What do you do when you’re the owner of a revolutionary electric car manufacturer and the paper of record slams your first mass product in a review?
If you’re Elon Musk of Tesla Motors you take to Twitter and accuse the newspaper of lying. At The Verge:
Three days ago, The New York Times wrote a scathing critique of the Tesla Model S, testifying that the all-electric sedan couldn’t handle cold weather — dying before it reached its destination, even though a driver spent time shivering without a heater. Today, Elon Musk says it’s simply not true: the Tesla CEO claims he has hard data which proves the Times faked the conclusion to its story. He insists vehicle logs kept by his company shed light on the truth, revealing that Broder failed to fully charge the Model S and that he “took a long detour” at one stage of his test drive.
Dig in deep at that post at The Verge and you’ll see that Musk has gotten his dander up over bad reviews before. Even suing the UK car show Top Gear.
While it may seem creepy that Musk says he has the data to back up his claims, it was a test car, after all. One way or another, I’m reaching for the popcorn. The Top Gear/Tesla feud took two years to resolve.
This article was originally published on TurnstyleNews.com on February 11, 2013.