Tesla Motors CEO rebuts New York Times Model S review
The task for聽The New York Times' contributor John M. Broder sounded simple enough: to highlight Tesla鈥檚 newly-installed Supercharger Stations at Interstate 95 rest stops in Newark, Delaware and Milford, Connecticut, Broder was to drive a聽聽with an 85 kilowatt-hour battery from Washington, D.C., to Boston, Massachusetts.
While the trip would ordinarily be impractical in an electric vehicle, the Supercharger stations would provide free electricity, charging the Model S鈥� batteries to almost full in roughly an hour. With a Tesla-claimed range of up to聽聽miles (or 265 miles, according to the EPA) the Model S had plenty of range to complete the journey via Supercharger waypoints.
According to Broder, however, that鈥檚 not what happened. In a Tesla-critical article, published online in the聽聽last Friday, Broder claims that the聽barely had enough range to reach Milford after recharging in Newark. In fact, the story alleges that the author was forced to drive at 54 mph, sans heat on a 30-degree day.
From Milford, Broder drove 79 miles to Stonington, Connecticut, where the car was parked, unplugged, overnight. When shut off, Broder logged a range of 90 miles; the following morning, the聽聽showed a range of just 25 miles in the 10-degree winter cold.聽
Tesla staffers helped Broder find a nearby charging station, but the hour-long charge turned out to be insufficient for the return trip to Milford. En route to another charging station (also located by Tesla), the car shut itself down on an exit ramp in Branford, Connecticut.
Tesla sees the events of the trip in a slightly different light. Ever since聽, which falsely showed a Tesla Roadster being pushed into a garage out of charge, when in fact it had 50 miles of range remaining, Tesla turns on monitoring software any time a journalist drives its products. It鈥檚 in the fine print, which Broder may or may not have realized.
In response to聽The New York Times听补谤迟颈肠濒别, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted, 鈥淣YTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake.聽聽logs tell true story that he didn't actually charge to max & took a long detour.鈥�
Broder claims his initial stop in Newark, Delaware, produced a claimed full charge in 49 minutes, but Musk claims the data refutes this. Vehicle logs also show that Broder exceeded the speed limit by a significant margin, which anyone who drives I-95 from Washington, D.C. to New York will tell you is necessary for self-preservation.
Perhaps most damning of all is that the logged data reveals a 鈥渓ong detour鈥� through Manhattan, which Musk claims was unplanned and seriously impacted battery range.
Musk will present Tesla鈥檚 side of the story in a聽聽update, coming soon. He鈥檚 also promised to toss the Model S鈥� keys to other journalists, so they can see for themselves what the car鈥檚 range actually is in winter conditions.
We鈥檙e fairly certain that those journalists will be given a detailed list of instructions, indicating the specific route the car is to be driven, a maximum speed and the required duration of Supercharger stops. As聽聽points out, winter weather can reduce battery range up to 30-percent, and we're sure this will be factored in, too.
As for who鈥檚 wrong and who鈥檚 right, we鈥檙e not taking sides on this one (though it's probably worth pointing out that聽聽was critical of electric聽in general). As any police detective will tell you, there are always three sides to any story - yours, ours, and what actually happened.
