Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk Lays Out His Evidence That NYT Tesla Test Drive Was Staged
mykepredko writes "Tesla Motors CEO and founder Elon Musk definitely isn't the best guy to try to pull a fast one on. The visionary entrepreneur set Twitter a titter when he claimed earlier this week that New York Times writer John Broder had fudged details about the Tesla Models S car's range in cold weather, resulting in what he termed a 'fake' article. Musk promised evidence, and now he has delivered, via the official Tesla blog."
Did John Broder think that in a car as sophisticated as the Tesla they wouldn't keep event the simplest of logs? My home router keeps more detail than it took to debunk this story. When I'm 30 miles from stranded my far less sophisticated Volt starts nagging and the Nav system offers "Plot a course to the nearest refueling point?" If you ignore this for half an hour, I assume you run out of gas. I'll never know.
Fake news enthusiasts should probably form a club so they can bounce ideas off one another and prevent embarrassingly weak lies from getting into print. It makes them all look... lame.
The blog entry explains that the logging is not done on consumer vehicles without prior consent, but that this is always turned on for the press, after Tesla was scammed by Top Gear.
Tesla monitors cars remotely now to warn owners who are in danger of bricking the batteries by not keeping them charged. And while you might ask whether you can trust them not to monitor where you go if you buy a car from them, you should certainly expect them to use the capability if it's THEIR test car and you're writing a review of it.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
But, I bet that oil company envelope he got under the table will make his humiliation more palatable.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Why let facts get in the way of a good story?
Anyone who is surprised to see this from a newspaper shouldn't be. They aren't in the business of telling the news - they're in the business of selling papers and putting advertising in front of eyeballs.
Unfortunately.
not to worry, sir, its normal. please type 'ifconfig' and read back its contents for me and I'll check on its next-hop adjacency while you do that.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
They apparently fudged a test of the vehicle to make it seem like it went from having a decent charge to being completely dead within a very short timeframe. I think it was Clarkson driving, and he gave a very bad review of the car.
That was never an issue. The issue was that Broder did not charge it fully and then ran it down. IOW, the tow truck driver is simply confirming what everybody agrees on.
Pretty much the same thing. They implied that the car could break down inside its range and showed the staff pushing a functional car back to the garage.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
John Broder works for the New York Times. They don't lie. Who do you trust more, a legitimate journalist or a corporate CEO? Seriously, people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Musk was smart -- the logs don't lie, and they don't jibe with what the reporter said. Now, this was in print, in the new York Times -- I'd be fascinated to have seen the same story reported with in-car cameras. I have a funny feeling it would turn out differently.
And for Top Gear to film a bunch of people pushing the Tesla they were test-driving -- implying that it had run out of go, when in fact it still had some juice left -- that's just rotten. Entertaining TV, but crummy journalism, and cheap.
print? there's no printer onboard.
instead, they use TELNET
TEsla's Logging NETwork
(its not secure, of course)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Top Gear had a pre-scripted show, where they decided in the end that the Tesla would run out of power, so they had a shot of their people pushing the car, even though it still had plenty of power in its batteries. Top Gear claimed it was OK doing this, because they were showing something that could happen, even though it didn't.
When you're citing a Gawker Media site as a reference, please forgive me if my opinion is not swayed.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Ten years ago it was the car companies, now it's the automotive press that seems determined to hasten its demise. Sad.
To reduce crime, make fewer things against the law.
Being that you actually have to turn this feature on yourself, I'd say that amounts to prior consent...
The Top Gear scam, as admitted by Top Gear's producers, was that they had already decided on the result AND written the script before receiving the vehicles. Yes, it's entertainment, yes I love the show too, and yes, Tesla's response wasn't the greatest (lawsuit subsequently thrown out for legal technicalities despite judge confirming intentional lies by Top Gear), but come on they were presenting a review as if it was a result of testing, not of scripting...
RTFA, but basically they wrote a scripted event showing the car running out of energy prior to actually testing the car. Tesla found out about it when Top Gear left a copy of the script while the car was being tested.
Musk is not claiming that the car still had a charge. If you RTFS you'd see that the accusation is that the reporter purposely did not charge the car and that is why it ran out of electricity. This occurred after behavior was logged that appeared to indicate an attempt to drive the car in circles in a parking lot until it died. When that failed, it was minimally charged and driven until it died on the road. Assuming the Tesla data is accurate, it doesn't disagree with your claims from the tow company and there's no reason to think there's anything more to it than what Musk describes.
The vehicle coasted on a freeway off-ramp but then become unmovable once stopped? ..did I miss a step somewhere?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading the post above, I'm guessing you missed the part where he put the parking brake on?
