Because it doesn't perform terribly if you're not incompetent in how you use it, but that's not the picture that the NY Times article put into everyone's minds,

Because it doesn't perform terribly if you're not incompetent in how you use it, but that's not the picture that the NY Times article put into everyone's minds, and that's a very large problem for Tesla. It requires that you plug it in at night, and that you charge it to have a longer range than your total trip distance, and add a little range to that if you know you're going to use power for things like the cabin heater. Every Tesla owner is well aware of this before they start driving it, and it's pretty much in line with other battery powered devices, and so should be intuitive to anyone who's very familiar with a laptop. There are a good number of owners in much colder climates who are using theirs quite happily, and don't feel it performs terribly in cold weather. The NY Times has a responsibility to portray things accurately, because they have a huge amount of power. It's not acceptable to have a casual attitude towards factual accuracy in that line of work.