Another Test Drive Of The Tesla Model S Is Going Badly

Dan Edmunds, the Director of Vehicle Testing for the automotive resource site Edmunds, is test driving the Tesla Model S.

It is not going well.

According to Edmunds' Twitter feed, the car's 17-inch touchscreen, which controls just about everything in the Model S (including door locks, windows, lighting, temperature, and volume) has gone black:

The car is still drivable, but without the use of the radio, navigation, or phone functions. A few minutes later, he tweeted:

Last September, Edmunds wrote an overall positive review of the Model S, and liked the touchscreen:

But the star of the interior is the massive touchscreen that dominates the center stack. Correction: It is the center stack. Looking for all the world like a double-size iPad, every single function that isn't on the steering stalks and door switches is found here. And it behaves like an iPad, too.

A flick of your finger makes it a back-up camera, a navigation screen and a 3G Web browser. This is where you go to pair phones, tune the stereo, adjust the climate control, tweak the suspension and steering settings, open the sunroof, peruse the trip computer and monitor battery status. It's all here, and as far as we can tell it all continues to work when the car is moving.

However the rest of the test goes, this is bad news for Tesla. Last week, CEO Elon Musk finally asked to "bury the hatchet" with the New York Times over a controversial review of the electric Model S.

The Times piece centered on the range of the electric car, which reviewer John Broder claimed fell far short of what Tesla promised. But limited range (especially in winter) is part of the tradeoff with an electric car.

Controls that do not work are not.

Update: Apparently, Edmunds is still having trouble getting the screen working: