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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."
The groupthink here already decided Broder is in the pocket of big oil. No explanation will change that.
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.
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.
Like Elon Musk.
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.
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...
The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00
He's claiming Tesla representatives instructed him to purposefully drive past the reported range then lie about it? That does not sound credible.
However Nikola Tesla is dead since long ago?
Like Broder, I bet you made up your mind before even glancing at them. I mean good God man, what reason do you have to call the vehicle half baked? Fuck you.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Nothing like a lover's quarrel on Valentine's day...
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
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
Steps:
1) find the apartment of John Broder, its easy, snicker snicker
2) apply kerosene
3) apply gasoline
4) strike match.
Best to do ops as this around 2 am.
Before the op, apply duct tape to door and windows to prevent escape.
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 was told that moderate-speed driving would “restore” the battery power lost overnight
Oh yea makes perfect sense.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
Tesla, you make expensive toys for people who just want posh toys, stufu your customers dont care, they can afford not to
NY times, go fuck yourself, your not worth even looking at IF I could look at you
EV car nuts, its nothing new ev's have been around since before gas cars were popular, they still suck 100 years later + charging stations are a serious random pain in the ass to geocache
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.
Pompous ass alert!
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'.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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!
You can't claim the logs may not be accurate and the use the same logs to defend yourself.
Why didn't Broder take an picture of the dashboard to show us that the car did indeed shutdown, as he sad it did.
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.
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
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"
Enough said. See the CNN test. Much more realistic.
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...
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.
I hope the shock of that revelation didn't cause you any heart trouble...
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.