Elon Musk calls NYT review of the Tesla Model S ‘fake,’ citing vehicle log data

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/11/elon-musk-calls-nytimes-review-of-the-tesla-model-s-fake-citing-vehicle-log-data-as-proof/

by sethbannon • 13 years ago

568 484 13 years ago

thenextweb.com

cryptoz• 13 years ago

This morning would have been a wonderful time to buy stock. TSLA was way down (due to this review?) and earnings are coming up soon. This makes me wonder if the NYTimes or this reporter had some ulterior motive; a conspiracy to discredit Tesla? A personal vendetta? Why would a reporter lie about the test?

jstalin2• 13 years ago

A negative review would get a lot more attention than a positive one.

avar• 13 years ago

There's probably a much simpler explanation: That automotive journalists are really lazy, have a story in mind before they ever drive the car in question, routinely do stuff like this, and are only being called out now because of black boxes being embedded into some newer cars such as Tesla's.

jonknee15• 13 years ago

He was not an automobile journalist, which is probably why it reads like he has no concept of how cars work or that planning a trip to test a car's theoretical range limit in winter is a poor way to review a car. John Broder is on the "Green" beat:

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/peopl...

cma2• 13 years ago

A positive review of something that is already Motortrend's Car of the Year would draw about zero views. A made up ordeal could draw millions (I've seen it posted all over the place).

If the detour was really long, hopefully the NYT will get sued. If the car wasn't fully charged by the reviewer it will be much harder to prove.

cjbprime• 13 years ago

Stock prices usually go down on extremely-hyped stocks just before earnings; I'm not sure the review had much to do with it.

> Why would a reporter lie about the test?

To get a story that's more interesting than "I tried this car and it was good".

Thrymr3• 13 years ago

>> Why would a reporter lie about the test?

> To get a story that's more interesting than "I tried this car and it was good".

And because it fit the reporter's expectation of what would have happened, without having to bother with actually following through with the experiment.

scrabble2• 13 years ago

The first thing I wondered upon seeing this story was whether or not the author was on the take with the oil or automotive industry.

Is he paid to give talks at conferences? Or to speak at insider company events?

adventured• 13 years ago

Only if you're planning to flip it for a short term gain and are willing to gamble on earnings being good.

You'll be able to get it for $25 to $30 / share within the next 18 months. Save your money, bide your time. If we're just talking historical analysis (assuming you have no special knowledge of Tesla earnings etc), it's rarely a good idea to buy near the 52 week high, on top of being at its all time high, much less on top of a stock market near all time highs.

Tesla is so volatile it's almost guaranteed to fall back to earth and provide a far cheaper buying entry point. The stock price is completely unsupported by earnings, meaning it's completely driven - without a buffer - by the typically manic mood swings of investors.

Let the investors running Tesla up, swing to depressed and buy it far cheaper. Or to put it another way, wait until the herd is fearful and then be greedy.

baggachipz• 13 years ago

Sounds like somebody is advocating a short!

mtgx• 13 years ago

If this is true, then he should sue NYT or the author, unless the author admits it's true in another article. I've heard quite a few random people use the NYT article as an argument against Tesla/electric cars, and I think that article can have long term negative impact on electric cars (even if it won't be a complete deal-breaker for electric cars). So he needs to either get them to admit the review was not accurate, or sue them.

jlgreco7• 13 years ago

Didn't Tesla sue Top Gear for basically the same thing? I recall that didn't turn out well for Tesla, though perhaps the fact that Top Gear is widely recognized as being entertainment not serious journalism had something to do with that.

eli4• 13 years ago

I don't know if their seriousness played into it. My understanding is that the judge ruled, essentially, that Top Gear was correct when they spoke about the car having extremely limited range when driven on their race track and that no reasonable person would confuse range on a racetrack with regular driving.

(And IANAL, but the UK is somewhat infamous for its plaintiff-friendly libel laws.)

rjacoby5• 13 years ago

Agreed. In this case, NYT is widely recognized as serious journalism. And sometimes it's not entertaining at all.

Eliezer5• 13 years ago

Naturally, on any occasion when it is actually possible to check a journalistic report against reality, the journalist will turn out to be lying. This is not absolutely universally true, but it is impossible to appreciate just how often it is true until you have been reported-on in a case where you know the facts yourself.

tl;dr of course they're lying, it's easier to make stuff up then investigate so why wouldn't a reporter always just lie?

jseliger• 13 years ago

>Naturally, on any occasion when it is actually possible to check a journalistic report against reality, the journalist will turn out to be lying

I don't think this is true "on any occasion"; that journalistic lying is news indicates that it rarely happens or rarely is caught.

