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Tesla Gets Carried Away Hyping Crash Test Results, Has Hand Slapped By Feds
- nonchalance 13y agoOfficial announcements on http://www.safercar.gov/ http://www.safercar.gov/ (image) and http://www.nhtsa.gov/Misc/HeadLines http://www.nhtsa.gov/Misc/HeadLines (first headline)
- Kylekramer 13y agoSo a problem with precision and judgment, but not integrity?
- nonchalance 13y agoand integrity: > NHTSA does not rate vehicles beyond 5 stars and does not rank or order vehicles within the star rating categories. So the following statement is flat-out untrue: > SETS NEW NHTSA VEHICLE SAFETY SCORE RECORD If NHTSA does not rate vehicles beyond 5 stars, the maximum safety score is 5 and thus 5.4 is irrelevant I think if the headline was "sets new vehicle safety score record", dropping the NHTSA acronym, then it would be fine.
- thezilch 13y agoNHTSA doesn't PUBLISH ratings above 5 stars. Regardless, the 5.4 IS relevant.
- nonchalance 13y agoThe fact that the NHTSA formula gives a score of 5.4 doesn't mean that NHTSA recognizes the car as superior to those with a technical score of 5.3. To put it differently, if a class gives a grade of A,B,C,D,or F, having a numeric score of 99 versus 98 is somewhat irrelevant if the ultimate grade is A in both cases. If they really did want to make a distinction, they'd introduce a new scoring metric that does allow for those differences
- jlgreco 13y agoIf you were in school and had a bet with your roommate about final grades, you wouldn't call off the bet as a draw if you both got A's but you got a higher numeric score than he.
- nonchalance 13y agoIf you had a bet with your roommate about final grades, you would look at the transcript at the end of the semester. And that transcript most likely says A for both of you, so it would be a draw.
- jlgreco 13y agoI'd jump on the web and see the grades posted by the professor on the course website actually. I always got numeric grades at the end of the semester unless I waited long enough that the course website was nuked, or unless that professor was lazy. You could also just go ask the professor at their office for your grade, but using their site is easier.
- makomk 13y agoFor a bet like that, it doesn't matter if the score difference results from random chance and not any underlying difference in skill or ability. The NHTSA is in the business of assessing car safety though, and it makes little sense for tnem to rank cars within a category if they don't think the difference is actually meaningful.
- thezilch 13y agoBut having a numeric score of 59 versus 9 is relevant, despite them both being F. Likewise, 89 versus 90. NHTSA can do whatever they want; I can say it is just a silly metric that is about as good as gaming reviews, as another comment points out. A 5.4 score is still relevant; why would they throw away precision?
- nonchalance 13y agoThe NHTSA probably doesn't think that a safety score of 5.3 versus 5.4 has any sort of meaning. If the set of accidents under which you would survive unscathed in a car with score 5.4 but would be injured in a car with score 5.3 has measure 0 (or negligible), then there is no real difference in terms of safety (even if the scores are different)
- invisible 13y agoThe Tesla blog post makes it abundantly clear that the 5.4 is the report the manufacturer receives (not the issued rating which is capped at 5). Why does it stop at 5 if you can still die in those cars?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- smackfu 13y agoI don't think it does make that clear. It says "safety levels better than 5 stars are captured in the overall Vehicle Safety Score (VSS) provided to manufacturers" but the VSS value for the Tesla was 0.43 according to the blog post. So where did the 5.4 come from? Extrapolation?
- invisible 13y agoYou're right - they didn't make it abundantly clear that the VSS report was 0.43. Regardless, the conversion they made isn't insane when you look at the other VS scores. Plus - watch the videos of other 5 star rated vehicle versus the Model S. It's like the comparison between a 1980s car and one from 2013.
- saraid216 13y agoNHTSA Six Stars: The car is a mobile fortress.
- invisible 13y agoAll I meant was that if 5 stars isn't perfect why is that the scale they're using? Obviously the range of what a 5 star rating represents could mean the difference between life and death in a serious collision.
- saraid216 13y agoI am clearly agreeing with you. A mobile fortress is far more perfect in terms of safety than any consumer car on the road. It might not move fast, but you need military-grade hardware or construction equipment to make a dent.
