Here is Broder's reply, which doesn't really answers all questions.
This is a very suspect situation, especially when you take a look at the rest of his articles. The vast majority of them are about or related to the oil industry, which then raises the question as to why he was the one writing this article when there appears to be a conflict of interest.
Yes, I think the main question now starts with "why": why did he want the test to fail?
Also, here is Broder's second reply; http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-w.../ Again, he does not answer all of the questions, though he does address some satisfactorily from my point of view. At the end of the day to me it looks like Tesla had some bad communication issues leading to some of the problems Broder encountered, and that Broder placed clear factual errors in his story, which definitely seemed to have a "point of view" that he wanted to convey. Looks to me like Brodoer was biased, and that his bias led him to report inaccurately. Some of the falsehoods could have been on purpose, but I could also see them slipping in due to his preconception about what kind of story he wanted to write. Both are inexcusable really imho. Reviews are not opinion pieces, and accuracy should reign supreme here.