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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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. Can you guess why?
Illiteracy, obviously.
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.
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!
If you didn't find it on your first time circling the small 100 car lot, why wouldn't you just slow down to look for it rather than going in circles around the lot 30-40 times at a speed too fast to carefully look?
30-40 times? Hah.
My estimate of the perimeter around the main parking lot area is about 500 feet. That would put it at 6-7 times max to get 0.6 miles.
But look: the Tesla charger isn't in that group of parking spaces, it's lower down to the left. Directly in front of the building. (Google helpfully has it marked.) Going around the whole building would take the distance up quite a bit more, depending on what path you follow. (It's not totally clear from there what paths are legal, and there doesn't seem to be street view.) If you got there, drove around the main parking lot a couple times looking for something that wasn't there, went up and down an aisle or two, then found yourself going around the north side of that building, that'd probably be sufficient to hit 0.6 miles.
And furthermore, 0.6 is even an overestimate. Based on Musk's own graphic, that 0.6 includes much of the exit into the service plaza. Just that exit could easily account for 20% of that 0.6 miles.
I'm not saying that Broder is in the right when it comes to the whole story. I think there are a number of unanswered questions, and some parts of his review + Musk's data that are suspicious. But, I also think that a couple part in particular of Musk's post are grasping at straws, and I think "Broder was driving around trying to run the car out of power" is one of them -- I find Broder's explanation way more credible than Musk's pseudo-accusation of sabotage.
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.
This overnight loss of range had been previously reported by Consumer Reports, and Tesla reportedly told them the same story- that the range will recover as driving is resumed and the batteries are warmed up. This was also in the vicinity of the Milford supercharging station.
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/01/rapid-charging-at-a-tesla-ev-supercharge-station.html
"The night before my voyage back to work, I had 88 miles left, according to the car's computation. I knew that would be cutting it pretty close, so I planned on a 30-minute supercharging session in Milford to gain some juice and added peace of mind. 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.) How can 30 miles evaporate just like that? 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. I didn't notice it adding miles to the range but the range remained steady for most of my 28-mile drive back to the supercharger. I connected to the charger with 50 miles on the meter and after 30 minutes, I was back to 150 miles—more than ample range to get back to our East Haddam test track."
He was at a "regular" charging station, not a supercharging station. It was an unscheduled stop and he charged it for an hour, which he says Tesla support staff told him would be enough to get back to the supercharging station. Reportedly, they said that the lost range would be recovered as he continued to drive, warming the batteries. It would have taken as much as five hours to fully charge the car at that station.
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.
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.
roflmao
I think you mean Honorable Chairman ROFLMAO.