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I don't know that this is quite the refutation that everyone is saying it is. I'm not sure what a reviewer driving in circles at a charging station proves? I im

I don't know that this is quite the refutation that everyone is saying it is. I'm not sure what a reviewer driving in circles at a charging station proves? I imagine he wanted to find out what would happen - after all he was at the station anyway. Also he clearly does start to turn down the climate change about 20 miles or so after he claims - not sure why Tesla is really fighting on that one. There is no denial of the Tesla losing 60 miles range overnight. There isn't a denial of Tesla telling him that the battery would regain its charge and range when it warmed up in the final leg. *Edit: Although it does certainly say they told him not to stop charging on that final charge.

marcamillion 14y ago
It's not JUST that he drove in circles near a charging station. It is that he had initially charged it for LESS than the recommended charge for the rest of his journey, then when he made the journey (even though the car was saying that he should recharge immediately), to get it to shutdown he drove in circles for a while to try and get it to shutdown. It's not JUST that he drove in circles, that takes it out of context. It is within the broader narrative that you realize how sinister that action really was.
alexjeffrey 14y ago
Why has this been downvoted? greendestiny raises some valid points.
- greendestiny 14y ago
  It hasn't. Hackernews is usually pretty good like that.
achompas 14y ago
So there's one damning thing in Broder's review: the confirmation of his range anxiety as the Model S sits on a flatbed. Tesla explicitly refutes that point by saying Broder ignored warnings against leaving Norwich. Also, I mean, come on: range says 30 and you have to go 60 miles so...you...disconnect the power? Interesting, especially since it's not the first time he tried to kill the car (see "driving around parking lot for 5 minutes with zero range"). But then again...look at the battery chart just before the Norwich charge. You see zero increase in distance, and a large (=60-70 miles) drop in range. That's the evening where he lost a bunch of power. That's a problem for Tesla. Anyway, Broder has a rebuttal to Musk's initial claims here [0]. I'm curious to see how he responds to this blog post, especially what seems to be a deliberate attempt to kill the car's power before recharging at Milford the second time. [0] http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/the-charges-are-flying-over-a-test-of-teslas-charging-network/?ref=automobiles http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/the-charges-are-f...
ghshephard 14y ago
The reporter was blatantly trying to drain the battery to get a story. They were, in no way, behaving like any half-ways rational person would, and they were absolutely not behaving the way anybody driving a Tesla would Zero doubt in my mind this was a pre-scripted hatchet job. The only question in my mind was whether the deception rises to the level of termination.
- mythrowaway0 14y ago
  ...or trying to find the charging point, since it was potentially his first visit there? While we're speculating on rationale, why don't we include possibilities fair to both sides?
  - chaz 14y ago
    This is a fair point, but based on this photo [1] of the Supercharger station, and the layout of the service area, it seems unlikely he would have missed it. Google Maps even has the spot marked [2], but the photography has not been updated since December 2012, when they were installed. That's a very prominent location. I'd have a hard time believing anyone would miss it repeatedly. [1] http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/tesla-begins-east-cost-fast-charging-corridor/ http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/tesla-begins-east... [2] http://goo.gl/maps/arrxP http://goo.gl/maps/arrxP
    - tokipin 14y ago
      also remember that the tesla dashboard is basically a tablet, and it has charger locations on its maps UI
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    It wasn't just his driving around in the parking lot - he was deliberately leaving charging locations prior to getting a full charge so as to increase the chances of a discharged battery. That was the entire point of this exercise, and he accomplished it on his first try. I say, have someone not biased towards big-oil try this road-trip again in similar conditions, and report back with the results. I expect they will have absolutely zero difficulty.
chaz 14y ago
Broder actually had an ok story to begin with, with a number of facts that are review-worthy. The cold weather energy loss is certainly one of them. Also, the Supercharger stations are not close enough together, admitted by Musk. Their customer support gave them incorrect instructions to use cruise control to preserve energy, which raises questions about how knowledgable their staff really is if it could leave you stranded. And electric cars use electric heaters, and you might be forced to pick some combo of heat and miles on freezing days. Most importantly, you still need to constantly be thinking about range. But Broder pushed it. Trying to get the battery to die in his first Milford stop is an obvious one. But when he failed to do that, he got a second chance by leaving Norwich without possibly being able to make it back to Milford. Both Broder and Musk agree that the car showed 32 miles of range, and that the car had made it 51 miles. But he would have known, before he left Norwich, that the distance to Milford was 61 miles. How Broder reasonably expect he would get there? As a result, he gets his dramatic photo of the Motor Trend Car of the Year, helpless on a flatbed truck.
- doe88 14y ago
  > As a result, he gets his dramatic photo of the Motor Trend Car of the Year, helpless on a flatbed truck. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I can't help but think all the author wanted is that photo.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    Exactly like Top Gear set it up. Face it, he's biased. Even if he made every effort to be honest in the review, in the end, he's true to himself and his own ideals.
- greendestiny 14y ago
  If I was a car reviewer and rocked up at a charging station with 0 miles range showing, I'd want to know what happens if you push it for a little bit more. It would definitely be an exaggeration for the story but we're talking about half a mile out of 200. He might have even been completely honest deliberately going the extra half mile if there had been some catastrophic result - a review isn't just a real drive, it has to be part simulation. As for driving that final stretch with 30 miles range showing - his story is that Tesla told him it would be fine because it would be regained through the battery conditioning. Tesla says that they told him not to stop charging. Well there is a lot of wiggle room for both those statements to be true.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mythrowaway0 14y ago
> I'm not sure what a reviewer driving in circles at a charging station proves? Perhaps that he couldn't find it, since it was his first visit? Based on the rest of this thread, though, Occam is not going to be making an appearance and we're going to be questioning the journalistic integrity of someone who's worked at the New York Times since most commenters here were in diapers. It totally makes sense that he'd write a completely false story at the behest of big oil. That's the logical explanation.
- bathat 14y ago
  Yes, yes, but isn't it awfully interesting how with all of Mr. Broder's complaints about the car, he completely forgot to mention just how hard it was to find the Supercharger station? Doesn't that seem like a relevant detail in an article ostensibly reviewing the Supercharger network? I'm just so upset that I can't help wringing my hands. Just think of all those uninformed citizens. Those poor souls buying this fancy car with the wool over their eyes. So naive: thinking they can just drive right up to a Supercharger station whenever they want with nary a thought. Who is going to tell them that they must not only drive to the station, but commit to a parking lot odyssey? Think of all the electrons that will be burned whilst the good people of this country waste their time searching for a Supercharger! Who? Who, I say, will bring this message to the masses, if not John Broder? And he has failed! For this, I demand the Times investigate his journalistic malpractice at once! Seriously, though, at what point are allowed to invoke Occam's Razor and admit that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Broder may not have been giving the car a fair shake?
  - smackfu 14y ago
    I think you need to wait to hear the NY Times response to the specific accusations from this blog post.
  - tokipin 14y ago
    there is only one electron, the chuck norris electron, and it does not burn
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
bathat 14y ago
Driving in circles doesn't prove anything. But, he didn't mention it in his original article or the follow-up blog post. In fact, he took great pains to write about all the hardships he endured to maximize the car's range, and how he still ran out of battery. So, one wonders why he would do it. It seems like an awfully odd thing to do, unless you are deliberately trying to run out of charge. Broder's defense to accusations that he should have charged overnight in Groton is that he was just acting like a regular driver. When you drive a conventional car from DC to Boston, do you pull up to the gas pumps and drive around in circles until you run out of gas? Do you add a few gallons and take off, or do you wait until the automatic shutoff on the pump trips? I think a "regular" driver would charge fully (at least a full "standard" charge) at each Super Charger and then drive directly to the next way-point, not unplug at 75% and pointlessly drive in circles.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > It seems like an awfully odd thing to do, unless you are deliberately trying to run out of charge. It's exactly what an insufficiently knowledgeable person would do if trying to deliberately damage the li-ion battery.
  - erichocean 14y ago
    It's also exactly what a sufficiently knowledgeable person would do if trying to deliberately damage the li-ion battery.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      A sufficiently knowledgeable person would have succeeded.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Scenario 1: Article: "The Tesla's range indicator is accurate but to drivers used to having a lot of range when the tank reads 'E' the Tesla's small amount of reserve range may catch them by surprise." Reality: Author drove until the Tesla read "0 miles remaining" then continued to drive until the battery ran out. Scenario 2: Article: "A range estimate misses the mark... the car fell short of its projected range and had to be taken back ... on a flatbed truck." Reality: Author short-charged the car then pulled off the road when the range meter read 0 and drove around trying to drain the battery. One is fine, the other is journalistic malpractice.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Yeah, well, none of those two happened, so it doesn’t really matter.
gnaffle 14y ago
A reviewer driving in circles at a charging station _without mentioning it in the article_ and all the other things mentioned here proves that the journalists left out facts in the article.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

