Pull up a chair, get some popcorn. The fireworks have been flying fast and furious. New York Times reporter John Broder wrote a piece about his press loaner Tesla running out of juice. Tesla, already smarting from the perceived slight given them by BBC’s Top Gear, decided they needed an ace up their sleeve: data logging. Chairman Elon Musk penned a response that included detailed data logs from the press car. Broder responded in general terms and then with a point-by-point response to Musk’s charges. The NYT’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, has also chimed in with the opening of her own investigation. Notably, Musk hasn’t returned her calls. Her tentative conclusion? “I reject Mr. Musk’s central contention that Mr. Broder’s Sunday piece was faked in order to sabotage the Model S or the electric-car industry.” She also called for Tesla to release all the data they’ve got in proper machine-readable form, not just their pretty annotated graphs with the circles and the arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one.

Readers are welcome to read all the back and forth and come to their own conclusion. You can read lots of smart technical people trying to reconcile both stories at this Hacker News thread. The AtlanticWire has a reasonably concise pro-Broder analysis if you don’t want to wade through a comment thread. Also, Consumer Report’s recent article and members of the independent-of-Tesla owner’s forum seem to be corroborating some of the cold-weather battery issues raised by Broder’s original piece.

Instead of going any further down that path, let’s instead talk some more about this data logging business. The Tesla Model S has the capability of logging everything about the car: it’s GPS location, velocity, even the settings on the AC/heating system. Musk noted, in a tweet, that “Tesla data logging is only turned on with explicit written permission from customers, but after Top Gear BS, we always keep it on for media.” How nice.

On the one hand, bully for Tesla. As Jack Baruth has often noted, car reviewers are often not particularly good car drivers, and this gives Tesla the opportunity to correct the record. On the other hand… Tesla is working to destroy the career of a seasoned journalist based on their interpretation of the evidence in these logs. It’s heady stuff that might give any other car reviewer a moment of pause. We believe that journalists sign something acknowledging that Tesla is watching them. But everybody else is cool, right? Let’s talk about the privacy implications.

Say you’re a Tesla owner, you enable the data logging feature, and then you let your teenage kid drive the car without you around. Does she have an expectation of privacy? Should she? Okay, now you give your car to one of the valet parking stands which many trendy restaurants force you to use these days. The valet takes your car for a joyride and you’ve got the data. (Amusingly, the Tesla Roadster had a valet mode to diffuse exactly this concern, but the Model S doesn’t seem to.) Those are easy cases. How about your insurance company or a car rental company? Maybe they offer you a discount for driving sedately and providing them with the data. Or maybe they require data logging access, particularly if you’ve got a less than stellar driving record. Drive your car more than 10 mph over the speed limit and lose your coverage? Some companies already offer variations on this sort of usage-based insurance, but Tesla’s data logging facility enables it to go to quite a different level. One step further: can a court order subpoena your data? The possibilities are endless. Hacker types might also imagine protecting their privacy by modifying the car to falsify these records. Criminal types might see this as a way to generate an alibi. Heck, unethical car manufacturers could even falsify these records to falsely impugn negative reviewers. Write a positive review or risk your career!

I don’t want to pick on Tesla too much. Any car with a modern telematics system (GM OnStar, etc.) already has the facilities to support remote data logging. Let’s just hope Tesla gets more of these cars into reviewers’ hands. That’s the scientific method at play: results should be repeatable. If there’s a real problem, it can and should be discovered by having more eyes looking at it. CNN has already set out with another Tesla. More on this story as it develops.

[This blog piece emerged from a discussion with several of my graduate students. Everybody’s buzzing today with this news.]

What good is a twenty-minute test drive?

Well, when most sources are getting a ten minute test drive, a twenty-minute one is twice as good. The problem, of course, is that range is as critical to an electric car as tensile strength is to parachutes; it’s the difference between a safe arrival and a harrowing trip. Without a genuine understanding of the Tesla’s range, we can’t say for sure whether it’s a great car or not.

That doesn’t mean we can’t pass along what we did learn during those twenty minutes.

