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NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk
DocJohn writes "NY Times' John Broder responded to Elon Musk's blog entry. Accused of driving around a parking lot for no reason, for instance, Broder notes he was simply looking for the poorly marked charging station. Worst of all, much of Broder's behavior can be attributed directly to advice he received from Tesla representatives — something Musk fails to mention."
There is another reporter duplicating this exact run.
Open the window and turn up the heater. Drive in circles in a parking lot.
Use the advise from Tesla motors in an odd way to maximize drain.
I await the other reporters story not this con job.
A charging station he had previously been to...which makes his claim seem pretty suspect to me.
Also, Musk did say this: "The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense."
That was the most damning accusation, and on that note, Musk refutes the claim that he was told by Tesla employees to act as he did.
Musk's media relations are terrible.
Can we get these 2 in a cage fight?
Who'll take odds?
Never get into a pissing contest with people who buy ink by the barrel.
Admit it, you were caught being a New York Times reporter.
Pack it in, because logs don't lie.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Like Elon Musk.
Is it so far fetched to imagine that there isn't a conspiracy, and his bias is just part of who he is? Humans are irrational. They form opinions and become entrenched in them. Millions of people are pretty biased in interpreting politics, not because they are part of some mass conspiracy, they are just stubborn and close minded.
They know exactly what Broder did with the car. It's like your son telling you he didn't visit that porn site when his laptop's IP address is logged by your router as having done so. Seriously, the guy didn't understand the technology he was fucking around with and his lack of credibility is about to be exposed in a big way.
Maybe because they're not yet ready for prime time? Seemed to me the biggest problem in the article was the battery charge dropping overnight in the cold weather. Elon Musk forgot to rebut that. Maybe if global warming is real, that won't be a problem. Eventually. Oh, and an hour and a half to refuel at supercharged station? I can't be the only one who sees a problem with that.
Is it so far fetched to imagine that there isn't a conspiracy, and his bias is just part of who he is
Congratulations, you understand the point.
They clocked the speed he was driving at because the tires were a different size? There's some mysterious huge downhill on the new jersey turnpike that caused him to hit 80 despite setting his cruise control to 54? Really? Is that the best he can come up with?
The model S may or may not be a good car. It sure seems like it's a pain to charge up on long trips. But this guy Broder sounds like he's full of it.
Was there a GPS logging that could confirm one story or the other? 54 mph vs 60 is quite a big difference on this long of a journey...
What's most likely is that he's just sloppy and got caught fudging the data. It was a Fake, But Accurate moment, a firecracker in the gas tank moment, or, a Zimmerman tape edit moment
Reported fudge, lie, push the truth to fit their preconceived notions. What his was? Who knows. But he tried to make a stupid point and got caught.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
He's claiming Tesla representatives instructed him to purposefully drive past the reported range then lie about it? That does not sound credible.
Or see icebike's comment: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3462591&cid=42905789
Either way is fine by me.
The log does show that rated range remaining dropped at the 400 mile mark very sharply. I wonder what happened. Did Broder just park the car and leave it on overnight? The battery charge did drain quite a bit without making any distance. Since the log's x-axis is distance based, it doesn't show how fast the battery charge is used up while the car is not moving.
I once had a signature.
Anyone who doesn't like electric cars clearly wants to destroy the planet. Broder probably goes to church too, and to Tea-party rallies, when he isn't shooting assault rifles. No wonder /.'ers hate him.
You are an idiot. Unfortunately, there is no law against it.
It is to be expected from someone who parrots Tea Party nonsense rather than exercising some original thought.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Who is Broder, and who is Elon Musk, and why would some guy publicly accuse another of driving in a parking lot?
I guess it is nice to be informed of something, but as a reader who didn't follow the other, very recent piece of news, I would have liked a few more words or sentences to give me context. Including what function does Mr Elon Musk occupy in the company.
This isn't Twitter, and we don't pay more for the Internet if we get a more complete summary, do we?
Thanks. Knowing I'm not the only one who feels this way might keep my misanthropy in check for another beer or two.
Ever heard of Fox News??? It's all about making some crazy outrageous claims that will entertain people and sell advertising. Hell, even Food Reviewers are making outrageous lies these days.
BBBZZZZ You both lose. This transcends stupid comments about the Tea Party or saying he's a Lefty. He's a Reporter. He did what Reporters do, distort, mislead, lie. Probably to enhance his reputation and certainly to enhance revenue...look how many clicks NYTs is getting from this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Is the number of you who are siding with a (to all reports) totally psychotic billionaire vs. a schlubby clock-punching "journalist" - at best a bagman, if he's not just doin' his job. Are you losers serious? Even if Broder is schilling for a corporation who is on the side of the oil companies - who do you think is going to win? Elon Musk can buy the Times and then some. Musk will realize that to sell cars he'll need make peace with the oil companies and their interests, produce a Tesla that uses - guess what? - gas. And Broder will go onto the next story, dutifully filing his reports.
Something that Broder also failed to mention in his original article. In my opinion, if you are claiming to review A CAR, and THE CAR says it won't reach your destination, and someone one the phone says go anyway, and you go, and it fails to reach the destination, implying there's something wrong with the car by saying it should have but didn't is either being deliberately misleading or unforgivably stupid. There's no third option.
Clearly, tech support for computers with drivetrains is as stellar as tech support for computers in general, but if Broder is going to blame everything on bad advice, even if every single thing he says is true, it destroys his credibility as a technology reviewer of any kind. That would be no different than doing a review of an operating system and saying "it kept losing all my settings" when in fact what was happening was some tech support person kept telling you to reinstall it from scratch. That's a pretty important thing to mention explicitly. The Tesla didn't just "fail" by Broder's own words it failed because he was told to do dumb things and actually did those dumb things *against the advise of the car itself*.
And that's the best case scenario assuming I take it as a given every single factual statement made by Broder about the test drive is accurate. That doesn't account for why CNN's route replication appears to have been dramatically different.
For all intensive purposes
I try not to be a grammar Nazi, but man you even italicized it.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
You are an idiot. Unfortunately, there is no law against it.
But, unlike you and the populations of Ohio, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Mississippi, I don't approve of depriving people of basic rights based on inaccurate measures of intelligence.
look how many clicks NYTs is getting from this.
And I would imagine Tesla's website is getting a few extra clicks today. What a great game - create a bit of controversy and everyone wins.
Let me attempt to clear this up.
Those words you italicized? They don't mean what you think they do.
Yeah. Can you guess why?
Illiteracy, obviously.
Nothing like a lover's quarrel on Valentine's day...
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
So to start, I am totally down with the idea of electric cars; I think that the utility of them around town would outweigh for many people the range problems for longer trips*. I personally try to drive relatively little; I've put an average of well under 5,000 mi/year on my car. I probably shouldn't say this, but Tesla is the answer to "what's your dream car?" security question on some website. Believe me when I say I don't have a bias against electric cars.
(* There was some discussion about this in the previous thread which I almost participated in, but didn't. Ballpark figures for the Tesla seem to be an hour of charge for about every three hours of driving. Personally, this is enough of an increase in stopping time compared to what I currently do on long trips that I really wouldn't want to do a long trip in one.)
But... I've read Musk's comments and both responses on the NY Times blog (ironically I haven't actually read the original article), and to be honest I didn't really find Musk's blog post all that convincing. And this is after a bit of me wanting to see the NY Times review get nailed to the wall.
For instance, Musk claims that the logs show that the heat was turned up when the reporter said he turned it down. But within 20 minutes of the point at which Musk says proves his point, the temperature was turned down -- dramatically. The NY Times article doesn't really give a precise "I turned down the heat at milepost 182"; that's a mileage that Musk seems to have derived from the following quote from the original article:
But Musk doesn't say how he arrived at that number in his blog post; he just asserts that's the point at which the reviewer says. IMO it's not too much of a stretch to think that the above review is imprecise enough that skirting that arrow over just 20 miles to where the temperature was lowered could be what actually happened.
This point in particular sits very poorly with me on Musk's side; I really feel like he was looking for faults with the data hard enough that he was probably prone to find ones that weren't actually there.
Note that I'm not by any means absolving Broder. I think that this story still has a bit more to play out until it reaches its resolution (if it ever does, without phone calls). But I really do feel like the "oh the NY Times got served!" people are really jumping to conclusions, even given Musk's data. I've been burned too many times my assuming things when they looked so clear before.
Yeah. Can you guess why?
You don't read much?
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/intensive.html
According to the Tesla data, Broder's charge percentages after leaving a charging station were 90%, 72%, and 28%. While 90% may be reasonable, and 3/4 of a tank a bit dicey, who in their right mind only fills up to just over 1/4 of a tank? If he were refueling a gasoline powered car in this manner, he'd be deemed a fool.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
It used to be the same around here with Apple and Jobs.
It has *NEVER* been the way of Slashdot that praising Apple & Jobs brings Karma. Slashdot has always been filled with Apple-haters and that hasn't changed with time.
In many ways, Slashdot is like the elderly racist relative that won't change their views despite being out of touch with the rest of society.
pollution and carbon emissions - and possibly not even the best way. Someone can logically disagree with the concept of electric cars, but still want to reduce emissions. For my money, telecommuting and online education and online shopping could have far more beneficial environmental impacts than building a global army of several hundred million electric cars running on lithium batteries. If people can replace nearly all their daily driving activities with online interactions - then you would be getting somewhere. Of course, we've got quite a ways to go with bandwidth and interactive forms of media before people would start dumping their cars en masse.
I understand why you're posting AC. Sadly, ./ has a fawning love of Tesla and Musk that anyone daring to offer even the mildest criticism will end up with their karma in the dirt. It used to be the same around here with Apple and Jobs.
Much of the American public loves the 1%, and has no reservations about throwing themselves under a bus to protect the interests and reputation of the latter.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
> I was told that moderate-speed driving would “restore” the battery power lost overnight
Oh yea makes perfect sense.
"the conclusions of the original report -- that the car performs poorly in cold weather, that it takes longer to fill up and that much more careful planning is needed driving it -- stand."
Why the need to lie about it then?
I ate my sig.
I don't think mine sucks. I love it. Chevy Volt. Has a fanboy webpage, not GM sponsored. gmvolt.com. We talk about the others, many of us either wish we had a Tesla - or DO. Funny thing - the least little thing wrong with any of our cars gets discussed. And we here almost nothing bad about Tesla, even though we're not his fan-group. What cold hard facts? People who, unlike this reporter, have some brains, and enough money to buy an electric almost universally love them. I prefer the mixed-hybrid Volt, as it can be an only car even if you do like to take long trips, and don't want to wait for even a super-charger to fill it back up. Guess what Bob Lutz (the guy who influenced GM to make the Volt) says? They'd never have made this great car if Elon hadn't prodded them in the ass with his.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Is there anyone outside of Tesla that can independently verify that the logs actually recorded what Musk says they recorded? Why is there an automatic assumption by some that what Musk is publishing is what the logs actually recorded? How would we know if Musk is falsifying what's in the logs?
I have to agree - I went into the article thinking that obviously all Musk wants to do is sell a product, but it quickly became clear that Broder has something against the Tesla or against electric cars. If I was driving one, I'd get to know it and not just play games trying to strand myself, just like I wouldn't drive around trying to see how close to E I could get the gauge on a gas car. Broder is either full of shit or too mechanically incompetent to be writing articles like that. No matter what anybody told me on the phone, even if they were Tesla's top engineer, I would know that running the heater on low isn't going to put energy into the battery, nor is speeding up so I can hit the regenerative brakes to recharge the battery... how stupid does Broder want me to believe that he is?
-- Elon Musk, on the Chevrolet Volt.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Because you are an idiot?
