There’s still a lot that isn’t clear to me, but my quick take is that Broder’s statements don’t gibe with the recorder, which is a major difficulty. Unless it’s shown that Tesla’s recorder is jiggered, or not working properly, I’ll side with them.
And the thing about the “as people drive” and “but it was WINTER” are irrelevant – they know that, and knew it when they gave him the car. Their point was to be that it would work acceptably even in the winter, and even as people drive.
My biggest worry about the Tesla case is, as Cheesesteak points out, the claimed drop in range overnight. Even so, I can’t believe that he didn’t charge the car overnight. Heck, I do thsat with my cell phone and Nook.
I spoke to someone who pays more attention to these things than I do. His take is that the NYT journalist had an agenda (e.g., doesn’t like electric vehicles).
I’m kind of baffled that someone would approach a new technology like that, but I guess I was being naive.
He also said that while Tesla could conceivably fake the data, doing so would be exposed soon enough as scrutiny of the faked data would show errors. In other words, Tesla would be really, really dumb to try.
I envision Broder as the teenager who swears he didn’t drive the family car over to the pool hall or do 100 MPH on the way home… until Dad hands over the GPS tracking sheet.
The Wired article says, “Tesla doesn’t dispute that the car told Broder that it was shutting down, but claims that the Model S never actually acted on the threat.” That’s ridiculous; as the car owner, I should just ignore its dire warnings that it’s shutting down the engine? And it also mentioned Tesla’s detailed driving instructions; “Keep the speed at 55 mph and turn down the climate control.” It’s kind of ridiculous to expect a driver to have to do that in the real world, particularly when it’s 10 degrees out in Connecticut. If the car isn’t suited for long winter drives in the Northeast, that’s fine, but don’t pretend it is.
Thank you.
Tesla’s response really misses the point. The “misstatements” that they prove up are “When Broder said he set cruise control at 54 mph, it was really set to 60 mph” and “When Broder said he lowered the cabin temperature, he only lowered it to 72-74 F (in the middle of winter).” And moreover, he did later lower it down to 60-something degrees.
All in all, it resembles the protests of an employee who, when being disciplined for coming to work forty minutes every day, notes that she was only twenty minutes late on Tuesday.
The substantial criticisms, the unreliability of the charge remaining indicator and then cold-weather charge penalty, are unrebutted. And these are obviously the most serious charges against a car whose $100K price tag is inconsistent which such problems.
I agree, thats the weakest part of Tesla’s complaint.
The instructions aren’t general ones for driving a Tesla, just if your running out of range. Broder was running out of range because he didn’t fully charge the car in the first place. And then he lied about following the instructions.
Maybe, but its kind of hard to know how seriously to take those criticisms from a reporter who fabricated part of his article. A report on problems with Tesla’s range indicator would be interesting, but its pretty hard to say if those problems exist based on Broder’s say-so.
The fact that a trip from DC to Conn. needs multiple calls for advice from the manufacturer, is a pretty clear indicator of a problem with the technology.
Completely buying Tesla’s log data the writer sat in a car displaying 20% to 100% buffers in range, and wound up white knuckling it to the first recharge and WAY short on the second recharge.
Tesla’s answer is that you need to change your driving, sit in the cold and find a random charging station so you can sit with your thumb up your ass for an hour or two while juicing up enough to make it to your destination. It’s 2013 not 1913, automobile trips this length shouldn’t require this much advance planning.
Actually, they claim that he Raised the temperature to 74 degrees (74 degrees? I don’t keep my house that hot) rather than lowering it at all.
And, when they suggested dtiving at 55 mph, but he averaged over 60 for the next 50 miles (and usually drove even faster – look at the log), it is a significant difference.
I think Tesla’s contention is that you just need to change your driving (in winter). The NYT reporter didn’t, so he was faced with option B – sitting in the cold, random charging stations, and white-knuckling it to destinations.
If he had kept he speeds down, his recharge times would have been shorter, and he might not have had any problems. But we don’t know for sure, because he didn’t.
FWIW, if he wrote an article about how he drove it like a normal car and had all these problems, I wouldn’t have an issue. But he wrote an article about how he drove it like a special snowflake and still had all those problems.
No problems other than facing a 200 mile drive going 10mph below the speed limit, 20mph slower than everyone else, with no heat, in the middle of winter.
This is what one expects from driving an old VW Bug, not a modern $100,000 roadster.
Here’s the thing. In those graphs, they write that “At 182 miles, Broder said [then a quote about setting cruise control or the temperature]”.
Broder never specified the mile at which he did this. Only that they happened shortly after he entered NJ. And the logs clearly show that the temp was dropped to 70 F and then 65 F for an extended period. Not at precisely 182 miles, but I don’t know where Tesla is getting this as the point at which this was supposedly done.
I did look at the log. I know you did too, which is why it’s so curious that you see “usually drove faster” when I—and Tesla! who wrote that the average speed over this distance was indeed just 60 mph. The dots are very slightly raised over the line, so maybe it was 60.5 mph? But I don’t think that’s what you meant.
