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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

by 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.
- 127001brewer 14y ago
  ... that these EVs aren't ready for primetime. “No new product does absolutely everything in exactly the same way as the product its replacing,” [Chelsea Sexton] says. "And yet when it comes to electric cars that’s the expectation." http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/whod-win-fight-tesla-or-new-york-times http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/whod-win-fight-te... Personally, after reading these tit-for-tat spats, I'm more inclined in considering EVs. (It's worth listening to Marketplace's reporting on this.)
bathat 14y ago
>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." But why is that the story? The story could just as easily be, "The NYT reporter stopped charging when the battery was less than 3/4ths charged and subsequently couldn't finish his trip. He experienced some unanticipated range loss overnight, but it was less than what he would have needed to finish his trip."
- codex 14y ago
  I think many people assume you should always charge a Tesla fully "just in case", but that takes much longer (hours longer) than filling up at a gas station. In practice people take shortcuts, especially when its freezing outside and they'd rather be arriving sooner at their hotel. Its human nature. The author's mistake is trusting the mileage reported by the car in cole weather, then trusting Tesla's PR lackey when he was told the range loss was a software glitch. "When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range"

by codex 14y ago

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.
127001brewer 14y ago
... that these EVs aren't ready for primetime. “No new product does absolutely everything in exactly the same way as the product its replacing,” [Chelsea Sexton] says. "And yet when it comes to electric cars that’s the expectation." http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/whod-win-fight-tesla-or-new-york-times http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/whod-win-fight-te... Personally, after reading these tit-for-tat spats, I'm more inclined in considering EVs. (It's worth listening to Marketplace's reporting on this.)

bathat 14y ago

>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." But why is that the story? The story could just as easily be, "The NYT reporter stopped charging when the battery was less than 3/4ths charged and subsequently couldn't finish his trip. He experienced some unanticipated range loss overnight, but it was less than what he would have needed to finish his trip."

codex 14y ago
I think many people assume you should always charge a Tesla fully "just in case", but that takes much longer (hours longer) than filling up at a gas station. In practice people take shortcuts, especially when its freezing outside and they'd rather be arriving sooner at their hotel. Its human nature. The author's mistake is trusting the mileage reported by the car in cole weather, then trusting Tesla's PR lackey when he was told the range loss was a software glitch. "When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range"