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> Elon might have been better off concentrating on this point more, rather than some of the smaller inaccuracies.

I agree. Often when you're arguing, you have a really strong argument and a few weaker ones. You'd think that making both the strong argument and the weaker ones would be the best case, (ie, that the strength of your case equals the sum of the strength of its components). In fact, in public discourse often the opposite is true. People will knock down your weaker arguments, making you and your case look bad. So I think the strength of your case might actually be closer to the minimum of the strength of its components.

For this reason, Elon would likely have been better off to emphasize and shore up his strongest argument--that Broder knowingly did not charge enough at Norwich--rather than try and nickle and dime Broder on a lot of smaller issues.

Worse than that: imagine you have one absolutely damning issue and four weak ones. If the weak ones are swatted away one-by-one or muddled, the reader doesn't even remember the damning one that remains. It even comes off as "well, the person making the accusation prefered to spend time talking about the weak ones while he could have been talking about the ostensibly strong one, so how strong could it really have been?"

I would argue it's nearly always best, both rhetorically and analytically, to reconstruct your opponent's case as generously and sympathetically as possible, and then bear down very hard on your strong point.

> In fact, in public discourse often the opposite is true.

This isn't just true in public discourse by the way. It's true in proposal/grant writing, legal argumentation, or even just arguing with your parents. You should always lead with your strongest arguments, and think very carefully before including any weak ones. Humans are just bad at doing weighted analysis of persuasive arguments. Say you have an argument, with three points, with weights: 0.9, 0.05, and 0.05. Your opponent destroying your two weak arguments is going to convince the reader or decision maker far more than the 0.1 combined weight of the arguments.

What you say resonates very much with my experiences too.

Do you happen to have book recommendations maybe that talk about this at a greater length?

Argument and rhetoric is a whole field of study. Prof. David Zarefsky at Northwestern has a good set of lectures on the subject which are on Amazon. The outline is here: http://thefulldialectician.synthasite.com/resources/ZAREFSKY...

My exposure to the subject has been in the legal context. This is a popular textbook on legal argumentation: Gardner, Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy. Someone has an older edition for cheap on EBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGAL-ARGUMENT-THE-STRUCTURE-AN-/310.... The text is quite general, not all that specific to the legal context.

Thanks very much! I'll definitely look into these.

Earlier in the article, Broder claims that Tesla blamed the mileage inaccuracies on a computer glitch, and that some battery reconditioning would restore the range lost overnight. So it's not impossible that either he, or Tesla, (or both) believed the mileage readout to be inaccurately low, caused by a bug triggered by low temperature readings. I think the author implies that this was the situation, but it is indeed vague. Unless a transcript of the phone calls is released, this will probably remain a contentious point forever.

That all comes down to what Broder claims someone told him on a phone call. Except he doesn't quote them verbatim and never provides the name(s) of the people he was talking to.

Given all that they had at stake, namely a disastrous NY Times review, how likely is it that Tesla would knowingly say "Oh, your reading says 30 miles, but you have more than twice that still to travel? Meh, it's probably just a computer glitch. Carry on."

Not bloody likely.

Except he doesn't quote them verbatim and never provides the name(s) of the people he was talking to.

Well, he can't provide all possible data all at once in the original article.

Since your post, he has said who he was talking to: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-w...

Interesting. Here's the relevant bit:

"[Quoting Elon]'The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.'

"The Tesla personnel whom I consulted over the phone – Ms. Ra and Mr. Merendino – told me to leave it connected for an hour, and after that the lost range would be restored. I did not ignore their advice."

If I had to guess, I'd bet they talked to him on the phone, saying "Try plugging it in for an hour, that should fix it", figuring after an hour he would call them back if it needed more charge. He didn't call them back, and instead set out knowing he was about to be stranded and have a great story, since he could always claim "Well I followed their advice to the letter! It's their fault!"

I think you've missed the most important part of that paragraph:

>"...Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford."

Tesla themselves cleared Broder to make the trip. If I was driving a BMW with a BMW engineer in the front seat, and he told me that I would be able to make my journey despite the "empty" or "check engine" lights flashing, I would believe him and keep driving. I don't see why this scenario is any different.

To people who say that Broder is just making it up, and that Tesla never cleared him to make the journey, I ask you this: why won't Musk release the call logs to prove it?

Because it's nearly impossible to prove a negative.

Releasing the call logs would easily prove whether or not he was cleared in those phone calls.

>Because the estimated range when he left that charging station was less than he needed to reach his destination and he knew damn well that that was the case.

But the Times article does say exactly that, right? "The displayed range never reached the number of miles remaining to Milford."

> (How he convinced the Tesla people to "clear" him at that point is a mystery that hasn't been followed up on by either party.)

It's interesting that you choose that wording, that Broder "convinced" Tesla to clear him rather than Tesla telling him what to do and giving him the go-ahead after an hour.