Theory: Broder didn't realize the logging capabilities of the car, and when the Model S' software ui initially supported his internal baises he took liberties with the truth. By "documenting" his experience through Tesla support he attempted to falsely add credence to what would be a traffic generating, "anti-electric" review masked in the journalistic repute of the NYT.
Firstly, all of Broder's excessive winging about the cold weather (I think) was designed to subtly imply that the Model S doesn't work in the cold. You future buyer, will be cold and your car will break. This is why Musk had to address the cold weather link directly in the evidence blog posting.
Secondly. Broder likely couldn't have fathomed that every parameter in the car was being logged. Very specific details add credibility and character to a story. They make the author appear diligent, and one who gives great attention to detail. In the past such details were a "literary tool used to bend the story. Now thanks to data driven engineering words and truth in such matters should align more closely.
Lastly. For a man who may or may not have a bias against electric vehicles (cars at least), the observation that "the estimated range was falling faster than miles were accumulating" at the outset of the author's journey might have set the tone of the coming review. With all the incessant calls to Tesla support to document all the "trouble", Broder had plenty of documentation to support his (what was IMHO a) journalistic malignment. This angle also had the added benefit of generating views for NYT - plus through the courtesy of Tesla arranging a tow - the money shot.
I hope NYT has the ethical chops to do what they must.
(comment posted first at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220302)
Read the blog post, it takes 2 minutes. He did run out of charge, in fact he KNEW he was going to run out of charge because he took a 61 mile drive with a 32 mile reading on the charge indicator. During that drive he drove past several charging stations.
He also drove around in circles in a parking lot trying to make it run out of juice at one point.
The writer had an agenda, and he should have known they would log the data and prove him a liar. Musk was incensed by the Top Gear article and proclaimed that he would never let a journalist have a car without logging enabled.
Frankly the writer of the article should be fired, this evidence is very damning.
Having the brake default to "on" when the battery is dead is a safety engineering issue. Just like in a truck you need air pressure to take the brakes OFF, not to apply them. If the battery fails and the emergency brake is the only thing keeping a car parked on a hill, you want the car to stay where it is. Now I will agree that there is probably a need for some sort of "manual release" that can be used by towing companies.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That Jalopnik article has since been updated, pointing out how both Musk and Broder could be correct.
UPDATE: A source who has seen the data logs explains how it's possible how Broder and Musk could both be truthful but sort of wrong. The high-voltage battery in the pack, allegedly, had enough power to move the car a much greater distance than needed to move the car onto a flatbed, maybe as far as five miles, but the 12V battery that powers the accessories and gets its juice from the high voltage battery shut down when Broder pulled into the service station.
When Broder decided to turn the car off, which was a mistake, the parking brake (operated by the 12V battery) was rendered unusable. If Broder was told not to turn the car off, it's his mistake. If Tesla told him to do it, or didn't inform him he shouldn't do it, then it's their mistake.
According to TFA, Consumer Reports already did a review of the car.
Being that you actually have to turn this feature on yourself, I'd say that amounts to prior consent...
Yea, ok, I can buy that. Point conceded.
The Top Gear scam, as admitted by Top Gear's producers, was that they had already decided on the result AND written the script before receiving the vehicles. Yes, it's entertainment, yes I love the show too, and yes, Tesla's response wasn't the greatest (lawsuit subsequently thrown out for legal technicalities despite judge confirming intentional lies by Top Gear), but come on they were presenting a review as if it was a result of testing, not of scripting...
I still maintain that anyone who watches Top Gear regularly already knew it was a rigged game.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This is not the first story that calls into question the NY Times accuracy/impartiality on tech related news stories.
Actually I watched that show, what they claimed was that at a track (where one might want to drive the roadster) while driving at track speeds you get very little range. Which is probably true since it is true of gas cars as well. The difference being the refueling time.
There is no doubt that they sensationalized the filming of it, as they do (this is top gear after all)... but the point Clarkson made was that you got a very short amount of track time out of a car that is really built for the track, followed by having to recharge rather than just gas up.
Replying to a bit of a troll, but:
Consumer reports basically the same route.
Motor trend car of the year 2013
The brake isn't held on or off by electric power, because that would be illegal.
What happens is that a surprisingly small electric motor (about the size of an electric window motor) tensions up the perfectly ordinary mechanical handbrake mechanism through a screw jack. The friction of the screw is sufficient to stop the tension in the brake cables slackening it off.
This is pretty common on cars now, for some reason. I think they're fairly horrible to use and make hill starts difficult.
Not a day goes by that some one says "I did this" or "I did that" and the end result is "I didn't work". Yet going back to a nice log file in fact shows "you didn't do that" and "you actually did this, causing your issue". I'm not sure when people will learn that you cannot lie about what you did when everything you do is logged, but its awesome to point it out when they flat out do and you have the evidence.
