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NYT article: Stalled on the EV Highway
- Thread starter Jeeps17
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Thank You, John Broder
John,
It now appears that news organizations are falling over backwards to do their own DC-Boston test drives. Who would have imagined your review would have had such a catalytic effect? CNN, CNBC, I'm sure there are others - between the online videos and the live reports on TV, you have generated millions of dollars in advertising value for TESLA. Not mention the online e-zines, blogs, and our own intrepid tweeting Tesla warriors who have all rushed to provide a counterpoint to you. You even helped drive the view count on my own blog to over 1,000 last week just from people tracking down my spirited responses to you.
And for all that, I say...
...thank you.
Cattledog
(cross post from tesla motors site for those who don't live double lives)
John,
It now appears that news organizations are falling over backwards to do their own DC-Boston test drives. Who would have imagined your review would have had such a catalytic effect? CNN, CNBC, I'm sure there are others - between the online videos and the live reports on TV, you have generated millions of dollars in advertising value for TESLA. Not mention the online e-zines, blogs, and our own intrepid tweeting Tesla warriors who have all rushed to provide a counterpoint to you. You even helped drive the view count on my own blog to over 1,000 last week just from people tracking down my spirited responses to you.
And for all that, I say...
...thank you.
Cattledog
(cross post from tesla motors site for those who don't live double lives)
My comment to Ms. Sullivan's post is below. It's amazing how limiting 1500 characters can be.
"Dear Ms. Sullivan:
Mr. Broder's "facts" are sufficiently far from the car's data logs to cast doubt on the accuracy of his reporting. But a writer uses more than facts: intention, word choice, innuendo and insinuation are all powerful tools in the wordsmith's trade. And here is the true failure or Mr. Broder's article and defense, and your own response to the matter; even assuming no malice aforethought, this article goes to great lengths to cast Mr. Broder as a helpless victim and to place all blame squarely on Tesla: car, charger, and company. Fair and unbiased? Hardly.
With climate control set to 70-74F (usually) or 64F (at worst), Mr. Broder writes of how "my feet were freezing and my knuckles were turning white". Really, a New Yorker's feet freezing at 64F? He also "...drove, slowly, to Stonington..." at 60-80mph. Slowly? And at no time did he "limp along at 45mph". Lastly, no "normal driver" would EVER deliberately leave a fuel stop with only half the fuel required to reach his destination. Ever.
More infrastructure is required before EV's overcome the convenience of gasoline for long-distance travel, though they are already superior for daily driving. But this article tells us more about Mr. Broder's personal failings as both driver and writer than it does about the subject matter. And that, Ms. Sullivan, is not just "casual and imprecise notes". It's a failure of journalistic integrity on his part, and a failure of quality control and moral courage on yours."
That's the best slam against Broder's piece I've read since this whole thing started. Nicely done, Rodolfo!
Beside outright half truths like the rest of Broder's article I have two theories:
1. That that Broder told them the wrong info so the solution was in error, and or Broder misunderstood.
2.
He did not talk with a customer support person but someone who while employed by Tesla does not fully understand the car. The 20-somethings at the Tesla mall stores typically only have done single drive or two and would not know what advise to give on hypremiling. Maybe Broder's call got though to one of them somehow.
Either way it sounds like Tesla is done here so I would not expect them to answer this one.
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I think there are several things going on here: some are Tesla's problems and others (and most of the blame, I believe) are Broder's.
- Tesla hasn't been able yet to get their call center employees enough road time in an S in the real world (and certainly not in harsh winter conditions), and consistent training seems to be lacking.
- You often get different answers if you ask two Tesla representatives the same question. Maybe this is really the other side of the same coin.
I think if they're not already doing so, Tesla ownership experience reps should be spending a lot of their time between phone calls reading some of the pithier threads on TMC. The amount of savvy, experience and engineering talent here is a vast resource waiting to be tapped. And among us we have amassed a huge number of road miles in the Model S.
