I’m defintely not a NYT fan... but I side with Broder on this one.
The Tesla has some great perfomance in some areas, but is a pain practicality-wise.
Elon Musk is a salesman, first and foremost. I don’t trust him at all.
Broder has at least one witness. The tow truck driver who confirms Tesla tech may not know how their car actually works:
http://jalopnik.com/tow-truck-driver-at-center-of-tesla-controversy-unaware-202391288
...But Ibsen, a veteran tow truck driver, was kind enough to take time out of his day to tell me more about his rescue of the stranded Model S. And for the record, he told me he didn’t get the sense that this was something Broder wanted to happen, or tried to make happen.
On that late January day when the Model S required a tow, it was “somewhere between 0 and 10 degrees outside,” Ibsen said, so both of them were cold and miserable.
“It didn’t appear that the gentleman driving the car wanted it to not work,” Ibsen told me. “I don’t think he had any desire to stand freezing on the side of the road.”
Much of what Ibsen told me echoed what his towing company coworker said earlier today. When he arrived, the Model S was stuck in park and its electric parking brake was on, making it very hard to get onto the flatbed. There was a way to jump the car’s 12-volt battery, but that wasn’t working, he said.
Now, the car’s touch screen center console was working, and Ibsen was on the phone with a Tesla employee in California who was walking him through a process to get the brake off, but he wasn’t getting the messages or menus on the screen that the employee said he was supposed to...
Owners’ reports of problems with their new Teslas: