Musk's account was total bullshit. Here's a complete accounting of why.

You can read the response from the journalist[1] and the NYT public editor[2] which concludes the report was done with "integrity". Musk was initially sympathetic to the journalist, then decided to go after him after he calculated that the optics of this situation were not good for Tesla. He does that crap all the time including with accident victims. Blames the victim. We've seen this over and over again, with little or no consequences for Musk.

Here are the major issues:

1- LOWERING SPEED: Out of the gate range was dropping faster than expected. Probably due to cold weather range loss (it was 30F).[3] He was advised to slow down and did so, which already is not a very good road trip story for Tesla.

Musk attacks him over whether he really engaged the cruise control or just how fast he was going (claims "65 mph to 81 mph for a majority of the trip"). But in his reply the journalist correctly notes that Musk mischaracterized what the data shows ("Tesla’s logs clearly show, much of my driving was at or well below the 65 m.p.h. speed limit, with only a single momentary spike above 80"). This is the first major mischaracterization of the data on the part of Musk.

2- LOWERING TEMP: The reporter was also advised to turn down the cabin temp to improve range. Musk accuses him of lying and notes the average temp was 72 degrees.

But notice, he only cites the average. The journalist response that he cycled between shutting off the heat until his extremities got so cold he couldn't take it anymore, then kicking it back on for a time. This also is not a great story for Tesla. He notes, "The data clearly indicates that I sharply lowered the temperature setting – twice – a little over 200 miles into the trip. After the battery was charged I tried to warm the cabin." Musk chose to omit this and only cite the average in an attempt to mislead you into thinking the journalist made up his experience of freezing to compensate for range anxiety.

3- "DRIVING IN CIRCLES" AT THE FIRST CHARGER: Musk goes absolutely bananas here. His "big reveal" is that the data shows the journalist driving in circles before plugging in and charging up. As the reporter notes, he just couldn't find the damn thing in the dark. Here's how Musk spins this:

"Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot. When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in. On the later legs, it is clear Broder was determined not to be foiled again."

What the heck? It is amazing to me that anybody bought this crackpot theory. Let's just think about it for one second, ok? If his grand scheme was to intentionally kill the battery and get stranded to make a good story.... Why on earth would he do it mere feet from a supercharger?

Boy oh boy. Occam's razor says the reporter just had a little bit of trouble finding the charger in the lot. If he wanted to invent a story about his Tesla battery dying, there's much better places to engineer a breakdown.. like on the road!

4- CHARGING UP TO 72%: The reporter spent an hour charging up to "well beyond" the range he needed for his itinerary. He trusted Tesla's range estimate. Musk also spins this as "deliberately stopped charging at 72%," implying that it was part of a scheme. This is just malevolent spin.

5- SUDDEN OVERNIGHT LOSS OF RANGE: The reporter parked the car overnight with 90 miles of range left, enough to make it back to the supercharger. When he woke up it had only 25 miles of range. This is the biggest problem in the trip!

Clearly the car suffered cold weather range loss. It was 10F outside. Whereas previously this forced some compromises, here it completed f'd him.

Musk did not dispute or even mention this part. It's the root problem: If you're going to do a cross country trip in the extreme cold you have a plan correctly for it and take some precautions like plugging in overnight and not trust the range estimate (in 2013). But this doesn't mean the journalist has an integrity problem; he just trusted his Tesla too much.

6- SHITTY ADVICE ON HOW TO DEAL WITH A F'D SITUATION: At this point he's just screwed. The nearest charger is too weak. He goes there. After an hour he's at just 32 miles of range. Then someone at Tesla gives him bad info: more range will come back as it heats up. This is believable to him because he got the same advice in the morning: warming the battery will give you back lost range.

Musk claims the reporter acted "against" the advice of Tesla personnel. But he offers no proof. The reporter replied by naming names: "Ms. Ra and Mr. Merendino told me to leave it connected for an hour, and after that the lost range would be restored."

This is a plausible misunderstanding. But the bigger picture is: It's not a good story for Tesla even under the best conditions. If he had never spoken with Tesla, just trusted the car's estimate and stayed put it would have taken another 1-2 hours just to charge up enough to make it back to the supercharger, ruining an already ~2 hour delayed day.

So this results in a breakdown when the range doesn't come back after warming up, as he had been led to believe.

SUMMARY- The core problem here was cold weather range loss combined with a driver who expected the car to just work as advertised. At first he drove it normally and was surprised by the diminishing range. He still trusted the range estimate at the first charge on the road. He didn't plug it in overnight in 10F weather, not realizing that it could reduce range. Then he misunderstood instructions from Tesla on how to limp his way back, although the trip was already a failure at that point.

Musk did not like this story. He schemed to find an angle to attack the journalist's integrity. I didn't respect him then for it and I'm not surprised that more of this behavior has surfaced in the years since.

[1] https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-...

[2] https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-w...

[3] https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/cold-weather-range-los...