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Tesla Motors Battles the New York Times
redletterdave writes "Days after the New York Times released a brutal review of Tesla's electric Model S sedan, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has fired back, claiming the Times article was completely bogus and misleading. In the article in question, Times writer John Broder took the Tesla Model S on a test drive from Washington to Boston, stopping at various service plazas in Delaware and Connecticut well within the projected 265-mile range of the car, as rated by the EPA. However, Broder's Tesla Model S, despite a heftier 85 kilowatt-hour battery for an extra 100 miles of range in 'ideal conditions,' died shortly before reaching its final destination. Broder blames the cold weather and heating issues for his abridged trip; Musk, however, claims the driver did not follow Tesla's instructions, which is why his trip was cut so short. 'We've taken great pains to ensure that the car works very well in the cold, which is why we're so incensed by this ridiculous article,' Musk said."
WTF? Isn't it common sense to fully charge an electric car before embarking on a journey to test the car's range? This guy should be fired from the NYT.
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Well, if the logs to show that he didnt fully charge the battery.. then he didnt fully charge the battery.
"His name was James Damore."
Have you ever read how EPA estimates are done? You put a car on a dyno and run it through some fanciful schedule for what a "trip" should consist of. Too many hills, some extra wind, or a heavy foot will heavily skew real-world numbers. If your car gets 50mpg, what sane person would pump one gallon of gas and set out across the desert for the next gas station, 50 miles away. I get the iPhone joke, but if you're trying to max the car's economy, you very well could be driving it the wrong way.
the popular assumption with regenerative braking is that it's actually better because you'll regenerate more power as you brake.
You're fired. Pack up your shit and get out.
So the Tesla is only suitable for people who:
1) can be certain of a full charge every time they leave the house; 2) never take detours, or get forced into detours by road construction; 3) never go above the speed limit;
Given that, I'm absolutely shocked that this isn't already a mass-market blockbuster - it's clearly suitable for all the common use cases!
To be fair, if you do start with a non-full tank, drive longer distances or raise the RPM (by driving it at higher speeds) to a fuel-driven car engine, you can expect that you may not be able to reach the next petrol station (i.e. what you describe is, in principle, not specific to electric cars). The difference is in the advertised range.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Overnight charges before a short trip are unreasonable
Meh, my Porsche has a rated range of about 350 miles. That's really not all that much further than the Tesla S. And according to what I average, with my driving style its closer to 317.
Yet, I don't worry much about making "short trips" of a couple hundred miles even if the tank is only half full when I set out, for the simple reason that I am really rarely more than a couple dozen miles from a place to fill up, and there is pretty much always a gas station before any large stretches of highway.
That is really all the issue here with the Tesla. Its not the range so much that is a problem, but the availability of places to refill. If I can quick charge a Tesla S for 200 miles pretty much anywhere then I'll never have to do an overnight charge to get the 265 absolute max.
I'm not sure how ubiquitous fast-charge stations are for the tesla or electric cars in general in new york... or anywhere else for that matter. But if they can get even a good fraction of the penetration that regular gas stations have, the tesla's range is already good enough for most people. And its only going to get better.
The car was not fully-charged
The car may not have been fully charged, but it was charged to the point where it displayed "Charging Complete" (which is apparently about 90% charge), at which point the estimated range displayed by the car should have covered the distance to his destination with no problems.
and the journalist took a detour from the given route.
A two-mile detour into Manhattan. Which he was thinking might actually increase the range, seeing that air resistance is lower at slower speeds, and regenerative braking can help recoup much of the energy lost by a gasoline-powered car during stop-and-go driving. Have you noticed how hybrids have a higher MPG for city driving vs. highway, whereas gas-powered cars have a higher MPG for highway vs. city? It turns out that he was wrong--driving at a slower speed is what saves energy, not the stop-and-go driving of going through a city, but a two mile detour is hardly the make or break thing that Musk is making it out to be.
It wasn't fully charged, but he didn't need it to be fully charged. It had plenty of charge indicated to get him to the next charging station.
He charged until the computer said he had sufficient juice for his planned route and driving style (assuming the Tesla is like my LEAF, the car estimates your driving efficiency based on your past driving). Then he took a longer route and drove more aggressively. Surprise, surprise, the charge the computer (correctly) estimated was sufficient for one route and style was not enough for another route and style.
This is like putting barely enough gasoline in your car for the planned journey and then taking a longer trip and wondering why you ran out of gas. The problem is between the seat and the steering wheel.
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Since I'm not rich enough to afford one of these, yet I still have two cars, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I wouldn't expect people to use their electric luxury car for long trips. Hell, we take our less-efficient car (minivan) on trips because it is more comfortable. It seems to me that the Times was looking for a way to fail the car to make their story better. Most of us would probably commute in this thing.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I used to have a 2005 BMW. Whenever I filled it up it would show 330 miles to empty. Yet after 200 city miles the tank would be dry. Amazingly the car was not able to see the future and know how many lights I'd have to stop at. What a crap car. I'll write a scathing article about it.
Whose fault it is is somewhat irrelevant. Do you want a car that you have to remember to plug-in overnight and which you have to carefully plan your trips to ensure that you can get to the next refuelling station? Even if you fully understand how they work and their limitations you can easily make a mistake by forgetting to plug it in and suddenly you can't drive to work the next day because it takes several hours to charge.
You may not have heard about it, but plenty of other people did when Tesla's stock price plummeted 2.5% moments after the review was uploaded to New York Times's website. The damage was immediate. In other words, Tesla lost $100 Million in capital in a matter of minutes because of the New York Times's review. That could be a devastating libel claim, but in the mean time, Tesla has to deal with $100 million fewer dollars.
Tesla didnt lose shit. Stock exchange speculators did.
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