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It's not surprising that the Tesla furor should take the shape of political argument. Green transportation is bound up in debates about fossil fuels, climate change and subsidies. And the idea of data vs. truthiness as a political fight--the defense of Enlightenment reason--became a meme in Election 2012. Bill Clinton talked "arithmetic"; Times poll analyst Nate Silver bested pundits who relied on their guts; a right-wing rearguard tried to rejigger the "skewed" polls. During election night on Fox News, when Karl Rove disputed the decisive call on Ohio, anchor Megyn Kelly asked, "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?"
Tesla's defense played into this zeitgeist--Vindicated! By arithmetic!--but it also showed the limits of raw data. Broder ran out of electrons, it seems, partly because he drove the car like a novice. But Musk's defensive data only reinforced the impression that the car needs to be driven by more than a novice. And data can't divine a reviewer's intentions, unless Tesla has brain monitors we don't know about.
Still, by becoming its own publisher, Tesla recast its bad press on its own terms. This could be a model for unfairly maligned subjects to defend themselves--or for companies to misleadingly data-dump their way out of trouble. Either way, expect companies to take notice, especially after this latest string of corporate p.r. fiascoes: Carnival's crippled ship limping into port with a cargo of sewage, Burger King and Jeep having their Twitter accounts hacked, horse meat showing up in European beef products. Bad news, it seems, is an endlessly renewable resource.