No, they didn't. The best option would have been to test the car in real-world sub-freezing temperatures and to have worked out the bugs in how the system repo

No, they didn't. The best option would have been to test the car in real-world sub-freezing temperatures and to have worked out the bugs in how the system reports remaining charge to the driver. Obviously, lithium batteries are going to lose charge in colder weather - that's just physics, but the problem here was twofold: one, the inherent limitation in the battery itself, but perhaps more importantly, how the car reports available charge to the driver in those conditions. If the car tells me that I have 100 miles to drive, I should have 100 miles left to drive. That it does not is a design flaw, and one that should not have been overlooked, plain and simple.