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C'mon, the entire response is a joke. The NY Times is just trying to save their face, after precipitously baking Broder without knowing the facts (and knowing t

C'mon, the entire response is a joke. The NY Times is just trying to save their face, after precipitously baking Broder without knowing the facts (and knowing that Tesla had that amount of data of the test drive). Ms. Sullivan herself admits that "Did he [Broder] use good judgment along the way? Not especially." And also that "...Mr. Broder left himself open to valid criticism by taking what seem to be casual and imprecise notes along the journey, unaware that his every move was being monitored." Still, she insists that it was all done in good faith and integrity. I'm sorry, but this is The New York Times. You can't just say "oh, our journalist just messed up by NOT following common sense instructions, and NOT taking proper notes, and still writing a misleading article [about the wrong topic -- the car -- rather than the super charge stations which was the original intention]. But hey, it was all in good faith, so no harm". To me this is exactly the opposite of what I'd expect to hear from the editor of the NYT. She missed the opportunity to recognize the flaws of the original article, apologize on behalf of their journalist for not taking proper diligence and care that you'd expect from such publication, and offer readers (& Tesla) to re-do the entire test and publish the results again.

cynicalkane 14y ago
The record clearly establishes that Broder engaged in unrealistic driving patterns to get the car to run out of juice--stuff like driving around in circles and ignoring range warnings--and then went on to lie and mislead people about it. There's a good point to be made here about arguing: like baseball, choose the juciest, easiest pitches and then swing for the fences. Don't try to argue every point and stretch the truth to do so, because it damages credibility. Musk tried to argue more than he should have. So we have a whole lot of people attacking Musk when the NYT did a provably dishonest smear job and is trying not to admit it.
- eli 14y ago
  This has turned into a political argument. We might as well be arguing vim vs emacs. But I don't see any evidence that the review was intentionally dishonest or intended to be any sort of smear. Driving around for ~5 minutes in a giant parking lot doesn't seem especially unrealistic to me (if it was intended to run down the battery, it was a pretty weak attempt). The advice he says he received may sound made up to you, but that's certainly not proven (And shouldn't it be? Tesla doesn't tape its customer service calls?).
- brown9-2 14y ago
  How is it we are still debating parts of this which have clearly been settled and which there are clearly logical explanations for? engaged in unrealistic driving patterns to get the car to run out of juice--stuff like driving around in circles Broder's response: I drove around the Milford service plaza in the dark looking for the Supercharger, which is not prominently marked. I was not trying to drain the battery. Musk accused Broder of "driving around in circles" for 0.6 miles. What kind of car would this be if an extra 0.6 miles was sufficient to cross the line into "the battery is now fully drained"? Occum's Razor dictates that the reason for driving around "in circles for 0.6 miles" is easily explained as being lost while trying to find a location you've never been to before. Someone doing extra malicious driving would probably go further than an extra 3000 feet. What is more realistic than driving around lost?
  - hotpockets 14y ago
    I don't think its been settled. Mr Broder lost a lot of credibility when outright lying about how fast he was going for the entire trip. Why wouldn't he lie about whether he saw the charging station. Since we don't have any data about what was going through his mind, Broder knows he can say anything in order to defend himself.
    - emn13 14y ago