- revelation 13y agoIt says as much in the official Tesla press release: NHTSA does not publish a star rating above 5, however safety levels better than 5 stars are captured in the overall Vehicle Safety Score (VSS) provided to manufacturers, where the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars. You can't blame Tesla for taking that number and running with it, given that (1) modeling car safety from two seaters to SUVs on a range from 1 to 5 stars is ridiculous and (2) the star systems suffer from the same problems as contemporary game and movie reviews: 99% of all evaluated products land between 3 and 5 stars, where 3 then becomes the new horrible, compressing the already low entropy of a star value further.
- apalmer 13y agoNothing wrong with the 5 star rating system as far as it goes... the marketing 'usefulness' of a measure is not the be all and end all, in that regards it is very different from video game and movie reviews.
- jlgreco 13y agoThis makes me wonder, do they adjust the rating system over time, and if so, are they doing it frequently enough? You can buy five star cars today, and I assume you could buy 5-star cars 15 years ago, but 5 star cars from 15 years ago wouldn't get rated as highly today, right? Maybe they need to be more aggressive with their adjustment so that the minimum expected really is 1 star.
- gamblor956 13y agoSafety ratings are adjusted annually, so a car that was rated 5-stars a decade ago would probably be lucky to get 2 stars today.
- chiph 13y agoAssuming it could even be sold, if it were lacking now-mandatory equipment (tire-pressure sensors, etc).
- deleted 13y ago
- hamburglar 13y agoObHeadlineHypeComplaint: that's a "hand slap"?
- asperous 13y agoI take it from the article, nothing but a statement from the safety agency asking "car manufactures" (not even mentioning Tesla) to not misrepresent their data to the public.
- smackfu 13y agoI wonder how many other cars got more than five stars by Tesla's methodology? From the graph, it looks like some have very close ratings. And clearly, the goal here is to stop every manufacturer from just coming up with their own rules for interpreting the score that give them a different rating from the one that the NHTSA gives. That's definitely worthwhile.
- jcampbell1 13y ago"The agency has dominion over any part of a vehicle sold in the United States, from the headlamps to the owner’s manual, but can’t regulate the speech of a corporation or its employees." True, but the agency gives legal cover. When there is a question in court as to whether the safety systems performed "as advertised", the NHTSA is free to say that Tesla didn't follow the advertising guidelines, and therefore cannot comment on the performance of the safety system. Drug companies can also advertise drugs outside the FDA guidelines, and would win a court challenge on 1st Amendment grounds. None do it because it would expose them to unbounded liability.
- lvs 13y ago>Drug companies can also advertise drugs outside the FDA guidelines, and would win a court challenge on 1st Amendment grounds. None do it because it would expose them to unbounded liability. No, no, no. This is utterly and confirmably false. It is illegal under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to advertise a prescription drug for a use that is not FDA approved, and it is within the FDA's mandate to recommend investigation to the Department of Justice in such circumstances. The FTC is authorized to oversee advertising for over-the-counter drugs under the Wheeler-Lea Act. As a recent example, Pfizer agreed to settle with the DoJ earlier this summer for half a billion to end an investigation brought under these very circumstances[1]. [1] http://www.newstatesman.com/business/business/2013/07/pfizer-pay-491m-fine-label-marketing-rapamune-us http://www.newstatesman.com/business/business/2013/07/pfizer...
- jcampbell1 13y agoJesus man. You seem awfully certain. Here is a ruling from December that affirms 1st amendment rights to market off label uses: http://www.reedsmith.com/files/uploads/DrugDeviceLawBlog/Caronia.pdf http://www.reedsmith.com/files/uploads/DrugDeviceLawBlog/Car... " Caronia argues that he was convicted for his speech -- for promoting an FDA-approved drug for off-label use -- in violation of his right of free speech under the First Amendment. We agree. Accordingly, -3- we vacate the judgment of conviction and remand the case to the district court. " It is uncertain whether marketing off label is protected by the 1st amendment. The courts don't all agree.
- skue 13y agoIt was easy to see that coming once the media story took off the way it did. But this just generates more coverage of Tesla's results. I doubt that anyone at Tesla is feeling the least bit chastised. Musk is certainly not the type of person who is afraid to generate a little controversy.
- hauget 13y agowhy is shit like this on the HN frontpage?
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoBecause it's getting upvotes, mostly.