You drive 600mi often? The car is not for you.
Millions of people drive less than 100km a day. The car's for them.
The pathetic complaint that the range is low is funny, because the vast majority of people never make use of the maximum range of their car. If you do, good for you! Just keep using a gas guzzler and shut up.
If you have to regularly drive 600 miles, you don't. That's 8-10 hours of driving though, with no breaks. You sure you wouldn't mind an hour layover or two?
That's a recharge every three hours. Given that drivers are recommended to take a break every two hours, it's not so unreasonable as long as there is a rapid recharge point to take a break at. But yes, it's not like refilling at a gas station.
If it wasn't reviewed on Top Gear UK, it wasn't reviewed!
Wait, what is this "unbiased" you speak of?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
"Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot. When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in."
Wow. That's pretty damning right there.
Not everybody has your driving habits. You may not want to drive one. But they are perfectly fine for many people.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
So did Motor Trend... They named it their 2013 car of the year. As did Automobile Magazine.
Read the linked story. That was just one of the lies Musk alleges the journalist wrote. The reason the journalist got stranded was because he didn't charge the car enough to actually do the intended journey. That's like putting a gallon of gas into a car to drive 100 miles.
Normally when someone is this far off factually I'd tell them to RFA. But it appears you read it and failed to comprehend it.
Tesla never said you can't drive 65 or have your temperature at 74F. *Broder* - you know, the lying liar who lies - claimed that he had to do that. Musk simply provides evidence that his claims are false.
I agree that the range sucks, but, as the article clearly points out, the car not only made its recommended range, it did it after being driven at high speeds and charged significantly less than the recommended time. Broder had to drive the thing in circles to get it to run out of range!
There appears to be a reference to his driving at 81mph. Surely that's above the speed limit, so can we look forward to a cop knocking on his door for a fine as well?
Not to mention, they are usually extremely biased against American cars.
Mind you, there are a lot of not great things about American cars, but TGUK would try to convince you that they are fueled by eating babies alive, and could have their efficiency rated at babies-per-mile.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Perhaps Broder would like to test drive --- A ROCKET SHIP!!!
Maybe he would refrain from screwing around with the fuel tanks; and if not, problem solved.
Jeremy Clarkson is the real-life Eric Cartman. Entertaining as hell to watch, you want to like him in a way, but he's still a gigantic asshole and terrible person.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is right on. Trust data.
You can look at my comment history... I have a history of trust problems with corporate America, but in this case there are logs backing up the claims. The NYT has free access to those logs and if there is tampering then it IS going to be found.
What SHOULD have been done by the NYT here... they should have had video evidence of what they are saying. We're stuck with one reporter who has shown to have an anti-electric car bias and his word vs a log. It's not hard to see who has the burden of proof in this situation.
The plots show a precipitous drop in charge level around the 400 mile mark that doesn't match the constant discharge slopes elsewhere. The only thing that happened at that time was the temperature increasing from 70F to 75F. It seems odd that at 35% charge the heaters would have that effect when nothing seemed to happen at other times with the temp above 74F.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
>Let me get this straight: I can't drive 65 or turn up the heat without having to worry about getting stranded?
The Superchargers are 200 miles apart, but you can use regular chargers too. If you look at Tesla's blog post, there were chargers all over the place. You're not going to get stranded unless you're a dishonest reporter with a grudge against electric cars.
>It takes an hour to refill the thing, and I have to do it three times to drive 600 miles?
Drive 3 hours (200 miles at 65 mph), stop for charge and lunch. Drive another 3 hours, stop for an hour break. Drive another 3 hours, and you're at your destination, so let it charge up overnight.
If you're a trucker with a pee bottle that doesn't want to stop for anything, I'm sure this isn't great. For normal people, an hour break every 3 hours of driving is fine.
Why the fuck would I ever want to buy one of these cars?
Clearly the car is intended for people that would not have a problem with three one-hour charging stops for a 600-mile trip. Clearly you are not one of those people, so I don't think we can answer your question.
Many people rarely take 600-mile trips. Of those that do, many would be fine with three one-hour charging stops. You can plan one or two stops around meals, for instance, to minimize the inconvenience. Those that need to make those trips and can't wait to charge will need to buy a different kind of car. No one is suggesting this type of electric car is appropriate for all purposes.
Many households with two working adults end up with two cars: a long-range large-capacity family vehicle and a smaller commuting vehicle. Electrics will dominate the latter use case before the former, for these reasons.
When I see an unbiased third party do the test - like Consumer Reports or Motor Trend - then I'll take what has to be said seriously.
You may have made that comment sarcastically, but in case you didn't (and for those unfamiliar with the other tests):
From CR: Tesla Model S - The electric car that shatters every myth.