Both Musk and Broder have reason to defend their positions. For Musk, the credibility of his revolutionary auto manufacturer is at stake. For Broder, he would seem to have an interest in showing that Tesla's machine is not quite as magical as it appears. However, both men represent institutions we want to believe in. We want to believe that Tesla will bring about the end of our dependence on oil for autos and bring thousands of good manufacturing jobs to the old NUMMI plant in Silicon Valley, and we want to believe that The Times vets its reporters thoroughly. But both institutions are under intense financial pressure to deliver what we want to believe. Does Tesla have the money to make our dreams reality, unlike Solyndra? Does The Times have the money to do all the fact checking of its reporters stories to prevent another Jayson Blair? I don't think either institution is out to deceive us, and its even possible that neither of these men are lying.
A reporter can fabricate facts (or forget details), and logs can be fabricated (or erroneously-recorded in the first place).
They should have Broder do another test drive, and set up a camera in the back seat that can see the dashboard and the windshield. It's easy enough to do with a tripod and a seat belt. If you're worried about battery drain on the vehicle for the camera, buy a $40 emergency jump-start kit at K-Mart which is basically a battery with jumper cables and an accessory outlet, and plug the camera into that. Stick a large memory card in the camera and you can record the whole trip. If the results are in dispute after the second drive, post the video online and let people see for themselves what actually occurred.
And in order to balance a budget like that you need both spending cuts and revenue increases. That's why people think the TP folks are morons. They refuse to talk about funding increases and insist upon cuts to other people's services.
This comment makes me wish there was a simple "like" button, I have mod points, but don't k.ow how to.mod this :(.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I try not to be a grammar Nazi, but man you even italicized it.
The Italicians weren't Nazis, just allied to them. Grammar fascist would be more accurate.
They may not have. The guys at Tesla had to lie about the brake failure on Top Gear even though to any non-expert a fuse blown that causes a brake to go out is still a brake failure even if it's not literally the brake that's causing the wheel to refuse to spin.
After that Tesla and Musk had no credibility.
I'm not sure why Tesla keeps sending these cars out to reporters and reviewers when they know the results aren't going to live up to the hype they're trying to generate. It's an electric car, not a super car and claims to the contrary are just claims.
Ah, the typical Tea Party sanctimony.
But actually, the big problem with the Tea party is that they absolutely refuse to curb wasteful spending, but decide to cut essential spending on other people, while refusing to increase revenues. It'd be like a building where the people at the bottom are suffering from freezing weather, and they decide to cut the heat because it's too expensive, and they can't raise the rents of the people taking up the penthouse floor, which is costing more money to service.
Yeah, I know, the Tea party hates thinking about things in a perspective besides their own, you'd rather just be piously asserting your own agenda and parroting your own solutions while complaining about how you're persecuted.
I know five-year olds who debate just like you.
Perhaps you didn't read Elon Musk's detailed report and so you are missing the obvious. Slashdot is siding with the hard facts recorded in the car logs, not with any personality.
Broder got caught in a lie - half his rebuttal is actually listing his resume, the rest is distraction from the fact that he misused the car deliberately, drove it so it ran out of power so he could write his "sensational" tabloid style story. Guy should be canned.
Less so for Tesla. Their site doesn't have any external ads, so they're not making anything from ad revenue, and most people can't afford their cars.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
It used to be the same around here with Apple and Jobs.
It was never this bad.
We have a car that keeps getting trashed in every review; we've got a company that keeps filing baseless lawsuits that get thrown out of court; and we've got magic logs that are referenced but never released, and an angry executive with very vested business interest in making the Tesla not seem like a steaming pile of fail.
Yet somehow, everyone else is lying.
No - this is what science has warned us about. Tesla has crossbred Linux, Apple, Google, Sony and Microsoft fanboys and created a superfanboi; a terrible thing immune to even the high-potency antibiotics of common sense.
Woe unto us all.
Musk's logs show precisely what the heater was doing. At 68 miles since recharging the NYT reporter DID NOT begin "range-maximization". The review isn't "imprecise", it's entirely fabricated "lies".
Entirely what i've come to expect from the NYT since it's WMD fabrications. Paper of record indeed.
The reality is that electric cars now are at a stage similar to where gasoline powered cars were in the 1930s. They work. You also need to be an engineer to drive one. It took gasoline powered car technology another 50 years or so to become roughly as reliable as it is today.
Of course there's a reliable efficient solution today. It's called gasoline-electric hybrid. It provides a path for electric vehicle development that can fall back onto matured and reliable technology when needed. Instead of building impractical electric vehicles it would be much more beneficial to develop a 100mpg hybrid vehicles.
To be honest, I knew next to nothing about Tesla cars and had never been to their website before this story hit. I'm sure I'm far from the only one. Those are some awesome looking cars - for $52K, I'm sure their base model fits squarely within the luxury-car-budget of Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes, etc buyers, which is a huge market now.
Considering two other reporters from Consumer Reports and Motor Trends drove essentially the same route without any of the problems Broder had, combined with Broder's history of electric car bias and oil friendly articles, I'm much more inclined to believe Musk over Broder.
"And I would imagine Tesla's website is getting a few extra clicks today. What a great game - create a bit of controversy and everyone wins."
Huh? You think they benefit from creating negative publicity concerning the quality of an expensive car? Really? Someone is going to go "oh, there's that car I read is impractical, let me buy it!"?
It's not the 1%, man. It's the Jews. Ever since they sank the Titanic the Icebergs have had the world in a stranglehold.
The only real issue in this whole debacle is the large loss in battery charge while the car was parked overnight. Looking at the graph that Musk posted here I can see the battery charge taking a steep dip right as the car is supposedly parked. The graph of remaining miles shows it even more clearly - obviously the computer was extrapolating from the sudden battery charge drop.
So, what caused the sudden drop? The speed graph isn't fine enough to determine of the car was driven, and although there is a cabin temperature spike, the reporter says that happened the next morning when he was told to run the heater for a while. The engineers were obviously thinking it was temperature related, and thought that with a bit of "conditioning" it would all be ok. Thus the suggestion to run the heater, and to slow-charge. Finally the assumed the computer had it wrong and told him it was ok to drive - and were probably wrong.
So, the only real conclusion left is that the battery actually lost charge overnight. Did Broder sabotage the result by running the heater longer than claimed, or drove around in circles (again) to run it down, or maybe he just left the headlights on overnight?. We'll probably never know.
The alternative is that the Tesla batteries discharge substantially when not being used in cold weather. That should actually be pretty easy for someone else to test.
Look i understand that this guy is somewhat of a rogue and does not reflect the whole of the NY Times. It's what NYT do now that this has been exposed...if they don't discipline or sack John Broder and issue a front page apology and clarification, they will be complicit in what has hapened.
Even bad PR can be good PR. You've got to build "Q Score" with the public, and the lowest level on Q Score is "Never heard of it".
LOL
You expect the CEO of one company to give good comments on a direct competitor. Way to think that through. The best part is that you try to use this against someone who stood up for the CEO but owns said competitor. What you essentially tried to do was drive a wedge in there. A wedge that has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STORY. You can debate those comments all you want, but they do not have a place in this story. You sir are clearly a troll. A clever troll, but a troll nonetheless.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
In this case, I'm way more inclined to trust Tesla. Why? Well they have data, the reporter doesn't. I figure both sides have a reason to make shit up.
Reporters are not someone I truest with facts these days, it is stories. They like to have the big story, and that often means scandal, be it true or false. We have have, many, many times, seen the press neglect evidence in their haste to get a story, omit things that don't fit with their narrative, frame things (pictures in particular) to show what they want, and sometimes outright make shit up.
Now I also figure Tesla has a reason to lie since, after all, they want to sell cars and as such want their cars portrayed in the best possible light. Companies don't want to admit faults of their products if they don't have to.
So given that both sources can be suspect, who do we believe? Well the one with the more credible data. The reporter has nothing but "ummm, the tires were the wrong size" which is a very half-assed explanation. Tesla appears to have rather extensive data logging. Given the choice between data and assertion, I'm inclined to trust the data. Give me some proof it is wrong if you wish to convince me otherwise.
This guy has no credibility, particularly in light of his half-assed response. To me it sounds like he was trying to gin up a sensationalized story, got caught, and now is doing a poor job covering.
Intents and Purposes.
Why is it that everybody's parents slur speech and continue to propagate the stupidity?
Pompous ass alert!
I can't guess! Tell me! Everyone else seems to have missed your double intender, but I can't think of any purposes that would be intensive enough to justify using the malaproprian, obviously frowned-upon phrase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot -- "In several U.S. states, 'idiots' do not have the right to vote: Kentucky Section 145; Mississippi Article 12, Section 241; New Mexico Article VII, section 1; Ohio (Article V, Section 6)".
those who can't... teach.
those who have no fucking clue... become 'journalists'.
This is just a replay of the Top Gear fiasco. Telsa seem to have a habit of "shooting the messenger", that in itself puts me off the brand more than price and problems.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I try not to be a grammar Nazi,
And yet.... You are.
Try harder. Nobody likes a pedantic ass. Technically correct or not.
I lied. I don't really try.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Explain to me how having additional sources of energy would raise the price of natural gas.
t
Because the fallout from fabricating data and accusing the NY Times of journalistic malfeasance based on it is a vastly worse idea than saying "well yeah, it was supposed to be barely possible based on the stated ranges, temperature, and real-world conditions"
I suspect the logs will actually be released, if not to us to some third party. The NYT seems to be taking this pretty seriously once accusations were leveled against their integrity.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Musk's logs show precisely what the heater was doing. At 68 miles since recharging the NYT reporter DID NOT begin "range-maximization".
I don't disagree with those statements. What I do disagree with is that the article necessarily says he did. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that +68 miles is where he really started paying attention to whether there was a problem. What my quote of the article didn't include was the paragraph break before "I began following Teslaâ(TM)s range-maximization guidelines", and I think that can make a world of difference. I think that dramatically lessens the degree of implication of "I did mental math around 68 miles" and "I started range maximization". It doesn't say "I immediately started range maximization".
Like I said before, I'm not really trying to excuse the NYT here. It's just I think that Musk may have found some things that aren't actually particularly well-supported by the data.
Doubling down on grammar/spelling errors. It's the new /. way:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3370515&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=42549831
Is there anyone outside of Tesla that can independently verify that the logs actually recorded what Musk says they recorded? Why is there an automatic assumption by some that what Musk is publishing is what the logs actually recorded? How would we know if Musk is falsifying what's in the logs?
Well, Broder didn't dispute anything in the log in his response other than his driving speeds (and he doesn't even disagree with all of it, admitting to reaching 80 at one point). Everything else he corroborates.
The only thing I found to be misleading with regards to Musk's interpretation of the log is when he said that Broder raised the cabin temperature instead of lowering. Before Broder's response, when looking at the plots the first time, I did notice that a few miles after Broder raised the temperature, he did lower it significantly. So he was slightly off the exact time at which he started doing that, not a big deal, it still looks as if he tried it.
The biggest discrepancy between the stories as told by Broder and Musk are related to the conversations between Broder and the Tesla support guys. Musk claims that Broder disconnected the car from the charger with 32 miles remaining "expressly against the advice of Tesla Personnel." Broder instead claims he was told by Tesla personnel to charge for one hour and leave, regardless of what the range display said, because as the battery heated up during driving, the car would update the range to restore what appeared to be a range loss overnight. The fact that car proceeded to drive for 51 miles after that indicates the story was plausible and that when the battery is cold, the range estimate is inaccurate. Still, I agree with Musk that it's a violation of common sense to go anywhere that the car is telling you it can't make it there, regardless of what anyone, even Tesla personnel, would tell you.
