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> Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test Oddly, I would write the exact opposite headline. The NYT review has minor problems w

> Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test Oddly, I would write the exact opposite headline. The NYT review has minor problems with precision and judgment, but major problems with integrity. Imagine a gasoline car review: "I'm here at a gas station with an empty tank, and I have 61 miles to the next gas station. I'm going to put in half a gallon of gasoline, hang up the nozzle and start driving to the next station. Oh no, I ran out of gas! Well, this proves the technology is still immature and that gas cars suck." Can you imagine this being a publishable review to the NYT editors?

makomk 14y ago
At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars. Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight unless you park in a really rough neighbourhood. He didn't have any reason to disbelieve his contact at Tesla when they said the lost range would return - hell, I've had Tesla fans tell me that their cars don't really lose range overnight, it's just calculated wrong, and I'm spreading FUD by pointing the range loss out. I bet they'd be going after Broder for that too if he'd waited for more of a charge.
- jellicle 14y ago
  Yep, and he could have talked about that as an issue. That would have been absolutely legitimate - discussing the overall time to complete this trip, including charging time on the way, and comparing it to gasoline. Intentionally draining the battery, refusing to charge it up at any of the numerous opportunities to do so, and then blaming the car is not.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight No, but your fuel could gel in a diesel car. Your battery could die. Your cooling system might freeze. I lived in a part of the country where people routinely plug in their gas powered cars for the night.
- bathat 14y ago
  >At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars. Well, hold on there one minute. The difference between a 72% charge and a 100% charge at Tesla's Superchargers is something like fifteen minutes. Not 9 to 12 hours. If Broder hadn't stopped the charge early in Milford he wouldn't have needed to charge the next day (even including the overnight range loss in Groton) at a slow charger. Some Model S owner's recently demonstrated that: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreating-the-NY-Times-Road-Trip-We-re-on-This-Weekend http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreati...!
niggler 14y ago
The key facts here are: 1) Broder reached out to Tesla on multiple occasions during the trip asking for advice when oddities happened 2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given. 3) The car ran out of charge Regarding the non-sequitur of charging overnight, Tesla's marketing materials clearly state that you can keep the car unplugged for extended periods of time without a significant dropoff: "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." (pulled from http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts , older discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209639 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209639) The only way to attack the integrity of Broder is to argue that somehow he wasn't advised to do something. Guess what: there are call logs, and those should be brought out. It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist. That's all fine, but in this case Tesla has a way of definitively proving that Broder was being malicious: If the call logs clearly show that Broder wasn't acting in accordance to what he claims was Tesla's judgments, then Broder deserves all the criticism. Otherwise it is Tesla's fault. Until we see the call logs, siding with Tesla is hero worshipping.
- slantyyz 14y ago
  Broder deserves to be called out on his inaccuracies. But the thing that made the story was your point #3. And it could have been completely prevented if the people who gave out the advice in #2 gave better advice. We can call Broder an idiot all we want, but it seems like there were bigger idiots on the other side of the phone. They could have erred on the side of caution and just told him to spend more time charging at every opportunity. As a result, #3 would likely not have happened, and Broder's article would have been seen as a mildly negative article, but also a forgettable one.
- babesh 14y ago
  You cannot record someone on the phone without permission so the call log is not available.
  - niggler 14y ago
Tloewald 14y ago
Did he not in fact charge it until it reported sufficient range?
- jellicle 14y ago
  Mr. Broder stated that he unplugged his car and departed on a 61-mile leg of his journey with the car telling him it had 32 miles of charge remaining. So the answer to your snarky question is "no".
  - slantyyz 14y ago
    It seems like the 32 mile thing has been a bone that is constantly being picked in discussions about the article. Broder continued the drive based on Tesla's advice: "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 Supercharger 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." http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-what-it-says-and-what-it-doesnt/ http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-w... -- Consumer Reports confirms that when the batteries warm up a little, they'll start reporting a longer range: "Anyhow, after a seven-hour overnight park (unplugged) and temperatures dropping below freezing, the "rated" range dropped to 65 miles." ... "But by now I've gained enough familiarity with our Tesla to assume the car would readjust once I started driving and things warmed up. (Owners would likely pre-condition the car before leaving, using household current to raise the battery temperature and heat the cabin.) Indeed, 30 miles into my trip, the car predicted 55 miles of range." http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/tesla-model-s-winter-chills-limit-the-electric-cars-range.html?EXTKEY=I72RSC0 http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/tesla-model-s-w...
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    Ah, I see this detail is in the follow-up article and seems to be egregiously missing from the original article. It seems that, if we take Broder's word, that he believed the car would mysteriously regain lost range after being charged for an hour, but he left a charging station knowing the range readout was lower than the distance he needed to travel and -- and no-one seems to have pointed this out on either side -- never having received such a pleasant surprise in the course of the journey.