We can start with the physical envelope of the car, which is similar to that of a Jaguar XF. The looks are Jaguaresque as well. Franz von Holzhausen, the man responsible for styling the big Tesla, also penned the Solstice/Sky twins for General Motors. Like those ill-fated droptops, the Model S has a packaging issue; in this case, it’s rear headroom, which is sacrificed to the false god of faux-coupe styling. It’s a shame, because rear legroom is solid and with no central tunnel it might be possible for a third person to be reasonably comfortable in the middle seat. Tesla reps tell us that the panoramic roof, available as an option, actually adds an inch of headroom, but our car came without it, or the rear jump seats and their Fifty Shades of Grey-esque five point harnesses.

The Tesla Roadster was universally panned for interior quality. In the case of the Roadster, which was based on the pre-Bahar Lotus Elise, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The Model S, by contrast, is a significant leap forward. The interior design is unique and distinctive without straying too far from the interior template set by the E65 BMW and its imitative successors. The only parts-bin contribution we recognized was the Mercedes-Benz column shifter. Although there was a loose trim piece on a door, this was an early series production car and overall the interior meets the expectations of this market.

Since Tesla expects to reach out to the tech-savvy crowd, they’ve gone through the trouble of providing what looks like an iPad class-leading center display. It’s Internet-enabled and it’s big enough to read your favorite website site — or, if that doesn’t load, you can check out TTAC, as seen below. If you aren’t interested in looking at photographs of rope bondage, and want to do unmentionable things like change the temperature or radio station, it’s all done through the giant touch screen, and it works fairly well. How it will hold up in a decade’s time is perhaps the second most interesting variable.

Naturally, we don’t recommend that you surf and drive, particularly when operating a vehicle with this kind of power. Although the Model S won’t keep up with the warp drive Tesla Roadster Sport, it’s fast enough. The kind of “electric-motor thrust” often found in reviews of turbocharged German luxury sedans is provided here by an actual electric motor. Our test variant was the most powerful one; however, due to some misdeeds by other participants in this event we were hard-limited to 80 miles per hour. The Model S reaches that in a hurry, no sweat. As you’d expect from an electric vehicle, the power delivery is linear and muscular. There’s no sportbike-esque exhilaration like you’d find in the Roadster, but it’s plenty quick, launching forward with the same urgency of a Porsche Panamera. The Porker relies on all-wheel drive and the big  V8 to launch away from a light; in the Model S, that sensation of an aircraft carrier catapult launch is magnified. The power is always available right now in a way that no gasoline car can match. The flat-and-straight nature of our Missisauga, Ontario test venue prohibited us from verifying claims of totally flat, telepathic cornering and whatever superlatives have been heaped on this car. Unlike the Roadster, the Model S won’t be expected to corner like a go-kart or any of the things people typically have in mind when they say something corners like a go-kart.

The Model S is spacious, and quick, and stylish, and it’s frankly a wonder that it got built at all in an era when the engineering, design, assembly, and distribution of a motor vehicle happens at a scale that would impress the architects of the Manhattan Project. Until the range question is answered, however, it’s impossible to know whether this Manhattan Project produced a vehicle that is the bomb… or just a bomb, period.

Back in August of 2010, I had the chance to drive a Tesla Roadster. Since the Model X debuted yesterday, I thought I’d re-visit the original Roadster. It was a lot of fun to drive. Here’s my original review. Thanks to Peter W J Miller for the photography.

Green cars are not supposed to be like this. They’re for hairshirt wearing, bike path populating hippies who are obsessed with how few miles their produce has traveled and whether their child’s Kindergarten is LEED Certified Gold for eco-friendliness. The Tesla Roadster, is not this. It has as much in common with other green vehicles as zero calorie cola does with an all-night cocaine binge.

With an electric motor making 288-hp and 295 ft-lbs of torque, the Roadster can accelerate to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. Sure, that’s not as fast as, say, a Porsche 911 Turbo or Corvette ZR1, but the quoted times for those cars are only valid under perfect conditions and with a brutal launch technique that you would never replicate. On the other hand, the Tesla’s single gear transmission makes repeated sprints a cinch and ensures anything short of a Bugatti Veyron will end up getting shanked.

The fun doesn’t stop when the road starts to curve either. With its Lotus Elise-derived chassis and Bilstein suspension setup, the Tesla feels just like the the Elise albeit with a 700lb weight penalty. Heavier, of course, being a relative term, since the Elise weighs just less than 2,000 lbs, while the Tesla, electric drivetrain and all, is about 2,700 lbs.