Finally, Broder claims some horrible advice from the Tesla guys to maximize battery range, which includes alternating speeding up and slowing down, to let the regenerative breaking recover energy while slowing down. That anyone would fail to grasp basic physics badly enough to think this is a valid strategy astounds me. Really, I think this is where the crux of the matter lies. I now don't think Broder was trying to sabotage the drive, but I also don't believe his claims about the problems with Model S in the cold. I think the Model S is a fine car, and either the Tesla personnel really screwed up in their advice to Broder, or more likely, Broder completely misinterpreted them, due to a lack of understanding of how batteries work (and a complete lack of understanding of basic physics, since he actually did try the speeding up and slowing down approach). I'm thinking he was probably told that regenerative breaking would extend the range shown, and not to worry about it, and took that to mean he should try to force the regenerative breaking to occur more often. I'm thinking he was told that the once he started driving and the batteries warmed up, that the range would update to show more miles than displayed, and took that to mean he could trust their charge estimate of 1 hour literally, over what was shown in the display.
Basically, this is a communication and tech support problem, that turned into accusations being flung back and forth. I'd really like to see a transcript of those conversations with Tesla to be sure.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Is there anyone outside of Tesla that can independently verify that the logs actually recorded what Musk says they recorded? Why is there an automatic assumption by some that what Musk is publishing is what the logs actually recorded? How would we know if Musk is falsifying what's in the logs?
How would we know if Musk is falsifying what's in the logs?
Because it is a HUGE risk to take. What if the reporter had Google Tracks running on his phone? What if he made phone calls that disproved his location according to Musk? What if he stopped at a McDonalds and has the receipt and it disagrees with Musk's data? What if he drove by a security camera...
All Broder would need to do to destroy Musk's claims is prove that any bit of his data is wrong, because then Musk would only have two options: Admit his data had errors and thus make him look like a fool, or admit that he was lying, and thus slandering/libeling the hell out of this guy.
Because there are so many ways to show that just one bit of his data was faked, it would be an astounding risk to take given all the ways I outlined above.
Honestly, there is no point to any of this, just redo
It and prove them wrong. All media is sensationalist and oriented towards ad traffic and has no intention of accurate publishing worthy articles anyhow. Basic fact, there is no truth to
Either side. End of story lets move on.
Not sure who you mean by "everyone else", but when I search for reviews the only negatives that I find are questions whether a new car company can make it. There is very, very little negative about about any of the actual cars. Things like "rear headroom is cramped", stuff like that.
http://www.automobilemag.com/features/awards/1301_2013_automobile_of_the_year_tesla_model_s/viewall.html
t
> Published: January 14, 1987
Yep. Biased then, biased now.
Considering two other reporters from Consumer Reports and Motor Trends drove essentially the same route without any of the problems Broder had, ...
Actually that's not entirely true. The drop in battery charge overnight that doomed Broder by his account happened to the Consumer Reports author as well, and that was in slightly warmer conditions.
What part of releasing the raw logs from the vehicle to dispute a biased at best - outright fabrication at worst - is shooting the messenger?
The guy wrote an outright hit piece against the car. It would have been a damning piece of news, if only it were true.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Actually, you don't need both. It may be desirable to reach a balanced budget with a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases in order to lessen the blow from either, but either will work for balancing the budget. On the flip side, you could balance the budget entirely through revenue increases. Simply increase tax rates across the board until the budget is balanced. Done. Or you can simply cut spending until it's in line with revenues. An across-the-board (including all entitlements) cut of, say, 25% of spending will do that. Or you could cut all spending by 75% and have a large surplus. Or you could do an infinite number of combinations to reach any given stated goal.
The point being, the Tea Party folks may be calling for something that isn't necessarily healthy for the US economy, but they most certainly aren't calling for something that's impossible by any stretch of the imagination.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
And people who love tech enough to build their own computers universally love them. While this reporter may not have had brains, I think his experience more accurately reflects what would happen if you put an electric car in the hands of a non-enthusiast tech-illiterate driver. I've had to do enough tech support for family and friends to know that they'll do all sorts of stupid stuff which is quite obvious to me that they shouldn't do.
The reason Apple is so successful is because they dumb down the tech to the point where those non-enthusiast tech-illiterate users have no problems using it. That's what needs to happen to electric cars before they'll be widely accepted. If the experience of enthusiasts mattered as much as you seem to think, your grandmother would be using Linux on the desktop today. And just like Linux, if you're going to blame problems in using the tech solely on the stupidity of users, it's going to languish at 1% market share.
Personally, I think Broder is a tool who set out to jeopardize the test drive if he could. But at the same time I can't fault him for sensationalizing the problem with charge times and charge rates. That's a huge difference between EVs and ICE vehicles, and it needs to be stressed over and over to the public until it becomes "common sense" that you can't just fill 'er up in 5 minutes like you can with gasoline. The sooner everyone is made aware of that drawback, the sooner it will cease becoming a problem.
Not necessarily really *wants* to destroy... probably more along the lines of thinking that the inconvenience (limited range, long recharge time, and drastically increased initial expense) isn't worth the benefit. At worst, they are shortsighted... not necessarily actively wanting to see the end of the world.
If electric cars had a comparable range and recharge time to gasoline cars, you'd see increased adoption. If EV's cost about 10% of what they do right now, you'd see *overwhelming* adoption... within a decade, it would probably be the norm that families would typically have one or more EV's for daily commuting, and probably own no more than one gasoline powered car that they would use only for rarer and much longer trips.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
To be fair, the article did have some valid points about drawbacks, such as the lost range after a cold night. The slow charges when a 'supercharger' isn't available sound painful to wait for. It's not a car for everyone, but may be perfect for some.
That was lost in the uproar. At the same time, Musk had a few valid points as well. Just because a phone tech said an hour should be enough doesn't mean you should just ignore any and all evidence to the contrary and take off anyway. That's idiocy on the same order as the people who drive into a lake because the GPS didn't say turn.
I try not to be a grammar Nazi, but man you even italicized it.
The Italicians weren't Nazis, just allied to them. Grammar fascist would be more accurate.
roflmao
I recognized siddesu's user name from the last time there was an article on this topic, where he was making lists of complaints of electric cars that were far from unique to electric vehicles and happen to gas vehicles, sometimes even more so. Some people have huge biases against electric vehicles, for whatever reason, and they will defend, to themselves and to others, how much they think they suck. It is usually quite obvious, as easy as it is to point to actual problems, they spend too much time trying to inflate the list of problems or concentrating on non-existent ones, or ones that are shared with gas cars, etc. Reality be damned, even if it supports their side or not.
You might want to familiarize yourself with that case before you accuse Musk of shooting the messenger. Top Gear would have lost the suit if the judge hadn't decided the show is entertainment and not actually conducting reviews. Top Gear got caught faking their review. Musk was not wrong. Perhaps he's a little sensitive about this now, but it appears he's got just cause to complain about shoddy reviews.
It does not anywhere say anything about bearing arms against the government. Or self-defense. Or hunting. It only says that people eligible to serve in their militia can bear arms, in defense of the government.
What raw logs? They've release a few graphs. There are various ways to construct a graph to present data in a favourable light.
Broder's response makes no sense. What rep would EVER suggest
. I was given battery-conservation advice at that time (turn off the cruise control; alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking)
since both of those are very obviously bad for the battery? What person would believe that advice?
And his explanation for how he came up with 45mph and frigid cabin temperatures when the logs utterly contradict that are lame at best.
You can look at the other points any which way, but this smells of furiously trying to come up with an excuse for a smear attempt.
And I was being sarcastic about "wants to destroy the earth". However, when most people no longer need nor desire cars - that's when you'll start to see real change. What we need is a fully immersive, 3D (or 4D) online experience that is quicker to access and preferable for the majority of people over sitting in traffic to go to work at some cubicle, to go to a meeting to sit and watch a PowerPoint, to go shopping, to go to school to sit at a desk, etc. And that online immersive experience could be created a lot faster than the time it would take to replace every gas-guzzling car on the planet.
Telling people they are ignorant yahoo buffoons is not pedantic. It may be rude.
I knew enough about Tesla cars, or so I thought. I always figured they were impractical for me because their price puts them at a sole-car position for a person, and for long trips there was nothing that could be done about not being able to reach places > 300 miles away.
The scandal actually gave me a second or third look at them and let me see that the supercharger network is coming along. I also thought that the supercharger network was dumb, reasoning that I wouldn't want to wait 50 minutes to recharge my car in the middle of a trip. The article made me rethink that as well. On a drive of >300 miles I almost always stop somewhere for lunch. Basically the cars range just enforces a break every few hundred miles.. not that bad a thing.
There are still problems unspoken by this article. What if multiple cars are ahead of you and it takes 2 hours to charge? You can't really plan those delays into a trip, not a business one at least.
I'm still a big fan of the Chevy Volt for being 100% electric, with the backup gas engine if needed. And it doesn't look completely ridiculous like the nissan leaf, nor does it require new infrastructure like the Tesla.
The logs need to be released to a neutral and well respected third party. I strongly suspect they'll then report back that the NYT reporter is full of shit and the NYT will can the guy immediately while running a retraction on page C19, right under an ad for used peanut butter. The moment the fight starts making the NYT brand look less credible, the reporter goes under the bus and the story goes away.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Maybe because they're not yet ready for prime time? Seemed to me the biggest problem in the article was the battery charge dropping overnight in the cold weather. Elon Musk forgot to rebut that. Maybe if global warming is real, that won't be a problem. Eventually. Oh, and an hour and a half to refuel at supercharged station? I can't be the only one who sees a problem with that.
Do you really think it was necessary to throw a little flamebait in?
I stole this Sig
Tesla's first car had a base price of $110,000. The founder and CEO of Tesla Motors stated that sales of that car would finance the R&D for a cheaper vehicle, which became the Model S. Base price starts about $52,000. The next stated target for Tesla Motors is an EV comparable to the Model S with a base price under $30,000.
Tesla's first customers were expensive toys for people who just want posh toys. The Model S is directly competing with BMW, Lexus, and others. Their customers for the Model S are middle class professionals; not just trust fund babies and hedge fund managers.
As for EV cars, the difference now is that Tesla is the first company to produce an EV that could actually function as a drop-in replacement for fuel-combustion vehicles. This is especially true if they can put together a functional business model for the promised 5-minute quick-change battery swap. If that happens, you're now talking about a car with comparable range to typical FCEs and a comparable refueling time to typical FCEs. That's definitely never existed before.
However, even with just the Quickcharge stations, Tesla has managed to make a car that recharges almost to full while you grab lunch. That's huge. They should put those at every Denny's and Marriott in the country.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Nobody likes a pedantic ass.
I like him.
I don't like you though, you seem petulant.
Well, the article proofed the car has plenty of range for people in say my country, where that range even in cold weather is more then enough to drive across the entire country.
The whole electric car debate roughly has three parties.
Those who NEED to drive really long distances regullarly, they are very few and to be pitied, really if you have to commute +300miles even once per week, you are doing something wrong with your life.
Those who really don't need to and know their normal car usage is below 50 miles a day and would rather suck the exhaust pipe then drive for 300 miles in one go.
And those who really have no need for long distance driving either but want to believe that they could at any time pack it all in, hit the highway and cross a continent. They never will but if they have up that dream they would have to commit suicide because they got nothing else left in life.
An electric car is a tool for the commuter. It is perfectly suited for small distances and for instance at my office there is a free charging station. FREE fuel! And if you can afford a car in the Tesla range, you are REALLY just NOT the type to drive 300 miles. There are no rich hillbillies living in the wild and rich people take a plane or train. It is only in the minds of Top Gear and the likes that people look forward to driving all the way from London to Paris to attend a business meeting. It might even be faster but a SMART person knows the train/plane passenger will arrive more rested then the driver.
So... all this story has done is convince all the sides that they are right after all. The car has enough range for daily usage for normal people even in cold weather and electric cars ain't for long range travel in single hauls.
