In a long article today in the sports section, where it puts the sunday auto articles
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
the nytimes has a huge slam on Tesla, which is a PR disaster for the company. the article is by a national staff writer, who ended his tesla journey being flatbedded.
at the heart it says:
...At the Washington Auto Show last month, Dr. Chu, who has since announced his plan to leave office in the next few weeks, discussed the Energy Department’s goal of making electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids as cheap and convenient as comparable gasoline-powered cars. He continued: “We can’t say this everywhere in America yet, but driving by a gasoline station and smiling is something everyone should experience.”
I drove a state-of-the-art electric vehicle past a lot of gas stations. I wasn’t smiling. Instead, I spent nearly an hour at the Milford service plaza as the Tesla sucked electrons from the hitching post. When I continued my drive, the display read 185 miles, well beyond the distance I intended to cover before returning to the station the next morning for a recharge and returning to Manhattan.
I drove, slowly, to Stonington, Conn., for dinner and spent the night in Groton, a total distance of 79 miles. When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range — the electrical equivalent of someone having siphoned off more than two-thirds of the fuel that was in the tank when I parked. I called Tesla in California, and the official I woke up said I needed to “condition” the battery pack to restore the lost energy...