With a manual steering system and a MOMO steering wheel the size of a saucer, weaving the Tesla through the corners is a sublime experience, as you grip the wheel tight around the perfectly placed indents (at 9 and 3, with one on each side that let your thumbs point skyward, the way they should), you can slice through turns like a sportbike knowing that the massive torque will be available right away as soon as you’re pointing straight again.

Like all great sports cars, the Tesla is best driven under ideal conditions; glass smooth roads, sunny weather and little traffic. The weather held up, and the car performed admirably in stop-and-go situations, but if you live in an area with poor roads, driving the Tesla might be a bit of a chore. The same amazing suspension that makes cornering so joyous also means that the Roadster is very stiff on all but the best pavement. Fire your chiropractor if you drive a Tesla over railway tracks, potholes or manhole covers, because the rigor mortis-like rigidity and high spring rates will re-align your spine multiple times per second with a sickening thud every time you meet an imperfection in the road.

In city driving, the Tesla is quiet, comfortable and easy to maneuver. The single speed transmission and the progressive nature of the regenerative braking (as opposed to the abrupt deceleration of the MINI E) means that the brakes only need to be used to bring the car to a dead stop mere feet from a stop sign. Slow speed movements and U turns require some muscle thanks to the manual steering, but one easily adapts to this quirk. The biggest obstacle you’ll have to deal with is the mob of people who will stop you at inopportune times to ask about the car.

Unlike many exotic cars, the Tesla seems to inspire goodwill among pedestrians and other motorists. In a town where Bentley Continental GTs and Audi R8s hardly merit a second look, the Tesla will induce the sort of hysteria that is seldom seen outside of a Justin Beiber concert. In the course of three hours I had: three mobs of screaming school children chase me down (including one who shouted “Oh by God a Lotus”); two guys offer me a home theatre system just to sit in the car (I declined); one young gentleman run out of a Foot Locker and ask if I was a movie star (no, but I have a wonderful radio face); untold camera phone snaps and plenty of smiles and waves from cyclists (who are notoriously unfriendly to motorists.) Prepare to feel like you’re on TMZ when you drive this car.

As incredible as it is, the Tesla has its drawbacks beyond the stiff ride. The interior looks good from afar, but for a $100,000 car, it could use some work. Exposed bolts and wiring are present in certain spots, and not in the industrial minimalist style that’s popular in modern architecture. One could say that it’s typical Lotus low-rent charm, but buyers of the Tesla are likely unaware of the spotty build quality that plagues that marque, and it seemed a little insidious to cut corners like this, especially in spots where most people wouldn’t look. The few storage spaces in the cabin are easily accessible, but poorly thought out. During the (admittedly frequent) bouts of rapid acceleration, Blackberries and iPods went flying al over the cabin.

Space inside is tight as well; if you take someone on a date in a Tesla, you’ll be getting fresh just by applying the parking brake or move your upper body. The awkward, race-car like ingress and egress means that female drivers or passengers should avoid wearing a skirt or a dress,lest they aspire to carry on Paris Hilton’s legacy. The trunk might provide enough room for an overnight bag, but the car’s limited range means you’ll be lucky to even get away for dinner.

With an estimated range of 250 miles, the Tesla isn’t a long distance car, and your mileage may vary. Keep your foot pinned to the floor and the number goes down. If you coast along and allow the regenerative braking to kick in, you might see a boost in range. Either way, a nice long drive isn’t in the cards at this stage of electric vehicle technology. Charging takes as little as 4 hours if you use a 220 volt outlet (like your washing machine or stove uses) and a proprietary quick charger sold by Tesla. With a standard outlet like your toaster or hair dryer uses, you’ll be charging your Roadster overnight at a minimum just to replenish the batteries.

Getting into a normal car at the end of the test drive was a major letdown. The whirr of the electric motor, the shove in the backside and the lithe little roadster that seems to pivot around you is replaced by a grunting, belching, feedback-free driving experience. Compared to a traditional gasoline automobile, the Tesla Roadster seems more spacecraft than sports car. Opinions on the viability of electric vehicles are still sharply divided, but driving the Tesla Roadster provides irrefutable evidence that the electrification of the automobile won’t be harmful for those who still enjoy driving.