Whats new?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Because it didn't look bad enough to illustrate his little anti-EV tirade.
It had to leave him stranded; he probably had the narrative drafted before he even got the car.
There's no way he could write that despite everything he did, he still arrived and the car was able do its job in the absolute worst case scenario of cold weather, borderline illegal speeds and a blatantly malicious end user.
Tesla has the benefit of being the first ones out there with a real EV that works, so they have an opportunity to set the standard. They need to put as much as they possibly can into getting supercharging stations at every rest stop, restaurant, and hotel in and around population centers. You're going to spend 45 minutes eating at Denny's (or wherever) anyway. If you can plug in your Tesla and charge to nearly full while you do it? That's brilliant.
Once they have critical mass of infrastructure in place, they can charge a very small licensing fee to other EV manufacturers for the interface technology and set the major standard for the next couple decades while practically printing money along the way.
As for the Volt, it can't be "100% electric" if it has a gasoline engine. Just like the Prius and others, it's an EV until it isn't. That entire time, it's an overcomplicated bit of machinery trying to be all things to all people. I just hope Tesla manages to get their next model out soon since it's targeting under $30,000 with specs comparable to the Model S. That, I think, is where they have the opportunity to get huge.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
After reading the Musk analysis and the Broder rebuttal, I have to come to the conclusion that Mr. Broder's assessment is honest an accurate. I think there are two critical points that he brings up. These points do not paint Musk as a conniver, but simply as a proud engineer. He is trying to defend the engineering of the vehicle, but the problem was not with the engineering. The problems were purely operational in nature. First:
"I was given battery-conservation advice at that time (turn off the cruise control; alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking) that was later contradicted by other Tesla personnel."
There are multiple references like this in the article, but I will address them all with this statement. Mr. Broder's account shows an all too common problem: a support organization that does not provide consistent or specifically correct answers to customer's questions. Guess what? Good support is hard. For a company of Tesla's age, with a product that has very little "gamma testing" to it's name right now, it is not the least bit surprising that Mr. Broder received conflicting and ultimately counterproductive support advice. Second:
"it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires. That just might have affected the recorded speed, range, rate of battery depletion or any number of other parameters."
A change in the overall tire/wheel diameter generally requires having your speedometer re-calibrated if you want it to give you an accurate reading. It is entirely reasonable to expect that there is a lot of calculation going on inside the vehicle that is dependent on being able to correctly correlate RPMs to distance traveled. It's also reasonable to expect that differences in the rolling resistance between the stock tires and the AW tires would also have some impact.
These are not engineering problems. These are operational problems with process, knowledge, and execution. Musk should be rightly proud of the car his company is built, and should be rightly terrified that his post-purchase support could potentially burn a lot of goodwill once he runs out of early-adopting fanboys and geeks who will cut him slack and are motivated to fix their own problems. The I Just Want It To Work crowd will be a tougher audience.
Keep in mind the Mercedes uses the Tesla drive-train, MB licensed a couple of years back and has invested in Tesla as well. I think they own 20% or something but don't quote me on that.
Need Mercedes parts ?
indeed. If you're unemployed your wage is zero.
I think it's quite possible that neither is being entirely dishonest.
The main disagreement is about not fully charging the car. But it's pretty critical to remember that charging, even at a supercharger, takes a long time.
If you're on a roadtrip would you really want to wait around at a supercharger station for an hour? I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that if the person is 150 miles from their destination they're going to wait till the range estimator reads 155 then take off.
Also one thing not quite clear from the NYT article:
"It was also Tesla that told me that an hour of charging (at a lower power level) at a public utility in Norwich, Conn., would give me adequate range to reach the Supercharger 61 miles away, even though the car’s range estimator read 32 miles – because, again, I was told that moderate-speed driving would “restore” the battery power lost overnight."
Note that this wasn't a supercharger station, this was just somewhere he could plug in so charging was slow. It's not quite clear to me whether he was told the car would be fine with the estimator at 32 miles, or the car would be fine after being plugged in for an hour. But I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who could do some magical thinking to convince themselves that the guy on the phone said it was enough so it must be so!
The speed discrepancy is hard to account for (unless it was a dumb thing like the wrong tire size), but as for the 80 mph spike, maybe he just floored it to pass someone, and even though the logs show he wasn't at 45 mph for the limping stage he did reduce his speed, which suggests he was trying to extend the range and not run it dry like Elon Musk suggested. As for all the charging stations along the final route there's no evidence Broder had access to this info.
As for the cabin temperature the data definitely shows he drops it quite a bit, Elon Musk is definitely fudging the interpretation when he suggests it was always around 72.
In short Broder tried to use the car like a lot of people would, spending the absolute minimal amount of time waiting at a charging station, and due to some misunderstandings and bad breaks that tend to happen when you're pushing the limits, got burned.
I stole this Sig
There are some fishy things though. When he's presented with logs, all of a sudden everything he did is because of tech support. Very convenient. And then there's tech advice like this: I was given battery-conservation advice at that time (turn off the cruise control; alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking).
Why would such a thing work unless you believe in perpetuum mobiles? I mean, seriously, the world needs more BS detectors. It's possible some nitwit gave hime that advice, or the reporter misunderstood, or he lied.
Unless the phone logs are kept, we'll probably never know. The only thing remaining is to repeat the test, or continue argueing untill the sun turns into a red giant.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I'm sure Apple would've loved to publish that their iPad Mini can run for an entire week with the WiFi off, the CPU throttled all the way down and the brightness at minimum. But they know some people are going to crank the brightness all the way up and try to play Angry Birds until their eyes fall out, so their testing tends to be a bit more representative of how people might actually use the device.
Musk's assumption that his precious baby would be treated exactly as recommended, was his mistake. Hell, if I was testing an electric car, I'd do exactly the same thing. I'd crank up the air conditioning (Central Florida, it's hot here year round!) and blast the radio with extra bass. I'd see how well it handles keeping up with traffic in the fast lane. I'd want to know how much charge it'll manage when I don't have the time to wait for it to fill up completely. I'd probably forget to charge it and end up stuck somewhere, just to see how much wiggle room you've really got when it tells you you're dangerously low on charge.
Why? Because gasoline powered cars are amazingly tolerant of these sort of behaviors. Yeah, you'll reduce your gas mileage lead-footing it around town and having the A/C cranked (heat is basically free, though), but it generally won't make enough of a dent in your vehicle's effective range on a full tank that you'll end up stuck. Most cars also have a pretty decent amount of reserve range even after you hit that dreaded "E".
Presently, Tesla's cars are pretty much playthings for people who'd otherwise have no difficulty affording the gasoline a straight internal combustion or hybrid car would use. I'm sure even the people with that kind of money appreciate "real world" testing, because ultimately, even the rich can't afford to drive a car that's a constant pain in the ass.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
CNN Link: http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s/index.html Any decent driver (read: Probably your grandma) should be able to make that drive with range to spare. Regardless of the motivation of John Broder, this pretty much proves it can be done. I'm surprised Tesla let him try it! However, the first time you drive a Model S you aren't going to take it easy, I can tell you that much! (So fun!!!)
Well I've got the unemployment insurance that I paid for so It's not quite zero. Though I'd be better off if I'd have been able to just save the money from that and SS.
I can't be the only one that has a problem with sucking Saudi Muslim cock. I'll wait 30 mins to avoid that on the rare times I drive extreme distances.
any news is good news?
Due to this whole fiasco, the name "Tesla" is showing up in the news quite a bit recently---in the end, this will be followed by a triamphant news story on all major networks about ``Tesla range confirmed'' (very likely). This is amazingly good advertising at virtually no cost to the company.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
That was my first thought and preconception, but Top Gear UK are some dumbasses that are fun to watch spout ideas about what makes a "good" car. They carp about the "fit and finish" of US cars, "ooo look it has a squeeky plastic dashboard" "leafsprings!" then go on about how great an Earl Shribe baby blue painted Austin looks fabulous. Then Jeremy shreds some multi thousand dollar tires on a custom AMG Merc and blames the car. That's Top Gear.
Anybody but Elon Musk would know what TopGearUK is. So he sued them and lost. And since he has no sense of humor he tried more serious and newsworthy advertisments.
The NYT is supposed to be serious and newsworthy, and it looks like (best case) this asshat did poor due diligence on his roadtest and tried to skate on it. (Worst case) this jackass is hiding his hatred for the car by sabotaging the test. I'm inclined to blame incompitence over conspiracy.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Is it so far fetched to imagine that there isn't a conspiracy, and his bias is just part of who he is? Humans are irrational. They form opinions and become entrenched in them. Millions of people are pretty biased in interpreting politics, not because they are part of some mass conspiracy, they are just stubborn and close minded.
You are correct, to a point. But a little knife work with Occam's Razor leaves your hypothesis bleeding on the floor. Broder's agenda was in the driver's seat; his entrenched opinions were just along for the ride.
Have you ever seen what happens when Top Gear doesn't get co-operation from a car company when they request a car for one of their stunts?
I'll just say ( "CityRover" Top Gear Review (about 16:40 in) ) and "Albanian Mafia", with a dodgy Yugo standing in for a Bently Mulsanne...
Yes. Top Gear is an entertainment show. Why would anyone think otherwise?
The Chevy Volt is a series hybrid. It's the same idea as a diesel-electric. You run an engine to run a generator to run a motor. That may sound wasteful, but the conversion losses are low (~5%/conversion) and (in heavy machinery, at least) you do away with gear boxes, which is a big win, and you get the engine running on the Atkinson cycle, which is a big efficiency win.
The new thing for the Chevy Volt is to throw a battery in the mix to get you regenerative braking (another big win).
So while the Chevy Volt is partially an EV, it's no more so than a plug-in Prius. It's a plug-in series Hybrid.
Not that this is a bad thing, but the question to ask is whether it's a better idea to put in a gas tank, engine, and generator, or to put in a bigger battery. It's an awful lot of weight to carry around for a "backup."
If it's speed of charge you're concerned about, check out Project Better Place. Their model is swappable batteries. A full "recharge" takes under 60s.
"Accused of driving around a parking lot for no reason, for instance."
Is Musk the heir of Jobs reality distortion field ? If Tesla is accusing anyone of skewing a test, because he's driving around a parking lot, then the product is a complete failure for the consumer and you (and Tesla) deep down already know it. Tip: Try to get your head clear. Mentally replace "Tesla" with "Microsoft" and "Musk" with "Ballmer". It won't change the pertinent facts of the story, but it could change your perception.
Sure, Volt and Prius has a gasoline engine to generate the electricity. If you are charging your EV from the grid, how do you think they are generating the electricity to charge you EV?
A plugin hybrid may not be ideal, but so far they are the best options available. Certainly better than any pure EV, unless you don't plan on long trips.
The analysis by Tesla was interesting. Rest I don't care, I personally like my car to go "brooom", but I absolute like the direction of e-vehicles and support it.
The part where the graphs (not raw logs!) basically confirm everything he said, especially the part that's most damaging to Tesla - the drop in range remaining from 90 miles to 25 miles overnight, unexpectedly leaving him without enough range to reach the nearest Supercharger. (Look at the vertical drop in range at the 400-mile mark. It's hard to see what actually happened because Tesla have carefully avoided releasing any graphs of range against time, or any raw logs of the same.)
In fact, Elon Musk is being really disingenous here when he accuses Broder of lying about the car falling short of its predicted range. Yes, it did predict 31 miles - after it'd already lost most of its predicted range overnight, forcing him to delay his journey and use a far slower Level 2 charger. (Which probably has rather more to do with why he charged to 28% rather than the full 90% than Elon's conspiracy theories. A full 90% charge would have taken around 10 hours - not that you could figure that out from Elon's blog post - adding a whole additional day to his two-day trip. Does Elon Musk really think that having to stand around in the cold for 10 long freezing hours and turn a two-day trip into a three-day one would really paint his $100,000 car in a good light? I honestly doubt it - if he had fully charged, we'd be seeing a blog post from Elon about how if he'd just charged enough to get to the Supercharger the article was meant to be about he could've made the trip in far less time, and how the journalist was intentionally trying to discredit Tesla by charging fully at a slower charger.)
