see this as proof positive that they are right too.

Personally I am in neither camp. I think Musk is overselling his car and Broder seems to have made some bad choices and been given some bad advice from Tesla. To call him a liar because of that is a bit strong though, guess you belong into the first camp.