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Elon Musk’s misguided attack on New York Times

41 points by MRSallee 14y ago

In essence, Elon Musk doesn’t think the New York Times author went far enough out of his way to make sure the car succeeded. (In fact, the author made way more concessions than a normal user would. He drove under the speed limit. He let the cabin temperature drop. He called Tesla HQ for tips and triage recharging locations. I wouldn’t have done any of that.)

alxndr 14y ago
Anyone else tired of this controversy?
- niggler 14y ago
  I am learning a lot about how not to respond to criticism (not to say i didnt know it beforehand, but its far easier to appreciate after seeing it happen to someone else) And the more responses we see, the more we can break down individual aspects and talk about what's right and what's wrong.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  I'm learning that if my product or service does something very well don't risk making it look bad by chasing a use case that isn't (today) critical to our success. As nice as that car is if I'm going to do a long road trip I'm not going to inject 45 - 60 minute for recharging stops. I'd still buy one!. Just if I needed to do a long trip it'd be a rental/plane/train/second car scenario.
danielsamuels 14y ago
This post completely reflect my thoughts on the whole saga - but there's one more thing which sticks out for me, something briefly touched upon in this article: filling up a petrol car to do 500+ miles takes <5 minutes. Charging a Model S to do 500 miles takes over 2 hours. I think that's one of the main issues people have, that to do a journey which would typically be insignificant, it requires a large amount of preparation. If I woke up in the morning and went to my car to drive to work and I found I didn't have enough mileage - despite it having twice as much as I needed the night before - I'd be pretty annoyed. Yes, everyone says that you should leave the car plugged in over-night, but it's such a different way of working with cars and something which feels like it shouldn't be required, which I think makes people a little unsure about buying electric cars.
- shokwave 14y ago
  We got used to it with laptops (think back to when they were mostly desktops - "I have to charge my computer?") and we'll probably get used to it with cars, assuming the same value to be gained is there (probably is).
  - noxryan 14y ago
    The laptop can be left plugged in and still achieve it's primary function of being a computer. I don't really understand this analogy.
- abdurraheem 14y ago
  I would imagine you would be unplugging your car in the morning before your commute to work, just as i unplug my phone from its charger when i wake up. Also living on the east coast (near DC suburbs) and having made a similar road trip to NYC many times, i cant remember the last time i did not spend 1 hour + at a rest stop to eat. refuel, relax, pee, etc. What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up.
  - niggler 14y ago
    It's roughly 250 miles each way. Unless you are just trying to do laps, you take a break when you get to the destination and fuel up before leaving. I do the trip from union square to falls church all the time in a 335 IX and a panamera without having to refuel on the way.
  - danielsamuels 14y ago
    > What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up. Hmm, every car I've owned so far? Renault Megane (1996) Renault Clio (2009) Volkswagen Scirocco (2012)
    - 14y ago
Synthetase 14y ago
Personally, I'm deeply satisfied Elon Musk stood up for first principles reasoning and rejected all the niceties of socially created reality. I've always hated Ayn Rand's writing but he's probably the closest thing to a Galt-like hero.
ebbv 14y ago
Do we really need these third party people chipping in? Tesla has provided their side, Broder has given his responses, and even CNN has done a story taking another Model S through the same overall route. Everybody can take in the info if they're interested and decide for themselves.
- Someone 14y ago
  Need? No, but if, as in this case, they bring a novel argument, and do that in a coherent way, I welcome continued discussion. Having said that, 90% of the comments in this thread repeat arguments beaten to death and beyond before.
  - ebbv 14y ago
    I guess I just haven't found the discussion -- whether the linked article or the comments -- to be enlightening at all.
niggler 14y ago
"Perhaps most worrying is the single-mindedness of the Internet hive mind that has, over the past few days, eaten up every word of Elon Musk." Very untrue. From the beginning, a lot of people found fault in Musk's twitter and CNBC performances, and its clear in ensuing discussion here and elsewhere that people who initially sided with Musk are adjusting their views based on the blog post and the NYT defense. This isn't to say that there aren't Elon evangelists, but the response wasn't as uniform as the visceral reaction to SOPA
- MRSallee 14y ago
  I was looking mostly at 1) Reddit, 2) Hacker News and 3) Twitter. I saw very, very few signs of critical thought that questioned Musk. But yes, I am certain I am not the only person to see that Elon was exaggerating when he called the article "fake."
  - niggler 14y ago