Elon's comments are disingenuous. He removes information to seek to mislead. You repeat the same mistake. Please read the actual NYT comments, and what was actually said. Because any potential Tesla customer will take time to read the ACTUAL review and see how Mr Musk's comments (and your) are so disingenuous.
I think in future, any reviewer needs to video and record Teslas phone calls and driving so that when Elon does this he can be shown as the liar he is. I'm disgusted by the astroturf Tesla seems to be putting out here.
“As the State of Charge log shows, the Model S battery never ran out of energy at any time, including when Broder called the flatbed truck.”
The car’s display screen said the car was shutting down, and it did. The car did not have enough power to move, or even enough to release the electrically operated parking brake. The tow truck driver was on the phone with Tesla’s New York service manager, Adam Williams, for 15 or 20 minutes as he was trying to move the car onto a flatbed truck.
“The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.”
The Tesla personnel whom I consulted over the phone – Ms. Ra and Mr. Merendino – told me to leave it connected for an hour, and after that the lost range would be restored. I did not ignore their advice.
“In his article, Broder claims that ‘the car fell short of its projected range on the final leg.’ Then he bizarrely states that the screen showed ‘Est. remaining range: 32 miles’ and the car traveled ‘51 miles’ contradicting his own statement (see images below). The car actually did an admirable job exceeding its projected range. Had he not insisted on doing a nonstop 61-mile trip while staring at a screen that estimated half that range, all would have been well. He constructed a no-win scenario for any vehicle, electric or gasoline.”
The phrase “the car fell short of its projected range” appeared in a caption with an accompanying map; it was not in the article. What that referred to (and admittedly could have been more precise) was that the car fell short of the projected range, 90 miles, that it showed when I parked it overnight at a hotel in Groton, Conn.
Tesla is correct that the car did exceed the projected range of 32 miles when I left Norwich, as I was driving slowly, and it gave me hope that the Tesla employee I’d consulted was correct that the mileage lost overnight was being restored. It wasn’t enough, however, to get to Milford.
“On that leg, he drove right past a public charge station while the car repeatedly warned him that it was very low on range.”
If there was a public charging station nearby, no one made me aware of it. The Tesla person with whom I was in contact located on the Internet a public charging station in East Haven, Conn., and that is the one I was trying to reach when the car stalled in Branford, about five miles shy of East Haven.
“Cruise control was never set to 54 m.p.h. as claimed in the article, nor did he limp along at 45 m.p.h. Broder in fact drove at speeds from 65 m.p.h. to 81 m.p.h. for a majority of the trip, and at an average cabin temperature setting of 72 F.”
I drove normally (at the speed limit or with prevailing traffic) when I thought it was prudent to do so. I do recall setting the cruise control to about 54 m.p.h., as I wrote. The log shows the car traveling about 60 m.p.h. for a nearly 100-mile stretch on the New Jersey Turnpike. I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires. That just might
Well, I guess trying to smear a car company to get a story of the year award would count as an intensive purpose.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
And just think, by the time they get through analyzing and bickering, this Car model will be replaced with a newer one!. And really, who drives their car exactly as the manual states?. If I'm cold, I will turn up the heat. If I am impeding traffic, I will speed up. It's all nonsense about a car that will be replaced next year by a newer model posing new issues.
This is two cave men arguing over a shiny rock. And they are doing in a serious way, as if it's going to solve the worlds problems; It's hilarious, sad and a poor example of evolution.
Errrrm, try reading his original article again - not Elon Musk's blog post about it, but what he actually wrote . He said the same things about the advice he'd got from Tesla then as he's saying now - this obviously isn't just something he came up with after Tesla released their interpretation of the logs.
To help GP understand why he is being ridiculed, the phrase you are looking for is "for all intents and purposes".
Well he could have charged his car fully before starting his trip and not have driven around Manhattan to begin with.
It's a known characteristic of this car that the battery system needs to spend energy to heat the battery pack on cold environments. The manufacturer even advises doing the initial startup on really cold climates plugged into the grid. In his case he just needed to charge a bit more so the battery pack would survive the trip.
Sure it would be nice to have more charging stations. But you have to know how to manage your energy supply. Have you never seen any driver needing assistance because he didn't fill his gas tank on time and ran until dry? This with a gas station network which has been constructed for decades and is nearly ubiquitous.
You don't have to. It's only necessary to get someone to do the same test under the same circumstances. We then see who is telling the truth from whose version fits the real world results.
Not that this is a bad thing, but the question to ask is whether it's a better idea to put in a gas tank, engine, and generator, or to put in a bigger battery. It's an awful lot of weight to carry around for a "backup."
The energy density of petrol/diesel is still a fair way ahead of battery packs, so the engine/generator set up is still lighter overall. Especially since the engine will have very little load, so it can be made from lightweight steels and aluminium.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
That was my first thought and preconception, but Top Gear UK are some dumbasses that are fun to watch spout ideas about what makes a "good" car. They carp about the "fit and finish" of US cars, "ooo look it has a squeeky plastic dashboard" "leafsprings!" then go on about how great an Earl Shribe baby blue painted Austin looks fabulous. Then Jeremy shreds some multi thousand dollar tires on a custom AMG Merc and blames the car. That's Top Gear.
I was going to argue, but you're pretty much spot on. Top Gear UK - at the leading edge of cocking about.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
When you've consumed your 40 miles...it's an engine that's under powered, it'll feel like a lawnmower engine powering a sedan...It'll feel anemic on the highway. It's problematic, neither fish nor fowl.
-- Elon Musk, on the Chevrolet Volt.
'Cadillacs are overpriced barges.' - Henry Ford.
OK, I made it up, but it's just as applicable.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
If it has a gas engine, in what way is it "100% electric"? That's a headscratcher for me.
Really? Reading the stats it looks like sheer stupidity of assuming you can drive further than the car is telling you is what doomed Broder. I'm actually thinking Broder's own brain has doomed Broder as the only word that really comes to mind out of all of this is "idiot".
As noted by many, those words raised a LOT of red flags. Basic lessons in physics would suggest to anyone that perpetual motion does not exist. That means slowing down and speeding up isn't going to magically charge the battery. So either reporter is lying or exceptionally stupid.
Considering that he reports on cars and has done so for a while, one would assume that he is familiar enough with physics not to be exceptionally stupid.
Try, " he's a journalist",
As an ex-journalist, I can tell you, being an asshole is what gets you the story. No one cares if Mary Sunshine writes about marshmallows and lollipops.
If there is no controversy, there is no story, certainly no front page, and then no paycheck. Musk is just job fodder, it's got nothing to do with anything relevant, just Broder notching his belt.
It's a hard thing to shake, as many of you can attest over the years, I still play in the threads with a similar writing style adapted to forums. Amazing assertion, conflicting response, bring out the facts and pound,pound,pound. Before you know it, you've been sucked in and are part of the sickness. It's so funny, people are suckers for "news" and take propaganda like medicine. It's not about news, it's about careers and selling ads.
Although there is freedom of the press, you'll note, Jefferson is always quoted saying that there is nothing to be learned from the "News papers". It's always been the same, but now digital and faster, speeding the lies to your frontal lobes in HD and stereo surround.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
As a person coming from a position of no knowledge, I would have to guess that the drive is 100% electric, and when you hear the dinosaur burning engine turn on, it's to provide additional power to the drive and to recharge the battery. I just checked wikipedia, it seems that's what series hybrid means.
Kind of like the 16 hour tablet/dock, where each battery provides 8 hours of life, except that neither part has an internal combustion engine in the tablet. Lucky for the car and not the tablet; my dock seems to be losing its juice capacity, now I'm thinking about a new or refurbished dock to keep it at 16 hours capacity, for an extra $60-100.
This thing was a steal at $325... we'll have to see how I feel at $425. Probably no big deal, at least I don't have to put gallons into it.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
roflmao
I think you mean Honorable Chairman ROFLMAO.
Since Broder didn't plug the car in overnight, the battery cooled down and the charge estimate decreased because of the change in impedance.
By driving the car and warming up the battery, the "missing charge" would have come back.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Those who NEED to drive really long distances regularly, they are very few and to be pitied, really if you have to commute +300miles even once per week, you are doing something wrong with your life.
Or you are a sales representative, a service engineer or, like me, a software engineer who actually visits it's customers. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons to travel more then 300 miles (and the Top Gear story was about the 200 mile roadster) regularly. And even when only doing this occasionally for holidays and family visits it is something to consider. (Yeah, you can rent a car, but it's still inconvenient).
It is only in the minds of Top Gear and the likes that people look forward to driving all the way from London to Paris to attend a business meeting. It might even be faster but a SMART person knows the train/plane passenger will arrive more rested then the driver.
Both planes and trains are often inconvenient because they never arrive where you need to be. On top of that, if you can't drive from London to Paris comfortably in a car that price it's not worth its money. It recently did an 800 miles trip (twice) in a car half the price without being broken when I arrived, a 280 miles drive should be a walk in the park in any decent modern car, and certainly in a car in that price bracket.
That said, if range isn't an issue for you the Model S seems to be a really nice car.
The "range loss" was because the battery cooled down due to the car not being plugged in overnight. Driving the car again would warm the battery and the missing range would have come back.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking"
Bizarrely that might 'sort of' work in a hybrid vehicle, where 'work' means 'force slightly quicker charging'. Still makes no sense at all even in a hybrid, but you can see how a suitable clueless person could spout this bullshit. I find it hard to believe a Tesla employ would say something that dumb though, if Broder isn't just making it up he heard it somewhere else.
That's very convenient for Musk since he'll probably need to wait a year or more to replicate the 10F temp in New York.
Wow! Looks like some Koch Brother's fans have mod points on Slashdot, my comment (see below) got modded -1, Troll.
Interesting:
I mean really, Big Oil had the New York Times help start a war with Iraq, skewing the results of an electric car test are nothing compared to that.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Motor Trend also picked it as the 2013 Car of the Year over 45 other entries and a unanimous decision by 11 reviewers who actually know how to evaluate a car, during which they drove the Model S about 1400 miles.
And for the counterpoint, there's James Broder, who couldn't find a 6ft tall charging station in front of a fast-food restaurant in a 100-car parking lot.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
If it has a gas engine, in what way is it "100% electric"? That's a headscratcher for me.
AFAIK, if the engine in a VOLT fails, you can still go. With a Prius you're stranded.
I'd like to see an electric car that has 4 motors, one for each wheel. Add redundant control electronics and you could have 50% systems failure and still be able to get home.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Justin Bieber has a lot of fanboy webpages too. That doesn't make him a great singer.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Musk has not published data, but charts...
Those charts are data. They're representations of time series. Do you think it only counts as data when it's numbers in columns? Then measure the chart, write down the numbers, and make yourself happy.
Was the data verified by a unbiased third party?
No?
Time will tell who was or is telling the truth here and exactly what is the truth.
and so far, reporter AND Musk haven't convinced me one way or another.
Typically my hybrid gets better mileage when I don't use the cruise control and speed up on the down-slope and let the speed sink a bit on the up-slope. Called Pulse and Glide.
Is this something the average driver of a gas-powered car would know? No. And makes sense that a Tesla support person might tell him that as a range extending technique.
The higher I turn the heater on, the less mileage. And if I have it even for a while starting in the off position, even better. And does that feel cold? You bet. Actually frigid? Well go turn your heater to 55 and see how it feels.
