Although the Tesla has won its fair share of fans in both the automotive and tech communities, there still remains a bit of skepticism around its ability to truly replace gas cars.
Some of that skepticism is focused on the car's reliability in cold weather conditions, a topic controversially covered by the New York Times last year in a review that pegged performance issues with the Model S, in part, to cold weather.
NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn't actually charge to max & took a long detour.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2013
If you believe the story of Sweden's Jens Kratholm, a long-time Tesla owner, however, the car suffers no ill effects when subjected to the cold -- even extreme cold.
Posting Kratholm's story on its website on Wednesday, Tesla says that the Swedish ophthalmologist owns the most Teslas of any individual in the world -- a Model S and six Roadsters (the first model sold by Tesla). Given that bit of information, as well as his notoriously cold location, Kratholm appears to be a reliable person to render an informed opinion on Tesla's abilities in the cold.
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Kratholm took his Model S out this past December to a hotel (an "ice" hotel, no less), where the temperature dipped to -40 degrees. According to the report, Kratholm claims, "trains couldn’t operate and the diesel in the buses froze. But the Model S was just fine."
Tesla has always maintained that its vehicles perform well in cold weather conditions. A full year before the New York Times review, the company distributed a video showing the Model S making its way through a snowy obstacle course. And in the months following the review, Tesla released footage (see above) challenging any doubts about the car's cold weather abilities by conducting a sub-zero temperature demonstration in Norway.
Kratholm also claims that the winter range of the car is about the same as its summer range. “These cars, they were made for the temperatures, for the snow and the ice that we have,” Ellen Røsnes, Kratholm's wife, told the automaker.
Of course, this glowing account of the electric car's performance in the freezing confines of Sweden comes via Tesla itself, so there will still be those who remain unconvinced. Nevertheless, Kratholm's tale of Tesla's performance in extreme cold, no matter the source, is hard to dismiss out of hand.