- Assuming he was acting in good faith, Broder seemed unable to grasp the nuances of what the car was trying to tell him and what his appropriate actions should be in response, and he demonstrated a stunning inability to interpret his situation and act accordingly. If his situational awareness was so bad (and this is my main point), my guess is that he failed to accurately tell the Tesla folks he talked to what was going on, either. With inaccurate reporting from the field, it shouldn't be too surprising that Tesla gave him inaccurate advice. But any advice Tesla did give him would have been subjected to the same Broderfilter on the receiving end: a recipe for disaster, if there ever was one.
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Wow, you and I were writing the same thing at the same time. Yours is half the length of mine, though, and brevity is commendable.
CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
"Rated" range is not a range "estimate". As far as I can tell it's just the EPA range of the vehicle multiplied by the percent charge remaining in the battery.
"Projected" range is far more accurate, was not mentioned by Broder (he might not have known about it), and was recently praised by Consumer Reports.
Winter chills limit range of the Tesla Model S electric car
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From the beginning, what Broder reported sounded like what you would expect the "Right" advice to sound like after playing a game of Telephone.
Knowledgeable person says "when the battery is cold, it displays less range than it should. It needs to be conditioned by being heated up before it will display the correct range. He should just turn on the heater and start driving to get the battery warm".
Interpretation "You're battery is cold, it needs to be heated up, you should turn on the heater".
The critical advice is to start driving because that heats the battery far better than the cabin heater can heat a half ton block of metal that is beneath (and partially insulated from) the cabin. But "driving" doesn't have the word heat in it so it was disregarded somewhere.
In fact many customers probably do heat the battery with just the heater, but that's when the car is plugged in. In terms of energy, its a terrible solution, especially when your goal is to maximize your range with whats left in the battery.
Similarly, after being told your range will increase by conditioning the battery, leaving with 32 miles on a 61 mile trip might make sense. Of course the battery was fully conditioned by that point, and cutting it that fine makes zero sense when you are at a working charger. I doubt anyone at Tesla told Broder to leave when he did. Based on what he has said (despite claiming to have been "cleared") I believe someone told him an hour of charging would be enough to fix his problem, so he did an hour of charging and then just left.
I always felt that stupidity was the best explanation for many of Broder's decisions, but I felt the language he used in his story was intentionally deceptive and malicious, and designed to mask his own errors. So for me the "conspiracy" was real, and the review was "fake" the the decision to do it likely happened after his drive.
Seegem
Member
Elon just posted a follow up:
A Most Peculiar Test Drive - Follow Up | Blog | Tesla Motors
+1,000,000,000,000,000
A Most Peculiar Test Drive - Follow Up | Blog | Tesla Motors
+1,000,000,000,000,000
I am feeling very proud today. To have followed this product for the last three years, put money down 2 years ago and finally see it overcome yet another obstacle. A negative portrayal of the car was inevitable in todays political climate and congratulations to Elon and the Tesla team for having the brass to call them out . A movie quote for Mr Broder...A Knights Tale....
"You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. In what world could you possibly beat " Tesla fans!
"You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. In what world could you possibly beat " Tesla fans!
William13
Active Member
Vger
Active Member
I think Ms. Sullivan's post is the best we could reasonably expect, and that is what Elon's new post indicates. It is actually gracious (and smart) for him to bury the hatchet now and get back to actually building the Supercharger network, improving the car, and making the truth that much more inescapable.
I drove my Roadster to work this morning, with the top down and ambient temperature 16celcius (61fahrenheit). At no time did my feet freeze or knuckles turn white.
+1 on your identification of those two items (temperature and speed) - for me it comes down to the exaggeration/lies of those two points. The rest is debatable.
Let's assume D is the distance to travel, R is the current rated range, and MR is max rated range.