I think it's possible to see this as an example of a problem with this individual journalist, or with the culture of journalism, without assuming "the journalist will turn out to be lying" in all circumstances.

btilly4• 13 years ago

You miss three important factors.

The first is that few are in a position to prove journalistic lies.

The second is that journalists do not like pushing reporting on other journalists lying because they are outing people they know, and they may get the same treatment some day.

The third (and in some ways most important) is that since the rise of the "blogosphere" in recent years, facts have become much less important. (Why? Because if you report something wrong you get clicks, then you publish a retraction and get clicks, then you can do a puff piece about "how could this happen" and get more clicks. Bingo, you earned ad dollars 3x when fact checking would have earned you nothing. What incentive, then, is there to fact check?) Therefore there is an erosion of standards which means that we should expect lying to go up over time.

My sister was famous back in "the good old days" of the 80s, back when media actually cared about its reputation. Even then it was a good idea to assume journalists were lying slime. Today I firmly believe that it is much worse.

If you are a blogger and disagree, then tell me this. How much of a fact check did your last 5 stories get beyond, "Can I find someone else saying this?"

Samuel_Michon2• 13 years ago

"that journalistic lying is news indicates that it rarely happens or rarely is caught."

Of all the times that I've been interviewed, I've been misquoted more often than not. Many others have noticed the same thing.

Scott Adams: "I've been interviewed several hundred times in my career. When I see my quotes taken out of context it is often horrifying. Your jaw would drop if you saw how often quotes are literally manufactured by writers to make a point. " http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/quote_approval/

Marco Arment: "I’ve learned the hard way, over and over again, that it’s most wise to talk to journalists the way you’d talk to the police: ideally, don’t. You have everything to lose and almost nothing to gain." http://www.marco.org/2012/09/19/quote-approval

ImprovedSilence2• 13 years ago

>>I don't think this is true "on any occasion"

Woah woah here... I wasn't about to fully support the grandparent here, but I would hazzard a guess that more often than not, persons end up misquoted, out of context, or sentences are strung together "just so" to make you "think" in a certain manner, that may not be factual. It happens everywhere. My own anecdotal evidence: I was in boy scouts, we camped near a farm field, trampled rows of corn to make a boundary for a capture the flag game, got busted, and had to go back and pick up all the corn by hand and make amends with farmer. The newspaper wrote up a fantastic article about how local boy scouts helped the community by helping a farmer reap damaged crops. there were no lies or factual inaccuracies in the article, sans lies of omission. From this, and what others respond to you, I'd believe this happens more often that not. But certainly not at 100% either.

danso2• 13 years ago

> tl;dr of course they're lying, it's easier to make stuff up then investigate so why wouldn't a reporter always just lie?

1. Lawsuits 2. Loss of credibility 3. Often the truth is more interesting than fiction

Eliezer5• 13 years ago

1. Almost never happens

2. Almost never happens

3. The truth is harder to write and the editor wants 700 words in the next hour.

untog3• 13 years ago

This is not absolutely universally true, but it is impossible to appreciate just how often it is true until you have been reported-on in a case where you know the facts yourself.

No, in that case you have a single data point that doesn't prove a larger point.

Don't get me wrong, I have no data to prove either side's argument, but suggesting that almost every single article written is a lie seems like a high level of paranoia.

gnaffle• 13 years ago

I've had and heard about about enough encounters with journalists to say that while they may not outright lie, they will twist or omit facts to fit whatever angle they have in mind for the story. Often it's just somewhat annoying to those who know the whole story, other times it paints a completely wrong picture. But as a reader it's difficult to spot this because you usually don't have the entire background story.

ericd2• 13 years ago

I don't think it's paranoid to think that almost every article about a non-trivial subject contains over-generalizations, misquotes, or outright falsehoods. It's been startlingly consistent in the cases where I had a thorough understanding of the subject.

doktrin3• 13 years ago

> "on any occasion"..."not universally true"

It sounds like you are basing a sweeping assertion on your personal experience. I certainly empathize, but you simply can't paint the entire profession with that brush Even with the "not universally" half-caveat, you are still implying journalists lie and fabricate more often than not.

