27 ms·

That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

375 points by tokenadult 14y ago

tokenadult 14y ago
From the article, "Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product planner at the company’s headquarters in California." That quoted sentence includes the interesting phrase "Tesla's spokeswoman at the time," seemingly implying that the company has a new spokesperson in just the last few days. Who speaks for the company to the press now? It appears that Christina Ra used to work for Honda http://automobiles.honda.com/2012/cr-z/blog.aspx?Author=5 http://automobiles.honda.com/2012/cr-z/blog.aspx?Author=5 and LinkedIn suggests she works for both Tesla and SpaceX https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinara https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinara with the title "senior manager, communications" for Tesla. "I spoke at some length with Mr. Straubel and Ms. Ra six days after the trip, and asked for the data they had collected from my drive, to compare against my notes and recollections. Mr. Straubel said they were able to monitor “certain things” remotely and that the company could store and retrieve 'typical diagnostic information on the powertrain.' "Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile 'in a tiny 100-space parking lot.'" So just what is the spatial resolution of the data stored by Tesla? Who can speak for the company on that exact issue, for the record? I'm amazed, by the way, that commenters here and elsewhere claim that something is easy to see because it can be seen in a Google aerial photo in broad daylight in the summer, when the actual visibility issue is seeing the same thing from a car, while driving, at night in winter. I know lots of drivers who can drive right past things without seeing them, even while looking for those things, if they are driving in an unfamiliar location at night. AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments in reply to this comment. I'll use my edit window to dump in some links from earlier threads on HN. There was an extensive, and on the whole rather favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance-driving-tesla-model-s-in-the-real-world http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance... submitted to HN while most participants were discussing the John Broder New York Times review. (Most participants missed the discussion on the article from The Verge, which is too bad, as the article has interesting photographs of the car and a lot of thoughtful commentary about its trade-offs as a vehicle for regular use.) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154 The author of the report in The Verge takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it’s still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world." ONE MORE EDIT: Reasonable taxpayer and consumer minds can differ, and the differing opinions are widely expressed here on HN, but on the issue of the data-logging, I trust Tesla LESS after the back-and-forth about how Tesla thinks the reporter drove than I did before I saw Tesla's response. Tesla has HUGE taxpayer subsidies keeping its business afloat. Its response to questions about its technology's actual usefulness seems to be to go into attack mode whenever a reporter raises questions about the Tesla driving experience after driving a Tesla car. That doesn't make me think I want to drive a Tesla car. If the cars are really great for driving in places that have snow in winter, word of mouth should be able to tell that story, without any corporate P.R. spin. I note that there are many other news stories out right now, some of which have already been submitted to HN or mentioned in comments, in which onlookers express their opinion that Elon Musk has come out of this looking defensive. The product seems to be lacking in basic features I would need where I live, namely reliable estimates of remaining driving distance in winter, and that seems to speak for itself.
- slantyyz 14y ago
  I think in one of Broder's other posts, he mentioned that the spokesperson moved full time to SpaceX.
- majormajor 14y ago
  "Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile “in a tiny 100-space parking lot.” While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly marked Tesla Supercharger. He did not share that data, which Tesla has now posted online, with me at the time." That bit is particularly curious. Is being able to spring a "gotcha" on a reporter for publishing a "fake" review preferable to sharing the info with the reporter so that, if malicious intent is suspected, the reporter knows that Tesla knows exactly what the facts are? The problems for Tesla here seems to be that the batteries don't like the cold (unsurprising this may be) and that the Supercharger network is still sparse at this point in time. Regardless of whose spin you buy, those points remain, and are good to know.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    There is a good chance that the vehicle stores that data for a limited time, not that it is posted through telemetry. If they are snooping on their cars (all of them, that is) then they have other problems. Fleet cars are also routinely fitted out with vehicle tracking systems, sometimes for insurance purposes.
    - shawn-butler 14y ago
      The Congressional Budget Office has recommended a pilot program of mandating GPS tracking of electric vehicles in order to tax them per mile driven. Since they don't consume fuel they don't pay fuel taxes and don't contribute to surface maintenance of roadways.
  - SilasX 14y ago
jacquesm 14y ago
Two bits are completely non-sensical to me, is there any battery technician or otherwise knowledgeable person that can indicate in what conditions this makes any sense? > Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product planner at the company’s headquarters in California. They told me that the loss of battery power when parked overnight could be restored by properly “conditioning” the battery, a half-hour process, which I undertook by sitting in the car with the heat on low, as they instructed. That proved ineffective; the conditioning process actually reduced the range by 24 percent (to 19 miles, from 25 miles). If there is one thing that will use up large amounts of energy it is electric heating, I find it hard to believe that using a heater as a consumer would regenerate the battery capacity in excess of what the the heater is consuming unless most or all of the energy was directed at the batteries. The exterior of a car will drain heat energy about as fast as you can put it in under cold conditions (or faster...). > It was also Tesla that told me that an hour of charging (at a lower power level) at a public utility in Norwich, Conn., would give me adequate range to reach the Supercharging station 61 miles away, even though the car’s range estimator read 32 miles – because, again, I was told that moderate-speed driving would “restore” the battery power lost overnight. That also proved overoptimistic, as I ran out of power about 14 miles shy of the Milford Supercharger and about five miles from the public charging station in East Haven that I was trying to reach. That does not make any sense either. Any kind of consumption will ultimately reduce the available range, you don't restore by removing joules from a pack. I've lived in a house powered with batteries, solar and wind for a long enough time to know that indeed temperature affects battery capacity, sometimes dramatically. But consuming power under cold conditions never put energy back in. Is this different for the kind of batteries that the Tesla uses? Or is the 'Tesla said' claim just an effort to get out from under the apparently non-sensical decisions that were made here? Or are Tesla spokespeople and product gurus totally clueless (which would seem to be very hard on the imagination)? All the hard data from the Tesla logs except for the 'shutdown' is contradicted by words apparently spoken (and probably unverifiable except for 'he said/she said' style debate) rather than actually refuting the data.
- duaneb 14y ago
deletes 14y ago
Can't wait to hear reResponse from Elon/Tesla.
jules 14y ago
> 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. What the heck? Does this guy seriously think that braking and then speeding up will conserve battery? Maybe the adage "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" is true.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  That bit about the second law of thermodynamics needs to get more attention in school.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  He's probably thinking that other Tesla drivers will do what the company tells them to do, so he does it to see what happens. Do you think the author is going to be the dumbest person to ever drive a Tesla?
  - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
    Yes, because his actions are most consistent with someone seeking the lowest quality advice available to them. Despite having multiple sources of information for both the estimated range, as well as the nearest charging stations, he happened to not only choose the least reasonable, but the one with the worst outcome.
    - shock-value 14y ago
      If both contradictory pieces of advice came from Tesla than surely the blame at least in this instance falls on their shoulders.
    - ANH 14y ago
      Precisely. How many Model S owners are going to call Tesla for regular recharging advice vs. taking 20 seconds to pull up a smart phone app that shows them nearby charging stations?
- 14y ago
luigi 14y ago
Overall I think Broder acquits himself well, and his explanation about circling the Milford parking lot makes sense. Also, the Tesla engineer he was on the phone with at the time should have been able to tell Musk that happened (or Tesla should have just asked Broder to comment before posting the rebuttal). His action here is still hard to understand: > The Tesla personnel whom I consulted over the phone – Ms. Ra and Mr. Merendino –told me to leave it connected for an hour, and after that the lost range would be restored. I did not ignore their advice. So it sounds like he didn't speak to Tesla personnel after he charged at the weak station in Norwich for an hour. If I were him, I'd call them back and say, "Uh guys, it says it only has 32 miles left and I have 61 to go. Maybe I should give it another hour?"
- jlgreco 14y ago
  > His action here is still hard to understand: Yeah, I got the same impression, but that seems so insane I'm not sure it is right. I mean, surely he called them afterwards, right?
  - deletes 14y ago
    I'm sure he didn't.
- bitcartel 14y ago
  Given the ambiguity of what the dash was reporting and what Tesla personnel were telling him, it looks like he put his trust in the humans. In that situation, where you've been led to believe the dash behaves like a wonky gauge, it's quite reasonable to not call back.
  - taproot 14y ago
    Can't say I'd call starting out on a 61 mile journey with 32 miles of charge reasonable.
    - pseut 14y ago
      You might if your only task that day were to assess and report on the current state of charging that car.
jtchang 14y ago
I need more popcorn. This is great!
- deletes 14y ago
  I'm hearing Hollywood is making a movie about it.
- deletes 14y ago
  I'm hearing Hollywood is making a movie about it.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I'm over this he said she said with NYT vs Elon Musk. I love the concept of the Tesla, let's just put up or shut up. Who cares about the times, let's get a new, in depth, independent study. But let's get past this soap opera.
- slantyyz 14y ago
  In my mind, the whole thing that turned this into a soap opera was Musk's knee jerk responses on Twitter. Had he come back with a more measured response (like OXO did with Quirky) and just politely pointed out the inaccuracies of the article and made his same offer of "We'll provide a car to any journalist to do the same test and see what happens", I don't think we'd be discussing this right now.
  - logn 14y ago
    I agree. If you subtract Musk's twitter posts and the few inflammatory sentences in his rebuttal to the review, I think he did a fine job of defending himself and pointing out that the reviewer was trying to push the limits of the battery (as the reviewer should). Musk should have simply made the point that no average person would have ended up towing their car. It would be like if I complained about my new Android not making it past 3 hours of web browsing and then HTC slams me for running 15 background tasks and only charging the phone to 85% the night before. The point remains that these batteries are not the greatest. Musk comes across as too defensive and a bit of a jerk. I understand he probably has PTSD after the other publication screwed him, but get over yourself. Most people just accept bad reviews and move on.