    It's hard to read these sources to determine the nature of the hive mind because the sorting algorithms gives higher weight to a few people with a lot of karma or popularity, so if you just looked at the top post you would see those people and erroneously conclude that the Internet agreed with them. On twitter, for instance, you are most likely seeing tweets from popular people (which is not really representative). On reddit and HN the position on the page isn't representative of the pool's view. I brought up the same problem in the thread regarding HN hiding stories: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5226147 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5226147
    - jug6ernaut 14y ago
      If you see it from ppl who have lots of karma/popularity or popular ppl on twitter is exactly the point. These people are singled out because they have been promoted by others who agree with them. Just the same if someone who had the opposite view were upvoted/popular they would be singled out.
      - 14y ago
shokwave 14y ago
tl;dr: They take too long to charge so clearly nobody should wait 58 minutes instead of 46 or whatever. Hell, why even bother charging for 46 minutes? Charge it for however long you estimate it takes you to fill up the gas in your other car, and complain when the car runs out then, too. Not a good piece at all; can't say whether that reflects on the author too or this is just him/her being mindkilled over, of all things, charging time.
- MRSallee 14y ago
  The point is that the author /did/ charge the car sufficiently. The car told him he could make each leg of the trip, and why would he waste an hour to charge the car completely? It would be silly to not spend 30 seconds to finish filling up a gas tank, but -- in my opinion -- it is perfectly reasonable to fill up an electric car to 50% above the necessary range and spare yourself significant waits. Maybe a 58 minute charge at the last leg would've spared him the tow. But how could he have known? He had 125 miles to drive. He took the car to 185 miles of battery power.
  - ripter 14y ago
    That's like saying "I put just enough gas in the car to drive to the next station. I don't know how I ran out of gas early!" There are a lot of factors in driving range. Tesla should be more conservative on their estimates, but realistically you don't fill a car just enough to get to the next station. And you definitely don't ignore low fuel warnings (even if you should have gotten a longer range.) I'm not saying Tesla is perfect, but I do believe the NYT author wrote the article to make the car look bad to the average reader.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
zeru 14y ago
Honestly, the only fact that should matter is that Broder tried to drive 60+ miles when the car told him it could only do 32. The rest is just silliness because we don't really know the actual facts, its just heresy from both sides, until both raw data logs and call logs are released, which I doubt they will. Sure, that Broder is the NYT oil guy certainly doesnt help him though, and his lack of common sense and lack of basic understanding of physics may be the nail in the coffin of this issue, imo.
codex_irl 14y ago
Electric is all very good, but I can buy a BMW 5 series with a diesel engine in Europe today & get 81 MPG. A Prius only gets 51.
- MRSallee 14y ago
  To be fair, UK gas mileage numbers are always higher than US numbers, for two reasons. 1) US and UK use different gas mileage verification (we have EPA, they have...). 2) A gallon in the UK is bigger than our gallon. It is not precisely the same unit of measurement.
  - evck 14y ago
    Yep, US EPA's 5 cycle analysis tends to produce lower MPG number.
  - codex_irl 14y ago
    When you convert the gallon sizes for US, it gets 52 MPG. No major engine servicing required until over 200k miles - why is the 5 series diesel not for sale in the US, seems nuts. Top Gear claimed last year that its pretty much "the perfect car"...I want :)
- pradocchia 14y ago
  81 mpg? A diesel jetta only gets 42 highway.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  "I can get there just as quickly with my horse, only feed her grass, and never get stuck in the mud!" - Early guy looking at a Ford T1 and passing on the potential of the combustion engine?
  - codex_irl 14y ago
    hehe - might be true, but I've given up being an early adopter. I'll take my 1000 miles on tank BMW diesel for now.
jwoldan 14y ago
It's been strange to watch this saga unfold and see how quickly the idea that this data unequivocally discredits Broder has propagated. All the data shows me is that humans aren't as precise with data as computers can be. The one solid point of dispute is that Broder says he was cleared by Tesla representatives to leave Norwich with a very low charge, and Musk says he was not. Unfortunately, unless there are recordings of the conversations released, we may never know the truth of that. I don't find the original article damning for the Model S- it just shows that the range is definitely affected by the cold, and that there are some additional factors that need to be considered that are different from gas engines. Any person who is considering an electric car should take those factors into account- for some they will be dealbreakers, and others they won't.
evck 14y ago
Assuming that the Model S uses the HV pack and a DC/DC to power the 12 V bus all of the time (like the Roadster), it would make sense that parking the car overnight in the cold would cause issues. All other EVs that I know of shut off the battery contactors when the car is keyed off, and rely on a 12 V SLI battery (usually lead-acid) to support the vehicle when the power is off. The roadster did not do this, which is explained in Tesla's BMS documentation [1]. This means that any quiescent current consumed by the 12 V system will drain the main battery pack. [1] http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadster...