Case 1:
D <= R < MR, user at supercharger
Case 2:
R < D, user at charger
The issues were:
1. left a supercharger without letting it complete, which invalidates the whole point of his trip -- to evaluate the superchargers
2. left a charger when the car explicitly indicated he won't make it -- idiot column
The criticism doesn't seem inconsistent to me.
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In a later report he "corrected" this to "85 killowatts per hour".
/facepalm
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Can't help but smile at this:
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Just another opinion...
This says a lot about the NYT times. The peers of the NYT have evaluated Mr. Broder's "story" and found it "wanting". As such, they felt it needed vetting with their own evaluation. If the NYT had done a worthwhile and honest review in the first place, it would have ended there. Instead, the NYT has already been judged by its peers to be lacking. And, in kind, their editorial review process has damned itself by failing to own up to it despite the clear signals from the rest of the industry.
smorgasbord
Active Member
I doubt any of us are old enough to have experienced the previous sea change in personal transport. I've read touches of it in fiction, such as The Magnificent Ambersons:
I just heard on the radio that "experts" are predicting $5/gallon gasoline this summer. Nothing like a 25% faster payback time, eh?
I just heard on the radio that "experts" are predicting $5/gallon gasoline this summer. Nothing like a 25% faster payback time, eh?
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Better than that. That story ran all day today interspersed with Phil's drive. CNBC reporter:
Will gas hit $5 a gallon!!?? Stay tuned... In the meantime lets go to Phil Lebeau driving the all electric Tesla Model S. Phil I'm so jealous of your assignment." Yes Jim, these Superchargers are free ..."
Meanwhile Tesla's stock gains more than it lost after the NYT sham.
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I agree that Ted and JB are beyond reproach
He gave two names but was unclear if they were the only ones he talked to.
One of the more puzzeling things about the NYT article is the advice Broder claims Tesla gave him. Based on the rest of the article I don't for a minute believe Tesla gave Broder instructions as he described them. If one has an agenda it is very easy to willfully misunderstand what one has been told. And it is easy to induce faulty answers from someone by giving them incomplete information. For instance how hard is it to ask "how long will I have to plug-in to have enough range to make the trip?" Tesla employee, "probably about an hour should do it." Employee of course assuming Broder is asking in good faith and if after an hour the car shows it still doesn't have enough range Broder would continue charging. But Broder stops charging after an hour and rides off with less charge than required because he had an agenda and this interpretation of what he was told scored points for it.
My guess is most of the misleading or outright incorrect info Broder claims to have gotten from Tesla was more the result of how he crafted his questions, and the way he chose to understand the answers, than poor information.
My guess is most of the misleading or outright incorrect info Broder claims to have gotten from Tesla was more the result of how he crafted his questions, and the way he chose to understand the answers, than poor information.
Based on the rest of the article and his responses to Musk's blog post, I wouldn't be surprised to find that he throttled back the amperage to 1A via the 17". He's lost all credibility with me with the absurd excuses, especially regarding cruise control, climate, and the wheel size.
If Broder made honest mistakes, maybe he made up everything after the fact to make himself look like less of an idiot and to enhance the story.
I must disclose that I own some Telsa stock........whew. I feel better I got that off my chest. Oh, I own one of their cars too. Didn't want to hide that fact. I've also own a Panasonic Television too if that makes a difference:smile:
I must disclose that I own some Telsa stock........whew. I feel better I got that off my chest. Oh, I own one of their cars too. Didn't want to hide that fact. I've also own a Panasonic Television too if that makes a difference:smile:
Yeah if you look at his exact language it is apparent that is what he did. He called before he even plugged in. They told him a charge of about an hour, would recover his lost range (not cover all the additional power he used driving a 22+ mile detour, and heating the cabin not moving for half an hour). Over an hour later he just unplugged and in the face of a 30+ mile discrepancy decided to run the car out of juice. And looking at it I doubt he would have even made up his heating and detour with that charge.
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