Following Elon Musk’s initial denouncement of The New York Times for publishing a fake review of the Tesla Model S electric car, he has now published the actual logs recorded by the car — and boy are they damning. In short, the NYT’s John Broder lied through his teeth to smear electric vehicles in general, and the Model S in specific.
The basic premise of John Broder’s story for The Times was that the car lied about its self-reported estimated remaining range; when it said there was 79 miles left in the batteries, there was in actual fact only 60. Eventually, after a few such cases of the on-board computer misreporting the estimated range, and apparently through no fault of his own, his Model S ran out of juice and had to be towed to the nearest charging station.
The vehicle’s logs, published today by Elon Musk, tell a very different story. The logs show that Broder intentionally failed to charge his car properly, and even drove around a parking lot in an attempt to drain the car’s battery. Despite claiming to set cruise control at 54 mph and turning off the heat to conserve battery life, the logs show that Broder did neither — instead, he turned the heat up to 74F (23C) and drove at speeds between 65 and 81 mph for most of the trip.
