Elon Musk: worse, worser, worsest. (And it's nothing new.)

If you like to write about bad business behavior - which, of course, I do - Elon Musk is surely the gift that keeps on giving. Trumpian in his grandiosity and malignity, Musk even looks like a Bond villain. Mr. X would fit. Or, because he is so cartoonish, maybe a Batman villain. 

Sometimes the gifts that Musk gives were born in the way back, gifts that were kicked off in yesteryear and eventually show up as horrors of present as these gifts are unwrapped.

Thus, I give you the Tesla recharge scandaleen.

About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing

to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments. (Source: Reuters)

The "Diversion Team" was tasked with canceling as many appointments that were related to range problems, appointments that were costing Tesla as much as $1K per visit. 

Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.

Turns out, the in-person service appointments weren't actually necessary, so Tesla owners weren't being put in any danger by not being able to come in and have their vehicles checked out. Those vehicles were just fine. It was the owners' expectations of how far they could go on a charge that were out of whack. And they were out of whack because they'd been set pretty high. 

Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts.

When the battery started to drift below 50% of its maximum charge, more accurate numbers for the remaining range were displayed. (To keep the Teslas from coming to a dead stop because of a rapid drop off in the battery's juice, "Teslas were designed with a 'safety buffer,' allowing about 15 miles (24 km) of additional range even after the dash readout showed an empty battery.")

The order to show the rosiest of range estimates came from none other than Elon Musk. 

“Elon wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged,” the person said, adding: “When you buy a car off the lot seeing 350-mile, 400-mile range, it makes you feel good.”

No thought given to that feel good dissipates pretty quickly when you get behind the wheel and find that if it's hotter out, or colder out, or whateverer out, that 350-mile or 400-mile range was going to drop. (It's mostly cold weather that impacts range, but there are other impacts: heat, lead foot driving, AC, headwinds.) And drivers would understandably think there was something wrong with the car when they weren't getting the mileage that was advertised. 

The miles you get per battery charge is like MPG, an important consideration when buying an electric vehicle. But it's more important than MPG because there are a lot more gas stations around for internal combustion vehicles than there are charging stations. And charging takes more time - it can take considerably more time - to fill 'er up. When it comes to EVs, "range anxiety – the fear of running out of power before reaching a charger – has been a primary obstacle to boosting electric-vehicle sales."

Reuters could not determine whether Tesla still uses algorithms that boost in-dash range estimates. But automotive testers and regulators continue to flag the company for exaggerating the distance its vehicles can travel before their batteries run out.

And Tesla has been fined by the South Korean government for advertising range that could plummet to half what's advertised in cold weather. 

Tesla is (supposedly) working to improve the range info on its dashboard and in its marketing communications. Which will just catch them up to the other EV producers, which are more accurate in their range estimates. While many of their estimates were still off, one study showed that Tesla's estimates were double the average "off" of other EV makers. 

Jonathan Elfalan is the "vehicle testing director" for Edmunds.com, a leading automotive site. 

“They've gotten really good at exploiting the rule book and maximizing certain points to work in their favor involving EPA tests,” Elfalan told Reuters. The practice can “misrepresent what their customers will experience with their vehicles.”

The more we learn about Elon Musk, the more it goes from worse, to worse, to worsest. Am I the only one who'd be delighted to hear learn that Elon Musk, tootling along in the latest Tesla model, ran out of juice and ended up stranded on the side of the highway? I might even get out my xylophone and tap out a bit of "Ode to Joy."