From Motor Trends: 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S.
While those two publications aren't perfect, they seem to have way more credibility than Broder.
They had already decided that actual features of the car (poor range and heavy weight vs. the Lotus Elise on which it was based) made them not like it.
As usual they put together a dramatic sequence, Tesla fishtailing off the track, lotus handling well. Ending with the Tesla having dead batteries and requiring a long recharge.
That's no more dishonest then Consumer reports rating the 'vette as unsatisfactory because it has a small trunk and poor gas mileage. In both cases their assessment is based on fact and the argument is with their criteria.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Actually, he came pretty damn close to being able to drive 65-80MPH with high heat levels. What he didn't do was actually charge the damn thing like he is supposed to and like he said he did. The last charge was just to 28%, not the 70+% he said.
Like the car or not, but to LIE about the conditions you drove it at is just bad journalism. I hope the guy is fired. I would say the same thing if he put 4 gallons into a ICE Car and claimed the car didn't run as advertised.
Do you Gentoo!?
They are selling them faster than they can make them and it has received spectacular reviews from the automotive press--or at least any automotive press that hadn't already made up their minds that "electric cars suck". This is a car which is more than competitive within its segment (luxury sports sedan). It's just a matter of time until the technology becomes more affordable and trickles down into mass market segments.
It's absurd to claim that electric cars won't be practical until we have fusion reactors when they are clearly practical in some segments today.
You sound like the sad, pathetic curmudgeons who crap on any trans-formative new technology--I'm sure some jackass said the same things about "horseless carriages" at the time. Someday soon you will be just as wrong and just as irrelevant.
Musk will print your driving log, and you'll end up getting traffic tickets in the mail.
No.. no. I wont.
Years ago I adopted a foolproof way of avoiding speeding fines; and one that keeps me and everybody around me safer; I simply obey speed limits.
As your driving improves you might discover this secret too.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
There is a simple way to prove it. Have someone else who is acceptable to both NYT and Tesla motors repeat the trip with the following differences;
1. Video the whole trip.
2. Charge to full at each stop.
Compare the logs from both trips and report the results. Let the readers decide who is telling the truth. How about we have more reporters telling the facts and fewer commentators telling us how to think.
It was an accurate review. The Tesla is a useless track day car. (unless your day is very short)
The only complaint Tesla could come up with is how they dramatized the out of power issue.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Let me get this straight: I can't drive 65 or turn up the heat without having to worry about getting stranded?
What kind of car do you drive now where you are able to use more energy than you put in to it?
Like this? http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2012/11/video-tesla-model-s-drive---the-electric-car-that-shatters-every-myth.html
can fuel them with grass and they can procreate.
By the way:
Half an hour of supercharge gets you 150 miles. An hour would normally get you about 260 miles.
Motor Trend named the Chevy Vega the car of the year in 1971. Car and Driver named the Renault Alliance as one of 1983's 10 best cars. In 1985 the Ford Merkur also made this list. You might enjoy this.
1. I can't feed my horseless carriage grass, it needs some special fuel that I can only get a special stations?
2. I can't breed my horseless carriage to make more horseless carriages.
3. It costs how much?!?!?
Why would anyone ever buy one of these things?!?
What happened with Top Gear?
They showed what would almost certainly happen in reality, under a given set of circumstances.
However, what with TV production schedules, budgets etc. (and probably not wanting to really push the car all the way back to the hangar) they acted it out, rather than actually driving the car until it turned into a brick on wheels.
In other news, food 'prepared' on cookery shows is probably stone cold and dried to a husk by the time the guests taste it and obediently go 'yum'. The windows behind TV presenters on news shows are added in post-production. When someone uses a phone on TV, even in a documentary, there isn't actually someone on the other end. When you see an interview, unless its actually live, the interviewer has probably re-recorded his side of the conversation after the fact, and the editor has probably cut out a load of 'ums' and 'ers' from the guest's responses.
To summarise - if you see it on TV it has probably been staged somehow. The issue is whether the claims are honest.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
That's gonna leave a mark.
Hopefully, a bootprint on the rear end of a near-future job seeker.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
To be fair, top gear does this ALL THE TIME. Its an entertainment program and they do so by panning some cars and lauding others (like DIY kits or 500k super cars). Any typical top gear viewer shouldn't consider a 'bad review' on the show as a buying decision.
Bye!
It's funny that Tesla hasn't posted them, or given them to a third party for analysis and review, but has spent a lot of time doing this exhaustive analysis on their blog.
I love the idea of electric cars, I want them to be successful, but this whole things strikes me as a little too much noise and too little actual content. If Tesla thinks he lied make public info that people can look at and assess. He drove in circles? Because you say so? Okay... sure.
