Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his electric car company will consider new strategies to recoup market value and increase demand, citing a loss of about $100 million in sales and cancelled orders due to a critical review of the Model S sedan by The New York Times earlier this month.
The Times review claimed the electric car ran out of battery due to cold weather before it could reach the closest charging station in a test drive between Washington, D.C. and Boston meant to assess the network of Tesla charging stations in place along the east coast.
"We have seen a few hundred cancellations that are due to the NYT piece and slightly lowered demand in the U.S. Northeast region," Musk told Reuters in an email.
Since the publication of The Times' story Feb. 8, shares of Tesla have fallen 13 percent and the company slipped 1.4 percent on the S&P 500 index, the report stated.
In the email to Reuters, Musk said between $100 million and $200 million of Tesla's market drop was attributed to The Times article.
"The Tesla team and I are brainstorming this week how to correct the misperception that they have created in the market about how well our car performs in cold weather," Musk wrote. "That too, will take money and time."
Last week Musk said the company would be turning a profit in the first quarter of this year. Musk's presence in the news has increased since The Times story ran. The CEO took to Twitter and the official Tesla blog to rebut elements of The Times article, at one point calling it "fake."
In a reactionary piece, the writer, John Broder, denied he had faked anything and stood by his story.
In an assessment of the story, The New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan said Broder took "casual and imprecise notes" during his test drive, as reported by Reuters.
But she also noted the vehicle data logs Musk used in his defense were "sometimes quite misleading," coming to the conclusions that ""there is still plenty to argue about and few conclusions that are unassailable."
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