    - slantyyz 14y ago
      After reading the original article myself, I didn't think it was that bad. My main takeaway was "If you're a Tesla owner, make sure you charge your battery if you're driving a reasonably long distance on a really cold day". I didn't think the article was that big a deal. Now we have what is essentially a "blogfight" with both sides parsing out every little word that the other published.
tomkarlo 14y ago
> "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." This is one of the more bizarre statements in this whole discussion. Why would anyone with the slightest understanding of electric cars or physics believe that to be true - and I mean the reporter, as well? By extension, you could recharge your electric car by alternately gunning the engine, then slamming on the brakes. Perpetual motion!
- csallen 14y ago
  To be fair, battery "conservation" is different than a battery "recharge".
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    Given that "conservation" in this case is driven by the rate of usage, minus the rate of recovery - the recharge - from the regen brakes, is it really materially different?
    - danielweber 14y ago
      Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving#Burn_and_coast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving#Burn_a... ?
      - tomkarlo 14y ago
        Perhaps, but there's a pretty huge difference between "burn and coast" and "burn and brake". Plus that's for ICE vehicles, not all-electric. ICE uses gas to keep idling even when your foot is off the gas, so that strategy might work, but electric doesn't "idle".
- vellum 14y ago
  To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: For many people, past a certain level of understanding, technology = magic.
zeteo 14y ago
The logged data does support the broad lines of Broder's story (large drop in battery charge overnight, slow driving, turning down heating) and the 10-15% imprecision (driving at 52 mph instead of 45, heating goes down at 200 miles instead of 182, charge time of 47 minutes instead of 58) is well to be expected from what is a journalistic review and not a scientific experiment. So this all comes down to what customer service might or might have not said over the phone. Was Tesla customer service incompetent enough to suggest anti-solutions (use the brakes more to save energy, charge up to 32 miles when you need 60)? Was there miscommunication? Or did Broder completely make that part up?
- avoutthere 14y ago
  I wonder if Tesla customer support recorded the calls.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  > So this all comes down to what customer service might or might have not said over the phone. Exactly, that is what I get out of it too. And that is probably conveniently unverifiable. Tesla really should repeat the trip with the same parameters as much as possible. Common sense dictates that if they waste power the way indicated that they should run out of juice and if they are conservative and follow the normal procedures that you could expect to observe when using any vehicle with a power source that depletes with use (which is all of them, including gasoline) that they should be able to complete the trip without a problem. When driving in the North somewhere I came upon a sign that said 'no gas for 200 miles'. I had a half tank of fuel but I still drove back to the last town to make sure the tank was full. It seemed only prudent. In an electric vehicle with limited range and with a limited support infrastructure it would be folly to leave for a trip on a leg with an indicated range below the known distance to the next fuel source and to not know exactly where those sources are relative to the car and the planned route.
  - erichocean 14y ago
    We don't need to know what was said, just that a call was made. Broder claims that he was "cleared to drive" after an hour of charging with 32 miles of range on the car for a 61 mile trip. But I don't think that actually happened (note how delicately Broder discusses this now). Tesla certainly denies it. And this is the reason the review was "bad", so this gets to the crux of the issue. What at least happened, according to Broder, is that they told him to "plug it in for an hour, and then it should be good to go". Note the "should". Broder never actually says that he called Tesla back when the hour was up, explained there was only 32 miles of range left on a 61 mile trip, and that Tesla said "go for it, you are cleared for takeoff". So Broder found his angle, thinking: I'll plug it in for an hour, then just leave, no matter what the range says. Hopefully it'll die on me this time. [Ed: I made up that last part, for flavor.] Unfortunately, Broder wrote that Tesla "cleared him to leave", which doesn't seem to be the case, and according to Tesla, was not the case, and that's why he's in the hot water that he's in. If instead he simply quoted the reps and said he didn't call back, despite the data, he'd be in the clear (although the story would be far less compelling, since it'd be clear to everyone that Broder is either an idiot, or has an agenda -- or both). Either way, all we need to do is see if Broder made a call to Tesla when the hour was up. His cell phone log is sufficient, and Tesla might have similar data on their side. We don't need to know what was said, we just need to confirm that Broder even had the opportunity to be "cleared" to drive by Tesla. Once we confirm that, then the tapes would be helpful. Otherwise, Tesla's version is the accurate one.
niggler 14y ago
Until the call logs are revealed, the discussion will boil down to a he-said-she-said.
blehhhhhh 14y ago
google maps/streetview shows the milford stop in detail - take a good look and explain to any reasonable person how can anybody miss the tesla charging station - and then driving half a mile doesn't seem possible...maybe possible if you mistakenly drove into the trucking lane, and had to circle around...maybe 5 times over and over?
- frinxor 14y ago
  got a handy link to this?
- Anechoic 14y ago
  take a good look and explain to any reasonable person how can anybody miss the tesla charging station It was dark (5:45pm), on an I-95 rest stop during rush hour. That parking lot was likely jammed with cars and pedestrians moving around, it's perceivable that someone not familiar with the area could miss it (based on my experience trying to find air pumps at various rest stops).
  - erichocean 14y ago
    A great opportunity for someone to visit the rest stop at 5:45pm, during rush hour, and put up a YouTube video of the location. Perhaps it was hard to find. Perhaps it was easy. It'll be obvious with a video, no?
    - Anechoic 14y ago
      They are gonna have to wait a year since the sun sets later than it did on January 23 (5:03pm vs 5:30pm now: http://www.calendar-365.com/calendar/2013/February.html http://www.calendar-365.com/calendar/2013/February.html ).
llambda 14y ago
> Mr. Musk not only apologized, he said the charging stations should be 60 miles closer together and offered me a second test drive when additional stations were built. How interesting is that! Mr. Musk himself, noting his own perceived deficiency in Tesla's charging station network. Whether or not this is an admission of guilt, it certainly is quite interesting he would immediately offer a follow up test drive after additional stations had been built. Fast forward to Musk's blog post and it seems he's completely changed his attitude: now the fault is entirely with the journalists; now Tesla is the victim of an ill-intentioned agenda on the part of the New York Times...
- relic 14y ago
  That line was from Broder's response to Musk's criticism...thus, it seems reasonable to infer that the offer was made after this whole ordeal. I think it is likely that Musk made the offer with a more favorable, redeeming article in mind. I don't think Musk repealed the offer after the posting of Broder's article, as your comment seems to imply.
- Ygg2 14y ago
  You are assuming he had log data at both points. He might have changed his story when logs were uncovered.
codex 14y ago
The tit-for-tat details here don't matter. The story is simply, "The Tesla lost a ton of range overnight, unexpectedly. Tesla said it would come back after an hour of low-power charging." Is that true? Clearly the former statement is true but the latter is not. The only question is whether Tesla gave the reporter bad advice, or whether the reporter lied because he wanted to sabotage the test. Given Tesla's focus on the tit-for-tat details, which I take to be a strategy of distraction, I suspect that someone at Tesla did indeed make a mistake--probably a high level PR employee with no expert familiarity with the car in cold conditions. Tesla's HQ is located in California, where the weather stays nice and warm, all the time.
- hype7 14y ago
  I agree with you that the tit-for-tat details don't matter; I don't agree with you that the only question is whether Tesla gave the reporter bad advice. This is a textbook example of how not to solve a PR problem — to get in a public, internet-driven slanging match with a journalist. Instead of "publicly refuting", Musk should have called up and got a full account of what went wrong; put the journalist on side, and got an at least somewhat positive follow up account from the journalist saying "I spoke to Musk and he had some questions and we talked through it and we realize that rather than the car being at fault, a database with current locations of chargers hadn't been updated etc etc etc". Right now, instead, Musk can't win. And he's drawing a HUGE amount of publicity to a fact that's already in the back of a lot of consumers minds — that these EVs aren't ready for primetime.
  - ghaff 14y ago
    But Tesla is at least consistent in their approach, see e.g. battery "bricking." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/automobiles/Tesla-Battery-Failures-Make-Bricking-a-Buzzword.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/automobiles/Tesla-Battery-... (This is an NYT story although it wasn't originally reported there.) I'm generally rooting for Tesla and EVs (where they make sense). But I didn't think much of their PR handling of a situation where they were at least somewhat in the wrong was good then and I don't think it's good now.
  - 14y ago
nikcub 14y ago
The biggest mistake Elon made in his response was to dump all that data and to attempt to tear apart each part of the review. This means that the rebuttals now involve taking pieces of that and disproving them in the aim of disproving Tesla's entire argument. Tesla should have posted nothing more than a single line statement saying that Broder left the last charging station for a 65 mile trip with 32 miles on his range meter. Tesla had the opportunity to define the territory of this argument very narrowly. Because Tesla placed everything on the table in the response, this has become a case of he-said, she-said.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Agreed. They've allowed Broder to just ride this out by muddying the waters. He walks away from this only slightly tainted now. At the very least, his notes and the resulting article are not accurate. He confirms this himself. This isn't surprising, and not necessarily malicious. But it's extremely common, as anyone who has ever dealt with a journalist knows. As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work.
  - Jun8 14y ago
    "As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work." This is quite a general statement, which in itself cannot be defended. Furthermore, I think that NYT's standards are higher than the average journalist taken "as a group". Their fact checking is rigorous (although, of course, is not infallible, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair)
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work. Something is very wrong here. If the way you conduct business has nearly equal probability of pissing off innocent people unjustly as it has of making wrongdoers hot under the collar, isn't it time to revisit how you do things?
stcredzero 14y ago
> I do recall setting the cruise control to about 54 m.p.h., as I wrote. The log shows the car traveling about 60 m.p.h. for a nearly 100-mile stretch on the New Jersey Turnpike. I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but 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. Okay, someone please explain to me how tires with a smaller circumference are going to result in faster speeds? John Broder already came across as someone who's hazy on basic physics. Maybe he's not so hot on geometry, either.
- DoubleCluster 14y ago
