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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. Especiall
by 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.
- manacit 14y agoMost of this analysis is spot on in my opinion - the one area I disagree with you in is the portion where he allegedly drove in circles. The graph Tesla shows is misleading and completely blown out of proportion. 0.6 miles is not very far to travel, especially when 0.2 miles are accounted for by the offramp. A drive once around an unfamiliar parking lot in the dark, looking for a small charging station can easily account for 4 minutes and 0.4 miles. Every EV charging station I've seen hasn't had any signage or otherwise aside from what's written right on it, You can't assume he'd automatically know where it is. Regardless of whether Tesla is right or the NYT is right (and I'm inclined to believe both sides are partially at fault), the fact that Tesla took such offense to a measly 0.6 miles I find laughable.
- bbatsell 14y ago> 0.6 miles is not very far to travel, especially when 0.2 miles are accounted for by the offramp. The graph seems to me to clearly account for the offramp. It doesn't start counting the 0.6 miles until his speed has slowed down to "I'm turning in now" conditions (0.1 mi after the origin point), and the graph itself tops off with the y-axis at 30mph—well below interstate offramp speeds—so at least some of the rest of the 0.2 mi long frontage is simply omitted off the left side of the graph. I agree that this particular complaint is probably the weakest in Musk's post.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tunesmith 14y agoI generally agree with you, maybe I phrased it badly.
- bathat 14y agoPart of the problem is that in his latest rebuttal, Broder turned off the map layer of the Google image he used. If he had left it on, you would see that many of the "streets" in that rest area are one-way. The only place he could have driven is around the two rightmost rows of parked cars. You really must have a very strong suspension of disbelief if you think he passed the Superchargers five times without seeing them. What really makes Broder's account unbelievable is that his original story was a review of the Supercharger network. His review completely omitted any mention of the difficulty of finding the charging stations. Why would he do that? As concerned as he claimed to be about not reaching the next charger, why did he never mention that he had to spend precious battery finding the damn thing until Musk accused him of driving in circles? Might it be possible that "searching for the charger" is just an excuse invented after his odious behavior was discovered?