Alluding to the New York Times article says that this combative strategy has worked. It's pretty clear that it was not a hit piece, but that has remained the common memory.

After the initial public letter, further details revealed that it was a battery issue that confused everyone involved. In fact, it was even a good design decision. If the car is parked in extreme cold, it will consume power in order to heat the battery so that it is not destroyed, thereby incurring a tens of thousands of dollars expense.

When the reviewer returned to the car parked in a freezing garage after his overnight stay at a hotel to find the projected battery range severely reduced, he telephoned support. It sounds like the support thought that the projected range was affected by the cold, and that warming it would by driving in a circle was likely to make the readings and projections sane again.

It didn't, and he decided to continue on with his trip. The recounting of the trip contained inaccurate details, that were not very material, about the climate control settings and speed. And, the review was generally inaccurate, because it reported that the ange was disappointing without noting the effect of the extreme cold. However, a mistake made in good faith is different than dishonest reporting.

In fact, the issue seems so nonobvious, that Musk himself failed to guess it. His public letter focused on whether the reporter drove over the speed limit, while making no mention of the car heating the battery overnight. Does the telemetry fail to log that power use, or was it so unusual that he didn't even think to look at that time frame?

It seems likely that all (three?) of them simply missed this autonomous heater as consuming a great amount of power. Even though it was a good design decision, since it prevents permanent damage to the battery, it is something relevant to a reviewer whose responsibility is reporting to his readership the real world experience of owning a car with technology they aren't used to.

Anyway, the strategy works, because people only remember that Musk went into detail and cited the car's telemetry. It ends up supporting the narrative that this reporter was one of the many people who unfairly attack the car. However, the real story is that unusual conditions like extremely cold weather can affect battery life, and they are unexpected enough that it isn't immediately obvious to an auto journalist, to the manufacturers' live telephone support, or Elon Musk himself.

That is a story, even if it wouldn't prevent anyone from buying the car. However, no one ever apologized for essentially calling the journalist's entire professional reputation into question. Furthermore, it is a reason for someone to worry that if there does ever turn out to be a serious design flaw, nitpicking over telemetry logs might be a bigger part of the experience than them quickly making good on the warranty.

Finally, I don't think the reporting on fires has been entirely unmerited as though it is so much more rare than it is in other new high end cars. Recall that once upon a time people referred to the Concorde as having a perfect safety record, until it didn't, and that that was due to there being so few rather than that it really was so much safer. I think it's great that Tesla has responded with very dramatic new safety measures, but the safety numbers weren't actually so far superior to anything else on the road.