  Maybe you aren't so hot either. Tell me, what do 19-inch and 21-inch specify? The outer diameter of the tire or the DIAMETER OF THE RIM?
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > Maybe you aren't so hot either. So, grade school geometry refresher. When you increase the diameter of a circle, what happens to its circumference? Thanks for playing: "Do I think I am clever but just accidentally revealed I'm the level of dolt that needs basic geometry spelled out and assumes everyone else is as clueless as me?"
    - DoubleCluster 14y ago
      I do like the game :) The overall diameter of the wheel is determined by the diameter of the rim + 2 times the thickness of the tire(!). Cars with larger rims usually have far thinner tires on them so the overall diameter stays almost the same. Whatever the case, the speedometer will need to be checked and adjusted. Human error in this case can swing either way.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        > I do like the game :) D'oh! You win. (Not in the game mentioned above, either. I'm willing to be shown as a bit of a tires noob, so long as you're not painting me as a rube who forgot grade school geometry. EDIT: Never bought aftermarket rims in my life!) In any case, this is enough to explain a 7 or 8% difference in the apparent direction the logs show?
pilsetnieks 14y ago
From the article: "In my 16 years at The Times I have served as White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent." I don't mean to insult or slander Mr. Broder but how does one go from a White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent to reviewing cars and charger stations?
- smackfu 14y ago
  He is the energy and environmental issues reporter now.
ricardobeat 14y ago
If he had just driven the fucking car and recharged as necessary, from looking at the battery meter, it would've been a fine trip.
- gamblor956 14y ago
  As the reporter noted, and Tesla itself has confirmed, the charging meter gets decalibrated in extremely cold weather (i.e., near or below freezing) and does not accurately state the charge level of the battery. In a nutshell, the decais the root cause of the scandal. Note that this problem is shared with all other EVs currently on the market (i.e., the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf). It's a basic problem of physics and chemistry.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    The car did show a sharp drop in mileage estimate (which turned out to be correct), but he still believed the display was wrong; that's the opposite. In Elon's post, he states they have strong sales in nordic countries, we haven't seen any reports of failure from there. Just because they use the same underlying technology (Li-Ion) doesn't mean all battery packs are the same, Tesla's has a very different design.
kdsudac 14y ago
I get why Musk feels like he needs to defend his company but I think he may be doing more harm than good on the PR front. Do you think the average Tesla customer is going to want to wade through a bunch of plots of battery charge vs distance, etc? I think the takeaway for the average Tesla customer might be along the lines of "hmm, this seems really complicated.... am I going to have to keep the heat down while I drive even when it's 10 degrees outside?" To me, Musk comes across as an out-of-touch engineer who keeps trying to argue the technical case and insists it's the customer's fault--it couldn't possibly be a faulty design, confusing U.I., or marketing not realizing a common (mis)use case. If I dropped $60-$100k on a car and run into problems, this is the last thing I'd want to hear on the other end of the phone.
- niggler 14y ago
  "To me, Musk comes across as an out-of-touch engineer who keeps trying to argue the technical case and insists it's the customer's fault--it couldn't possibly be a faulty design, confusing U.I., or marketing not realizing a common (mis)use case. " Fully agree. This is a great case study for other startups on what not to do.
  - slantyyz 14y ago
    For some reason this story reminds me a lot of Steve Jobs and the response to the Antennagate fiasco.
    - niggler 14y ago
      There are profound differences, but let me focus on one: Jobs and Apple tried to make the claim that people were holding the phone wrong, without ever making the claim about the proper way to hold the phone. They never said anything about the "right" or "wrong" way beforehand, so while the comment is strange it isn't hypocritical. http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphon... It's a very strange response, and clearly foolish, but Apple never made a claim before the launch that the phone could be held that way. And of course, we can be generous in retrospect because Apple eventually gave free bumper cases. But Jobs didn't make a claim on the website which was contradicted by the behavior. In contrast, Tesla claimed that leaving the car out for a long time shouldn't cause much battery loss: "The Model S battery will not lose a significant amount of charge when parked for long periods of time. For example, Model S owners can park at the airport without plugging in." http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts It strikes me odd because the claim, prima facie, suggests that you can leave the car for multiple days without charging. Musk is contradicting Tesla literature here, which is why you should always be careful about the marketing material.
methehack 14y ago
REDO. With supervision. Seems worthless to yak back and forth when we can just find out how the car performs. It's still cold on the east coast, right?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rikelmens 14y ago
Just redo the drive test ! The easiest way to see who is speaking the truth.
revelation 14y ago
Certainly, and as Tesla’s logs clearly show, much of my driving was at or well below the 65 m.p.h. speed limit, with only a single momentary spike above 80. Most drivers are aware that cars can speed up, even sometimes when cruise control is engaged, on downhill stretches. That sounds very very unlikely with the regenerative braking. They call it single pedal driving for a reason - the braking is pretty strong.
mafro 14y ago
All publicity is good publicity?
damian2000 14y ago
Musk and Broder should have got together and nutted out their differences in person instead of having this public bun fight. When I first read Musk's piece yesterday, I thought Broder must be some sort of malicious a-hole, but after reading Broders first response and now this, his second response, I'm thinking its just a case of Musk being overly optimistic as to the capabilities of his product, and Broder being overly pessimistic.
AlexeiSadeski 14y ago
Elon's own arguments are absolutely killing the credibility of electric cars: -Turn the heat down for more range? Who the heck wants to drive around cold in an extremely expensive car? -Drive slowly? Again, what? Elon is simply agreeing with the reviewer's most damning findings: The consumer must make considerable sacrifices - in addition to spending more money - in order to properly use their Tesla car.
kdsudac 14y ago
Hope there are some Boeing battery engineers out there getting a kick out of this!
pulledpork 14y ago
Here's what the data says - Elon Musk is generating a ton of hype by calling these guys out. Right or wrong it's a savvy move.
ANH 14y ago
My summary: 1) We need more EV infrastructure, a point that seems to be getting lost and that I think should have been the thesis of the original article. 2) Broder was irresponsible for not taking seriously enough what the car was telling him and trusting too much the judgment of people 3,000 miles away. 3) Musk is on the defensive and perhaps overreacting because he feels he's doing good in the world and has produced a solid product that is now being unjustly (he feels) attacked. 4) External factors affect mileage, no matter what kind of car you're driving. 5) The attention this spat is receiving suggests to me people understand we can do a much smarter, better job of hauling our asses around.
- Charlesmigli 14y ago
  Awesome summary! You should love http://tldr.io http://tldr.io :)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- Charlesmigli 14y ago
  I posted it on tldr.io, it's now accessible by everyone at this url http://tldr.io/tldrs/511e2afb84eebe2d69000006/that-tesla-data-what-it-says-and-what-it-doesnt-nytimes-com http://tldr.io/tldrs/511e2afb84eebe2d69000006/that-tesla-dat...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
fuddle 14y ago
All I can say is there's no such thing as bad publicity
calhoun137 14y ago
The key issue here is, why did this reporter attempt a drive that was twice as long as the range which he himself admits was displayed by the car? His defense is laughable: because someone on the phone the night before told me it would take an hour of charging. Obviously, no one driving their own car would act this way, because then they would run a big risk of getting stuck on the road.
electic 14y ago
This car sounds like a huge pain overall and sounds like it has a few things to work out. That, coupled with the price, makes me not want to consider any electric car until they have some of these kinks worked out.
evo_9 14y ago
Unfortunately I think Musk has over-reacted and truly done more damage to Telsa/the electric car 'movement' in general the more this has gone on. It's actually really upsetting to see something like this spiral so ridiculously out of control because it's a fantastic car, and Musk is admirable person. But before you make inflammatory claims one would hope a serious investigation would occur. Unfortunately it appears that Musk took over the company 'megaphone' and got emotional, perhaps driven by ego? I don't get it, honestly esp. after the poorly handled Top Gear incident, they apparently learned nothing. At first I was 100% behind Musk, esp. when I heard they had data to back up their claims; but now, honestly I don't know what he was thinking, or what Telsa as a company was thinking letting emotions take control of the situation. In the future I think Telsa would be well served by imposing a 72 hour minimum media silence while they do their investigation into the matter, and for F-sake keep Musk off Twitter/everything. I'm still huge fan of Musk, I hope this can be turned into a positive for Telsa somehow.
- JabavuAdams 14y ago
  I like what Musk has been trying to build, but he seems rather impulsive. E.g. the story about wrecking a super-car with Peter Thiel as a passenger. There seems to be this assumption that just because he's clearly smart, and doing great things, that he can't also be self-destructively impulsive. It's a shame, because un-varnished communications are much more interesting than generic corporate PR. On the other hand, he's doing his cause a disservice. He needs to sit back and shut up. His recent comments on the 787 battery, and this internet-esque flame war are at least unseemly, and more likely actively damaging his plans.
- JabavuAdams 14y ago
  I like what Musk has been trying to build, but he seems rather impulsive. E.g. the story about wrecking a super-car with Peter Thiel as a passenger. There seems to be this assumption that just because he's clearly smart, and doing great things, that he can't also be self-destructively impulsive. It's a shame, because un-varnished communications are much more interesting than generic corporate PR. On the other hand, he's doing his cause a disservice. He needs to sit back and shut up. His recent comments on the 787 battery, and this internet-esque flame war are at least unseemly, and more likely actively damaging his plans.
chm 14y ago
> Certainly, and as Tesla’s logs clearly show, much of my driving was at or well below the 65 m.p.h. speed limit, with only a single momentary spike above 80. Most drivers are aware that cars can speed up, even sometimes when cruise control is engaged, on downhill stretches. Why not just admit that he pushed the car to 80mph? If he bothers giving a really bad excuse for something benign, what's the rest of the article worth?
tunesmith 14y ago