I also think some of the points he makes are asinine... driving 54 mph? Not turning the heat to 72f in the winter in an electric car with NO ambient heat source? Yeah, high, welcome to real world conditions. I don't know how hardy these norwegians are, but I don't like driving in 65f, or spending 80 hours driving to my target. Avg speeds in the northeast are about 65-75mph for most folks, if you aren't testing in those conditions you've already failed IMHO.
RT
reviewed the car and verified the range, as has the EPA and the NY Times (a previous NY Times review got 300 miles). Motor Trend named it car of the year as did a number of other companies.
Of course Elon has proof to back up his claims. He is the guy behind that car after all. And if his car used pink unicorns, he'd have proof of their existence.
When I see an unbiased third party do the test - like Consumer Reports or Motor Trend - then I'll take what has to be said seriously. Until then, I'll treat everything with skepticism.
Considering how easy it is to monitor vehicle state, functions and location with a few added gadgets, all of which we have been hearing are being placed in some rental cars, beginning a few years ago, never mind this car is built around the corner from Silicon Valley Broder assumed they wouldn't be watching. Here's an education for future journos, keep it honest and keep your job.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wow. 1971. It's almost like there were different people working there 40 years and it was a different time in automobile advancements and technology. Seriously, is that the best trolling you can do? Digging up old articles from 25-40 years ago to reflect on how a magazine might be run today?
No. All they did was save themselves time.
Tesla's engineers told them the estimated range they'd get on the Top Gear track.
Top Gear drove a few laps, but did not drive to the maximum range they were quoted.
They then ACTED as if they drove that distance, and proceeded to show viewers what would have happened had they driven the distance Tesla told them the car would go. There was no deception, all they did was act like they drove it until it died so they could then show the problems with the car. Namely, the PRIMARY problem, that running out of fuel isn't just a hike with a jerrycan to fix.
What, you think only going a few laps around the track is bad? That's really not different from any other supercar. That's not the bad side to the Tesla. The bad side is that if you drain the battery, you're pretty much fucked. Call the tow truck, you're not driving again any time soon.
Top Gear has never shown every single lap a car would drive before it went dry, because it's TV and that would be boring to watch. They never claimed the range would be any less than what Tesla's engineers calculated it would be -- yeah, they actually simply *assumed Tesla was right* about the range.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
And do you remember what the OTHER cars were like in 1971? The Vega well could have been the best of the lot.
Do not attempt to lie to Tony Stark. He will come and have a chat with you.
Then, on the NYTimes' original response to the controversy (at http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/the-charges-are-flying-over-a-test-of-teslas-charging-network/ ) Broder writes:
I drove more than 100 miles below 55 on cruise control to conserve power.Yet the graphic presented by Elon Musk ( http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/speeddistance0.jpg ) of speed vs. distance clearly shows that Broder's statement is false, unless Elon Musk is presenting false data logs. Of course, one possible explanation could be an uncalibrated speedometer, which showed Broder the numbers he wrote in his article. But considering the digital-ness of this fancy-schmancy electric car, I expect that the display is a digital display of speed and that the console speed displayed actually matches the speeds logged and graphed by Musk.
.
Now little things lke "I but the climate control to low at 182 miles" when he really did it at 212 miles (approximately eyeballed by me) which would have seemed like picking at details and mistakes takes on a sadder dirtier note of trying to spin the story the way he wanted it to turn out.
:>(
How sad for the nytimes if Elon Musk's allegations turn out to be true and Broder lied.
After Musk's initial complaint, the Times doubled-down and defended their report as accurate, and then Musk presented this quantitative evidence. Someone at the Times is going to be very pissed with Mr. Broder if Tesla's data stand up to scrutiny.
They never mention that they are fakes during the shows. The reviews are presented as reviews. Entertainment is not an excuse for outright lying.
There was also a element of strawman in Tesla's complaints about the Top Gear review. Watch the video and you will see that Clarkson does not say that the car ran its batteries flat. Top Gear said that, driving on the track, they way they were doing it *would* run the batteries down in 55 miles. A claim that Tesla did not dispute. There was a real problem with the brakes on one of the cars -- the brakes did not fail completely, but again, Tesla did not dispute the partial failure.
Let's not forget that in the libel-lawsuit capital of the world, Tesla's libel suit was switftly dismissed.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Kinda dumb. They weren't reviewing its range, just the car, and running out of power is something you can realistically expect. Even if you don't drain it down to the point you have to push it into the garage, it's STILL a long wait until you can drive it again.
What part of that is not true? Should they NOT have shown the primary downside to the Tesla and other electrics? Would ignoring the most serious flaw of an item be the more honest way of reviewing it?
