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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.
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.
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.
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.
Just a bunch of Journalist Homers circling the wagons to protect Broder.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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.
You must be unaware of the fact that there are very clear instances where bending over for a customer is the worst thing a company can do. This "customer" is in the wrong, regardless if Musk has the personality of a rabid wolverine on PMS.
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.
How is this "Insightful"? Given the low regard that the general public have for reporters, why would they regard the reporter as a customer like them?
Personally, I don't think reporters get called enough on their BS. I am not a big Elon Musk fan (he came across like a baby after the "Top Gear" situation), but his response in this situation raised my opinion of him a couple of notches.
Anyway, in the past, I have observed a strong bias against particular cars in the Automobiles section in the NY Times. There are occasionally very good automotive-related articles there, but, for the most part, I take everything that I read in that section with a grain of salt. Given that NYC is one of the most car-unfriendly cities in the US, I have always wondered why the NY Times even has an Automobiles section.
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.
Yeah. Can you guess why?
Illiteracy, obviously.
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.
Speaking as a person who provides support professionally...
Fuck you, fuck the horse you road in on, fuck your mother, your father, your sister, and your dog.
If Musk's people gave the right advice, and he's positive they did, major props to him for standing behind them. I wish more companies out there would be willing to tell off the "customers" who purposely act the fool.
How you treat those above you shows nothing. How you treat those "below" you shows everything.
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
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.
Pack it in, because logs don't lie.
Perhaps not, but logs can be altered.
I'm not saying they were in this case, but just saying "logs don't lie" seems a bit naive when the only log data we have to go on are those provided by Tesla, hardly a disinterested party.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"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!
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.
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.
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!"?
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.
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)".
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
To help GP understand why he is being ridiculed, the phrase you are looking for is "for all intents and purposes".
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!
roflmao
I think you mean Honorable Chairman ROFLMAO.