That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

- not charging past 90% at the 1st station is defensible. Especially if Tesla warns it will shorten the battery's life.

- It'd be better if Tesla's software took temperature into account when estimating mileage range.

- Broder is being ridiculous about the cruise control and his speed estimates, and the temperature. He has partial accountability for the NYT graph. Turning the temperature down to 70 does not mean "sharply downward". He turned it down once more at around 250 miles, but that's far after the 182 that the article/graph indicates, and markedly different than "a little over 200 miles". He writes about how his feet were freezing and knuckles were turning white, but he didn't turn the heat down below 70 until (if my math is right) right about the time he got to Manhattan, which was mentioned afterward in his article timeline. On the other hand, it looks like it was turned down for most of the leg between Manhattan and Milford.

- The leg from Manhattan to Milford sounds legitimately stressful, but Broder claims low-speed cruise control that never happened. He tries to blame this on wheel size later, while simultaneously using Tesla's logs as showing that he wasn't driving very fast. That makes no sense.

- Tesla claims they told Broder to fully charge at Milford. He did not, and lists a lot of justifications for not following their advice.

- Broder complains that Tesla didn't tell him more about how to get the most out of charging stations, but Broder's a veteran at electric vehicles even if it's true that he hates them. And his defense for not charging overnight is laughable - plugging in overnight is not the same as plugging it at every Walmart stop. It's overnight in cold temperatures and the car was at less than 50% of its range. He's just being obstinate here.

- It's laughable to say that the Tesla fell short of its projected range when the projected range was from the day before, before not plugging it in on a cold night.

- Tesla and Broder directly contradict each other on whether they gave him the go-ahead to stop charging after an hour in Norwich. Broder's being vague in his wordings - he phrases it as if they approved him to unplug when they might have just said to plug it in for about an hour when they were trying to find him the plugin station ahead of time. Tesla, in turn, says that he unplugged over their objections.

- Broder just can't "account for the discrepancy" about the logs showing him driving close to 55 when he said he was limping along at 45, back from Norwich.

- Broder seems defensible on the parking brake - how is he to know not to turn off the car? - and the driving in circles, although it would be interesting to know just how clearly marked that supercharge station is. Musk is probably guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" here.

Anyway, even after Broder's latest response, it still reads like Broder was trying to stack the deck.

Instead of waiting until his tank is full enough, John instead starts driving. Why? Is he just stupid, and decides to ignore the gauge and risk his own safety based upon the ballpark estimate of a Tesla customer support rep? Or did he decide that now his ass was covered if the car did somehow end up dying, giving him his story? Either way, the story stinks.