Top Gear's a entertainment primarily and review secondarily, but jesus christ. You're tilting at them for.. actually touching on the negative points of something they were reviewing. Good god. That's what is supposed to happen.
They didn't say the Tesla's range was any less than what Tesla's engineers told them it would be, they didn't say it would take 3 days to charge, they didn't say you have to charge it with the soul of a murdered street urchin.
They just pretended they drove 2 or 3 laps that we didn't see, and proceeded from that point as if those laps had been driven.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
A $100,000 car is "mass market"?
They were originally targeting a $50k price tag with the S but rapidly gave up on that idea. Cool car though.
-l
And, after the tax break, the low end one is about $50k, only the early-adopter limited edition model is $100k.
Sure, because the NYT left the charger with 32 miles estimated range and then drove it 51 miles to make sure the battery would actually go flat. Run a gasoline car until the guage reads E, put in a single gallon of gas and drive more than the car's MPG and SURPRISE! you're out of gas. You might even get a tow truck driver to agree that you're out of gas if you ask him to verify it.
But don't try that at home, many gasoline cars don't take kindly to being run out of gas.
Look at other articles he has written. He is consistently pro-oil and anti-environmentalist.
See: Dirty Hippies get arrested for obstructing the utopian big oil future.
This guy is an oil shill.
Broder appears to have posted a response.
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
Depends on the day. When I'm driving around with my GF, going to several widely spread casinos, restaurants, and other places, I easily exceed 100 miles.
So, that's half of the 200 miles for the Tesla S. No problem! :)
I'm not saying the Tesla S is for everyone; it's not for me, even if it wasn't priced well out of my reach.
"like I95 a whopping 5 cars an hour can fully charge"
When you see 5 Teslas on the road in an hour, let us know.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
From TFA:
Cruise control was never set to 54 mph as claimed in the article, nor did he limp along at 45 mph. Broder in fact drove at speeds from 65 mph to 81 mph for a majority of the trip and at an average cabin temperature setting of 72 F.
At the point in time that he claims to have turned the temperature down, he in fact turned the temperature up to 74 F.
The charge time on his second stop was 47 mins, going from -5 miles (reserve power) to 209 miles of Ideal or 185 miles of EPA Rated Range, not 58 mins as stated in the graphic attached to his article. Had Broder not deliberately turned off the Supercharger at 47 mins and actually spent 58 mins Supercharging, it would have been virtually impossible to run out of energy for the remainder of his stated journey.
Let me get this straight: I can't drive 65 or turn up the heat without having to worry about getting stranded? It takes an hour to refill the thing, and I have to do it three times to drive 600 miles?
Why the fuck would I ever want to buy one of these cars?
Why are you asking us? If the car doesn't meet your needs, of course you wouldn't buy it. Not every car is meant to meet the needs of all drivers. not every driver goes on 600 mile trips regularly.
My car hasn't been more than 100 miles from home in over 4 years. When we go on family trips, we usually rent a minivan since it's more comfortable for everyone. If I needed a new car, I'd probably get something like the Nissan Leaf since it has enough range for 2 days of commuting, and spending a minute plugging it in at night to charge it is more convenient than spending 15 minutes driving a couple miles out of my way and refueling a conventional car.
I love logs like these, since they let you fact check both sides. They paint a pretty damning picture when you take them with Tesla's notes, but Tesla's notes are rather one sided and skip some obvious facts that they'd rather ignore but which are plain for all to see. Similarly, Broder's account was clearly sensationalized a bit in various parts, though not in all of the ways that Tesla claims. For instance:
1) The cabin temperature logs Tesla provides have a note saying that Broder turned up the temperature at the 182 mile mark when he claimed he turned it down. If we read the original article, we see that Broder merely mentions having noticed a decreased reported range at the 182 mile mark (114 miles from start + 68 since charge), but he never said he decreased his speed or turned down the heater at that exact time. What we see in the logs is that he did turn up the heater slightly around that time, but very shortly thereafter he turned it down to its lowest setting, exactly as he claimed. If you're looking at the logs, it's easy to spot the deep valleys where he did what he said he did at about the time that he said he did it.
2) Similarly, if you compare the graphs, you'll see that at about the time he dropped his heating down to its lowest setting, his speed also dropped down to around 54 miles per hour, again, as he claimed. That said, he seemed to imply in the article that he maintained that speed for quite some time. What the logs show is that he only maintained that speed for a short period of time, before resuming his typical driving habits that had him in the mid-60s for his speed. He conveniently neglected to mention how long he maintained that speed, leaving it to the reader to assume that he maintained it until his next stop, which was untrue.
