Hell, why even bother charging for 46 minutes? Charge it for however long you estimate it takes you to fill up the gas in your other car, and complain when the car runs out then, too.
Not a good piece at all; can't say whether that reflects on the author too or this is just him/her being mindkilled over, of all things, charging time.
Maybe a 58 minute charge at the last leg would've spared him the tow. But how could he have known? He had 125 miles to drive. He took the car to 185 miles of battery power.
There are a lot of factors in driving range. Tesla should be more conservative on their estimates, but realistically you don't fill a car just enough to get to the next station. And you definitely don't ignore low fuel warnings (even if you should have gotten a longer range.)
I'm not saying Tesla is perfect, but I do believe the NYT author wrote the article to make the car look bad to the average reader.