I put a graph together showing all the points/counterpoints and here's what I'm left with. - not charging past 90% at the 1st station is defensible. Especially if Tesla warns it will shorten the battery's life. - It'd be better if Tesla's software took temperature into account when estimating mileage range. - Broder is being ridiculous about the cruise control and his speed estimates, and the temperature. He has partial accountability for the NYT graph. Turning the temperature down to 70 does not mean "sharply downward". He turned it down once more at around 250 miles, but that's far after the 182 that the article/graph indicates, and markedly different than "a little over 200 miles". He writes about how his feet were freezing and knuckles were turning white, but he didn't turn the heat down below 70 until (if my math is right) right about the time he got to Manhattan, which was mentioned afterward in his article timeline. On the other hand, it looks like it was turned down for most of the leg between Manhattan and Milford. - The leg from Manhattan to Milford sounds legitimately stressful, but Broder claims low-speed cruise control that never happened. He tries to blame this on wheel size later, while simultaneously using Tesla's logs as showing that he wasn't driving very fast. That makes no sense. - Tesla claims they told Broder to fully charge at Milford. He did not, and lists a lot of justifications for not following their advice. - Broder complains that Tesla didn't tell him more about how to get the most out of charging stations, but Broder's a veteran at electric vehicles even if it's true that he hates them. And his defense for not charging overnight is laughable - plugging in overnight is not the same as plugging it at every Walmart stop. It's overnight in cold temperatures and the car was at less than 50% of its range. He's just being obstinate here. - It's laughable to say that the Tesla fell short of its projected range when the projected range was from the day before, before not plugging it in on a cold night. - Tesla and Broder directly contradict each other on whether they gave him the go-ahead to stop charging after an hour in Norwich. Broder's being vague in his wordings - he phrases it as if they approved him to unplug when they might have just said to plug it in for about an hour when they were trying to find him the plugin station ahead of time. Tesla, in turn, says that he unplugged over their objections. - Broder just can't "account for the discrepancy" about the logs showing him driving close to 55 when he said he was limping along at 45, back from Norwich. - Broder seems defensible on the parking brake - how is he to know not to turn off the car? - and the driving in circles, although it would be interesting to know just how clearly marked that supercharge station is. Musk is probably guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" here. Anyway, even after Broder's latest response, it still reads like Broder was trying to stack the deck.
petegrif 14y ago
Let's just drive the route again. See what happens.
kingkawn 14y ago
The simple depth of engagement required by Tesla engineers for this test drive, and now the amount of nitpicking being done about the minor details of this trip suggest that this technology is not prepared for the average driver.
gfodor 14y ago
Tesla employees give the guy a ballpark estimate that an hour of charging should get him enough juice. He charges the car an hour. The car says it doesn't have enough juice yet. Instead of waiting until his tank is full enough, John instead starts driving. Why? Is he just stupid, and decides to ignore the gauge and risk his own safety based upon the ballpark estimate of a Tesla customer support rep? Or did he decide that now his ass was covered if the car did somehow end up dying, giving him his story? Either way, the story stinks.
horacio 14y ago
Others have already noted parts of this, but Broder is very clearly only naming 3 people at Tesla: the CTO, a press spokeswoman (who's since moved on), and a product planner. These are not technical support personnel. I doubt that the specific operational advice that Broder received when he called Tesla's 24-hour customer support line was wrong or contradictory. I can very much believe that if he placed a reporter's call to a press spokeswoman's cell phone late at night (as he claimed in his response of today), or to a product planner, or even to a CTO who's not in the weeds of the tech support database, that he might receive contradictory information. I think this confusion between Tesla people who aren't technical giving Broder advice, and Tesla's tech support people (who aren't named in Broder's story) giving him advice, is a large part of the source of the contradictions.
jusben1369 14y ago
"It's like wrestling with a pig in mud. Pretty soon, you realize the pig is enjoying it" - I think the pig here is the NY Times. But Musk didn't get to where he is by knowing when to take his foot off the accelerator (pardon the pun) and going less than 110% when he sees an obstacle to winning. So can't really expect him to handle this with restraint or reserve.
gesman 14y ago
Who gives a f* about the bullshit between NYT and Tesla? Take it to the restroom...
lutusp 14y ago
A quote: "About three hours into the trip, I placed the first of about a dozen calls to Tesla personnel expressing concern about the car’s declining range and asking how to reach the Supercharger station in Milford, Conn. 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) ..." This is unbelievable. The advice is quite wrong, what remains is to discover whether Broder actually got this advice from someone at Tesla or made it up (or misremembered it). If Tesla offered this advice, someone needs an education in electric car technology (stop-and-go driving can only hurt battery life compared to driving at a steady speed). If Broder made it up, it casts into doubt the remainder of his account. For the record, regenerative braking is not something that one can take advantage of -- it's always less efficient than not losing the energy in the first place. It's only a way to minimize the energy loss involved in braking, it can't eliminate the loss. As to cruise control, in level terrain, it can only help the car's range by preventing the driver from wastefully changing speeds. "... that was later contradicted by other Tesla personnel." Ah. Well, then. Tesla should have phone records, but probably didn't record what was said (in many places, recording phone conversations is illegal without explicit consent).
infinitivium 14y ago
This is such a stupid debate. Batteries aren't that great yet for long range travel. This has made me respect the NYT and Musk much less for the mudslinging alone.
encoderer 14y ago
I cringed when I read Musk's charge that he circled the parking lot, suggesting it was done out of a desire to kill the car that just wouldn't die on its own. Who among us hasn't circled a parking lot a few times? There are so many other possible reasons that making a charge like that, something that if true could forever tarnish a journalist's career, was inappropriate. I don't blame Musk for his desire to reply and "clear his name." (I'd be surprised if he didn't identify personally with Tesla). But I think he let his inner-geek shine through too much. That post of there's was in the classic slashdot style of point-by-point refutation. You don't win friends that way. Maybe a better strategy would've been to politely refute the conclusions about cold weather -- since when is this guy a batter scientist -- but then suggest that some bad luck and confusion had more to do with Broder's experience than the cold weather, and possibly invite somebody to spend a little longer with the car -- a week, a month -- to come to conclusions not as tainted by circumstance.
meisterbrendan 14y ago
Tesla customer care appears ignorant/poorly trained. This debate over things as trivial as a .6 mile discrepancy actually underscores the most damaging assertion that can be made against Tesla: that driving its vehicles in normal winter conditions requires some sort of finesse or special knowledge that most customers won't have. Niether end customers nor reporters should be expected to have deeper knowledge of the product they are buying/testing than the customer care agents who are assisting them. Tesla needs to clean its house of bad customer care and accept responsibility for its role in Broder's bad experience.
i2oc 14y ago
As a Model S owner I found that taking the position that an electric vehicle (EV) should behave exactly the same as an internal combustion engine (ICE) car, especially in sub-zero temperatures was a big mistake on his part. Before we set out to test the limits of our Model S in cold weather we spent time learning about how it behaves. Call me crazy, but when using a different fuel source that seems like a reasonable step to me? http://www.colinbowern.com/posts/drive-smart-in-the-cold-with-an-ev http://www.colinbowern.com/posts/drive-smart-in-the-cold-wit...
tubbo 14y ago
You know what? Maybe the Tesla S is too hard to use for most journalists, who aren't exactly known for being the smartest people on earth.
justin_vanw 14y ago
I realize that the NYTimes likes to pretend they are 'the newspaper of record' and therefore 'tell us how it is', but when they themselves are accused of lying, to come out with an article claiming to tell us what is really going on? Ha! Haha! Yes, nytimes, please tell us, what does the Tesla data says, and what it doesn't. We shouldn't look at your original article ourselves, and then look at Tesla's reply. We should instead read the objective analysis of the situation. An objective analysis from the very party accused of lying. Oh god, the irony, it burns, the goggles do nothing.
ck2 14y ago
A cnn "journalist" is now doing the same run in a model S https://twitter.com/PeterDrives https://twitter.com/PeterDrives
nutanc 14y ago
Ultimately, it is about trusting the system. Even when on gasoline, and the indicator shows empty, we have a gut feel for how much further we can push it. But with these new cars, that trust is not there and hence the blaming of the system.
krashidov 14y ago
I'm sure most people wouldn't have even known about the NYT article or even taken it very seriously, but after this whole kerfuffle, Musk has put the Streisand effect into full force. Personally I think that Tesla looks bad here. They have been given so much praise over the last year that this one unfortunate review caused them to react with overzealous vigilance. Perhaps, if Musk had privately contacted Broder, shown him the data and make an understanding out of all this, they could have re-done the road trip and all would be well. Instead, Musk attempts to embarrass him with internal logs and a blog post. It almost seems like he is implying that Broder has some ulterior agenda. I'm not saying Musk is right or wrong (I really don't know). I'm saying he could have handled the whole thing a lot better.
mkhpalm 14y ago
I think both Musk and NTY have errors in their stories. But I particularly despise the way Musk went about responding to the article. If he's right, just post the raw data with a summary of Tesla's findings for the readers to decide. I much prefer a detailed and professional retort over an "emo" knee-jerk berating. And if you can't do that, just post the parts Tesla doesn't think add up minus the highly pointed commentary. But thats me... I find you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
Mordor 14y ago
Fear, uncertainty and doubt is all I'm reading. Top Gear was even worse. Behind it all is the ego of the car. What's the identity of an electric car which isn't trying to be green?
knodi 14y ago
What ever the case maybe its clear Tesla cars are not ready for the real world. I'm little saddened by this as I was hoping to get one in few years.
kevinthew 14y ago
I'm not sure how people can defend Broder. He lied in a very well-respected newspaper about the quality of a product he claims to be an expert in. That could sink a less vigilant company. I get it's just one review, and Broder also probably wasn't even necessarily trying to misrepresent anything. But his rebuttals are completely disingenuous, and he won't admit any wrong doing which is the cardinal sin journalists always seem to get away with. I don't know why journalists can seemingly get away with anything. Always the critic but can never be rightfully criticized by the public.
Havoc 14y ago
This article reeks of deceptive phrasing. e.g. Instead of say nobody provided energy saving instructions he says nobody provided detailed energy saving instructions. I also find it highly improbably that a Tesla engineer would advise someone to improve range by speeding up and slowing down. Some of it does ring true. e.g. The driving in circles vs searching for charge station. But on the whole it still sounds pretty weak.
jamieb 14y ago
This isn't journalism. This is a flamewar. Its not even a very good flamewar. No popcorn for me.
KRoP 14y ago
Maybe I'm being dense, but it doesn't make sense to me: if Broder's only goal was to write a negative review, and he didn't know about data being collected from his car, why take the trip at all? And if he did know about Tesla collecting data from his car, why would he do the things Musk claims he did? He's not stupid. That, and the fact that he has a fairly plausible explanation for each of Musk's claims, would put the burden of proof on Tesla. (I also get lost in parking lots; it doesn't prove he was trying to kill the car.)