Ouch CNN just accomplished it without a problem
http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s/index.html
John Broder got some explaining to do
So, what caused the sudden drop?
Two things cause it:
1. Batteries lose charge, even just sitting on the shelf.
2. Batteries lose charge fast with extreme temperatures variations. Think of it as the charge shrinks when cold and expands when warm/hot.
Take ANY warm battery, fully charged or not, and let it cool or get really cold(as in this case) and the charge will decline by a significant percentage. Warming the battery again, such as by drawing current from it, will return (expand) some of the charge. But, there is a degree of loss that is not returned.
Likewise, with every charge cycle, there is a decrease(perhaps very small) in the battery's capacity.
This is the nature of batteries. ALL of them.
You've always experienced it, even with your cellphone. But, where as in the past you might have bought a new battery for under $100 or replaced the device and battery entirely, the Tesla's battery replacement will cost you $20,000(?) in 6(?) years. Oh? You'd rather replace the car instead? $90,000!
At this point I cannot trust either party. What I require is simple: multiple field tests that are video recorded the whole way through and posted on a public site.
Not everyone can telecommute, but traditionally people have lived much closer to work, whether it be on a farm, above their shop or in row homes near a factory. I've lived within a mile of my job for the past 12 years and it has saved me quite a bit of money. Public transit and zipcar work for when I need to go a little farther. With the average cost of car ownership around here being $8,000 a year, it's more than enough to pay for the higher cost of living. Yes, there are many jobs this doesn't work for, but if the average office worker didn't have to clog up miles of roads to get to work, the occupations that do need to travel would have a much easier time commuting between job sites.
Think about it for one second: who has more motive to outright lie? The reporter who will lose credibility and a job if caught in a blatant lie, or the company CEO who has hundreds of millions and his reputation invested in performance of the car? Stop just yelling how the reporter is in the pocket of big oil, show me his financial stake in Tesla failing. He may have opinions (right or wrong). It's pretty easy to see the financial interests of the CEO in Tesla not failing. If only people spend 5 seconds not being fooled by noise and just cut to the chase, even politics would work!
Or, he has heard about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving#Burn_and_coast
Mr. Broder awaits your apology.
I also thought that the supercharger network was dumb, reasoning that I wouldn't want to wait 50 minutes to recharge my car in the middle of a trip. The article made me rethink that as well. On a drive of >300 miles I almost always stop somewhere for lunch. Basically the cars range just enforces a break every few hundred miles.. not that bad a thing.
If it takes 5 minutes to fill up a gas vehicle, and 50 minutes to fill up an EV, it takes 10 times the charging stations to service the same number of vehicles. And when *everyone* wants to charge their EV at "lunchtime", that's only going to increase contention.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Let me attempt to clear this up.
Those words you italicized? They don't mean what you think they do.
True, but eventually they *will*.
I cringe at the use of "begs the question" when the writer means "raises the question". The use of "impact" as a synonym for "affect" still makes my eye twitch. I don't like it, but rationally, I accept that trying to stop people from changing the meaning of words they don't understand is just spitting into the wind.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well you can't run a gasoline engine without electricity, so there you go... 100% electric.
But this is assuming the footprint of a charging station must be the same as a gas pump. While it looks like Tesla's Supercharger terminals take up about as much room as a traditional gas pump (maybe a little less), it doesn't seem to me that there's any real reason it has to. You're just running wires to a plug. You could potentially have a lot more charging outlets than gas pumps in the same amount of space.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Most idiotic comment I've seen on Slashdot in weeks. Thanks chump.
Just another day in Paradise
... This has to be the most braindead AC I've seen in a while. Mr Broder, is that you?
Even if you assume the charger occupies no extra space, you have to store all those cars somewhere. I see a lot of gas stations that don't even have parking lots. They can serve maybe 4 cars at a time, remove the pumps and maybe 8 cars. All those are going to have to be replaced with parking structures wired for EV charging.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You can't claim the logs may not be accurate and the use the same logs to defend yourself.
the proper term was extended range EV. the drive train is all electric, and you can use a battery pack as primary power source.
you simply have the option or capability to use a gasoline engine to directly generate electricity. this allows gasoline type energy density, but electric type efficincies, and you eliminate the weight and space taken up by a gasoline drivetrain. eventually such systems will even be plug and swap: 1 primary battery pack always present, and then either a 2ndary one, or a generator module.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
what this guy said. mod up
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_the_messenger
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Glad I could make your next day in paradise just a little happier. Hawaii?
Why didn't Broder take an picture of the dashboard to show us that the car did indeed shutdown, as he sad it did.
True, but the way most gas stations are designed, they waste a lot of space already. You should be able to charge more electric cars per square meter.
An hour is admittedly a long time to have to wait for a full charge, but perhaps that's where the idea of locating them in random parking lots comes in. You don't need the full infrastructure of a service station, just put them in, say, mall parking lots and shopping plazas. Let people charge up while they go run some errands or shop. Those parking lots tend to be bigger, and people are going to be hanging out a while anyway.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Yeah, because there's absolutely no one out there with an ax to grind against electric cars. No one would ever try to portray them in an unfairly unfavorable light. Are you for real?
The Top Gear incident was agreed by all parties to be a staged hoax that's not representative of how the car behaves.
Broden's article was a pure hit piece.
Tesla has every right to speak out against "journalism" that unfairly maligns their products.
I have no dog in this fight, mind you. I don't own an EV and probably won't anytime soon, but anyone who calls himself or herself a "journalist" has an obligation not to taint their reporting with an irrational agenda. I know it's hard to keep all bias out. That's why a professional actively works to quell it, rather than making it the centerpiece of their narrative.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Yes, ultimately the only way this is going to be feasible is if there's a charger at every parking spot. That's a huge amount of infrastructure work that's going to have to be done before EVs can get anywhere close to replacing gas powered vehicles.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The wheel size thing is irrelevant and wouldn't affect results. All automakers offer wheels in different diameters. But then the tires they equip have different profiles to compensate so that the overall diameter is about the same. There are even calculators online that allow you to choose the right tire size for different wheel sizes. I've never seen an automaker go with sizes that vary much more than 1% in outer circumference.
I was originally on Tesla's side. But reading all this has led me to the conclusion that electric cars are simply not ready for the mass market. Even with charging stations as ubiquitous as gas stations are today, who wants to sit around for 30 minutes so that they can drive 150 miles? And keep in mind that rapid charging dramatically reduces the lifespan of these batteries. So it isn't something you can do on a regular basis.
That said, electric cars are awesome for anyone who's got a reasonable commute. But again, you're dealing with your average consumer who's as ignorant about the technology as this reporter, if not moreso. Right now we're seeing mostly early adopters. These are people who are either willing to deal with issues, or interested in learning the nuances of the car's operation. That's not going to continue as these cars become more widespread. I can only imagine the headache automakers will face from constant customer complaints. It may be user error, but people don't seem to enjoy using their own brains.
Try harder. Nobody likes a pedantic ass. Technically correct or not.
Your assertion that he's being a pedantic ass is only your opinion. Man up, AC. Simple typos being called out by grammar nazis is one thing, but the OP clearly had a mistaken understanding of what he had written, and went on to prove it in a subsequent post. Calling him on it, was the right thing to do.
Just another day in Paradise
They don't have to be at every parking spot. People will still have outlets at home. But there can be parts of every parking lot set aside with charging stations.
Getting the supply right in order to meet demand will admittedly be tricky, and a long-term issue to solve.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
It has a 100% electric drive train. This is different from hybrids such as the Prius that still use the gas engine to turn the wheels.
alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking
For a guy who is supposed to be an energy expert he clearly has a pretty poor understanding of thermodynamics. For that matter, anyone reviewing cars for a major publication should have a basic understanding physics, not to mention... you know... cars. The article read like someone reviewing a stick shift car when they had only ever learned automatic. If you are writing car reviews for the NYT I would hope you would be a fucking car junkie who is obsessed with every little detail, but distills the most important stuff down for us casual users. This is like my mom reviewing the new Macbook: "The internet won't close! How do I open Facebook! You mean it doesn't get my email? My old Macbook had email!"
Don't get me wrong, I do still think Elon Musk is a shifty little bastard who could/would lie his way out of anything, but the real story here is that the NYT assigned a completely unqualified journalist to a story and it blew up in their face.
This is what Tesla engineers told him. He tried it. It didn't.
My take on all of this is actually pretty straightforward:
1.) The car DID lose charge overnight it cold weather. That seems clear, as Musk doesn't seem to be refuting this claim. I don't consider this a scathing knock against electric cars, but would be a perfectly reasonable complaint for Broder to put in the article.
2.) Broder claims (not corroborated, but I tend to believe him) that Tesla engineers told him that #1 had actually not happened, and that it was safe to make the 61-mile trip leg with only an hour of low-power charging.
3.) After the hour of charging the car stated that it only had 32 miles of range.
4.) Broder attempted the trip.
5.) He didn't make it.
My takeaway from this:
1.) Broder's tone for his review is far too scathing for what actually happened.
2.) I don't understand why Broder didn't charge the car overnight during his stay at the hotel. This is what most people owning an electric car would have done, and was a strange choice. Then again, it did allow him to report on the overnight charge loss, which is valuable information to a consumer.
3.) Broder's experience DOES NOT represent what a normal consumer would do in his situation. If I needed to go 60 miles to the next charging station, you better bet that I would make DAMN SURE that I had at least 60 miles of reported range on the battery. If the reported range had dropped overnight, then I would plug in on low power and wait for the range to be at least 60. I might complain about the time this took, but would NOT listen to Tesla engineers when they said that the gauge was lying to me. I might report that Tesla engineers told me that it was lying, but that a normal consumer would not have a team of engineers backing them up in everyday driving.
4.) Tesla needs to get control over the mouths of their engineers who deal with the media. In both the Top Gear and the NYT cases, it was statements from their engineers that got them in the most trouble. The 55 mile Top Gear statement was straight from an engineer, and the attempt to make a 61-mile trip with 32 miles of range displayed on the gauge was also the result of advice from a Tesla engineer. The Tesla engineers should just be saying: The estimated range is there for a reason, use it. They should otherwise keep their mouth shut.
Yeah. Major fail. I bet if you walked into the NYT and asked the crossword guy if speeding up and slowing down could extend the range of an electric car, they could tell you the obvious answer, no. This guy is supposed to be an energy expert. No way in hell he could not know the basic challenges to efficiency even if he was a complete and total moron. He would have heard about this stuff all the time. Unbelievable audacity.
If for some unknown reason everyone used "for all intensive purposes" and ignored the fact that the word "intensive" has a separate meaning here, then, yes, eventually we would all have to use that. But as it makes no sense, it is hard to see why usage should go that way, especially as everyone would have to stop using "intensive" in its correct context.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Exactly. It will always be a net loss for highway travel. Regenerative braking is only a win in stop and go traffic. Yet even there, its still a net loss for the batteries.
What always amuses me on slashdot is that people will moan abut the pedantry of correcting grammar, spelling or sense, but as soon as it comes to misquoting Star Wars or transliterating the name of a Japanese tentacle porn heroine incorrectly, eveyone's up in arms about how stupid, ignorant and lazy the poster is.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You may say he is simply lying, but that is a very serious accusation to make with no evidence.
And saying "anyone should have known that the concept of regenerative braking is the equivalent of perpetual motion" is bollocks. No one claims that there is some magical creation of power from nothing. It just (more or less efficiently) moves unneeded energy from one place to another. There is plenty of discussion and information about it on the web, and it's not all Time Cube guys thinking they've found the solution to eternal free power.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I consider that statement to be one of those things that Politifact would rate "half true" or even "mostly false"; I think Musk overstates his case, and as a result I can't tell how much of a case he has. (At the moment, I don't find either side particularly credible.)
