Palo Alto, California-based Tesla Motors hit a speed bump on the East Coast Sunday when a New York Times reviewer of its Model S luxury sedan wrote of the electric car being towed during a test drive.

The last leg of John M. Broder’s icy-cold 200-mile journey between Washington D.C. and Boston was made on the back of a flat-bed truck after the car ran out of battery power that was supposed to take the car at least 265 miles. The Times reporter sarcastically noted, “Of course, mileage may vary.”

Broder said he took all the recommended precautions to keep Motor Trend Magazine’s 2013 Car of the Year properly juiced: he kept his speed down, turned the temperature  down low, stayed in the slow lane with the cruise control at 54 miles per hour and charged his car for an hour in transit. Regardless, the car told him it was using power at an alarming rate and he didn’t make it to journey’s end.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said it was Broder’s own fault and he should have read the instruction book first. The billionaire co-founder of PayPal and space vehicle maker SpaceX called Broder’s article a “fake” review and, using data from the car’s black box, rebutted many of the reporter’s claims.

Musk blogged that cruise control was never set at 54 and that Broder drove between 65 and 81 mph. The interior car temperature was kept at a toasty72, and Broder drove around lost for awhile. He said the reporter unplugged the car before it was fully charged (“who would do that?”) and then drove past a charging station while the car was telling him he was running low on power. The battery wasn’t out of juice when he called for a tow truck, Musk said, but Broder apparently didn’t know that.

Musk posted annotated screen shots of his data. 

The electric car industry and Tesla are having a challenging infancy. Tesla is days away from releasing fourth-quarter financial statements and it should include indications of how well the company’s second model—the Roadster was first—is selling.  

After Broder’s review was reviewed online by Musk, the New York Times public editor and other outside media weighed in with a mixed verdict, while other reviewers reviewed all the reviews (“The squabble between Musk and Broder has everything to do with the personalities and prejudices of its participants and relatively little to do with the Model S or electric vehicles themselves.”)

Tesla stock bolted 6% higher in one day.

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk Is Right to Battle Bad Review of the Model S, Experts Say (by John Boudreau, San Jose Mercury News)

NYT's Public Editor Slams Tesla Test Drive (by Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times)

Test Drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S (by  Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN Money)

Problems with Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test (by Margaret Sullivan, New York Times)

Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway (by John M. Broder, New York Times)