I just re-read the NY article and the normal person did not at any point drive circles around in the parking lot when the range indicator was zero. They were told by the Tesla mechanic to "recondition" their car because the range indicator wasn't working, which in the NYT article was him sitting in the parking lot for half an hour.

As Tesla's own mechanics on the scene indicated that the car was malfunctioning, Tesla's subsequent PR statement has absolutely no value whatsoever and cannot be relied upon as an accurate statement of what the NYT driver did. Because Tesla's own people, on the scene, indicated that the Tesla software wasn't working, which means that the data Tesla used to "refute" the NYT article was simply untrustworthy, bad data.