3) Tesla disputes the time that Broder claims he spent charging at Milford (the Times' picture claimed 58 minutes, Broder's article says "nearly an hour", but Tesla claims 47 minutes). It's possible this was a simple case of misunderstanding, where he was in the service station for 58 minutes (including the rather shady 5 minutes driving around the lot to seemingly try and kill the battery) but actually only spent 47 minutes charging. Either way, there's no dispute that his range read 185 miles when he stopped charging the car before it was done. Tesla suggests that it's his fault for not charging it to full, even though the reported range was 60 miles greater than what was necessary to reach his next stop.
4) If you look at the logs showing the reported range, you'll see a sudden drop in range of about 50 miles at the 400 mile mark. Broder claimed that the reported range went from 79 miles to 25 miles overnight, which is exactly what the logs show. Tesla doesn't make a point of highlighting that blip in the logs, to say the least. We also see that Broder once again turned his thermostat to an extremely low setting, though the logs do not support his claim that he limped along at 45 miles per hour (though he did slow down quite a bit...maybe he made a typo when meaning to say 54 miles per hour?).
5) Broder never mentions in the article what the estimated range was after his last stop, instead merely saying that "after an hour they [Tesla] cleared me to resume the trip". Since he says he woke up a Tesla official on the west coats to ask for instructions and this was not his scheduled stop, it's quite possible he got someone half-asleep or unfamiliar with the fact that he had stopped at a non-Supercharger station, meaning that they cleared him after the hour that the Supercharger would have taken, rather than the several hours necessary at the station he was at. Either way, he was definitively not charged enough (which he clearly knew), since both Musk's notes and the Times' own map indicate that he had around 32-35 miles of reported range after he had charged, which was nowhere close to the 51 necessary to reach his destination.
Long story short, both sides are trying to spin the facts in their favor. As far as I can tell,
When he first reached our Milford, Connecticut Supercharger, having driven the car hard and after taking an unplanned detour through downtown Manhattan to give his brother a ride, the display said "0 miles remaining." Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot. When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in. On the later legs, it is clear Broder was determined not to be foiled again.
the rated range historesis, charge logs, and cabin environment logs are all available. The speed logs from the vehicle directly contradict any claims made by the reviewer to have 'limped along' at anything less 60. this is an asshole, not a journalist.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So, he showed the Tesla can be run flat in 15-20 mins, and he did the same with a petrol car, and somehow that is inconsistent? Sounds like he treated the Tesla the same as any other, and the pointed out the downside is it can't be refuelled easily when that happens.
Cool, thanks for the heads up. I haven't generally tracked it in awhile and saw the 100,000 quote mentioned and made an incorrect assumption.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
If Tesla is keeping tabs on consumers, then that's definitely a bigger sin than Broder lying through his teeth. Any proof they do this for everyone? I'd be more likely to believe they only do it if you're driving THEIR car which they loaned you for a test drive for you to report truthfully on. Probably not safe to just assume they respect your privacy more than your cell phone company does though.
There is no bigger danger to democracy than an individual who is tasked with educating the public knowingly falsifying reports. There is a reason in our society that journalists enjoy strong protections under the constitution, but that protection comes with responsibility, and Broder has violated the trust. If the NYT doesn't act, then they are complicit.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
In looking over the logs, I'm having trouble finding places where Broder outright lied, and I see several places where Tesla takes some liberty with the facts as well. I detailed my points in another post further down, but suffice to say, Broder implied extended duration of events in a few cases where they didn't last, and Tesla made a few obviously incorrect assumptions that were convenient for their efforts to make Broder look bad.
For instance, in looking over Broder's account, he never provided an exact time for when he turned the heater down, merely saying that it occurred sometime after he noticed that the range had decreased faster than he expected. Tesla chose to assume that he turned the heater down at the exact time he reported seeing the range drop, so they painted him as a liar by showing how he turned up the heater around that time, while neglecting to point out that he clearly did turn the heater to its lowest setting a few minutes later. They conveniently ignored quite a few other facts like those that supported Broder's story or made them look bad (e.g. the overnight loss of 54 miles of range that Broder reported, which the logs support as having happened).
That said, Broder also claims that he dropped to 54 miles per hour and put the car on cruise control around the same time he turned down the heater, suggesting strongly that he maintained that speed until his next stop. What the logs show is that he did drop to around that speed for awhile...before speeding back up to his typical speed in the mid-60s for that leg of the trip. Again, it doesn't contradict his account, since he never actually said he maintained that speed, but it does show that his account was at least a bit disingenuous. Not enough for libel, but certainly enough to be shady.
Discrepancies like those abound in both accounts if you compare them against the actual logs. I went into a lot more detail in my other post.
"She says that their records indicate the car's battery pack was completely drained."