In particular, let's look at the portion where the battery died. Based on charging, this was (1) leave Milford, (2) arrive and spend the night at Groton, (3) do a tiny recharge in Norwich, (4) try to make it back to Milford.
Google maps says that the Milford->Groton distance is 60 miles. So in Milford, if you're trying to figure out how much you'll need to get to Groton and back, you only need 120. Now, Broder took a long-cut and increased that to 79 miles on the trip there, meaning that he'd really need 140 miles. (He was planning on taking a shorter path back, actually a bit less than my 60 miles: "I drove, slowly, to Stonington, Conn., for dinner and spent the night in Groton, a total distance of 79 miles. When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford." Musk's data says that, despite charging for less time than the original review said, he still stopped charging at 185 miles -- at least for someone used to gas driving (i.e. me) who doesn't have to worry about how the car takes into account heating and such in that range estimation, that's plenty of wiggle room. Nothing particularly dumb yet.
For some reason -- the four possibilities that come to mind are the range estimate ignoring the effects of cold weather + heater use, other causes of a very bad estimate on the part of the Tesla; a dumb mistake on the part of Broder, or deliberate malfeasance on the part of Broder -- the estimated range when leaving Milford was dramatically high. It's certainly possible that the cause of this was Broder's doing, but it seems equally likely to me that it was not, given that the Consumer Reports reviewer didn't exactly have a ton of leeway when they made it. And the Consumer Reports author (1) started from Milford with a larger charge, and (2) had warmer weather from what they say in their articles (which is admittedly very imprecise, but it was perhaps 15 or even 20 degrees difference). Anyway, if it was the car (very plausible), then there's no dumbness on Broder's part.
That leaves his behavior on the morning he left Groton. He took a detour to Norwich to get a trickle charge, which Musk's data shows he stopped at 28%. This is the one time that Broder left a charging station with a report that he had inadequate charge. How much this is "dumb" depends on your level of risk factor. Under a reasonable assumption, it was risky but reasonable to do. He felt that the Tesla was underreporting its available mileage. This is a reasonable assumption -- the batteries output less power when they're cold, and driving along was supposed to warm them up. That was the purpose of the conditioning. After all, this exact thing happened to the Consumer Reports reviewer, and is the reason I posted that link at the GP. ("The night before my voyage back to work, I had 88 miles left, according to the car's computation. ... But while parked outside my house overnight, the temperature dipped and so did the indicated range, which now read only 58 miles. (Yes, a little range anxiety began to set in.) ... According to Tesla, the car's computer takes into account the freezing temperature and readjusts the remaining range. The company also said that, upon restarting, the battery warms up and the computer once again updates the range.") Broder's or
Regenerative braking exists but it doesn't recover 100% of the kinetic energy of the vehicle. IE, if you expand x energy unit to accelerate the vehicle, regenerative braking will recover less than x when braking, which is better than 0 which is what would happened if there wasn't any regenerative braking. In no case can regenerative braking recover more energy than what was used to put the vehicle in movement in the first place. Therefore accelerating and braking cannot charge the battery, always discharge it, just less so with regenerative braking.
alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking
All energy changes cause losses. They may have said, "Do not drive aggressively, for instance gradually slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking."
I don't like to think Broder is an idiot, but he is certainly trying to convince everyone he is.
Unfortunately, if you follow the logic of those that want to balance the budget through revenue increases you will find that it is impossible to do so by only increasing rates on those making more than $250K. Theres also the argument that increasing tax rate could be as bad or worse for the economy than dramatic spending cuts.
The reporter's financial stake isn't in Tesla failing.
On the other hand, the financial stake he stands to lose if he's shown to be lying? That'd be called his *JOB*.
It's normal for a paper to stand by their journalists, because they *have* to have some faith in them in order to report on anything beyond public announcements by third parties. But, and this is a *big* but, if it comes out that one of those journalists has been fabricating facts, or otherwise lying or being deceptive in their articles, the paper stands to lose a *lot*. As a result, when that sort of dishonesty is proven, the paper will often throw the journalist under the bus so fast he'll experience time dilation effects.
Broder said that his car came equipped with the 19" rims instead of the 21's and that may have accounted for the speed difference. Although, the speedometer should show the same number as the logs and according to teslamotors.com the 19's are the stock size which suggests the speedometer is more likely to be calibrated for those anyway:
"19" aluminum alloy wheels with all-season tires (Goodyear Eagle RS-A2 245/45R19). Note: optional 21" wheels come with Continental Extreme Contact DW 245/35R21 high-performance tires"
Who, apart for Clarkson, said the fuse had anything to do with the brakes? The fuse went whilst the car was being recharged.
Not quite, though I was on Waikiki two weeks ago.
Just another day in Paradise
Come no tehcyder, you're not that stupid. And I would hope a NYT reporter isn't either.
Enough said. See the CNN test. Much more realistic.
Which is why the paradigm has to change. Day to day, you should be plugging in at home at work, maybe at places like grocery store and restaraunts with available 220v outlets that are not too bad to add to existing stores. If at lunch you can't find an outlet, no big deal, you've been charging 4 hours prior and you'll be changing for another 4 hours before going home. Supercharging stations like this only make sense for people on long haul trips that don't have enough intervening downtime to do anything else.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The Volt is an EV with a gas-powered generator strapped on. The generator is not connected to the drivetrain like it would be in a hybrid.
You meant he WASN'T talking about intense dolphins?!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Ah, you might want to check your facts there haruchai.
He did drive it and wound up stranded. No range restoration happened.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We are not talking about a difference of 100 feet difference. We are talking a max of 1 inch.
If you actually knew even basic math, you would not had made-up that ridiculously ignorant excuse.
The answer to this question is actually straightforward:
If the total distance recorded in the logs agrees with the total distance between the points traveled, then that is a point in Musk's favor.
Additionally, if the speeds recorded in the logs (for travelling on the various roads) make sense compared with typical speeds you'd need to drive on those roads, then that is another point in Musk's favor.
It would be a lot of work to falsify the logs convincingly, and it isn't the sort of thing you'd be able to generate on short notice.
Note, that reporter hasn't contested the accuracy of the logs. This is yet another point in Musk's favor.
It will be interesting to see if anyone recorded the telephone calls and they can either corroborate or contradict the reporter's statements...
Look, the most efficient way to move is at constant speed. There is no way on earth that speeding up/slowing down is going to be more efficient. You need energy to speed up, at less than 100% efficiency, and you recuperate energy from slowing down, at less than 100% efficiency. How can that ever prolong battery life? That's basic highschool stuff. If the reporter has a highschool degree, yet is unaware of that, then that's quite embarrasing for the educational system.
It's true that accusing the reporter to lie is a serious one, but so is accusing the technical support staff of such incompetence. That leaves that there was a misunderstanding between the two: maybe support wanted to explain how to optimally slow down to maximize energy recuperation, and the dumb reporter didn't understand. Or maybe Tesla hired a moron for tech support. All are possible. With all results being possible, that is equivalent to saying that no conclusion can be made. So: do the test again, better this time.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Pulse-and-glide is a well-known hyper-miling technique for extending range; the physics are described in the link.
But, I just looked at your posting history, and it's full of insults and low on facts, so I expect you didn't actually read the article.
Supercharging stations like this only make sense for people on long haul trips that don't have enough intervening downtime to do anything else.
Which is a lot of people. Picture your average truck stop off the interstate. Now imagine 10 times the number of people, each there for 10 times as long.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But I think you missed my point, what is the financial stake for the reported to LIE. You are starting with the assumptions, I am saying if you view it from the above angle and ASSUME you don't know how is stretching the truth one party has a lot more financial stake than the other to lie.
Yes perpetual motion does exist and those who dare to claim it doesn't are clearly low on facts and full of insults.
Carry on.
Still: you're reviewing the car of a company that has proven itself extremely prickly to negative press coverage. You call the company regularly and do what they tell you to do, so they can't accuse you later of not reviewing it right. And then they accuse you of not doing it right.
Imagine if Mr. Broder had *not* done what the Tesla person said, on the basis that he thought it was silly - it doesn't seem unreasonable to imagine there'd be a blog post from Elon Musk in which he says the NYT is wrong because it didn't do what the people from Tesla told it to do. Seems rather like a no-win situation for the journalist, if the company gives you ridiculous advice. Take it, you're screwed. Ignore it, you're screwed.
This seems rather like a 50/50 thing to me, to be honest. I think Musk is going in way too hard and should have gotten his ducks in a row first; he can't just post a graph and declare what the journalist ought to have done, if his _own employees_ were telling the journalist to do something else. But on the other hand, regular drivers aren't likely to be taking advice from Tesla on the phone 24x7; if I'd bought a Tesla and wanted to drive 60 miles and the range remaining indicator was saying 30 miles, I wouldn't call up Tesla and then drive it away if the moron on the phone said 'yeah, 30 really means 60, go for it!', I'd just wait for the thing to read 60. Or 80.
So eh, swings and roundabouts. On pure approach though, I gotta say the journalist's coming off better than Elon so far. He's refusing to sling mud and sticking to a consistent and not obviously falsifiable narrative about what happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving#Burn_and_coast
I hope the shock of that revelation didn't cause you any heart trouble...
Seriously? You can't tell the difference between this and 'perpetual motion'?
I can understand that being a first response, but the link is actually pretty clear. Basically, only a fraction of the power consumed in an automobile is used for forward motion; pulse-and-glide can improve the efficiency curve.
That's not a violation of any of the laws of thermodynamics. It is simply exploiting a set of engineering tradeoffs.
I've not yet had the opportunity to drive a Tesla but know several who have and all have done so in cold temps. I've also read many reviews.
Deliveries of the car has been ramping up in the last few months which means that at least some drivers would be driving in cold weather.
This is the 1st complaint of its kind that I've heard.
From what I can tell, there are 3 likely possibilities - this particular Model S if flaky, James Broder is an idiot or James Broder is a liar.
Since Tesla is a low-volume manufacturer, it would be blindingly stupid to deliver the high-end version at this time of year if the winter performance is dismal.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So basically that's a sort of pulse-width modulation. The same technique used in DC-DC converters to maximize efficiency. Keep the motor running at maximum efficiency. Fine. Now take a look at this again: "alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking". Can you spot the difference?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Now that's a legitimate point of discussion.
But we're in the middle of a thread where everyone is busy crowing that the reporter failed high-school physics, and that a constant speed is the only option under the laws of conservation of energy. Obviously that's not true.
That's not to say you could improve anything with regenerative braking. Most hybrids get better mileage in the city vs the highway, but that's more a result of lower speeds. However, regenerative braking contributes to the difference.
Given all of this, the reporter's statements sound a lot more like a misunderstanding or misinterpretation, either by the reporter, whoever he was talking to on the phone, or both. The statements are definitely not the smoking gun that some are trying to make them out as.
Selling licenses and giving away (supercharge stations are free) electricity indefinitely != "printing money."
Kid-proof tablet..
The superchargers are just for the occasional long trip or whatever. It's a very different world than with gas cars, where you don't have the option to "top off at home" each night.
It won't charge the battery, but it may extend the range. Consider the following scenario:
You have to drive 180 miles. You have two routes you can take. One is perfectly level, and the other is a series of moderate hills.
On the level route, you get your car's standard 30 MPG, and use 6 gallons of fuel.
On the hilly route, you spend equal time going up and down. Going up, you're fighting gravity and your fuel economy is reduced to 18MPG. Going down, you put the car in neutral and roll, using effectively no fuel (on some cars, using literally none as the gasoline engine will turn off). You use 5 gallons of fuel on the uphill portions (180mi/2 = 90mi, 90mi/18mpg = 5gal) and less than a gallon on the downhills. By taking the hillier route, you've saved fuel.
