[b1daly]

While it does seem Musk might actually feel personally aggrieved, I see the situation as follows: In spite of a lot of progress on making a fully electric car, the Tesla S has obvious shortcomings as a replacement for an ICE car. Mainly, it requires constant vigilance to maintain the battery, and the battery is subject to unpredictable behavior with regards to predicted range and maintaining a charge, which are worsened by cold.

These weaknesses were illustrated by the original NYT article, and no amount of spin, or "better" reporting can change this.

Musk knows that once a meme gets started along the lines of ""Tesla is the car that leaves you stranded unpredictably and doesn't work in cold climate" gets started, it is game over for reaching a mass market. So the story is a potential existential threat to the company, requiring maximum response. Losing credibility with some of the HN crowd is not such a threat, the market they represent is tiny.

He mainly needed to bring up doubts about the story enough to prevent it from becoming a defining story on the S. It might not have been pretty, but in this I would say he succeeded.