41 points by MRSallee 14y ago

alxndr 14y ago

Anyone else tired of this controversy?

niggler 14y ago
I am learning a lot about how not to respond to criticism (not to say i didnt know it beforehand, but its far easier to appreciate after seeing it happen to someone else) And the more responses we see, the more we can break down individual aspects and talk about what's right and what's wrong.
jusben1369 14y ago
I'm learning that if my product or service does something very well don't risk making it look bad by chasing a use case that isn't (today) critical to our success. As nice as that car is if I'm going to do a long road trip I'm not going to inject 45 - 60 minute for recharging stops. I'd still buy one!. Just if I needed to do a long trip it'd be a rental/plane/train/second car scenario.

danielsamuels 14y ago

This post completely reflect my thoughts on the whole saga - but there's one more thing which sticks out for me, something briefly touched upon in this article: filling up a petrol car to do 500+ miles takes <5 minutes. Charging a Model S to do 500 miles takes over 2 hours. I think that's one of the main issues people have, that to do a journey which would typically be insignificant, it requires a large amount of preparation. If I woke up in the morning and went to my car to drive to work and I found I didn't have enough mileage - despite it having twice as much as I needed the night before - I'd be pretty annoyed. Yes, everyone says that you should leave the car plugged in over-night, but it's such a different way of working with cars and something which feels like it shouldn't be required, which I think makes people a little unsure about buying electric cars.

shokwave 14y ago
We got used to it with laptops (think back to when they were mostly desktops - "I have to charge my computer?") and we'll probably get used to it with cars, assuming the same value to be gained is there (probably is).
- noxryan 14y ago
  The laptop can be left plugged in and still achieve it's primary function of being a computer. I don't really understand this analogy.
abdurraheem 14y ago
I would imagine you would be unplugging your car in the morning before your commute to work, just as i unplug my phone from its charger when i wake up. Also living on the east coast (near DC suburbs) and having made a similar road trip to NYC many times, i cant remember the last time i did not spend 1 hour + at a rest stop to eat. refuel, relax, pee, etc. What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up.
- niggler 14y ago
  It's roughly 250 miles each way. Unless you are just trying to do laps, you take a break when you get to the destination and fuel up before leaving. I do the trip from union square to falls church all the time in a 335 IX and a panamera without having to refuel on the way.
- danielsamuels 14y ago
  > What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up. Hmm, every car I've owned so far? Renault Megane (1996) Renault Clio (2009) Volkswagen Scirocco (2012)
  - 14y ago

Synthetase 14y ago

Personally, I'm deeply satisfied Elon Musk stood up for first principles reasoning and rejected all the niceties of socially created reality. I've always hated Ayn Rand's writing but he's probably the closest thing to a Galt-like hero.

ebbv 14y ago

Do we really need these third party people chipping in? Tesla has provided their side, Broder has given his responses, and even CNN has done a story taking another Model S through the same overall route. Everybody can take in the info if they're interested and decide for themselves.

Someone 14y ago
Need? No, but if, as in this case, they bring a novel argument, and do that in a coherent way, I welcome continued discussion. Having said that, 90% of the comments in this thread repeat arguments beaten to death and beyond before.
- ebbv 14y ago
  I guess I just haven't found the discussion -- whether the linked article or the comments -- to be enlightening at all.

niggler 14y ago

"Perhaps most worrying is the single-mindedness of the Internet hive mind that has, over the past few days, eaten up every word of Elon Musk." Very untrue. From the beginning, a lot of people found fault in Musk's twitter and CNBC performances, and its clear in ensuing discussion here and elsewhere that people who initially sided with Musk are adjusting their views based on the blog post and the NYT defense. This isn't to say that there aren't Elon evangelists, but the response wasn't as uniform as the visceral reaction to SOPA

