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I've read all the arguments on both sides, and while both have made good points, there is one that stands out. This reporter clearly barely made any attempt at

• niggler 14y ago
  You haven't read the arguments carefully: If the car tells you it has half a tank left, and if you find out 10 miles later that the car is almost empty, who do you blame? Do you blame the driver for not having filled the tank or do you blame the car for potentially misreporting the levels? In context, I wonder if the data recorded by the tesla is indeed the same data reported on the dashboard. What would be cool and definitive is if they could present "screenshots" of what was displayed. More general, what I would like to see, given the detail Tesla kept on the car, is a log of the phone calls that Broder made to Tesla during the journey.
  • halviti 14y ago
    If you assume that at no point during the journey did the gauge correct itself, and that the reporter was right to just drive past fueling stations until he "had to be towed", then you assume the vehicle has serious operational problems. I will wait for more evidence before I believe that to be the case.
    • niggler 14y ago
      Here is my thought on the matter: The reporter's behaviors are indeed consistent with what he claims he was told by Tesla when he called them during the journey. If the car manufacturer told me that regenerative braking can help extend the mileage, as dumb as it sounds I absolutely would repeatedly brake the car. I'm not an expert in electric vehicles, and if the company is telling me this is good for the car I wouldn't be in a position to refute it (especially under duress). This is why I want to see the logs of the conversations. If the guy is running low, calls tesla and they say its not an issue, I can't blame him for malice. If he intentionally misdiagnosed the situation and presented it in a way that he would have received the advice he got, then we could blame him for malice (and it would be apparent from the log) On the driver side, I'm surprised he didn't stop and take photos of the dashboard showing the range drop (especially if he thought it wasn't normal). I do this all the time (taking a picture of the dash, including odometer and fuel level) because I park in garages and I've noticed that, every once in a while, I'll come back and see the gas levels fall much more than expected.
      • stcredzero 14y ago
        > If the car manufacturer told me that regenerative braking can help extend the mileage, as dumb as it sounds I absolutely would repeatedly brake the car. Wow. Just Wow!
        • kamaal 14y ago
          Sorry, but what are you trying to imply. The default way in which any user thinks before acting is to trust the customer support guy. Just like how you trust your doctor, or lawyer, or your teacher. Besides no ones studies chemical engineering before buying an electric car just to use it.
          • Natsu 14y ago
            Nothing works with perfect efficiency thanks to entropy. The energy recaptured during braking is less than that expended while accelerating in the first place. In other words, crazy maneuvers like that are only going to drain your battery. The lost energy will go into things like friction heating up your brake pads as you wear them down pointlessly.
            • Someone 14y ago
              Regenerative braking should not use the brake pads. More importantly: battery chemistry is weird and differs widely between technologies (for example, should you completely empty lithium ion batteries every now and then, or is that disastrous for the batteries? How is that for NiMh batteries? Does the memory effect exist? Etc.). That overnight loss likely was (mostly) not a loss at all, but due to the difference in mileage you can get out of a warm vs a cold battery pack, or maybe even out of one that had recently seen small charge cycles due to regenerative braking vs one that hadn't (IMO unlikely, but as I said, battery chemistry is weird) If Tesla told me that regenerative braking would improve available range in this situation, I think I would take them for their word.
              • lutusp 14y ago
• gamblor956 14y ago
  Other Tesla owners have reported this exact problem (inaccurate charging gauge) in the Roadster; other reviewers have noted this problem in the Model S. Moreoever, this problem is endemic to all pure-electric vehicles in cold climates, such as Nissan Leafs and Chevy Volts. (Google for references) Ergo, the likelihood of (1) the reporter not fully charging his car's battery and (2) the fuel guage inaccurately reporting a fully charged battery is the realm of more likely than not.
  • beedogs 14y ago
    got any sources for "other reviewers" regarding the Model S? The roadster isn't really part of this discussion.
• scarmig 14y ago
  I agree that that's the weirdest part of the journalist's story. Why doesn't Musk focus on that? Instead of trying to discredit the reporter by saying he maliciously lied about when he turned the heat on or off by a couple miles, or whether the car had actually run out of juice at the very end.
  • lawdawg 14y ago
    Because focusing on that would be admitting that: 1. The Tesla lost ~65 miles worth of range overnight 2. That their staff told Mr. Broder that the lost miles would return on their own.
    • danielweber 14y ago
      #1 seems a UX problem, not a tech problem. Clearly Tesla's fault, but nothing that will endanger the company. #2 has been denied by Tesla. I'm not saying I believe them, but right now both sides say something different happened at that key point.
    • demallien 14y ago
      I have a question for you. Knowing that Broder definately misrepresented the facts, based on what we do see in the logs, why should we then believe his recounting of the conversations that he had with Tesla support staff?
• lawdawg 14y ago
  Did you (or 99% of HN) read the NYT article? "When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range" "I called Tesla in California, and the official I woke up said I needed to “condition” the battery pack to restore the lost energy." Looking back, I should have bought a membership to Butch’s and spent a few hours there while the car charged. The displayed range never reached the number of miles remaining to Milford, and as I limped along at about 45 miles per hour I saw increasingly dire dashboard warnings to recharge immediately. Mr. Merendino, the product planner, found an E.V. charging station about five miles away. But the Model S had other ideas. “Car is shutting down,”" --- Sounds like he was in constant contact with Tesla and they incorrectly stated that the ~65 miles lost overnight would magically return, and Mr. Broder, unfortunately, took them for their word and left the charging station with the dash showing less than the amount needed to make the trip. Who is the real "liar" here?
  • halviti 14y ago
    Nobody is lying, but if you get in your car and it tells you that you can only you can only go 25 miles, do you really think it's ok to drive over twice that?
    • lawdawg 14y ago
      In my own car during day to day driving? Of course not. If I was reviewing a car and was told that it was OK? Of course! Don't curious minds want to know if the missing miles will actually return on their own? It's not like his life was in any real danger, or that he was late for work or something.
    • AlexeiSadeski 14y ago
      Of course it is. Stop at the gas station for five minutes, fill 'er up, and go on my way.
    • killerpopiller 14y ago
      it actually does work. Cars usually have a fuel reserve and thus range up to 50km (5 litres) when it already shows 0km.
• danso 14y ago
  Just for reference's sake: > After making arrangements to recharge at the Norwich station, I located the proper adapter in the trunk, plugged in and walked to the only warm place nearby, Butch’s Luncheonette and Breakfast Club, an establishment (smoking allowed) where only members can buy a cup of coffee or a plate of eggs. But the owners let me wait there while the Model S drank its juice. Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford. Looking back, I should have bought a membership to Butch’s and spent a few hours there while the car charged. The displayed range never reached the number of miles remaining to Milford, and as I limped along at about 45 miles per hour I saw increasingly dire dashboard warnings to recharge immediately. Mr. Merendino, the product planner, found an E.V. charging station about five miles away. So if you read just Musk's piece, you get the perception that Broder lied about not knowing that he was under-juiced. To paraphrase: Broder: "I should've stayed at the diner and charged for more hours" Musk: "Broder is an idiot who should've stayed at the diner and charged for more hours" OK, no argument there. But if Broder is trying to show what a lemon the Tesla is, he's sure doing about it at a roundabout way (which I guess I what we'd expect a well-heeled Big Oil secret agent to do). So Broder is a professional journalist at the Times, but as far as I can tell, his role is to not describe what it's feels like to be a tech-expert who owns a Tesla. His scenario is not at all alien to anyone who's driven a gas-powered car and skipped "just one more" off-ramp even as the fuel meter hovers at 0. Irresponsible? Sure. But this is how an average car owner might act. Not every car owner has, on a given day, the ability to wait around an extra hour after breakfast at a diner for the car to keep charging. If the charging stations are as commonplace as the map Musk produced indicates, then Broder may have thought (and misjudged) that he could make it to the next public station. I think a passage from earlier in Broder's review is a good insight to what he was thinking: > I drove a state-of-the-art electric vehicle past a lot of gas stations. I wasn’t smiling. Instead, I spent nearly an hour at the Milford service plaza as the Tesla sucked electrons from the hitching post. When I continued my drive, the display read 185 miles, well beyond the distance I intended to cover before returning to the station the next morning for a recharge and returning to Manhattan. The success of Tesla depends on the electric infrastructure improving dramatically. Until that comes about, there is apparently a lot of babying and thinking ahead that a Tesla owner has to do even when the car is running just fine. I find it funny that so many people here are so quick to jump on Broder for not being so patient and tech savvy. While not everyone here is a huge Apple fan, I think most would laugh at a hardware manufacturer who delivered a high powered laptop that performed with variable results depending on the conditions of the day: it's powerful, and cutting edge, you'd just have to remember to plug it at night remember that the battery's decline won't be at a constant rate for more than the usual range of reasons. It's not Tesla's fault that charging stations aren't ubiquitous, and Tesla deserves a lot of credit for trying to change it. And it's not Tesla's fault that people are sometimes dumb, impatient, and not constantly vigilant. But that's the reality of the market Tesla is selling its $100,000 vehicle for, and this is the market that the media writes for.
• makomk 14y ago
  If he had done this on gasoline, he could have got a full top-up in under 10 minutes rather than the 10+ hours it would have taken to do a full charge at Norwich.
• ZoFreX 14y ago
  The reporter didn't really use the car correctly, agreed. There were other factors involved as well though: the poor performance in bad weather conditions, the weather conditions, and Tesla not providing good customer support. If Elon wants to stop this happening again, perhaps he should look to the factors he can control?
• dclowd9901 14y ago
  No, what's getting lost is that it takes an hour to fill up that fucking car. Thanks but no thanks; 10 minutes at a gas station is enough to make me want to chew my own arm off.