375 points by tokenadult 14y ago

From the article, "Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product planner at the company’s headquarters in California." That quoted sentence includes the interesting phrase "Tesla's spokeswoman at the time," seemingly implying that the company has a new spokesperson in just the last few days. Who speaks for the company to the press now? It appears that Christina Ra used to work for Honda http://automobiles.honda.com/2012/cr-z/blog.aspx?Author=5 http://automobiles.honda.com/2012/cr-z/blog.aspx?Author=5 and LinkedIn suggests she works for both Tesla and SpaceX https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinara https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinara with the title "senior manager, communications" for Tesla. "I spoke at some length with Mr. Straubel and Ms. Ra six days after the trip, and asked for the data they had collected from my drive, to compare against my notes and recollections. Mr. Straubel said they were able to monitor “certain things” remotely and that the company could store and retrieve 'typical diagnostic information on the powertrain.' "Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile 'in a tiny 100-space parking lot.'" So just what is the spatial resolution of the data stored by Tesla? Who can speak for the company on that exact issue, for the record? I'm amazed, by the way, that commenters here and elsewhere claim that something is easy to see because it can be seen in a Google aerial photo in broad daylight in the summer, when the actual visibility issue is seeing the same thing from a car, while driving, at night in winter. I know lots of drivers who can drive right past things without seeing them, even while looking for those things, if they are driving in an unfamiliar location at night. AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments in reply to this comment. I'll use my edit window to dump in some links from earlier threads on HN. There was an extensive, and on the whole rather favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance-driving-tesla-model-s-in-the-real-world http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance... submitted to HN while most participants were discussing the John Broder New York Times review. (Most participants missed the discussion on the article from The Verge, which is too bad, as the article has interesting photographs of the car and a lot of thoughtful commentary about its trade-offs as a vehicle for regular use.) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154 The author of the report in The Verge takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it’s still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world." ONE MORE EDIT: Reasonable taxpayer and consumer minds can differ, and the differing opinions are widely expressed here on HN, but on the issue of the data-logging, I trust Tesla LESS after the back-and-forth about how Tesla thinks the reporter drove than I did before I saw Tesla's response. Tesla has HUGE taxpayer subsidies keeping its business afloat. Its response to questions about its technology's actual usefulness seems to be to go into attack mode whenever a reporter raises questions about the Tesla driving experience after driving a Tesla car. That doesn't make me think I want to drive a Tesla car. If the cars are really great for driving in places that have snow in winter, word of mouth should be able to tell that story, without any corporate P.R. spin. I note that there are many other news stories out right now, some of which have already been submitted to HN or mentioned in comments, in which onlookers express their opinion that Elon Musk has come out of this looking defensive. The product seems to be lacking in basic features I would need where I live, namely reliable estimates of remaining driving distance in winter, and that seems to speak for itself.

slantyyz 14y ago
I think in one of Broder's other posts, he mentioned that the spokesperson moved full time to SpaceX.
majormajor 14y ago
"Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile “in a tiny 100-space parking lot.” While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly marked Tesla Supercharger. He did not share that data, which Tesla has now posted online, with me at the time." That bit is particularly curious. Is being able to spring a "gotcha" on a reporter for publishing a "fake" review preferable to sharing the info with the reporter so that, if malicious intent is suspected, the reporter knows that Tesla knows exactly what the facts are? The problems for Tesla here seems to be that the batteries don't like the cold (unsurprising this may be) and that the Supercharger network is still sparse at this point in time. Regardless of whose spin you buy, those points remain, and are good to know.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  There is a good chance that the vehicle stores that data for a limited time, not that it is posted through telemetry. If they are snooping on their cars (all of them, that is) then they have other problems. Fleet cars are also routinely fitted out with vehicle tracking systems, sometimes for insurance purposes.
  - shawn-butler 14y ago
    The Congressional Budget Office has recommended a pilot program of mandating GPS tracking of electric vehicles in order to tax them per mile driven. Since they don't consume fuel they don't pay fuel taxes and don't contribute to surface maintenance of roadways.
- SilasX 14y ago

jacquesm 14y ago

Two bits are completely non-sensical to me, is there any battery technician or otherwise knowledgeable person that can indicate in what conditions this makes any sense? > Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product planner at the company’s headquarters in California. They told me that the loss of battery power when parked overnight could be restored by properly “conditioning” the battery, a half-hour process, which I undertook by sitting in the car with the heat on low, as they instructed. That proved ineffective; the conditioning process actually reduced the range by 24 percent (to 19 miles, from 25 miles). If there is one thing that will use up large amounts of energy it is electric heating, I find it hard to believe that using a heater as a consumer would regenerate the battery capacity in excess of what the the heater is consuming unless most or all of the energy was directed at the batteries. The exterior of a car will drain heat energy about as fast as you can put it in under cold conditions (or faster...). > It was also Tesla that told me that an hour of charging (at a lower power level) at a public utility in Norwich, Conn., would give me adequate range to reach the Supercharging station 61 miles away, even though the car’s range estimator read 32 miles – because, again, I was told that moderate-speed driving would “restore” the battery power lost overnight. That also proved overoptimistic, as I ran out of power about 14 miles shy of the Milford Supercharger and about five miles from the public charging station in East Haven that I was trying to reach. That does not make any sense either. Any kind of consumption will ultimately reduce the available range, you don't restore by removing joules from a pack. I've lived in a house powered with batteries, solar and wind for a long enough time to know that indeed temperature affects battery capacity, sometimes dramatically. But consuming power under cold conditions never put energy back in. Is this different for the kind of batteries that the Tesla uses? Or is the 'Tesla said' claim just an effort to get out from under the apparently non-sensical decisions that were made here? Or are Tesla spokespeople and product gurus totally clueless (which would seem to be very hard on the imagination)? All the hard data from the Tesla logs except for the 'shutdown' is contradicted by words apparently spoken (and probably unverifiable except for 'he said/she said' style debate) rather than actually refuting the data.

duaneb 14y ago

deletes 14y ago

Can't wait to hear reResponse from Elon/Tesla.

jules 14y ago

> 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. What the heck? Does this guy seriously think that braking and then speeding up will conserve battery? Maybe the adage "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" is true.

jacquesm 14y ago
That bit about the second law of thermodynamics needs to get more attention in school.
tedunangst 14y ago
He's probably thinking that other Tesla drivers will do what the company tells them to do, so he does it to see what happens. Do you think the author is going to be the dumbest person to ever drive a Tesla?
- lawnchair_larry 14y ago
  Yes, because his actions are most consistent with someone seeking the lowest quality advice available to them. Despite having multiple sources of information for both the estimated range, as well as the nearest charging stations, he happened to not only choose the least reasonable, but the one with the worst outcome.
  - shock-value 14y ago
    If both contradictory pieces of advice came from Tesla than surely the blame at least in this instance falls on their shoulders.
  - ANH 14y ago
    Precisely. How many Model S owners are going to call Tesla for regular recharging advice vs. taking 20 seconds to pull up a smart phone app that shows them nearby charging stations?
14y ago

luigi 14y ago

Overall I think Broder acquits himself well, and his explanation about circling the Milford parking lot makes sense. Also, the Tesla engineer he was on the phone with at the time should have been able to tell Musk that happened (or Tesla should have just asked Broder to comment before posting the rebuttal). His action here is still hard to understand: > The Tesla personnel whom I consulted over the phone – Ms. Ra and Mr. Merendino –told me to leave it connected for an hour, and after that the lost range would be restored. I did not ignore their advice. So it sounds like he didn't speak to Tesla personnel after he charged at the weak station in Norwich for an hour. If I were him, I'd call them back and say, "Uh guys, it says it only has 32 miles left and I have 61 to go. Maybe I should give it another hour?"

jlgreco 14y ago
> His action here is still hard to understand: Yeah, I got the same impression, but that seems so insane I'm not sure it is right. I mean, surely he called them afterwards, right?
- deletes 14y ago
  I'm sure he didn't.
bitcartel 14y ago
Given the ambiguity of what the dash was reporting and what Tesla personnel were telling him, it looks like he put his trust in the humans. In that situation, where you've been led to believe the dash behaves like a wonky gauge, it's quite reasonable to not call back.
- taproot 14y ago
  Can't say I'd call starting out on a 61 mile journey with 32 miles of charge reasonable.
  - pseut 14y ago
    You might if your only task that day were to assess and report on the current state of charging that car.

jtchang 14y ago

I need more popcorn. This is great!

deletes 14y ago
I'm hearing Hollywood is making a movie about it.
deletes 14y ago
I'm hearing Hollywood is making a movie about it.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

I'm over this he said she said with NYT vs Elon Musk. I love the concept of the Tesla, let's just put up or shut up. Who cares about the times, let's get a new, in depth, independent study. But let's get past this soap opera.

slantyyz 14y ago
In my mind, the whole thing that turned this into a soap opera was Musk's knee jerk responses on Twitter. Had he come back with a more measured response (like OXO did with Quirky) and just politely pointed out the inaccuracies of the article and made his same offer of "We'll provide a car to any journalist to do the same test and see what happens", I don't think we'd be discussing this right now.
- logn 14y ago
  I agree. If you subtract Musk's twitter posts and the few inflammatory sentences in his rebuttal to the review, I think he did a fine job of defending himself and pointing out that the reviewer was trying to push the limits of the battery (as the reviewer should). Musk should have simply made the point that no average person would have ended up towing their car. It would be like if I complained about my new Android not making it past 3 hours of web browsing and then HTC slams me for running 15 background tasks and only charging the phone to 85% the night before. The point remains that these batteries are not the greatest. Musk comes across as too defensive and a bit of a jerk. I understand he probably has PTSD after the other publication screwed him, but get over yourself. Most people just accept bad reviews and move on.
  - slantyyz 14y ago
    After reading the original article myself, I didn't think it was that bad. My main takeaway was "If you're a Tesla owner, make sure you charge your battery if you're driving a reasonably long distance on a really cold day". I didn't think the article was that big a deal. Now we have what is essentially a "blogfight" with both sides parsing out every little word that the other published.

