New York Times Negative Review Cost Tesla $100 Million

According to Tesla Motors co-founder and CEO Elon Musk, the controversial review of the Model S published by The New York Times has cost the Company close to $100 million. Many customers cancelled their orders after reading the article that accused Tesla of lying about the Model S real range.

Tesla confronted New York Times reporter John Broder and provided the car’s log file that proved it had actually done what Tesla claims it is capable of. NY Times then apologized and admitted their reviewer didn’t keep proper track of his numbers, but the damage had been done.

“We did actually get a lot of cancellations as a result of the New York Times article,” Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “It probably affected us to the tune of tens of millions, to the order of $100 million, so it’s not trivial… I would say that refers more to the valuation of the company. It wasn’t as though there were 1,000 cancellations just due to The New York Times article. There were probably a few hundred.”

Losing sales wasn’t the only result of NYT’s negative review. The day after the article was published, Tesla shares fell from $39.48 to $34.43. Talk about the power of the press!

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