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It's blown out of proportion for the normal use case, but I still think it was a very interesting review. I didn't expect them to be great road-tripping vehicles at this point, but was a bit disappointed by how the weather affected things. Even Musk's comments so far don't change my impression of that: so it's fine for a road trip if you make sure you don't get stuck in traffic, and make sure you never ever miss a chance to get it fully charged up, especially if the weather is cold? That's just not going to be competitive convenience-wise for long trips right now, no matter how much spin you want to put on it. The open question to me is just how fast the driver was going on the highway (90+ would make me raise an eyebrow or too), I'm not really sympathetic to the rest of Musk's claims at all. And unless he can provide some conclusive log evidence, collaborated by outside evidence, that's far more damning than what his comments so far describe, it reflects pretty poorly on the company to me. Much more poorly than the original review, since I expected that to be pretty much a worst-case scenario—and was very interested in just how well it would handle that kind of stress test.

Edit: the thing that really bugs me about the response is that it's empty so far. If you've got conclusive evidence, show the evidence. Don't go all he-said-she-said in the meantime.

I didn't buy his explanations when I saw him on CNBC and Bloomberg. The impression I got is that he's whitewashing the review, focusing on how fast he was driving and pointing to another NYT reporter who got 300 miles (and when the anchor pointed out that it was in different driving conditions, he sort of glossed over it).

Speaking of inconveniences, how can someone who lives in an apartment own a Tesla vehicle? Most parking garages I've come across don't even have a standard 110v outlet, let alone the 240v outlets needed for faster charging. Is the solution for them to hope that there's a supercharger near by? It seems like Tesla is only viable if you live in a house.

Link to the Bloomberg and CNBC interviews:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/musk-model-s-works-well-nyt-a...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100439335

Increasingly seeing charging stations in multilevel carparks both in large apartment complexes and offices. I could charge a Tesla or shatever at work every day if i had to. Heck even The University of Alabama had EV charging stations.

If you live in the Northeast, its a big deal. Give me a Prius or Volt any day.

ICEs are significantly less efficient at startup and until they get up to their normal operating temperatures. That's not so much a problem for long range trips, but taking multiple single-digit mile trips spaced apart in the time dimension.

Overblown, at least for modern cars. Girlfriend sometimes drives an ICE 1.5 miles to work, Gas mileage suffers ~30% versus freeway driving. When I did ~7 mile trips to work and back efficiency was <20% worse than freeway driving. Combustion chamber temps warm relatively quickly.

EVs have no problem "starting" in low temperatures. You might not be able to draw as much power for the drive train as the pack is heating up, but it's not a primordial "fuel-air-mix won't explode" problem.

In theory you're correct. In practice, ICEs will start and operate at temperature of -40F (perhaps with a bit of help heating the oil). The Tesla in the article was brought to its knees in temperatures within the positive teens.

And then this is mostly an issue of infrastructure; if there were at least 120V plugs at every parking lot, you wouldn't ever have to worry about these vampire loads.

Except now you have to convince everyone to install 120V plugs in parking lots, wire them up, figure out a way to bill for this or provided it for free, AND you have to remind the consumer to plug in every time they park their car.

> 90% of driving is commuting, it is decidedly not long-range trips.

Would you buy a second vehicle to accommodate your needs for the remaining 10% of your driving?

You could always rent a vehicle for your remaining driving needs. For 10% of total driving that might be somewhat impractical, but 10% sounds like a pretty high estimate for trips that would challenge the Model S's range. That's one long-range trip every week and a half. Yes, there are people who drive like that, but they are very much in the minority.

If you drive to grandma's/the in-laws/"up to the cabin" three or four times a year, that's only 1% of trips (assuming you commute every day and run local errands on the weekends). Most families in the US already have multiple vehicles. Why can't one be an electric?