I like the comment on the submitted article that Teslas should come with a bike rack and bicycle as a back-up plan. "On second thought, just buy a bicycle. You will get there faster and more reliably." In this jest is truth for my family, because we live at least 1,000 miles from the nearest currently installed Tesla Supercharger station

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

and yet my wife and I can use our bicycles year-round in our cold-weather but bicycle-friendly city,

http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-m...

so we can be even more environmentally friendly than the buyers of the big, heavy, expensive Tesla Model S by using our bicycles.

As the New York Times reporter follows up,

"Virtually everyone says that I should have plugged in the car overnight in Connecticut, particularly given the cold temperature. But the test that Tesla offered was of the Supercharger, not of the Model S, which we already know is a much-praised car. This evaluation was intended to demonstrate its practicality as a 'normal use,' no-compromise car, as Tesla markets it. Now that Tesla is striving to be a mass-market automaker, it cannot realistically expect all 20,000 buyers a year (the Model S sales goal) to be electric-car acolytes who will plug in at every Walmart stop.

"Knowing then what I know now about the car, its sensitivity to cold and additional ways to maximize range, I certainly would have treated the test differently. But the conclusion might not have been any better for Tesla."

P.S. I see from the pattern of votes so far on this comment that some fellow participant here is not amused by my suggestion that a bicycle is a more environmentally friendly form of alternative vehicle for someone living in snowy Minnesota than a Tesla Model S. But I am serious. There is NO WAY I would sink so much of my family's budget into buying a car like that when I can obtain more reliable transportation at a much lower price. That's the tough squeeze that Tesla Motors is in. There was an extensive, and on the whole more favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance...

submitted to HN earlier today (most participants missed the discussion on that article)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154

and the author of that report takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it’s still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world." I'm not going to be lining up to buy the first Tesla car for sale in Minnesota unless both the charging network and the car's cold-weather performance are massively improved.

P.P.S. While I still have my edit window, I should mention that one blogger on business writes "Why Tesla's Elon Musk Should Consult The Communications Playbook,"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/02/12/d...

and a Forbes staff writer on the global auto industry writes, "Fake Or Not, New York Times' Tesla Review Speaks Truth About Electric Cars,"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2013/02/11/fake-or-n...

suggesting that not all business writers have been impressed by Elon Musk's response to the first New York Times report so far.