makomk 14y ago

At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars. Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight unless you park in a really rough neighbourhood. He didn't have any reason to disbelieve his contact at Tesla when they said the lost range would return - hell, I've had Tesla fans tell me that their cars don't really lose range overnight, it's just calculated wrong, and I'm spreading FUD by pointing the range loss out. I bet they'd be going after Broder for that too if he'd waited for more of a charge.

jellicle 14y ago
Yep, and he could have talked about that as an issue. That would have been absolutely legitimate - discussing the overall time to complete this trip, including charging time on the way, and comparing it to gasoline. Intentionally draining the battery, refusing to charge it up at any of the numerous opportunities to do so, and then blaming the car is not.
stcredzero 14y ago
> Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight No, but your fuel could gel in a diesel car. Your battery could die. Your cooling system might freeze. I lived in a part of the country where people routinely plug in their gas powered cars for the night.
bathat 14y ago
>At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars. Well, hold on there one minute. The difference between a 72% charge and a 100% charge at Tesla's Superchargers is something like fifteen minutes. Not 9 to 12 hours. If Broder hadn't stopped the charge early in Milford he wouldn't have needed to charge the next day (even including the overnight range loss in Groton) at a slow charger. Some Model S owner's recently demonstrated that: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreating-the-NY-Times-Road-Trip-We-re-on-This-Weekend http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreati...!

niggler 14y ago

The key facts here are: 1) Broder reached out to Tesla on multiple occasions during the trip asking for advice when oddities happened 2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given. 3) The car ran out of charge Regarding the non-sequitur of charging overnight, Tesla's marketing materials clearly state that you can keep the car unplugged for extended periods of time without a significant dropoff: "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." (pulled from http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts , older discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209639 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209639) The only way to attack the integrity of Broder is to argue that somehow he wasn't advised to do something. Guess what: there are call logs, and those should be brought out. It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist. That's all fine, but in this case Tesla has a way of definitively proving that Broder was being malicious: If the call logs clearly show that Broder wasn't acting in accordance to what he claims was Tesla's judgments, then Broder deserves all the criticism. Otherwise it is Tesla's fault. Until we see the call logs, siding with Tesla is hero worshipping.

slantyyz 14y ago
Broder deserves to be called out on his inaccuracies. But the thing that made the story was your point #3. And it could have been completely prevented if the people who gave out the advice in #2 gave better advice. We can call Broder an idiot all we want, but it seems like there were bigger idiots on the other side of the phone. They could have erred on the side of caution and just told him to spend more time charging at every opportunity. As a result, #3 would likely not have happened, and Broder's article would have been seen as a mildly negative article, but also a forgettable one.
babesh 14y ago
You cannot record someone on the phone without permission so the call log is not available.
- niggler 14y ago

Tloewald 14y ago

Did he not in fact charge it until it reported sufficient range?

jellicle 14y ago
Mr. Broder stated that he unplugged his car and departed on a 61-mile leg of his journey with the car telling him it had 32 miles of charge remaining. So the answer to your snarky question is "no".
- slantyyz 14y ago
  It seems like the 32 mile thing has been a bone that is constantly being picked in discussions about the article. Broder continued the drive based on Tesla's advice: "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 Supercharger 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." http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-what-it-says-and-what-it-doesnt/ http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-w... -- Consumer Reports confirms that when the batteries warm up a little, they'll start reporting a longer range: "Anyhow, after a seven-hour overnight park (unplugged) and temperatures dropping below freezing, the "rated" range dropped to 65 miles." ... "But by now I've gained enough familiarity with our Tesla to assume the car would readjust once I started driving and things warmed up. (Owners would likely pre-condition the car before leaving, using household current to raise the battery temperature and heat the cabin.) Indeed, 30 miles into my trip, the car predicted 55 miles of range." http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/tesla-model-s-winter-chills-limit-the-electric-cars-range.html?EXTKEY=I72RSC0 http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/tesla-model-s-w...
- Tloewald 14y ago
  Ah, I see this detail is in the follow-up article and seems to be egregiously missing from the original article. It seems that, if we take Broder's word, that he believed the car would mysteriously regain lost range after being charged for an hour, but he left a charging station knowing the range readout was lower than the distance he needed to travel and -- and no-one seems to have pointed this out on either side -- never having received such a pleasant surprise in the course of the journey.