And again, I’m no stranger to driving, increments of 5 mph or so are generally the level of granularity I get with my speedometer. No car should see a substantial degradation in performance by a deviation of that size.
Overall, I think Tesla hopes to make the debate “What was the exact distance driven when you claim you turned the temperature down to a sultry 72 F?!?!?” Which would be good for them, because who remembers that? “182 miles? Bzzzzzzt, wrong. Our records show it was at 243 miles! Guess you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
But the real issue is, driving the car under realistic conditions, even making some, if imperfectly observed concessions to range-maximization efforts, this car just is not ready foe prime-time. Not at $15 thousand and definitely not at $100 thousand.
You’re exaggerating. They didn’t tell him to turn off the heat, just keep it low. And 55 isn’t 20mph slower than everyone on I-95.
I mean, winter driving in the Tesla isn’t exactly up to the luxurious standards of, say, a Chevy Cruze, which means there’s no reason to make up facts to prove that point.
Thank you. Your parody of Tesla’s counterarguments express my position far more elegantly and succinctly then I was able to.
I’m no big fan of the New York Times, but on this one, so far I believe their account more than I believe Tesla that the test was “faked”. My favorite from the Tesla release:
“Tesla doesn’t dispute that the car told Broder that it was shutting down, but claims that the Model S never actually acted on the threat.”
Oh - so if the computer tells you the car is shutting down, you’re supposed to stay on the road to eke out the last dregs of mileage, risking a shutdown right in the middle of a traffic lane?
And the dread sin (if actually committed) of the driver having the thermostat set at 72 degrees in winter? (as I recall, he noted in the Times review that he kept it downright chilly in the car at times to maximize the distance he could drive).
I doubt that the Times has an anti-electric car bias (if it was the Wall St. Journal, I might tend to give that more credence). Tesla needs to submit the actual computer evidence it claims supports it (and not just logs) And even giving this matter spin favorable to Tesla, it doesn’t exactly encourage any potential buyers other than huge electric car enthusiasts to think that they’ve got to drive considerably slower than others on the road, watch to keep the heat on low in winter and ignore the car’s own warning system to be able to eke out enough miles to make it between charging stations.
There’s enough stress driving as it is.
Some commentators over on reddit have pointed out that Broder doesn’t normally review cars for the paper. His normal writing topic is oil and oil policy. He had an agenda.
A lot of this reads like the screams on Hybrid boards from people who drive their cars like regular cars, without making any effort to adjust to how the car needs to be driven (because it isn’t a regular car) and then loudly claim to have been “ripped off”. All the while surrounded by people who point out that they got lousy milage too until they adjusted their driving appropriately and now are getting the Company or EPA claimed milage.
The batteries don’t work as well in the cold. So naturally, sitting overnight and getting cold, they will appear to have a shorter range. This will change as they warm up. He could also have plugged it in, and any intelligent EV owner would have done so.
Spending 5 minutes driving around a parking lot? Sounds a lot to me like “looking for a spot” and I am disinclined to pay any attention to this one.
Exacting differences in claims apart, it is abundantly clear that the writer LIED about multiple facets of his trip. This and only this should really be the basis of whatever happens to him and his newspaper. (But yeah, Tesla should really release the raw logs if they want to make their case.)
Here’s an interesting article exploring Tesla’s claims, which concludes that the New York Times’ reporter’s story substantially holds up. As to the charge that he deliberately drove in circles to get the car’s battery to go dead:
“Musk is accusing Broder of driving three times the most direct route. Maybe Broder missed the charging station and drove around the McDonald’s a couple times looking for it? Update: And indeed, earlier today, Broder told Daily Intel’s Joe Coscarelli that he got lost looking for the charging station. “I was circling the parking lot in the service plaza looking for the unmarked and unlighted Supercharger port in the dark. I was not trying to drain the battery.” At the speeds shown in the logs, Tesla says Broder spent around five minutes driving around the service plaza before stopping. If he was deliberately trying to drain the battery, he did not stick to the endeavor for very long.”
As far as I can tell, he’s been writing for the Green blog on the New York Times’ website, which says, “From renewable energy policy to eco-advertising, tracking the pursuit of a greener globe.” So do you think that he’s somehow in the pocket of Exxon Mobil?
He said that he was looking for the charging stations in the Milford service area (which is pretty big).
Right now it sounds to me like Tesla is calling the reporter a liar based on misleading interpretations of the data and nitpicks that don’t change the story in any significant way. That would make them liars who are trying to smear a guy to protect their reputation. I should reread Broder’s story, but I believe he said he was trying to do two things: one, drive in the cold the way a normal driver probably would, and two, rely on Tesla’s Superchargers. He also posted a tweet where Musk acknowledges they need more of them because they should be 140 miles apart, not 200 miles.
This is shallow nonsense. Writing about oil doesn’t mean you love oil and hate electric cars. He’s written about electric cars before - Tesla mentioned this to try to show he wanted the car to suck - and I think a reporter who only wrote about oil and not about other energy sources would be unusual. Here are his latest blog posts.