marcamillion 14y ago

It's not JUST that he drove in circles near a charging station. It is that he had initially charged it for LESS than the recommended charge for the rest of his journey, then when he made the journey (even though the car was saying that he should recharge immediately), to get it to shutdown he drove in circles for a while to try and get it to shutdown. It's not JUST that he drove in circles, that takes it out of context. It is within the broader narrative that you realize how sinister that action really was.

alexjeffrey 14y ago

Why has this been downvoted? greendestiny raises some valid points.

greendestiny 14y ago
It hasn't. Hackernews is usually pretty good like that.

achompas 14y ago

So there's one damning thing in Broder's review: the confirmation of his range anxiety as the Model S sits on a flatbed. Tesla explicitly refutes that point by saying Broder ignored warnings against leaving Norwich. Also, I mean, come on: range says 30 and you have to go 60 miles so...you...disconnect the power? Interesting, especially since it's not the first time he tried to kill the car (see "driving around parking lot for 5 minutes with zero range"). But then again...look at the battery chart just before the Norwich charge. You see zero increase in distance, and a large (=60-70 miles) drop in range. That's the evening where he lost a bunch of power. That's a problem for Tesla. Anyway, Broder has a rebuttal to Musk's initial claims here [0]. I'm curious to see how he responds to this blog post, especially what seems to be a deliberate attempt to kill the car's power before recharging at Milford the second time. [0] http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/the-charges-are-flying-over-a-test-of-teslas-charging-network/?ref=automobiles http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/the-charges-are-f...

ghshephard 14y ago

The reporter was blatantly trying to drain the battery to get a story. They were, in no way, behaving like any half-ways rational person would, and they were absolutely not behaving the way anybody driving a Tesla would Zero doubt in my mind this was a pre-scripted hatchet job. The only question in my mind was whether the deception rises to the level of termination.

mythrowaway0 14y ago
...or trying to find the charging point, since it was potentially his first visit there? While we're speculating on rationale, why don't we include possibilities fair to both sides?
- chaz 14y ago
  This is a fair point, but based on this photo [1] of the Supercharger station, and the layout of the service area, it seems unlikely he would have missed it. Google Maps even has the spot marked [2], but the photography has not been updated since December 2012, when they were installed. That's a very prominent location. I'd have a hard time believing anyone would miss it repeatedly. [1] http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/tesla-begins-east-cost-fast-charging-corridor/ http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/tesla-begins-east... [2] http://goo.gl/maps/arrxP http://goo.gl/maps/arrxP
  - tokipin 14y ago
    also remember that the tesla dashboard is basically a tablet, and it has charger locations on its maps UI
- ghshephard 14y ago
  It wasn't just his driving around in the parking lot - he was deliberately leaving charging locations prior to getting a full charge so as to increase the chances of a discharged battery. That was the entire point of this exercise, and he accomplished it on his first try. I say, have someone not biased towards big-oil try this road-trip again in similar conditions, and report back with the results. I expect they will have absolutely zero difficulty.

chaz 14y ago

Broder actually had an ok story to begin with, with a number of facts that are review-worthy. The cold weather energy loss is certainly one of them. Also, the Supercharger stations are not close enough together, admitted by Musk. Their customer support gave them incorrect instructions to use cruise control to preserve energy, which raises questions about how knowledgable their staff really is if it could leave you stranded. And electric cars use electric heaters, and you might be forced to pick some combo of heat and miles on freezing days. Most importantly, you still need to constantly be thinking about range. But Broder pushed it. Trying to get the battery to die in his first Milford stop is an obvious one. But when he failed to do that, he got a second chance by leaving Norwich without possibly being able to make it back to Milford. Both Broder and Musk agree that the car showed 32 miles of range, and that the car had made it 51 miles. But he would have known, before he left Norwich, that the distance to Milford was 61 miles. How Broder reasonably expect he would get there? As a result, he gets his dramatic photo of the Motor Trend Car of the Year, helpless on a flatbed truck.