MRSallee 14y ago
I was looking mostly at 1) Reddit, 2) Hacker News and 3) Twitter. I saw very, very few signs of critical thought that questioned Musk. But yes, I am certain I am not the only person to see that Elon was exaggerating when he called the article "fake."
- niggler 14y ago
  It's hard to read these sources to determine the nature of the hive mind because the sorting algorithms gives higher weight to a few people with a lot of karma or popularity, so if you just looked at the top post you would see those people and erroneously conclude that the Internet agreed with them. On twitter, for instance, you are most likely seeing tweets from popular people (which is not really representative). On reddit and HN the position on the page isn't representative of the pool's view. I brought up the same problem in the thread regarding HN hiding stories: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5226147 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5226147
  - jug6ernaut 14y ago
    If you see it from ppl who have lots of karma/popularity or popular ppl on twitter is exactly the point. These people are singled out because they have been promoted by others who agree with them. Just the same if someone who had the opposite view were upvoted/popular they would be singled out.
    - 14y ago

shokwave 14y ago

tl;dr: They take too long to charge so clearly nobody should wait 58 minutes instead of 46 or whatever. Hell, why even bother charging for 46 minutes? Charge it for however long you estimate it takes you to fill up the gas in your other car, and complain when the car runs out then, too. Not a good piece at all; can't say whether that reflects on the author too or this is just him/her being mindkilled over, of all things, charging time.

MRSallee 14y ago
The point is that the author /did/ charge the car sufficiently. The car told him he could make each leg of the trip, and why would he waste an hour to charge the car completely? It would be silly to not spend 30 seconds to finish filling up a gas tank, but -- in my opinion -- it is perfectly reasonable to fill up an electric car to 50% above the necessary range and spare yourself significant waits. Maybe a 58 minute charge at the last leg would've spared him the tow. But how could he have known? He had 125 miles to drive. He took the car to 185 miles of battery power.
- ripter 14y ago
  That's like saying "I put just enough gas in the car to drive to the next station. I don't know how I ran out of gas early!" There are a lot of factors in driving range. Tesla should be more conservative on their estimates, but realistically you don't fill a car just enough to get to the next station. And you definitely don't ignore low fuel warnings (even if you should have gotten a longer range.) I'm not saying Tesla is perfect, but I do believe the NYT author wrote the article to make the car look bad to the average reader.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

zeru 14y ago

Honestly, the only fact that should matter is that Broder tried to drive 60+ miles when the car told him it could only do 32. The rest is just silliness because we don't really know the actual facts, its just heresy from both sides, until both raw data logs and call logs are released, which I doubt they will. Sure, that Broder is the NYT oil guy certainly doesnt help him though, and his lack of common sense and lack of basic understanding of physics may be the nail in the coffin of this issue, imo.

codex_irl 14y ago

Electric is all very good, but I can buy a BMW 5 series with a diesel engine in Europe today & get 81 MPG. A Prius only gets 51.

MRSallee 14y ago
To be fair, UK gas mileage numbers are always higher than US numbers, for two reasons. 1) US and UK use different gas mileage verification (we have EPA, they have...). 2) A gallon in the UK is bigger than our gallon. It is not precisely the same unit of measurement.
- evck 14y ago
  Yep, US EPA's 5 cycle analysis tends to produce lower MPG number.
- codex_irl 14y ago
  When you convert the gallon sizes for US, it gets 52 MPG. No major engine servicing required until over 200k miles - why is the 5 series diesel not for sale in the US, seems nuts. Top Gear claimed last year that its pretty much "the perfect car"...I want :)
pradocchia 14y ago
81 mpg? A diesel jetta only gets 42 highway.
jusben1369 14y ago
"I can get there just as quickly with my horse, only feed her grass, and never get stuck in the mud!" - Early guy looking at a Ford T1 and passing on the potential of the combustion engine?
- codex_irl 14y ago
  hehe - might be true, but I've given up being an early adopter. I'll take my 1000 miles on tank BMW diesel for now.

jwoldan 14y ago

It's been strange to watch this saga unfold and see how quickly the idea that this data unequivocally discredits Broder has propagated. All the data shows me is that humans aren't as precise with data as computers can be. The one solid point of dispute is that Broder says he was cleared by Tesla representatives to leave Norwich with a very low charge, and Musk says he was not. Unfortunately, unless there are recordings of the conversations released, we may never know the truth of that. I don't find the original article damning for the Model S- it just shows that the range is definitely affected by the cold, and that there are some additional factors that need to be considered that are different from gas engines. Any person who is considering an electric car should take those factors into account- for some they will be dealbreakers, and others they won't.

evck 14y ago

Assuming that the Model S uses the HV pack and a DC/DC to power the 12 V bus all of the time (like the Roadster), it would make sense that parking the car overnight in the cold would cause issues. All other EVs that I know of shut off the battery contactors when the car is keyed off, and rely on a 12 V SLI battery (usually lead-acid) to support the vehicle when the power is off. The roadster did not do this, which is explained in Tesla's BMS documentation [1]. This means that any quiescent current consumed by the 12 V system will drain the main battery pack. [1] http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadster...