But here's another perspective you haven't heard on the hyperactively reported news-bite news channels.

Awhile back I picked up some kids to take to a nearby soccer camp. One of them, Noah (9 years old), walked up to the rear door and for a moment just stood and stared at it. It was flush with the bodywork. He'd never encountered a door handle you touch to make electrically extend. But before I said anything, he touched it, it extended, and his eyes widened. I slightly smiled. While it would be smart aerodynamics for all cars in the future to have flush door handles like this, their charm factor (they also extend whenever you're nearby with the key) hasn't quite made it into those bad-news-sells 24-hour-a-day news alerts. Would I prefer the door handles worked perfectly 100 percent of the time instead of 98 percent of the time? Sure. Would I prefer a conventional door handle? Would you rather have a rotary telephone because your iPhone 5 is puzzling sometimes?

Same goes for rebooting the big infoscreen. Yes, I've rebooted ours many, many times — way more, I suspect, than Consumer Reports has. Sometimes it's because I've forgotten to put it into its screen-cleaning mode before a car wash, tapped too many things too fast, or just wanted to show somebody how easily it can be rebooted. All it involves is holding down the steering wheel's two thumb wheels, and after a few seconds the screen is refreshed (even while driving; it doesn't matter). Big deal. To perceive this as evidence that a car has "more than its share of problems" strikes me as the predictable bleating of the usual narrow minds confounded by the automobile's evolution into its new and starkly different role -- as a large, rolling, connected electronic device. Rebooting is commonplace with complex devices; is it suddenly headline news that an iPad-like device in a car might behave the same way?

The payoff here is the utterly fascinating range of possibilities the large multi-touchscreen offers. When I neared that soccer camp I mentioned, the boys in the back seat leaned forward and watched as I swiped through the Google Maps display, spread my fingers to zoom in on the satellite image of a playing field, and arrived with time to spare. By their silence, I could sense their intrigue. All three were fascinated by a car -- OK, a screen in a car -- but captivated nevertheless, and in a way that's directly counter-rhythm to the drumbeat of trends positing that tomorrow's young males will lose all interest in the automobile.

The actual Consumer Reports analysis of its car was the solid and fair work you'd expect. The disservice here is covered with the fingerprints of the reporting machines that compress a professional critique into a quick-digest sound bite designed not to inform you but to startle you -- and to make a buck. All the while, the reality of it is quietly hidden in the cracks of nuance, in the gleam in eyes of a 9-year-old boy who watches a door handle electrically extend to meet his hand.

More on our long-term2013 Tesla Model SP85+:

Our Car
Service life	33,700 mi
Average fuel economy	86.2 MPGE
CO2 emissions	N/A
EPA City/Hwy/Comb Fuel Econ	88/90/89 MPG
Energy consumption	39 kW-hr/100 mi
Unresolved problems	None
Maintenance cost	$0
Normal-wear cost	$0