      But the thing is - I don't care about Broder. We wouldn't be seeing these posts if it were just about Broder. This story is about Tesla's car! I'd say it's undisputably true that Broder comes across as lacking professionalism. So sure, his review embellished the truth. But what exactly were you expecting? The whole review set up is designed to be personal. It's not a scientific experiment with hundreds of trials, decent statistics, reproducible environments; it's not about the truth; it's about communicating with human beings: how does it feel to actually drive the car? It's an anecdote - and that includes all the good things (empathy, personal interest, real-life) and the bad things (non-reproducible, not your life, colored by that drivers opinion). Tesla knew this - but people make choices not just for purely rational reasons, so the human connection is one they wanted. They agreed to this test knowing full well that the range involved was going to be tricky at those temperatures, especially for a driver that doesn't have a clue about electrical cars. They also knew that the point of a review is to see what a car can do; so it's not unexpected for the reviewer to push the car a little further that you'd normally risk it. And at the end of the day - I don't know Broder, I don't care about Broder - I don't really care about Tesla. I care about the future development of electric cars. And whatever Broder did or didn't do, the car didn't fare particularly well, and in a situation a normal car (and certainly a diesel) would have been able to do without any refill at all. Sure, you could have avoided the complete breakdown by not finishing the trip on schedule, but that's not a great alternative. From my point of view it was never about Broder, it was about Tesla's car being put through a somewhat unfair test - but even taking into account the test's flaws, the car just doesn't come out looking good. Put it this way - I wouldn't have wanted to be Broder.
- taligent 14y ago
  You have no facts to back anything of what you said up. And that "driving around in circles" bit is debatable when you actually see the chargers in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw Oh and that giant, lit up structure is NOT the chargers.
- doktrin 14y ago
  Have you never missed an exit, or attempted to find your way in an unfamiliar area? Half a mile is trivial. Perhaps I'm outing myself as a klutz of a driver, but just this week I missed an exit and ended up on the Bay Bridge to Oakland (ta-da, 20 mile detour). If I were actively trying to burn through mileage I could probably do a fair bit better.
tlrobinson 14y ago
"C'mon, the entire response is a joke." If Musk could really back up all of his accusations, why would he be "satisfied" with this "joke" of a response? It seems Musk prematurely accused NYT of "faking" the review, then realized they couldn't back up that accusation, and are taking this opportunity to back down.
- cwp 14y ago
  Yeah, it looks to me like, after the Top Gear thing, they ascribed to malice what could be explained by stupidity. But, they made a bunch of noise, got some more headlines, cast doubt on the negative review, and gave their fans a good story to use at the water cooler. Time to declare victory and drop the issue.
  - emn13 14y ago
    Musk comes across as somewhat delusional. Or really dishonest - but I suspect he really sees the world this way. In no way shape or form did Musk's claim turn out to be true, which indeed is just like the Top Gear thing. I particularly love how Musk seems to blame the choices of the reviewers - i.e. selective reporting, cherry-picking - for the car's undenied failures. And of course that can be entirely reasonable; if you make the wrong choices things won't work. But then he turns around and does exactly the thing he's accusing the reviewers of: he cherry-picks his data, and selectively interprets it to present it as some kind of conspiracy. I can excuse an individual reporter for experiencing something in typically human fashion: i.e. colored by preference and ignorance, somewhat muddled and poorly remembered, and certainly not necessarily representative of the experience of others. On the other hand; Musk doesn't have those excuses. He has tons of quantitative data that he can review as often as he likes, in whatever detail he likes. He's presumably an expert on the car and knows of plausible explanations for various observations to be found in that data. He and this team have reviewed such data many times before. And yet, nevertheless, he chooses to cherrypick his observations and read into them what he'd like to see - namely that the failures are entirely the reviewer's fault and in no way the car's. (I mean, that whole driving around in circles thing... or the exact moment the temperature changed...) Worse, the test occurred in cooperation with Tesla, so they could have predicted at least a few of these issues. Why in the heavens did Musk agree to this review in this form when it was obviously not going to be an easy drive? Didn't they look at the weather forecast and know this was going to be a problem? Isn't it obvious that a reviewer accustomed to convential cars won't be an expert in electrical range-maximization? I'd love to see electrical cars work. It's a shame that Musk seems to think (self-)deception is the way to convince the world that they're ready for long-haul travel.