tomkarlo 14y ago

> "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." This is one of the more bizarre statements in this whole discussion. Why would anyone with the slightest understanding of electric cars or physics believe that to be true - and I mean the reporter, as well? By extension, you could recharge your electric car by alternately gunning the engine, then slamming on the brakes. Perpetual motion!

csallen 14y ago
To be fair, battery "conservation" is different than a battery "recharge".
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  Given that "conservation" in this case is driven by the rate of usage, minus the rate of recovery - the recharge - from the regen brakes, is it really materially different?
  - danielweber 14y ago
    Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving#Burn_and_coast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving#Burn_a... ?
    - tomkarlo 14y ago
      Perhaps, but there's a pretty huge difference between "burn and coast" and "burn and brake". Plus that's for ICE vehicles, not all-electric. ICE uses gas to keep idling even when your foot is off the gas, so that strategy might work, but electric doesn't "idle".
vellum 14y ago
To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: For many people, past a certain level of understanding, technology = magic.

zeteo 14y ago

The logged data does support the broad lines of Broder's story (large drop in battery charge overnight, slow driving, turning down heating) and the 10-15% imprecision (driving at 52 mph instead of 45, heating goes down at 200 miles instead of 182, charge time of 47 minutes instead of 58) is well to be expected from what is a journalistic review and not a scientific experiment. So this all comes down to what customer service might or might have not said over the phone. Was Tesla customer service incompetent enough to suggest anti-solutions (use the brakes more to save energy, charge up to 32 miles when you need 60)? Was there miscommunication? Or did Broder completely make that part up?

avoutthere 14y ago
I wonder if Tesla customer support recorded the calls.
jacquesm 14y ago
> So this all comes down to what customer service might or might have not said over the phone. Exactly, that is what I get out of it too. And that is probably conveniently unverifiable. Tesla really should repeat the trip with the same parameters as much as possible. Common sense dictates that if they waste power the way indicated that they should run out of juice and if they are conservative and follow the normal procedures that you could expect to observe when using any vehicle with a power source that depletes with use (which is all of them, including gasoline) that they should be able to complete the trip without a problem. When driving in the North somewhere I came upon a sign that said 'no gas for 200 miles'. I had a half tank of fuel but I still drove back to the last town to make sure the tank was full. It seemed only prudent. In an electric vehicle with limited range and with a limited support infrastructure it would be folly to leave for a trip on a leg with an indicated range below the known distance to the next fuel source and to not know exactly where those sources are relative to the car and the planned route.
- erichocean 14y ago
  We don't need to know what was said, just that a call was made. Broder claims that he was "cleared to drive" after an hour of charging with 32 miles of range on the car for a 61 mile trip. But I don't think that actually happened (note how delicately Broder discusses this now). Tesla certainly denies it. And this is the reason the review was "bad", so this gets to the crux of the issue. What at least happened, according to Broder, is that they told him to "plug it in for an hour, and then it should be good to go". Note the "should". Broder never actually says that he called Tesla back when the hour was up, explained there was only 32 miles of range left on a 61 mile trip, and that Tesla said "go for it, you are cleared for takeoff". So Broder found his angle, thinking: I'll plug it in for an hour, then just leave, no matter what the range says. Hopefully it'll die on me this time. [Ed: I made up that last part, for flavor.] Unfortunately, Broder wrote that Tesla "cleared him to leave", which doesn't seem to be the case, and according to Tesla, was not the case, and that's why he's in the hot water that he's in. If instead he simply quoted the reps and said he didn't call back, despite the data, he'd be in the clear (although the story would be far less compelling, since it'd be clear to everyone that Broder is either an idiot, or has an agenda -- or both). Either way, all we need to do is see if Broder made a call to Tesla when the hour was up. His cell phone log is sufficient, and Tesla might have similar data on their side. We don't need to know what was said, we just need to confirm that Broder even had the opportunity to be "cleared" to drive by Tesla. Once we confirm that, then the tapes would be helpful. Otherwise, Tesla's version is the accurate one.

niggler 14y ago

Until the call logs are revealed, the discussion will boil down to a he-said-she-said.

blehhhhhh 14y ago

google maps/streetview shows the milford stop in detail - take a good look and explain to any reasonable person how can anybody miss the tesla charging station - and then driving half a mile doesn't seem possible...maybe possible if you mistakenly drove into the trucking lane, and had to circle around...maybe 5 times over and over?

frinxor 14y ago
got a handy link to this?
Anechoic 14y ago
take a good look and explain to any reasonable person how can anybody miss the tesla charging station It was dark (5:45pm), on an I-95 rest stop during rush hour. That parking lot was likely jammed with cars and pedestrians moving around, it's perceivable that someone not familiar with the area could miss it (based on my experience trying to find air pumps at various rest stops).
- erichocean 14y ago
  A great opportunity for someone to visit the rest stop at 5:45pm, during rush hour, and put up a YouTube video of the location. Perhaps it was hard to find. Perhaps it was easy. It'll be obvious with a video, no?
  - Anechoic 14y ago
    They are gonna have to wait a year since the sun sets later than it did on January 23 (5:03pm vs 5:30pm now: http://www.calendar-365.com/calendar/2013/February.html http://www.calendar-365.com/calendar/2013/February.html ).

llambda 14y ago

> Mr. Musk not only apologized, he said the charging stations should be 60 miles closer together and offered me a second test drive when additional stations were built. How interesting is that! Mr. Musk himself, noting his own perceived deficiency in Tesla's charging station network. Whether or not this is an admission of guilt, it certainly is quite interesting he would immediately offer a follow up test drive after additional stations had been built. Fast forward to Musk's blog post and it seems he's completely changed his attitude: now the fault is entirely with the journalists; now Tesla is the victim of an ill-intentioned agenda on the part of the New York Times...

relic 14y ago
That line was from Broder's response to Musk's criticism...thus, it seems reasonable to infer that the offer was made after this whole ordeal. I think it is likely that Musk made the offer with a more favorable, redeeming article in mind. I don't think Musk repealed the offer after the posting of Broder's article, as your comment seems to imply.
Ygg2 14y ago
You are assuming he had log data at both points. He might have changed his story when logs were uncovered.

codex 14y ago

The tit-for-tat details here don't matter. The story is simply, "The Tesla lost a ton of range overnight, unexpectedly. Tesla said it would come back after an hour of low-power charging." Is that true? Clearly the former statement is true but the latter is not. The only question is whether Tesla gave the reporter bad advice, or whether the reporter lied because he wanted to sabotage the test. Given Tesla's focus on the tit-for-tat details, which I take to be a strategy of distraction, I suspect that someone at Tesla did indeed make a mistake--probably a high level PR employee with no expert familiarity with the car in cold conditions. Tesla's HQ is located in California, where the weather stays nice and warm, all the time.

hype7 14y ago
I agree with you that the tit-for-tat details don't matter; I don't agree with you that the only question is whether Tesla gave the reporter bad advice. This is a textbook example of how not to solve a PR problem — to get in a public, internet-driven slanging match with a journalist. Instead of "publicly refuting", Musk should have called up and got a full account of what went wrong; put the journalist on side, and got an at least somewhat positive follow up account from the journalist saying "I spoke to Musk and he had some questions and we talked through it and we realize that rather than the car being at fault, a database with current locations of chargers hadn't been updated etc etc etc". Right now, instead, Musk can't win. And he's drawing a HUGE amount of publicity to a fact that's already in the back of a lot of consumers minds — that these EVs aren't ready for primetime.
- ghaff 14y ago
  But Tesla is at least consistent in their approach, see e.g. battery "bricking." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/automobiles/Tesla-Battery-Failures-Make-Bricking-a-Buzzword.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/automobiles/Tesla-Battery-... (This is an NYT story although it wasn't originally reported there.) I'm generally rooting for Tesla and EVs (where they make sense). But I didn't think much of their PR handling of a situation where they were at least somewhat in the wrong was good then and I don't think it's good now.
- 14y ago

nikcub 14y ago

The biggest mistake Elon made in his response was to dump all that data and to attempt to tear apart each part of the review. This means that the rebuttals now involve taking pieces of that and disproving them in the aim of disproving Tesla's entire argument. Tesla should have posted nothing more than a single line statement saying that Broder left the last charging station for a 65 mile trip with 32 miles on his range meter. Tesla had the opportunity to define the territory of this argument very narrowly. Because Tesla placed everything on the table in the response, this has become a case of he-said, she-said.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Agreed. They've allowed Broder to just ride this out by muddying the waters. He walks away from this only slightly tainted now. At the very least, his notes and the resulting article are not accurate. He confirms this himself. This isn't surprising, and not necessarily malicious. But it's extremely common, as anyone who has ever dealt with a journalist knows. As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work.
- Jun8 14y ago
  "As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work." This is quite a general statement, which in itself cannot be defended. Furthermore, I think that NYT's standards are higher than the average journalist taken "as a group". Their fact checking is rigorous (although, of course, is not infallible, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair)
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work. Something is very wrong here. If the way you conduct business has nearly equal probability of pissing off innocent people unjustly as it has of making wrongdoers hot under the collar, isn't it time to revisit how you do things?

stcredzero 14y ago

> I do recall setting the cruise control to about 54 m.p.h., as I wrote. The log shows the car traveling about 60 m.p.h. for a nearly 100-mile stretch on the New Jersey Turnpike. I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but 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. Okay, someone please explain to me how tires with a smaller circumference are going to result in faster speeds? John Broder already came across as someone who's hazy on basic physics. Maybe he's not so hot on geometry, either.