- skue 13y agoHN isn't just about software/engineering, it's also about entrepreneurship. Tesla is a startup with cool technology. They're taking on a market where startups never succeed and are navigating significant challenges regarding new technology, consumer bias, competitors, regulatory issues, business model, press relations, and more. Some of us find it fascinating and enlightening to watch them take this journey. Edit: Reworded.
- nonchalance 13y agoThe Tesla Motors post that heralded this news (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240862) was on the front page for nearly a full day and garned 794 upvotes. HN readers are clearly intrigued by TM
- Uchikoma 13y agoBecause Elon Musk is god here and worshipped.
- robterrell 13y agoI really like Tesla and want them to succeed, but they've got some weird ideas about good PR. The cost calculator that factored in the cost of pump time at your billable rate; the over-the-top posture against the NY Times reviewer who discovered that the battery heater could draw enough power to affect range; and now this, where they made up their own methodology to convert VSS into stars and found themselves to be the best. (I'm not even considering the weird stuff like Elon Musk offering publicly to consult on Boeing's batteries, although I think that points to the source.) Aren't the "best car ever made" reviews enough?
- eli 13y agoYou left out Tesla suing television show Top Gear for libel. (Which they lost despite the UK's infamously plaintiff-friendly libel laws.)
- TrevorJ 13y agoI think that may have been less about winning the case, and more about getting the word out that the 'test' Top Gear did was edited in a way that maximized humor vs. being 100% accurate.
- eli 13y agoSure, and that's probably a fair point. They should have said exactly that. Instead they implied the show maliciously falsified a review and then spent months (years?) unsuccessfully litigating them.
- fancyketchup 13y agoRight, and Tesla lost because Top Gear argued (successfully) in court that what they aired was not a review but a comedy show. And being that the review was not a review, it could not be a malicious review. That's very thin ice to be standing on.
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- jhonovich 13y agoThis is nonsense: "can’t regulate the speech of a corporation or its employees" Entities have rights over how they are used in promotions, i.e., the right of publicity / personality rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights For example, Consumer Reports No Commercial Use Policy - http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/no-commercial-use-policy/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/no-commercial-us...
- etler 13y agoIt just seems like the NHTSA is just reiterating that there's no official higher than 5 star rating to protect themselves, rather than scolding Tesla. Tesla did say that a rating higher than 5 stars does not exist, and that the extra high rating should be taken with a grain of salt seemed implied to me, but I guess they could have been clearer. The blog post was very in depth, so it's not like they were misleading people with their wording.
- marvin 13y agoYeah. This is a non-story; it makes a good headline but no one has been slapped. Tesla just noted that they received some papers which noted that for the internal purposes of the ranking, it got 5.4 stars. Then the NHTSA made a clarification that the official ranking actually doesn't go past 5 stars. It's good for Tesla shareholders that Forbes decided to run with this story, though. Free advertising. There is no way anyone will ever perceive a fight about whether the car should have 5 or 5.4 stars as negative.
- Aqueous 13y agoBetter to ask for forgiveness than permission.
- justthetip 13y agoTesla is going to bend and stretch the truth as far as they can whenever they can. Tesla is more than an electric car. It has enough momentum now to be a measurable threat to almost 100 years of oil-driven businesses from supplier to manufacturers to dealers to the oil companies themselves. This creates no shortage of enemies who do not want adapt or change at all. It's going to be a rough road ahead. Tesla is going to apply the same tactics that its enemies do, the good and the bad. It's how war actually works. So don't be surprised when it happens.
- twoodfin 13y agoDoes it really hurt consumers if carmakers are bragging about doing well on tests? I'd argue that it might: NHTSA wants to encourage automakers to build safer cars. One way to do that is to provide them with detailed information on the results ("scores") of its tests, so that automakers can benchmark their engineering against each other and tune individual safety features as needed. Another way is to aggregate those results for each model and publish a consumer-friendly figure that automakers are motivated to be able to advertise as a "stamp of approval". What they don't want is automakers getting into NHTSA test "hot-rodding" games, focusing their efforts on topping the individual tests by some small relative figure in order to claim things like "safest car ever". In an environment like that, NHTSA has to either stop publishing detailed results, or keep the mechanics of their testing secret in an attempt to prevent "benchmark gaming" of the kind we see all the time in technology. That sounds like an NHTSA that is competing with automakers rather than working with them, and I suspect that is how consumers could be ultimately hurt.