New York Times Fires Back At Tesla

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- After a scathing blog post by Tesla Motors' (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk regarding New York Times (NYT) journalist John Broder's test drive of a Model S, Broder has fired back. He claims he did not "consciously set out to sabotage the test."

Mr. Broder has responded, refuting each of the points that Musk cited in his blog post. Musk showed data that indicated the Model S battery never ran out of energy, though Broder says the car shut down, and did not have enough power to move, or even release the parking brake.

In an article, Broder mentions that he has detailed notes on the trip, citing his dealings with several Tesla employees, including Christina Ra, a Tesla spokeswoman, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product planner.

How to Really Test Drive a Car

One of the more interesting defenses is that Tesla says the trip into Manhattan was unplanned, but Broder says this was "was planned from the beginning and known to Tesla personnel all along."

The controversy over the test drive has become a "he said, she said"-style spat, albeit one with billions of dollars and a company's reputation on the line. Broder's article affected the stock price of Tesla on Monday when it crossed the wires, prompting Musk to go on the offensive, calling the review a "fake."

NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn't actually charge to max & took a long detour.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2013

Musk has even said that Tesla was "pretty dumb to agree to an article by this guy."

@satinsilence Wow, no surprise that Broder wrote a hit piece on Tesla. I guess we were pretty dumb to agree to an article by this guy.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2013

--Written by Chris Ciaccia in New York

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