cynicalkane 14y ago

The record clearly establishes that Broder engaged in unrealistic driving patterns to get the car to run out of juice--stuff like driving around in circles and ignoring range warnings--and then went on to lie and mislead people about it. There's a good point to be made here about arguing: like baseball, choose the juciest, easiest pitches and then swing for the fences. Don't try to argue every point and stretch the truth to do so, because it damages credibility. Musk tried to argue more than he should have. So we have a whole lot of people attacking Musk when the NYT did a provably dishonest smear job and is trying not to admit it.

eli 14y ago
This has turned into a political argument. We might as well be arguing vim vs emacs. But I don't see any evidence that the review was intentionally dishonest or intended to be any sort of smear. Driving around for ~5 minutes in a giant parking lot doesn't seem especially unrealistic to me (if it was intended to run down the battery, it was a pretty weak attempt). The advice he says he received may sound made up to you, but that's certainly not proven (And shouldn't it be? Tesla doesn't tape its customer service calls?).
brown9-2 14y ago
How is it we are still debating parts of this which have clearly been settled and which there are clearly logical explanations for? engaged in unrealistic driving patterns to get the car to run out of juice--stuff like driving around in circles Broder's response: I drove around the Milford service plaza in the dark looking for the Supercharger, which is not prominently marked. I was not trying to drain the battery. Musk accused Broder of "driving around in circles" for 0.6 miles. What kind of car would this be if an extra 0.6 miles was sufficient to cross the line into "the battery is now fully drained"? Occum's Razor dictates that the reason for driving around "in circles for 0.6 miles" is easily explained as being lost while trying to find a location you've never been to before. Someone doing extra malicious driving would probably go further than an extra 3000 feet. What is more realistic than driving around lost?
- hotpockets 14y ago
  I don't think its been settled. Mr Broder lost a lot of credibility when outright lying about how fast he was going for the entire trip. Why wouldn't he lie about whether he saw the charging station. Since we don't have any data about what was going through his mind, Broder knows he can say anything in order to defend himself.
  - emn13 14y ago
    But the thing is - I don't care about Broder. We wouldn't be seeing these posts if it were just about Broder. This story is about Tesla's car! I'd say it's undisputably true that Broder comes across as lacking professionalism. So sure, his review embellished the truth. But what exactly were you expecting? The whole review set up is designed to be personal. It's not a scientific experiment with hundreds of trials, decent statistics, reproducible environments; it's not about the truth; it's about communicating with human beings: how does it feel to actually drive the car? It's an anecdote - and that includes all the good things (empathy, personal interest, real-life) and the bad things (non-reproducible, not your life, colored by that drivers opinion). Tesla knew this - but people make choices not just for purely rational reasons, so the human connection is one they wanted. They agreed to this test knowing full well that the range involved was going to be tricky at those temperatures, especially for a driver that doesn't have a clue about electrical cars. They also knew that the point of a review is to see what a car can do; so it's not unexpected for the reviewer to push the car a little further that you'd normally risk it. And at the end of the day - I don't know Broder, I don't care about Broder - I don't really care about Tesla. I care about the future development of electric cars. And whatever Broder did or didn't do, the car didn't fare particularly well, and in a situation a normal car (and certainly a diesel) would have been able to do without any refill at all. Sure, you could have avoided the complete breakdown by not finishing the trip on schedule, but that's not a great alternative. From my point of view it was never about Broder, it was about Tesla's car being put through a somewhat unfair test - but even taking into account the test's flaws, the car just doesn't come out looking good. Put it this way - I wouldn't have wanted to be Broder.
taligent 14y ago
You have no facts to back anything of what you said up. And that "driving around in circles" bit is debatable when you actually see the chargers in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw Oh and that giant, lit up structure is NOT the chargers.
doktrin 14y ago
Have you never missed an exit, or attempted to find your way in an unfamiliar area? Half a mile is trivial. Perhaps I'm outing myself as a klutz of a driver, but just this week I missed an exit and ended up on the Bay Bridge to Oakland (ta-da, 20 mile detour). If I were actively trying to burn through mileage I could probably do a fair bit better.

tlrobinson 14y ago

"C'mon, the entire response is a joke." If Musk could really back up all of his accusations, why would he be "satisfied" with this "joke" of a response? It seems Musk prematurely accused NYT of "faking" the review, then realized they couldn't back up that accusation, and are taking this opportunity to back down.

cwp 14y ago
Yeah, it looks to me like, after the Top Gear thing, they ascribed to malice what could be explained by stupidity. But, they made a bunch of noise, got some more headlines, cast doubt on the negative review, and gave their fans a good story to use at the water cooler. Time to declare victory and drop the issue.
- emn13 14y ago
  Musk comes across as somewhat delusional. Or really dishonest - but I suspect he really sees the world this way. In no way shape or form did Musk's claim turn out to be true, which indeed is just like the Top Gear thing. I particularly love how Musk seems to blame the choices of the reviewers - i.e. selective reporting, cherry-picking - for the car's undenied failures. And of course that can be entirely reasonable; if you make the wrong choices things won't work. But then he turns around and does exactly the thing he's accusing the reviewers of: he cherry-picks his data, and selectively interprets it to present it as some kind of conspiracy. I can excuse an individual reporter for experiencing something in typically human fashion: i.e. colored by preference and ignorance, somewhat muddled and poorly remembered, and certainly not necessarily representative of the experience of others. On the other hand; Musk doesn't have those excuses. He has tons of quantitative data that he can review as often as he likes, in whatever detail he likes. He's presumably an expert on the car and knows of plausible explanations for various observations to be found in that data. He and this team have reviewed such data many times before. And yet, nevertheless, he chooses to cherrypick his observations and read into them what he'd like to see - namely that the failures are entirely the reviewer's fault and in no way the car's. (I mean, that whole driving around in circles thing... or the exact moment the temperature changed...) Worse, the test occurred in cooperation with Tesla, so they could have predicted at least a few of these issues. Why in the heavens did Musk agree to this review in this form when it was obviously not going to be an easy drive? Didn't they look at the weather forecast and know this was going to be a problem? Isn't it obvious that a reviewer accustomed to convential cars won't be an expert in electrical range-maximization? I'd love to see electrical cars work. It's a shame that Musk seems to think (self-)deception is the way to convince the world that they're ready for long-haul travel.