DoubleCluster 14y ago
Maybe you aren't so hot either. Tell me, what do 19-inch and 21-inch specify? The outer diameter of the tire or the DIAMETER OF THE RIM?
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > Maybe you aren't so hot either. So, grade school geometry refresher. When you increase the diameter of a circle, what happens to its circumference? Thanks for playing: "Do I think I am clever but just accidentally revealed I'm the level of dolt that needs basic geometry spelled out and assumes everyone else is as clueless as me?"
  - DoubleCluster 14y ago
    I do like the game :) The overall diameter of the wheel is determined by the diameter of the rim + 2 times the thickness of the tire(!). Cars with larger rims usually have far thinner tires on them so the overall diameter stays almost the same. Whatever the case, the speedometer will need to be checked and adjusted. Human error in this case can swing either way.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      > I do like the game :) D'oh! You win. (Not in the game mentioned above, either. I'm willing to be shown as a bit of a tires noob, so long as you're not painting me as a rube who forgot grade school geometry. EDIT: Never bought aftermarket rims in my life!) In any case, this is enough to explain a 7 or 8% difference in the apparent direction the logs show?

pilsetnieks 14y ago

From the article: "In my 16 years at The Times I have served as White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent." I don't mean to insult or slander Mr. Broder but how does one go from a White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent to reviewing cars and charger stations?

smackfu 14y ago
He is the energy and environmental issues reporter now.

ricardobeat 14y ago

If he had just driven the fucking car and recharged as necessary, from looking at the battery meter, it would've been a fine trip.

gamblor956 14y ago
As the reporter noted, and Tesla itself has confirmed, the charging meter gets decalibrated in extremely cold weather (i.e., near or below freezing) and does not accurately state the charge level of the battery. In a nutshell, the decais the root cause of the scandal. Note that this problem is shared with all other EVs currently on the market (i.e., the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf). It's a basic problem of physics and chemistry.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  The car did show a sharp drop in mileage estimate (which turned out to be correct), but he still believed the display was wrong; that's the opposite. In Elon's post, he states they have strong sales in nordic countries, we haven't seen any reports of failure from there. Just because they use the same underlying technology (Li-Ion) doesn't mean all battery packs are the same, Tesla's has a very different design.

kdsudac 14y ago

I get why Musk feels like he needs to defend his company but I think he may be doing more harm than good on the PR front. Do you think the average Tesla customer is going to want to wade through a bunch of plots of battery charge vs distance, etc? I think the takeaway for the average Tesla customer might be along the lines of "hmm, this seems really complicated.... am I going to have to keep the heat down while I drive even when it's 10 degrees outside?" To me, Musk comes across as an out-of-touch engineer who keeps trying to argue the technical case and insists it's the customer's fault--it couldn't possibly be a faulty design, confusing U.I., or marketing not realizing a common (mis)use case. If I dropped $60-$100k on a car and run into problems, this is the last thing I'd want to hear on the other end of the phone.

niggler 14y ago
"To me, Musk comes across as an out-of-touch engineer who keeps trying to argue the technical case and insists it's the customer's fault--it couldn't possibly be a faulty design, confusing U.I., or marketing not realizing a common (mis)use case. " Fully agree. This is a great case study for other startups on what not to do.
- slantyyz 14y ago
  For some reason this story reminds me a lot of Steve Jobs and the response to the Antennagate fiasco.
  - niggler 14y ago
    There are profound differences, but let me focus on one: Jobs and Apple tried to make the claim that people were holding the phone wrong, without ever making the claim about the proper way to hold the phone. They never said anything about the "right" or "wrong" way beforehand, so while the comment is strange it isn't hypocritical. http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphon... It's a very strange response, and clearly foolish, but Apple never made a claim before the launch that the phone could be held that way. And of course, we can be generous in retrospect because Apple eventually gave free bumper cases. But Jobs didn't make a claim on the website which was contradicted by the behavior. In contrast, Tesla claimed that leaving the car out for a long time shouldn't cause much battery loss: "The Model S battery will not lose a significant amount of charge when parked for long periods of time. For example, Model S owners can park at the airport without plugging in." http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts It strikes me odd because the claim, prima facie, suggests that you can leave the car for multiple days without charging. Musk is contradicting Tesla literature here, which is why you should always be careful about the marketing material.

methehack 14y ago

REDO. With supervision. Seems worthless to yak back and forth when we can just find out how the car performs. It's still cold on the east coast, right?

deleted 14y ago

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rikelmens 14y ago

Just redo the drive test ! The easiest way to see who is speaking the truth.

revelation 14y ago

Certainly, and as Tesla’s logs clearly show, much of my driving was at or well below the 65 m.p.h. speed limit, with only a single momentary spike above 80. Most drivers are aware that cars can speed up, even sometimes when cruise control is engaged, on downhill stretches. That sounds very very unlikely with the regenerative braking. They call it single pedal driving for a reason - the braking is pretty strong.

mafro 14y ago

All publicity is good publicity?

damian2000 14y ago

Musk and Broder should have got together and nutted out their differences in person instead of having this public bun fight. When I first read Musk's piece yesterday, I thought Broder must be some sort of malicious a-hole, but after reading Broders first response and now this, his second response, I'm thinking its just a case of Musk being overly optimistic as to the capabilities of his product, and Broder being overly pessimistic.

AlexeiSadeski 14y ago

Elon's own arguments are absolutely killing the credibility of electric cars: -Turn the heat down for more range? Who the heck wants to drive around cold in an extremely expensive car? -Drive slowly? Again, what? Elon is simply agreeing with the reviewer's most damning findings: The consumer must make considerable sacrifices - in addition to spending more money - in order to properly use their Tesla car.

kdsudac 14y ago

Hope there are some Boeing battery engineers out there getting a kick out of this!

pulledpork 14y ago

Here's what the data says - Elon Musk is generating a ton of hype by calling these guys out. Right or wrong it's a savvy move.

ANH 14y ago

My summary: 1) We need more EV infrastructure, a point that seems to be getting lost and that I think should have been the thesis of the original article. 2) Broder was irresponsible for not taking seriously enough what the car was telling him and trusting too much the judgment of people 3,000 miles away. 3) Musk is on the defensive and perhaps overreacting because he feels he's doing good in the world and has produced a solid product that is now being unjustly (he feels) attacked. 4) External factors affect mileage, no matter what kind of car you're driving. 5) The attention this spat is receiving suggests to me people understand we can do a much smarter, better job of hauling our asses around.

Charlesmigli 14y ago
Awesome summary! You should love http://tldr.io http://tldr.io :)
- deleted 14y ago
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Charlesmigli 14y ago
I posted it on tldr.io, it's now accessible by everyone at this url http://tldr.io/tldrs/511e2afb84eebe2d69000006/that-tesla-data-what-it-says-and-what-it-doesnt-nytimes-com http://tldr.io/tldrs/511e2afb84eebe2d69000006/that-tesla-dat...
deleted 14y ago
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fuddle 14y ago

All I can say is there's no such thing as bad publicity

calhoun137 14y ago

The key issue here is, why did this reporter attempt a drive that was twice as long as the range which he himself admits was displayed by the car? His defense is laughable: because someone on the phone the night before told me it would take an hour of charging. Obviously, no one driving their own car would act this way, because then they would run a big risk of getting stuck on the road.

electic 14y ago

This car sounds like a huge pain overall and sounds like it has a few things to work out. That, coupled with the price, makes me not want to consider any electric car until they have some of these kinks worked out.

evo_9 14y ago

Unfortunately I think Musk has over-reacted and truly done more damage to Telsa/the electric car 'movement' in general the more this has gone on. It's actually really upsetting to see something like this spiral so ridiculously out of control because it's a fantastic car, and Musk is admirable person. But before you make inflammatory claims one would hope a serious investigation would occur. Unfortunately it appears that Musk took over the company 'megaphone' and got emotional, perhaps driven by ego? I don't get it, honestly esp. after the poorly handled Top Gear incident, they apparently learned nothing. At first I was 100% behind Musk, esp. when I heard they had data to back up their claims; but now, honestly I don't know what he was thinking, or what Telsa as a company was thinking letting emotions take control of the situation. In the future I think Telsa would be well served by imposing a 72 hour minimum media silence while they do their investigation into the matter, and for F-sake keep Musk off Twitter/everything. I'm still huge fan of Musk, I hope this can be turned into a positive for Telsa somehow.

JabavuAdams 14y ago
I like what Musk has been trying to build, but he seems rather impulsive. E.g. the story about wrecking a super-car with Peter Thiel as a passenger. There seems to be this assumption that just because he's clearly smart, and doing great things, that he can't also be self-destructively impulsive. It's a shame, because un-varnished communications are much more interesting than generic corporate PR. On the other hand, he's doing his cause a disservice. He needs to sit back and shut up. His recent comments on the 787 battery, and this internet-esque flame war are at least unseemly, and more likely actively damaging his plans.
JabavuAdams 14y ago
I like what Musk has been trying to build, but he seems rather impulsive. E.g. the story about wrecking a super-car with Peter Thiel as a passenger. There seems to be this assumption that just because he's clearly smart, and doing great things, that he can't also be self-destructively impulsive. It's a shame, because un-varnished communications are much more interesting than generic corporate PR. On the other hand, he's doing his cause a disservice. He needs to sit back and shut up. His recent comments on the 787 battery, and this internet-esque flame war are at least unseemly, and more likely actively damaging his plans.

chm 14y ago

> Certainly, and as Tesla’s logs clearly show, much of my driving was at or well below the 65 m.p.h. speed limit, with only a single momentary spike above 80. Most drivers are aware that cars can speed up, even sometimes when cruise control is engaged, on downhill stretches. Why not just admit that he pushed the car to 80mph? If he bothers giving a really bad excuse for something benign, what's the rest of the article worth?

