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Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

40 points by dbasedweeb 7y ago

bearcobra 7y ago
I really like Telsa's mission, but stuff like this is why they get a bad rap. I don't understand why they try to oversell everything. You've got a good product and are making a positive impact, don't squander it by making claims that can't be backed up.
- robertAngst 7y ago
  > You've got a good product They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder. Tesla has a weird situation that despite a product that breaks often and doesn't have niceties, their customers have a high satisfaction.
  - grecy 7y ago
    Don't make the mistake of letting your personal preferences or requirements cloud the information available. The cars Telsa make are selling well, so obviously there are people out there that do like them. It doesn't matter what you personally think.
  - dominotw 7y ago
    Breaks often?
  - m463 7y ago
    > They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console. You're not the target market. Really it's for people who don't have money for a model s/x who don't care about touchscreens and want to control the car from an app. (fwiw: I'm not the market either, I want a dashboard) What's kind of interesting is looking at older model S cars and searching back for what the UI looked like in the early years vs what it looks like now. Looks loads more modern now. These folks have upgraded their cars like their iphones throughout the years. The "niceties" are software and have just appeared over time.
    - goshx 7y ago
      The Model 3 has a large touch screen. I recommend both of you to just go visit a Tesla store and do a test drive. At least it will help preventing the spread of misinformation.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- Finch2192 7y ago
  Are they squandering it by making such claims? How many people do you really think are going to read their claims, then read that their claims are not fully backed up, and then decide to boycott the company? Versus how many people read their claims, and have been reading their previous claims, and are already sucked into Tesla's "Saving the world" narrative. For those people, stuff like this "Impact Report" aren't deciding factors, but are a part of a larger effort at Tesla to imbue a sense of 'higher purpose' or something along those lines. There's little downside to this kind of fluff.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  Name a single car maker that doesn't use paid marketing, which always oversells itself. ...and which claims can't be backed up? If you look at average existing ICE vehicle mpg (not counting hybrids and electrics), Tesla used the correct numbers.
robertAngst 7y ago
Marketing. But its 2019, if you still believe Tesla doesn't have ethics problems, you haven't paid attention or don't care.
- Hurpterderper 7y ago
  I don't care. If I buy an electric car, it will be because it goes faster than a petrol car. Get ready for the dated South Park reference. There is enough smug people who like to smell their own farts.
xkcd-sucks 7y ago
"Impact Report" is a poor choice of words in light of all the autopilot crashes
- DeonPenny 7y ago
  If by impact you mean the very very very few AP crashes
  - serf 7y ago
    >the very very very few AP crashes (tl;dr : 'very very very few' is entirely relative ) I don't know if comparing frequencies is such a hot idea with regards to a paradigm shift. If that's the comparison you want to make, the few AP accidents that have happened are infinitely more than came before Tesla. Since there is no A/B comparison to make in order to judge severity, maybe we should treat every AP accident as important and research worthy until there is a standard to compare against -- unless of course you want to compare AP to non-AP crashes, but that metric is mostly only useful for marketing AP towards people, not improving the system itself.
SECProto 7y ago
> Fact Checking Tesla's "Impact Report" > It's no surprise that the electric automaker is having a positive environmental impact, so why does it need to exaggerate the good and gloss over the bad? I have a similar view of this article as this article has of Tesla: Why does it need to exaggerate the bad and gloss over the good? The only hard number it criticizes is the number Tesla used for the average mileage of the US fleet (25.4 vs 22) - nevermind that the higher efficiency would work in their favour: it would mean that the same number of Tesla vehicles displaces a larger number of ICE-vehicles. Oh, and the author doesn't like that the report includes both the to-date solar electricity generated by Solarcity (13.25 TWh) and the to-date electricity used to charge Tesla fleet (5.26 TWh). There's lots to criticize about Tesla, but this article doesn't do a great job of it, in my personal opinion.
- tedivm 7y ago
  > The only hard number it criticizes is the number Tesla used for the average mileage of the US fleet (25.4 vs 22) - nevermind that the higher efficiency would work in their favour: it would mean that the same number of Tesla vehicles displaces a larger number of ICE-vehicles. I don't think your math is right on that- higher efficiency in ICE vehicles would mean that the Tesla vehicles displaces fewer ICE vehicles, would it not? It would make their claim that Tesla is "the equivalent of saving emissions from being released into the environment from over 500K ICE vehicles" closer to 425K ICE vehicles.
  - SECProto 7y ago
    > I don't think your math is right on that- higher efficiency in ICE vehicles would mean that the Tesla vehicles displaces fewer ICE vehicles, would it not? Hard to tell - the report doesn't show all it's math so there are two ways to interpret. But I'll post the relevant paragraph from the report here: > Over 550K Tesla vehicles have been sold, and they have driven over 10B miles to date, resulting in a combined savings of over 4M metric tons of CO2. This is the equivalent of saving emissions from being released into the environment from over 500K ICE vehicles with a fuel economy of 22 miles per gallon (MPG). The way I read that, the hard number is 4 million metric tonnes of CO2 (which they determined is equivalent to 500000 vehicles at 22MPG, given average distances driven and CO2 output from that amount of gasoline). If my interpretation is correct, it would be equivalent to (500000*25/22=) 568 thousand cars at 25 MPG (the more efficient cars put out less co2 per mile, so the same amount of co2 reduction is equivalent to more cars). But it may just be worded poorly, and they know how many cars it kept off the road, and calculated their emissions savings based on an equivalent average of 22 MPG. In which case, your calculation would be correct.
