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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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Yeah, the truth from the media? The US has been bought and sold. All of it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
This is a trick question, right? Well, of course it is, you called a reporter for the NYT a legitimate journalist...which of course he is, in the fine tradition of Jayson Blair and Walter Duranty.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
A corporate CEO who has data to back his claims.
Replying to a bit of a troll, but:
Consumer reports basically the same route.
Motor trend car of the year 2013
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.