Good on you that you found value in the article, but I found it to be biased in favor of Tesla, and also find it sleazy that they didn't disclose their affiliation to Tesla.
Every Tesla owner is in the referral program. If you get something like 20 referrals at various times you could get a car. These guys own a Tesla, I think two of them between them, and so could eventually earn a car. Even I am a craven person who get something if you use my referral code to buy a tesla. You get $100 a year for at least 4 years in supercharger credits (that's like $400 a year in a regular gas car cause EVs get the equivalent of around 100 miles a gallon in gas :-)).
I get virtually nothing unless I get 20 of them - not sure of the current program but so far my life time total referrals is: 0. If you have questions and want to ask someone who has owned two different ones since 2012 ask me questions. If you want to buy a tesla, I have a referral link too, contact me via email on my account here, maybe hackernews wouldn't like me to just put it out here.
When someone makes a broad critical remark about an article, but provides no specifics, I tend to assume it is because they know the article was in fact accurate, but don't want to admit it.