doe88 14y ago
> As a result, he gets his dramatic photo of the Motor Trend Car of the Year, helpless on a flatbed truck. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I can't help but think all the author wanted is that photo.
- calinet6 14y ago
  Exactly like Top Gear set it up. Face it, he's biased. Even if he made every effort to be honest in the review, in the end, he's true to himself and his own ideals.
greendestiny 14y ago
If I was a car reviewer and rocked up at a charging station with 0 miles range showing, I'd want to know what happens if you push it for a little bit more. It would definitely be an exaggeration for the story but we're talking about half a mile out of 200. He might have even been completely honest deliberately going the extra half mile if there had been some catastrophic result - a review isn't just a real drive, it has to be part simulation. As for driving that final stretch with 30 miles range showing - his story is that Tesla told him it would be fine because it would be regained through the battery conditioning. Tesla says that they told him not to stop charging. Well there is a lot of wiggle room for both those statements to be true.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mythrowaway0 14y ago

> I'm not sure what a reviewer driving in circles at a charging station proves? Perhaps that he couldn't find it, since it was his first visit? Based on the rest of this thread, though, Occam is not going to be making an appearance and we're going to be questioning the journalistic integrity of someone who's worked at the New York Times since most commenters here were in diapers. It totally makes sense that he'd write a completely false story at the behest of big oil. That's the logical explanation.

bathat 14y ago
Yes, yes, but isn't it awfully interesting how with all of Mr. Broder's complaints about the car, he completely forgot to mention just how hard it was to find the Supercharger station? Doesn't that seem like a relevant detail in an article ostensibly reviewing the Supercharger network? I'm just so upset that I can't help wringing my hands. Just think of all those uninformed citizens. Those poor souls buying this fancy car with the wool over their eyes. So naive: thinking they can just drive right up to a Supercharger station whenever they want with nary a thought. Who is going to tell them that they must not only drive to the station, but commit to a parking lot odyssey? Think of all the electrons that will be burned whilst the good people of this country waste their time searching for a Supercharger! Who? Who, I say, will bring this message to the masses, if not John Broder? And he has failed! For this, I demand the Times investigate his journalistic malpractice at once! Seriously, though, at what point are allowed to invoke Occam's Razor and admit that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Broder may not have been giving the car a fair shake?
- smackfu 14y ago
  I think you need to wait to hear the NY Times response to the specific accusations from this blog post.
- tokipin 14y ago
  there is only one electron, the chuck norris electron, and it does not burn
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

bathat 14y ago

Driving in circles doesn't prove anything. But, he didn't mention it in his original article or the follow-up blog post. In fact, he took great pains to write about all the hardships he endured to maximize the car's range, and how he still ran out of battery. So, one wonders why he would do it. It seems like an awfully odd thing to do, unless you are deliberately trying to run out of charge. Broder's defense to accusations that he should have charged overnight in Groton is that he was just acting like a regular driver. When you drive a conventional car from DC to Boston, do you pull up to the gas pumps and drive around in circles until you run out of gas? Do you add a few gallons and take off, or do you wait until the automatic shutoff on the pump trips? I think a "regular" driver would charge fully (at least a full "standard" charge) at each Super Charger and then drive directly to the next way-point, not unplug at 75% and pointlessly drive in circles.

stcredzero 14y ago
> It seems like an awfully odd thing to do, unless you are deliberately trying to run out of charge. It's exactly what an insufficiently knowledgeable person would do if trying to deliberately damage the li-ion battery.
- erichocean 14y ago
  It's also exactly what a sufficiently knowledgeable person would do if trying to deliberately damage the li-ion battery.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    A sufficiently knowledgeable person would have succeeded.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

Scenario 1: Article: "The Tesla's range indicator is accurate but to drivers used to having a lot of range when the tank reads 'E' the Tesla's small amount of reserve range may catch them by surprise." Reality: Author drove until the Tesla read "0 miles remaining" then continued to drive until the battery ran out. Scenario 2: Article: "A range estimate misses the mark... the car fell short of its projected range and had to be taken back ... on a flatbed truck." Reality: Author short-charged the car then pulled off the road when the range meter read 0 and drove around trying to drain the battery. One is fine, the other is journalistic malpractice.

arrrg 14y ago
Yeah, well, none of those two happened, so it doesn’t really matter.

gnaffle 14y ago

A reviewer driving in circles at a charging station _without mentioning it in the article_ and all the other things mentioned here proves that the journalists left out facts in the article.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]