rgrove 7y ago
The article claims Tesla is incorrect when they say that "the average ICE vehicle gets around 22 MPG", and counters with EPA stats showing that the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US is 24.9 MPG. But these aren't the same thing. The set "all vehicles in the US" contains both ICE vehicles _and_ hybrid/battery-powered EVs. But Tesla is explicitly only talking about ICE vehicles, and Tesla doesn't specifically indicate whether they're talking only about US ICE vehicles or all ICE vehicles worldwide. I'm not sure what the source is for Tesla's number, and it's entirely possible it's inaccurate, but The Drive's counter-argument makes an apples vs. oranges comparison.
- xfitm3 7y ago
  Don't forget that a substantial amount of fuel is burned while parked. Lights and other electronic equipment consume a lot of energy. "In one recent report about police vehicle fuel consumption, the cruiser studied was found to idle 60% of the time during normal operation and used 21% of its total fuel while parked. While the engine provided 250 horsepower (hp), together all of the accessories needed less than 2 hp. (Air conditioning consumed the most power, followed by external lighting.)" https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/idling_emergency-service_vehicles.pdf https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/idling_emergency...
  - geomark 7y ago
    Didn't read the article, but the engine doesn't provide 250 hp while parked and idling, that's for sure. Certainly it is inefficient compared to an engine sized to provide 2 hp but that's not the same as running it at max rated power.
- disiplus 7y ago
  afaik data is for new cars with ICE.
- slg 7y ago
  >but The Drive's counter-argument makes an apples vs. oranges comparison. I will go one step further, The Drive's number is just straight dishonest. It lists that number as "the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US hit 24.9 MPG in 2017". If you click through to the EPA report it list that 24.9 number as for "all new vehicles". It also says the number was 23.6 in 2012. The average car on the road is roughly 10 years old so that 23.6 number is still too modern to apply to "all vehicles in the US". So if you subtract non-ICE vehicles and factor in that MPG has been improving, the 22 MPG number from the original report seems perfectly reasonable.
tdhz77 7y ago
I’m not stating anything other than this website is owned by Time, inc. Time, inc owners is currently on several boards for the oil and gas industry. https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=22992797 https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...
- tdhz77 7y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=8459832&privcapId=13422240 https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?...
- dbasedweeb 7y ago
  At least the conspiracy theories have moved on from “the shorts” to a more typical group.
  - basetop 7y ago
    I don't think pointing out a potential conflict of interest is the same thing as a conspiracy theory.
    - dbasedweeb 7y ago
      It is when they’re not even owned by Time! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19678982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19678982
      - tdhz77 7y ago
        Yes it is. http://fortune.com/2018/11/09/fortune-sale-chatchaval-jiaravanon/ http://fortune.com/2018/11/09/fortune-sale-chatchaval-jiarav...
      - justinclift 7y ago
        It turns out... they're probably right in this case. ;) eg it does look like Time, Inc owns it, and the new owner of Time, Inc does sit on the board of both a Thai Gas company and some other (Thai?) energy company.
revscat 7y ago
“ Tesla also compares crash statistics for Autopilot which, in addition to the comparative distortions mentioned above, is only supposed to be used on divided highways that are about twice as safe as non-divided roads.” This statement about Autopilot is flatly incorrect. AP has worked on every road and street I have driven on for at least a year without caveat. I’m not sure where he gets the “supposed to” from, but I have never seen such warning, nor does the car itself seem to have any significant problems navigating non-divided roads. This is a terrible article that smacks of fear-lingering.
williesleg 7y ago
Whenever I see "Fact Check" I think Hillary. Good job Hillary.
7e 7y ago
Tesla's report does not include the damage it does to the world by selling carbon credits it earns to polluters, cheaply—thereby enabling them to pollute more and defer cleaning up their own acts. I wonder if Tesla's sum contribution is net negative when viewed from this perspective.
zaroth 7y ago
Written by Ed Niedermeyer of “Tesla Death Watch” fame. This guy has been feuding with Tesla since 2008, and you can’t miss the malice when reading TFA. This guy can’t get over the fact that Tesla hasn’t failed. Makes me wonder how much he lost shorting the stock.
derkster 7y ago
Tesla has almost highhandedly kept the public interested in electric cars. By becoming a viable car company, there's been huge amounts of money put into research from their competitors alone. I don't think it's good for them to over exaggerate their personal impact, but looking at the overall scale of what they have done.... I don't care that their marketing team went overboard on something I wouldn't have read anyway. We all know what Tesla has done laid the groundwork for some very important work that otherwise wouldn't have a footing.
Proven 7y ago
The tldr of it is Tesla are crooks. The fake savings are largely financed by employing the State to coercively extract taxes from people most of whine aren’t even Tesla customers.
omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
Ugh, Neidermeyer... He's been anti-PHE/EV for over a decade at this point. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30neidermeyer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30neidermeyer.htm... He's been focusing on Tesla recently, but that's only because they're pushing EV production more than anyone else.

