Musk extends Times feud, calls Model S review "ethics violation"

I highly doubt he can fix it. At least, not on his own.

1) There needs to be more accessible infrastructure. Having superchargers 200mi apart isn't sufficient. They need to be < 50 miles apart, ideally more concentrated in urban areas, and FTLOG why isn't there a charger in manhattan? The car may be able to reach the full range under ideal conditions, but in any non-ideal circumstance like the NYT trip the range will be diminished.

2) They need more realistic marketing. It's not a panacea, and to sell it as such is a misrepresentation. There are issues, the car must be coddled, and until that is explicitly admitted by Tesla marketing material people should not be expected to treat the car gently

His numbers, which he took pains to make appear exact, simply do not match the data. So where did he get the numbers? To me it seems extremely likely that he made them up to add veracity to his story. "Yeah, that sounds about right." This would not be the first time a journalist had done such a thing. He would have been fine if he had given approximate numbers, or if he had taken better notes, like a good journalist should. He clearly did neither of those things.

Having said that, the theme of the story, that Tesla has problems in cold weather, seems likely to be true. That seems like a worthy story to tell. With real data, from a test under realistic conditions.

Musk is harming his personal brand now, and he should stop for his own sake. But neither the Times nor Broder are in the clear, nor should they be.

If you think Elon Musk is 100% correct that the reporter was a liar, or that the reporter was 100% in the right for publishing a big picture of a Tesla Model S being towed, you're going to be disappointed.

Both sides are upset, extremely opinionated, and have their own slant on the matter. Both sides made mistakes, and probably could have held back on a few things they claimed.

Elon Musk should have focused just on the obvious faults of the reporter -- like how the reporter probably should have more clearly highlighted that he literally began a trip for X miles with Y miles range displayed on the dash, where X > Y by a considerable amount (rather than burying this fact in noise). Not little details like air conditioning and driving in circles to find the supercharger.

And similarly, although there's disagreement over what certain Tesla reps may have recommended over the phone, it seems at last slightly disingenuous to post a big photo of a Tesla Model S being towed given the fact that he started and forced a trip of length X when the car showed range Y on the screen, where X > Y by a considerable amount.

Saying that you lost respect for Elon Musk is your right. However I personally haven't lost much if any. He was defending a cause he felt strongly about. What was the reporter's motivations?

The article was clearly slanted. So was Elon's rebuttal, but with every force, expect an equal and opposite reaction.

I'm not condoning the rebuttal, but I would put it this way: I understand and sympathize with Elon's overreaction far more than I do with the reporter's initial motivations to slant the story. And he very clearly did slant it.

> Just fix the car.

That's not really the issue, even if he could fix it. Which is easier said than done; we're dealing with advanced material science here. You can bet his team is hard at work on it, but this is the kind of thing that takes many years of deep research. Let's deal with the issue at hand (slanted articles vs slanted rebuttals), for now.

What's clear, from an objective point of view, is that there were issues that could be attributed to Tesla. Musk still hasn't refuted the fact that Tesla engineers gave Broder really poor advice during the trip. Musk didn't produce the call logs, and the "data" corroborates most of Broder's claims regarding what happened during the drive.

"Elon Musk cares. He has everything on the line, and everything he's worked for "

Gives him more incentive to fight the NYT and try to paint Broder as an evil man. CEO has billions of dollars on the line, NYT reporter has his career on the line, yet if this were any other traditional company you would side with the reporter.

"To have that put at risk by a lazy/incompetent reporter, who's got nothing on the line but 24 hours of his ass in a car, someone who can't even take his job seriously enough to even attempt to get it right...it's got to be infuriating."

Broder did get it right, and Musk's data and nonsequiturs proved it. The core facts were that Broder followed Tesla's advice and, by following the advice, the car ran out of charge. You are letting your blind faith in Musk cloud your reasoning abilities

"Say, why hasn't Broder offered to repeat the drive? He's probably too busy figuring out how to review rocket technology without learning anything about that either."

Why hasn't Musk revealed the call logs with the advice Tesla gave Broder during the trip? Is it because they would corroborate Broder's story? Most likely.

Telsa is starting to get a reputation as being toxic to the media.

Defamation? Really? I think Clarkson was actually pretty fair, considering his usual style. What they showed at least seems believable to me.

In the end, he is the CEO of a public company, he should hire a professional to deal with this. The bottom line is that Tesla batteries do drain on the cold and Musk keeps reminding people.