Significant range drop overnight in cold weather. No range recovery despite battery 'conditioning'.
That's not the way I read it. My empirical observation from driving the S this winter is that when the battery is cold-soaked the Rated range underreports what the battery is capable of delivering. In order to access this 'hidden' range, you merely drive the car and the battery warms up through a combination of active pack heating and the recovery of waste heat from battery, inverter and motor due to driving. You won't necessarily see the Rated range increase, but you will see the Rated range drop more slowly than expected. So, for example, you might drive 30 miles showing a usage of 400wH/mi, while the Rated range display only drops 20 miles (these are not actual numbers, but they are representative of what I've seen).
This is a fairly subtle point, and not one I'd expect a neophyte EV driver to understand.
Instead of driving, Broder attempted to condition the battery while sitting in a stationary car, not plugged in. This is counterproductive: he used up some charge and went zero miles. He probably misunderstood Tesla's attempt to explain what he could expect were he to condition the battery on shore power, or to a lesser extent by just driving toward his destination while the battery warmed up some. It's also possible, though I'd be flabbergasted if it were true, that Tesla told him over the phone to sit there with the car on and the climate control running, to 'condition' the battery. More likely is that there was some combination of Broder's having mis-reported what the car was telling him, Tesla misinterpreting what Broder was saying, and Broder misinterpreting Tesla's instructions. It's the old telephone game, writ large on the NYT's stage.
I don't blame Broder for being confused: like I said, this is fairly subtle stuff and Tesla has been less than forthcoming with solid information about how the Model S behaves in the cold. I do blame Broder for never charging the car fully and for failing to apply at the end of the trip what he had already learned about cold weather driving. Mostly I blame him for failing to take any responsibility for the end result of his actions, whether he was just misguided or actively seeking a sensational photo opp.