40 points by dbasedweeb 7y ago

I really like Telsa's mission, but stuff like this is why they get a bad rap. I don't understand why they try to oversell everything. You've got a good product and are making a positive impact, don't squander it by making claims that can't be backed up.

robertAngst 7y ago
> You've got a good product They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder. Tesla has a weird situation that despite a product that breaks often and doesn't have niceties, their customers have a high satisfaction.
- grecy 7y ago
  Don't make the mistake of letting your personal preferences or requirements cloud the information available. The cars Telsa make are selling well, so obviously there are people out there that do like them. It doesn't matter what you personally think.
- dominotw 7y ago
  Breaks often?
- m463 7y ago
  > They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console. You're not the target market. Really it's for people who don't have money for a model s/x who don't care about touchscreens and want to control the car from an app. (fwiw: I'm not the market either, I want a dashboard) What's kind of interesting is looking at older model S cars and searching back for what the UI looked like in the early years vs what it looks like now. Looks loads more modern now. These folks have upgraded their cars like their iphones throughout the years. The "niceties" are software and have just appeared over time.
  - goshx 7y ago
    The Model 3 has a large touch screen. I recommend both of you to just go visit a Tesla store and do a test drive. At least it will help preventing the spread of misinformation.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Finch2192 7y ago
Are they squandering it by making such claims? How many people do you really think are going to read their claims, then read that their claims are not fully backed up, and then decide to boycott the company? Versus how many people read their claims, and have been reading their previous claims, and are already sucked into Tesla's "Saving the world" narrative. For those people, stuff like this "Impact Report" aren't deciding factors, but are a part of a larger effort at Tesla to imbue a sense of 'higher purpose' or something along those lines. There's little downside to this kind of fluff.
Robotbeat 7y ago
Name a single car maker that doesn't use paid marketing, which always oversells itself. ...and which claims can't be backed up? If you look at average existing ICE vehicle mpg (not counting hybrids and electrics), Tesla used the correct numbers.

robertAngst 7y ago

Marketing. But its 2019, if you still believe Tesla doesn't have ethics problems, you haven't paid attention or don't care.