Note: this doesn't require any violation of the laws of physics. The thing to remember is that car engines are inefficient. On the level route, the fuel is being used to overcome the wind resistance for speed X plus the wheel friction (we'll call this force that slows the car down Y). The engine also consumes fuel to overcome or provide for the drivetrain and timing system friction, waste heat, vibration, pulling in fuel and air on the intake stroke, compressing it on the compression stroke, expelling it on the exhaust stroke, and powering the spark plugs (assuming a fairly basic 4-stroke gasoline engine). With me so far?
Now, assume that speed X is maintained the entire way, on either route (simplification of real driving, but close enough). On the downhill sections, the force of gravity is equal to the wind resistance and rolling friction at speed X (thus gravity force Y counteracts the slowing force Y from wind and friction), so the engine doesn't have to do anything at all (if idling in neutral, it will waste a small amount of fuel to keep itself running at low revs, but not much unless the idle point is set unreasonably high). On the uphill sections, this means that the car must drive against 2Y of force (gravity plus wind/friction). However, this doesn't mean it needs twice as much fuel; the other inefficiencies of the engine will not necessarily double just because the engine's power output doubles, so the total fuel usage will probably not double.
I've tested this on my car, incidentally, and for certain slopes it's true: going up the hill uses less than twice the fuel that level driving does, but coming down the hill I can coast the whole way at the same speed.
Now... for an electric, it's going to be different in the details, but that doesn't mean that the basic concept won't apply anyhow. It *may* be more efficient to speed up and then let the regenerative braking slow you down, than to maintain constant speed. It flies in the face of common sense, but it *may* be true under at least some circumstances..
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
You need to read what you're replying to. You're talking about minimizing losses from having to run on increased power (climb) by engine braking on direct injection engine. This will not actually save you fuel when driving on even terrain, as energy consumption from accelerating is significantly higher then energy savings when engine braking.
Same applies to electric and regenerative braking. This is simply because efficiency is always 100% alone, without adding any other factors in.
And slashdot formatting strips less then symbol. Argh. The message is supposed to read "less then 100%"
The whole concept of the electric car actually defeats the stated purpose of reducing pollution. The best efficiency one can find in a room temperature electric motor is 0.28. And the efficiency (power factor) applies both to the generating end and the motor end.
Big picture, once you run the numbers, comes to the fact that the amount of fuel required to get a certain torque to the wheels of a vehicle is less that 25% efficient for an electric vehicle and can be over 50% for a well tuned internal combustion engine.
I do like the concept of the Tesla car, but it isn't there yet and unless I'm building a new home I could not afford to have 480v service installed to take advantage of the fast charge capability.
NRRPT/RCT
And Broder thinks we are really going to buy into a pile of excusses. One excuse maybe, but the article was so obviously biased and the lies so easily exposed You say you turned the heat down, but the graphs show you turned it up. Even that could have been a mistake but one you should have quickly remedied. Too many excuses to make any of them creditable. Sounds like it's time for thr Times to have a staff change to maintain what little of their tarnished reputation they can. They are already becoming known as a rather biased publication. Add to that a rigged review?
And I taught Intro to CS as a GA. 200 students with about 195 that were completely completely clueless which also describes the general population where any science or technology is involved. However I do think a larger % would pay attention to a car that tells them it's time to put fuel..er..maybe "gas up", I'm not sure it'd be safe to say fuel. I saw some of the geniuses that had degrees they interviewed representing the OWSers. Sometimes I'm amazed that "do it yourself" gas stations even survive. That is how clueless I see the general population.
Tesla's electric car concept is really sound, there is a small BIG problem. In this stage the technology of energy storage is still to young. Many Tesla customers will be disappointed. And lets be fair. Who will want to pay 100k for a car that when you are a little distracted makes you lose an appointment. In this moment Tesla is a nice effort, a technology demo, a gadget, but is not a real car.
I have not read his previous articles, but I have read about them. I tend to share his point of view, not from a car perspective, but from an environment perspective. Electrical cars are a nonsensical solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Let me elaborate a little before you take my head off.
I am not a climate scientist, but it does seem that he prevailing idea is that we are in a warming period. It is also claimed that it is anthropogenic. Again, it does appear to me that the data supports this to a greater or lesser extent. I therefore have no reason to doubt it. I do know a little bit about statistics though, and I have been looking at data that explain the sources of this anthropogenic warming. All the sources I have looked at say the same thing. Private cars are a statistical a rather small contributor to the release of the gases that are at the cause of this AGW. All transportation in the world accounts for (according to the epa) about 27%, and cars are about 43% of that. So, private driving accounts for perhaps 10% of GHG - this is the highest estimate I have seen though, other estimates are closer to 5-7%, but even with the high estimate, it's a nonsensical discussion when talking about cars and AGW. Make cars more efficient by 50%, and you have accomplished very little, and even moving them all to electricity would probably not cut the emissions by 50% - see below). Also, the process of making cars more efficient (making new and better cars in staggering numbers) is a significant source of GHG.
Electricity production is 34% of GHG emissions (I have seen estimates far higher), a number that would go up significantly if the US moved from gasoline to electrical over night. These emitters are (comparatively) few, and fixing their emissions would have a significantly better end result. Cut coal and oil power plant GHG emissions by 50%, which is a lot easier than doing it for cars, would mean a real-world drop of 17 percentage points in GHG emissions. That's a lot!
Now, if this was all, the manic drive for electrical cars would be bad enough, but this isn't enough. From what I have been able to see, electrical cars are, compared to gasoline guzzlers, "gross polluters" (in an AGW sense, though CO2 is not and never was a pollution). I know a little bit about electricity production, and an issue is that the amount of energy that leaves its production site is quite a bit higher than the energy that actually comes out of the wall on the consumer end. There are many, many inefficiencies in the system, so there is a significant amount of loss. Not only that, but the industry that produces said electricity is among (actually the according to the epa) biggest man-made contributor to this AGW. So, when you move cars away from gasoline you move them onto coal and heavy oil burning. Industries that emit enormous amounts of CO2 and the like. So, again, electrical cars appear to be not only an inefficient problem solver, it seems they are significant contributors to the problem. More so than gasoline operated cars.
It appears to me that people who talk about solutions involving private cars when they talk about solving the AGW problem are retarded and ignorant. It also seems to me like a significant portion of them are cowards. Putting hard caps on emissions from electricity production would be easy technically, but it would hit everybody with higher prices on electricity. Therefore, in order to be seeming to do something, they attack a problem that isn't and try to force upon us solutions that will not even theoretically work.
It might very well be that I am wrong, and I would love to get information that contradicts what I (based on the epa and others) have.
Wooooosh!
When the only car you know is a floor shift standard, then your comparison is made based on a floor shift standard.
When it graduates to column shift, there is a new learning curve.
When the manual transitions to automatic transmission, there are diehards who will not give up on the manual transmission, And there are those who bless the provisioning of automatic transmission.
Telsa is not a production car. Therefore we have to stop comparing the telsa to a BMW or Corvette, but compare it to the equivalent car. It could be the Ford Epic, or the Toyota Echo or Yaris, or the Honda Civic . Compare the Tesla to what it is designed to replace. Compare the noise, required maintence, polution, and operating cost to the equivalent car.
Now, for the charging station. I would argue that he should have learned where it was before starting out. I used to do that when I took a work contract out of town in the boonies. Gasoline stations were few and far between.
The Tesla will improve over time, and that is without a doubt. But we should not compare it to the BMW, or the Honda or Full sized vehicle.
If I drove my car with a heavy foot, a) the mileage will be half of what was epa rated,. b) the brakes would not last the projected miles of service, c) The engine or other breakdowns would be higher, and tires would wear more quickly. So, I drive a vehicle respecting it's design parameters. If I had the Tesla, I think I would do the same.
Bottom line, be fair in your evaluation.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Who said anything about indefinitely?
That's like saying ATMs will always be a losing proposition for banks because they started out free. You get people used to using them, then you slowly introduce gradually increasing fees until you make bank.
More likely, you let others build them for you, charge them for the interface license, charge the manufacturers for the interface license, and then throw that money into R&D to make 2.0 (500 miles worth of charge in 10 minutes?) that they'll have to pay you to upgrade to.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
That's not exactly how ATMs started. In the beginning, banks paid people to use them.
Kid-proof tablet..
As self proclaimed "journalist" John Broder is now the butt of a hundred geek jokes, his name will become immortalized along with OJ, Christophe Rocancourt, Jayson Blair, Charles Ponzi, Milli Vanilli, Frank Abagnale, etc. Driving around in circles waiting for your car to run out of fuel is the classic Broderism. Lying about your average driving speed is a Brodersim. Forgetting to fully charge your battery - yep, Bodericious. The Times flimsy attempt to defend Broder is itself now a classic Brodersim - in that even the once venerable New York Times could not bring themselves to admit the truth and dumb the fraudster.
Just out of curiosity, did you try looking up series hybrid before calling it an extended range EV? The term "Series Hybrid" describes, exactly, the power train structure of the Chevy Volt. It is also synonymous with Range Extended Electric Vehicle (REEV).
Wow... never before been modded to +5, spawned a huge discussion branch, and then (almost a week after the initial post) been downmodded 5 times in the space of a few hours. I suspect Broder isn't the only one with a bias here... but, as with him, I shall refrain from speculating as to why. That's a very bizarre number of accounts getting modpoints and all being mad at me simultaneously, though.
(The accusation itself is obviously bollocks; whoever leveled it my way, enjoy your loss of moderation privileges when you get bithslapped during metamod).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
When the problem is overspending, increasing revenues will not solve the problem. That's like saying the solution to credit card debt is more credit cards.
I didn't realize the tea party was in control of spending. When did that happen?
These cars are not ready for prime time. What ever the case may be here, we know this to be true. If for only one simple fact, this guy is supposedly not the average driver, so we've got a whole slew of people who will end up on the sides of the road stranded. Hell, that happens every day already with gasoline cars. We even have a rocket surgeon in this thread saying his own car has a fuel tank that leaks and yet he still drives the thing around, proudly proclaiming his ignorance. "New gas tank, heh, not gonna happen!"
We're better off installing streetcar rails on existing roads and taking advantage of existing infrastructure to (re-)create streetcar networks and even personal transportation vehicles that can utilize those networks. There's already folks doing just that. Musk's car is a certified P.O.S. unless you are the kind of car owner who thinks you should conform to the poor performance of a current electric car. Then by all means drive your Muskmobile about town.
Distort, mislead, lie? The buzzer is for you. Having given may press interviews I can tell you that reporters always WANT to get the story right, but never do. They just can't get deep enough into the technology to fully understand what they are writing about and there are always subtleties about the situation that are either glossed over or at the least not fully fleshed out. So I know that every news story I read is wrong, I just don't know why. In this case, I believe the NYT way more than Musk. There is no NYT master plan to extract massive readership out of this. There is however, a master plan for Musk to sell lots of cars, and this is a big problem for him. Or maybe not - any publicity is good publicity, especially when the Musk/electric car fanboys rush to call the NYT guy a liar, a tool for big oil (that's rich!), and other insults.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
One of these days I'll come across a sentence like "This breathing mask is for Intensive Purposes" and my head may explode.
That's rather silly and makes no real sense. It's actually like saying the solution to credit card debt is a second job. If your spending remains the same and a second job causes your overall income to rise to meet or exceed that level, you're solving your debt problem.
An analogy that's equivalent to what you're suggesting would be to say that raising the debt ceiling is the solution to overspending.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
And - the Volt is a Chevy, which makes it a non-starter for most.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Yes, the analogy doesn't apply in that aspect but it does in others. Analogies do not always (and rarely can be) perfect. The point is that when there is a problem with behavior, the solution is not more of the same behavior.