tunesmith 14y ago

I put a graph together showing all the points/counterpoints and here's what I'm left with. - not charging past 90% at the 1st station is defensible. Especially if Tesla warns it will shorten the battery's life. - It'd be better if Tesla's software took temperature into account when estimating mileage range. - Broder is being ridiculous about the cruise control and his speed estimates, and the temperature. He has partial accountability for the NYT graph. Turning the temperature down to 70 does not mean "sharply downward". He turned it down once more at around 250 miles, but that's far after the 182 that the article/graph indicates, and markedly different than "a little over 200 miles". He writes about how his feet were freezing and knuckles were turning white, but he didn't turn the heat down below 70 until (if my math is right) right about the time he got to Manhattan, which was mentioned afterward in his article timeline. On the other hand, it looks like it was turned down for most of the leg between Manhattan and Milford. - The leg from Manhattan to Milford sounds legitimately stressful, but Broder claims low-speed cruise control that never happened. He tries to blame this on wheel size later, while simultaneously using Tesla's logs as showing that he wasn't driving very fast. That makes no sense. - Tesla claims they told Broder to fully charge at Milford. He did not, and lists a lot of justifications for not following their advice. - Broder complains that Tesla didn't tell him more about how to get the most out of charging stations, but Broder's a veteran at electric vehicles even if it's true that he hates them. And his defense for not charging overnight is laughable - plugging in overnight is not the same as plugging it at every Walmart stop. It's overnight in cold temperatures and the car was at less than 50% of its range. He's just being obstinate here. - It's laughable to say that the Tesla fell short of its projected range when the projected range was from the day before, before not plugging it in on a cold night. - Tesla and Broder directly contradict each other on whether they gave him the go-ahead to stop charging after an hour in Norwich. Broder's being vague in his wordings - he phrases it as if they approved him to unplug when they might have just said to plug it in for about an hour when they were trying to find him the plugin station ahead of time. Tesla, in turn, says that he unplugged over their objections. - Broder just can't "account for the discrepancy" about the logs showing him driving close to 55 when he said he was limping along at 45, back from Norwich. - Broder seems defensible on the parking brake - how is he to know not to turn off the car? - and the driving in circles, although it would be interesting to know just how clearly marked that supercharge station is. Musk is probably guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" here. Anyway, even after Broder's latest response, it still reads like Broder was trying to stack the deck.

petegrif 14y ago

Let's just drive the route again. See what happens.

kingkawn 14y ago

The simple depth of engagement required by Tesla engineers for this test drive, and now the amount of nitpicking being done about the minor details of this trip suggest that this technology is not prepared for the average driver.

gfodor 14y ago

Tesla employees give the guy a ballpark estimate that an hour of charging should get him enough juice. He charges the car an hour. The car says it doesn't have enough juice yet. Instead of waiting until his tank is full enough, John instead starts driving. Why? Is he just stupid, and decides to ignore the gauge and risk his own safety based upon the ballpark estimate of a Tesla customer support rep? Or did he decide that now his ass was covered if the car did somehow end up dying, giving him his story? Either way, the story stinks.

horacio 14y ago

Others have already noted parts of this, but Broder is very clearly only naming 3 people at Tesla: the CTO, a press spokeswoman (who's since moved on), and a product planner. These are not technical support personnel. I doubt that the specific operational advice that Broder received when he called Tesla's 24-hour customer support line was wrong or contradictory. I can very much believe that if he placed a reporter's call to a press spokeswoman's cell phone late at night (as he claimed in his response of today), or to a product planner, or even to a CTO who's not in the weeds of the tech support database, that he might receive contradictory information. I think this confusion between Tesla people who aren't technical giving Broder advice, and Tesla's tech support people (who aren't named in Broder's story) giving him advice, is a large part of the source of the contradictions.

jusben1369 14y ago

"It's like wrestling with a pig in mud. Pretty soon, you realize the pig is enjoying it" - I think the pig here is the NY Times. But Musk didn't get to where he is by knowing when to take his foot off the accelerator (pardon the pun) and going less than 110% when he sees an obstacle to winning. So can't really expect him to handle this with restraint or reserve.

gesman 14y ago

Who gives a f* about the bullshit between NYT and Tesla? Take it to the restroom...

lutusp 14y ago

A quote: "About three hours into the trip, I placed the first of about a dozen calls to Tesla personnel expressing concern about the car’s declining range and asking how to reach the Supercharger station in Milford, Conn. 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) ..." This is unbelievable. The advice is quite wrong, what remains is to discover whether Broder actually got this advice from someone at Tesla or made it up (or misremembered it). If Tesla offered this advice, someone needs an education in electric car technology (stop-and-go driving can only hurt battery life compared to driving at a steady speed). If Broder made it up, it casts into doubt the remainder of his account. For the record, regenerative braking is not something that one can take advantage of -- it's always less efficient than not losing the energy in the first place. It's only a way to minimize the energy loss involved in braking, it can't eliminate the loss. As to cruise control, in level terrain, it can only help the car's range by preventing the driver from wastefully changing speeds. "... that was later contradicted by other Tesla personnel." Ah. Well, then. Tesla should have phone records, but probably didn't record what was said (in many places, recording phone conversations is illegal without explicit consent).

infinitivium 14y ago

This is such a stupid debate. Batteries aren't that great yet for long range travel. This has made me respect the NYT and Musk much less for the mudslinging alone.

encoderer 14y ago

I cringed when I read Musk's charge that he circled the parking lot, suggesting it was done out of a desire to kill the car that just wouldn't die on its own. Who among us hasn't circled a parking lot a few times? There are so many other possible reasons that making a charge like that, something that if true could forever tarnish a journalist's career, was inappropriate. I don't blame Musk for his desire to reply and "clear his name." (I'd be surprised if he didn't identify personally with Tesla). But I think he let his inner-geek shine through too much. That post of there's was in the classic slashdot style of point-by-point refutation. You don't win friends that way. Maybe a better strategy would've been to politely refute the conclusions about cold weather -- since when is this guy a batter scientist -- but then suggest that some bad luck and confusion had more to do with Broder's experience than the cold weather, and possibly invite somebody to spend a little longer with the car -- a week, a month -- to come to conclusions not as tainted by circumstance.

meisterbrendan 14y ago

Tesla customer care appears ignorant/poorly trained. This debate over things as trivial as a .6 mile discrepancy actually underscores the most damaging assertion that can be made against Tesla: that driving its vehicles in normal winter conditions requires some sort of finesse or special knowledge that most customers won't have. Niether end customers nor reporters should be expected to have deeper knowledge of the product they are buying/testing than the customer care agents who are assisting them. Tesla needs to clean its house of bad customer care and accept responsibility for its role in Broder's bad experience.

i2oc 14y ago

As a Model S owner I found that taking the position that an electric vehicle (EV) should behave exactly the same as an internal combustion engine (ICE) car, especially in sub-zero temperatures was a big mistake on his part. Before we set out to test the limits of our Model S in cold weather we spent time learning about how it behaves. Call me crazy, but when using a different fuel source that seems like a reasonable step to me? http://www.colinbowern.com/posts/drive-smart-in-the-cold-with-an-ev http://www.colinbowern.com/posts/drive-smart-in-the-cold-wit...

tubbo 14y ago

You know what? Maybe the Tesla S is too hard to use for most journalists, who aren't exactly known for being the smartest people on earth.

justin_vanw 14y ago

I realize that the NYTimes likes to pretend they are 'the newspaper of record' and therefore 'tell us how it is', but when they themselves are accused of lying, to come out with an article claiming to tell us what is really going on? Ha! Haha! Yes, nytimes, please tell us, what does the Tesla data says, and what it doesn't. We shouldn't look at your original article ourselves, and then look at Tesla's reply. We should instead read the objective analysis of the situation. An objective analysis from the very party accused of lying. Oh god, the irony, it burns, the goggles do nothing.

ck2 14y ago

A cnn "journalist" is now doing the same run in a model S https://twitter.com/PeterDrives https://twitter.com/PeterDrives

nutanc 14y ago

Ultimately, it is about trusting the system. Even when on gasoline, and the indicator shows empty, we have a gut feel for how much further we can push it. But with these new cars, that trust is not there and hence the blaming of the system.

krashidov 14y ago

I'm sure most people wouldn't have even known about the NYT article or even taken it very seriously, but after this whole kerfuffle, Musk has put the Streisand effect into full force. Personally I think that Tesla looks bad here. They have been given so much praise over the last year that this one unfortunate review caused them to react with overzealous vigilance. Perhaps, if Musk had privately contacted Broder, shown him the data and make an understanding out of all this, they could have re-done the road trip and all would be well. Instead, Musk attempts to embarrass him with internal logs and a blog post. It almost seems like he is implying that Broder has some ulterior agenda. I'm not saying Musk is right or wrong (I really don't know). I'm saying he could have handled the whole thing a lot better.

mkhpalm 14y ago

I think both Musk and NTY have errors in their stories. But I particularly despise the way Musk went about responding to the article. If he's right, just post the raw data with a summary of Tesla's findings for the readers to decide. I much prefer a detailed and professional retort over an "emo" knee-jerk berating. And if you can't do that, just post the parts Tesla doesn't think add up minus the highly pointed commentary. But thats me... I find you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

Mordor 14y ago

Fear, uncertainty and doubt is all I'm reading. Top Gear was even worse. Behind it all is the ego of the car. What's the identity of an electric car which isn't trying to be green?

knodi 14y ago

What ever the case maybe its clear Tesla cars are not ready for the real world. I'm little saddened by this as I was hoping to get one in few years.

kevinthew 14y ago

I'm not sure how people can defend Broder. He lied in a very well-respected newspaper about the quality of a product he claims to be an expert in. That could sink a less vigilant company. I get it's just one review, and Broder also probably wasn't even necessarily trying to misrepresent anything. But his rebuttals are completely disingenuous, and he won't admit any wrong doing which is the cardinal sin journalists always seem to get away with. I don't know why journalists can seemingly get away with anything. Always the critic but can never be rightfully criticized by the public.

Havoc 14y ago

This article reeks of deceptive phrasing. e.g. Instead of say nobody provided energy saving instructions he says nobody provided detailed energy saving instructions. I also find it highly improbably that a Tesla engineer would advise someone to improve range by speeding up and slowing down. Some of it does ring true. e.g. The driving in circles vs searching for charge station. But on the whole it still sounds pretty weak.

jamieb 14y ago

This isn't journalism. This is a flamewar. Its not even a very good flamewar. No popcorn for me.

KRoP 14y ago

Maybe I'm being dense, but it doesn't make sense to me: if Broder's only goal was to write a negative review, and he didn't know about data being collected from his car, why take the trip at all? And if he did know about Tesla collecting data from his car, why would he do the things Musk claims he did? He's not stupid. That, and the fact that he has a fairly plausible explanation for each of Musk's claims, would put the burden of proof on Tesla. (I also get lost in parking lots; it doesn't prove he was trying to kill the car.)