Hurpterderper 7y ago
I don't care. If I buy an electric car, it will be because it goes faster than a petrol car. Get ready for the dated South Park reference. There is enough smug people who like to smell their own farts.

xkcd-sucks 7y ago

"Impact Report" is a poor choice of words in light of all the autopilot crashes

DeonPenny 7y ago
If by impact you mean the very very very few AP crashes
- serf 7y ago
  >the very very very few AP crashes (tl;dr : 'very very very few' is entirely relative ) I don't know if comparing frequencies is such a hot idea with regards to a paradigm shift. If that's the comparison you want to make, the few AP accidents that have happened are infinitely more than came before Tesla. Since there is no A/B comparison to make in order to judge severity, maybe we should treat every AP accident as important and research worthy until there is a standard to compare against -- unless of course you want to compare AP to non-AP crashes, but that metric is mostly only useful for marketing AP towards people, not improving the system itself.

SECProto 7y ago

> Fact Checking Tesla's "Impact Report" > It's no surprise that the electric automaker is having a positive environmental impact, so why does it need to exaggerate the good and gloss over the bad? I have a similar view of this article as this article has of Tesla: Why does it need to exaggerate the bad and gloss over the good? The only hard number it criticizes is the number Tesla used for the average mileage of the US fleet (25.4 vs 22) - nevermind that the higher efficiency would work in their favour: it would mean that the same number of Tesla vehicles displaces a larger number of ICE-vehicles. Oh, and the author doesn't like that the report includes both the to-date solar electricity generated by Solarcity (13.25 TWh) and the to-date electricity used to charge Tesla fleet (5.26 TWh). There's lots to criticize about Tesla, but this article doesn't do a great job of it, in my personal opinion.

tedivm 7y ago
> The only hard number it criticizes is the number Tesla used for the average mileage of the US fleet (25.4 vs 22) - nevermind that the higher efficiency would work in their favour: it would mean that the same number of Tesla vehicles displaces a larger number of ICE-vehicles. I don't think your math is right on that- higher efficiency in ICE vehicles would mean that the Tesla vehicles displaces fewer ICE vehicles, would it not? It would make their claim that Tesla is "the equivalent of saving emissions from being released into the environment from over 500K ICE vehicles" closer to 425K ICE vehicles.
- SECProto 7y ago
  > I don't think your math is right on that- higher efficiency in ICE vehicles would mean that the Tesla vehicles displaces fewer ICE vehicles, would it not? Hard to tell - the report doesn't show all it's math so there are two ways to interpret. But I'll post the relevant paragraph from the report here: > Over 550K Tesla vehicles have been sold, and they have driven over 10B miles to date, resulting in a combined savings of over 4M metric tons of CO2. This is the equivalent of saving emissions from being released into the environment from over 500K ICE vehicles with a fuel economy of 22 miles per gallon (MPG). The way I read that, the hard number is 4 million metric tonnes of CO2 (which they determined is equivalent to 500000 vehicles at 22MPG, given average distances driven and CO2 output from that amount of gasoline). If my interpretation is correct, it would be equivalent to (500000*25/22=) 568 thousand cars at 25 MPG (the more efficient cars put out less co2 per mile, so the same amount of co2 reduction is equivalent to more cars). But it may just be worded poorly, and they know how many cars it kept off the road, and calculated their emissions savings based on an equivalent average of 22 MPG. In which case, your calculation would be correct.

rgrove 7y ago

The article claims Tesla is incorrect when they say that "the average ICE vehicle gets around 22 MPG", and counters with EPA stats showing that the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US is 24.9 MPG. But these aren't the same thing. The set "all vehicles in the US" contains both ICE vehicles _and_ hybrid/battery-powered EVs. But Tesla is explicitly only talking about ICE vehicles, and Tesla doesn't specifically indicate whether they're talking only about US ICE vehicles or all ICE vehicles worldwide. I'm not sure what the source is for Tesla's number, and it's entirely possible it's inaccurate, but The Drive's counter-argument makes an apples vs. oranges comparison.