What records. All that means is that the call they received for a tow, had a stated reason as "battery drained"
A towing company has no means to test or confirm such. Second, when my wife needed a jump in our 1st generation Prius. She had to argue for 20 minutes that the battery was in the trunk. They couldn't find it. And refused to listen to her. Called a second tow truck operator. Who still was clueless. After 30 minutes of arguing, they listened to my wife. Lo and behold they found the batter in the trunk.
Furthermore, the Tesla Model S is like a 100x beyond my 1st generation Prius. So claiming a tow truck handler had ANY knowledge or understanding other than what the driver told them "battery pack completely dead". Is just BUNK!!!
"(Broder's own report said that the car couldn't be moved because its electric parking brake was stuck in place.)"
I've seen flatbeds tow cards with parking breaks on. They hook the winch and the whole car bounces up and down off the ground as it's dragged. Done every day, hundreds of times.
"12V battery that powers the accessories and gets its juice from the high voltage battery shut down when Broder pulled into the service station."
And why would that battery drain? Just wondering if Mr. Broder is influenced by Tom Beaudette and Motel 6 "We'll leave the lights on for ya!"
http://jalopnik.com/towing-company-the-nyt-tesla-model-s-was-dead-when-it-196100064
There's been mention of the 2/12 response from Broder (previous to Musk's rebuttal), but the first post-rebuttal articles are now showing up:
* http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/conflicting-assertions-over-an-electric-car-test-drive/?smid=tw-share
Plus a general line by line analysis of Musk's comments:
* http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks-data-doesnt-back-his-claims-new-york-times-fakery/62149/
I'm pretty sure that you would question the test regardless.
There are actually quite a few newer gas fueled cars that have an electric parking brake.
It's worth reading the New York Times article author's response to the accusations which was written before Elon Musk's new blog post with the data. And also remember when this all happened before? I'm not sure who to believe, but I'm not sure why everybody thinks the NYT reporter is blatantly lying but Musk wouldn't fudge the numbers a little. I think some of Musk's response is weak and still dances around some major issues that the reporter had with the car. All the graphs he posted are shown in miles instead of time, which hides some of the problems that the reporter talked about, like going to bed with with a 90 mile charge and waking up and finding the battery with 25 miles.
It's interesting how most, if not all, of the ad hominem attacks on Tesla Motors are done using anonymous accounts. I've read through half the comments for this article now, and some anonymous coward seems determined to throw dirt on Tesla and defend the journalist.
c++;
Apparently the current Ford F150 can do 756 miles on a single (monstrous 36 gallon) tank, though I wouldn't describe it as a "car". The closest car would be the Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid at 694 miles/tank.
Then again, these are based on mileage ratings. If you hyper-mile, then I suppose you could get far higher ranges than these. The drive wouldn't be very much fun though.
Everything from the Elon's logs align with what John said happened. The "irregularities" in the logs are all reasonably within the measurement variances of the instruments, or within the programming safeties of the car itself. Even the harshest claims by Elon are just restatements of what John wrote, in a more inflammatory manner.
Here's a simple example: Elon claims the car had juice left. This is true -- Li-ION batteries have a limiter to prevent 100% discharge. There's technically juice left in the battery. But it's irrelevent -- that juice can't be used -- because it would damage the battery to use it, and the car won't allow you to use it. A tow truck driver confirmed the car had reached its safety-cut off, and locked the wheels, and had to spend over an hour dragging the car onto a flat-bed. So, Elon lied -- He stated a technical truth that's not accurate to the scenario.
There's tons others -- speed variance between the speedometer and a GPS within normal variance limits for the instruments. Charging to only 28% -- 2-3x the anticipated mileage. It's like buying $5 worth of gas to drive a $2 trip. The logs match what John, the reporter, said happened.
IMHO, the reporter is telling the truth. Elon is making mountains out of molehills to distract us from the truth. And, I read both Articles -- not just talking out my ass like a bunch of commenters here...
Wah wah wah what a lot of crying you do...
Top Gear got caught cooking up the results, just like the NY Times author. They've made admissions, but you can't even come to accept these.
THE BRAKES WERE FUCKING WORKING PERIOD. All you attempts to lie about it notwithstanding. You wrote, and I quote: "When I push down on my brake pedal, and when my car does not then brake, my brakes are broken." In Top Gear the car braked! Can you not fucking understand such basic shit? You're the asshole who refuses to admit you LIED and got caught doing so, only coming with "semantics" arguments after the fact... Puts you in the same class as Top Gear and Jon Broder...
It's not even log data. It's a handful of graphs and a bunch of statements, but not the data it is based upon. So it's actually easier to fake then log data. So far it's just the word of Musk against that of Broder. Without any real independent evidence you'll have to make up your own mind, do you trust the CEO or the journalist (or they might actually both be guilty).