xfitm3 7y ago
Don't forget that a substantial amount of fuel is burned while parked. Lights and other electronic equipment consume a lot of energy. "In one recent report about police vehicle fuel consumption, the cruiser studied was found to idle 60% of the time during normal operation and used 21% of its total fuel while parked. While the engine provided 250 horsepower (hp), together all of the accessories needed less than 2 hp. (Air conditioning consumed the most power, followed by external lighting.)" https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/idling_emergency-service_vehicles.pdf https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/idling_emergency...
- geomark 7y ago
  Didn't read the article, but the engine doesn't provide 250 hp while parked and idling, that's for sure. Certainly it is inefficient compared to an engine sized to provide 2 hp but that's not the same as running it at max rated power.
disiplus 7y ago
afaik data is for new cars with ICE.
slg 7y ago
>but The Drive's counter-argument makes an apples vs. oranges comparison. I will go one step further, The Drive's number is just straight dishonest. It lists that number as "the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US hit 24.9 MPG in 2017". If you click through to the EPA report it list that 24.9 number as for "all new vehicles". It also says the number was 23.6 in 2012. The average car on the road is roughly 10 years old so that 23.6 number is still too modern to apply to "all vehicles in the US". So if you subtract non-ICE vehicles and factor in that MPG has been improving, the 22 MPG number from the original report seems perfectly reasonable.

tdhz77 7y ago

I’m not stating anything other than this website is owned by Time, inc. Time, inc owners is currently on several boards for the oil and gas industry. https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=22992797 https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...

tdhz77 7y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=8459832&privcapId=13422240 https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?...
dbasedweeb 7y ago
At least the conspiracy theories have moved on from “the shorts” to a more typical group.
- basetop 7y ago
  I don't think pointing out a potential conflict of interest is the same thing as a conspiracy theory.
  - dbasedweeb 7y ago
    It is when they’re not even owned by Time! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19678982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19678982
    - tdhz77 7y ago
      Yes it is. http://fortune.com/2018/11/09/fortune-sale-chatchaval-jiaravanon/ http://fortune.com/2018/11/09/fortune-sale-chatchaval-jiarav...
    - justinclift 7y ago
      It turns out... they're probably right in this case. ;) eg it does look like Time, Inc owns it, and the new owner of Time, Inc does sit on the board of both a Thai Gas company and some other (Thai?) energy company.

revscat 7y ago

“ Tesla also compares crash statistics for Autopilot which, in addition to the comparative distortions mentioned above, is only supposed to be used on divided highways that are about twice as safe as non-divided roads.” This statement about Autopilot is flatly incorrect. AP has worked on every road and street I have driven on for at least a year without caveat. I’m not sure where he gets the “supposed to” from, but I have never seen such warning, nor does the car itself seem to have any significant problems navigating non-divided roads. This is a terrible article that smacks of fear-lingering.

williesleg 7y ago

Whenever I see "Fact Check" I think Hillary. Good job Hillary.

7e 7y ago

Tesla's report does not include the damage it does to the world by selling carbon credits it earns to polluters, cheaply—thereby enabling them to pollute more and defer cleaning up their own acts. I wonder if Tesla's sum contribution is net negative when viewed from this perspective.

zaroth 7y ago

Written by Ed Niedermeyer of “Tesla Death Watch” fame. This guy has been feuding with Tesla since 2008, and you can’t miss the malice when reading TFA. This guy can’t get over the fact that Tesla hasn’t failed. Makes me wonder how much he lost shorting the stock.

derkster 7y ago

Tesla has almost highhandedly kept the public interested in electric cars. By becoming a viable car company, there's been huge amounts of money put into research from their competitors alone. I don't think it's good for them to over exaggerate their personal impact, but looking at the overall scale of what they have done.... I don't care that their marketing team went overboard on something I wouldn't have read anyway. We all know what Tesla has done laid the groundwork for some very important work that otherwise wouldn't have a footing.

Proven 7y ago

The tldr of it is Tesla are crooks. The fake savings are largely financed by employing the State to coercively extract taxes from people most of whine aren’t even Tesla customers.

omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago

Ugh, Neidermeyer... He's been anti-PHE/EV for over a decade at this point. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30neidermeyer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30neidermeyer.htm... He's been focusing on Tesla recently, but that's only because they're pushing EV production more than anyone else.