CamperBob25• 13 years ago

Even with the "not universally" half-caveat, you are still implying journalists lie and fabricate more often than not.

It would be an extraordinary claim to suggest that's not the case. Journalists are basically people who would rather be writing fiction, but who haven't figured out a way to get paid for it.

It's a terrible-sounding generalization to make, but I will stand by it.

gfodor• 13 years ago

There really needs to be a phrase for this. I've noticed it myself. Whenever the news reports on something I happen to know a little bit more than average about, they almost universally get material facts (not just nitty gritty details) completely wrong. Taken inductively this is pretty damn scary.

danielweber8• 13 years ago

It's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I don't necessarily endorse it, but here you go:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” — Michael Crichton

chime• 13 years ago

I have had over a dozen positive articles about me written in newspapers, blogs, and TV segments over the years. Every single one of them misrepresented key facts, exaggerated my accomplishments, and oversimplified the invention/process. Initially I was shocked at the inaccuracies but over time I realized that despite the journalists' best intentions, they have to look at my story from different points of views and pick the angle that best fits the column's theme/focus - prodigious kid invents technology even Microsoft can't (David vs. Goliath), smart techies whip up app on weekend (HP/Apple garage-style startup), friendly-neighborhood IT guy takes a stab at unrelated field (everyone's a hidden genius).

One could argue that news must be devoid of any such slants, angles, or specific POVs but then we get caught in a debate about boring news that won't sell vs. sensationalized news that is meant solely to increase sales. Just like for programmers it is a constant balance between quality, deadlines, and cost, for journalists it is between truth, importance, and sales. '12 more people dead in blast in Tel Aviv' is truth and important but not sensational enough to sell. 'No-name D-list celeb gets caught speeding' is truth and sensational but not important.

In articles like this, they're trying to make it sound important and sensational while skirting around the limits of truth. In personal articles we've been involved in, they play the angles to show importance and make it sensational while not caring much about the factual accuracies.

lukifer• 13 years ago

I think "perverse incentives" covers it pretty well. Reporters who care more about truth than narrative are filtered out of most media outlets due to the basic economic forces involved. Season 5 of The Wire elucidates it better than I ever could (and of course, the series was crafted by a former journalist).

jstalin2• 13 years ago

This needs to be the top comment. In a former life I was a local politician and currently I do some public policy work. I can say without a doubt that journalists do not print the truth. They print the story they want to convey. I've been quoted and misquoted so many times that I realized that the media just can't be believed. Now I do work on some government financial issues and media always gets it wrong, even when I show them government documents obtained by FOIA to show them they are wrong. The real kicker is that there's essentially no effective way to call media out on false reporting.

cs702• 13 years ago

I love this: Musk has promised to respond publicly to the negative NY Times review WITH DATA FROM THE CAR directly contradicting the assertions in the review. From now on, reviewers will be extremely careful about exaggerating the negatives of, or lying about, Tesla vehicles.

TylerE• 13 years ago

This is also a good way to never get positive press coverage ever again.

jonknee15• 13 years ago

Having the most respected news organization in the world apologize for lying in its review of your vehicle will not harm your future press coverage.

If anything it will ensure others take a more rigorous fact checking process in the future.

nlh2• 13 years ago

I dunno - do you really think auto reviewers are all a same-think cabal who hold grudges on each other's behalf? I've met a bunch, and I don't think that's correct. Most are out to ... drumroll ... write reviews. If Tesla puts out a good product, they'll get good reviews.

smackfu10• 13 years ago

Honestly, I'm surprised anyone is even willing to do a review, when they have shown a willingness to sue the press for libel. Why bother taking the risk? Just let them have no press.

monsterix2• 13 years ago

Why so? I think it is going to be quite the opposite. They now have the exact kind of coverage they wanted.

At best what's going to happen here is either a legal suit, or an apologetic exit. It's good that they were storing the logs - machines don't lie.

vm• 13 years ago

Not true. Tesla sued BBC's Top Gear for libel after a review [1]. That didn't stop Tesla from getting this NY Times piece [2] and other award-winning press, such as Motor Trend Car of the Year 2013.

[1] Tesla vs Top Gear, well documented by Tesla http://www.teslamotors.com/teslavstopgear

[2] NY Times piece in question: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the...

Edit: removed date of lawsuit per comment below

throwaway54-762• 13 years ago

What positive coverage?

wahsd2• 13 years ago

Because they have to tell the truth or be called out with data? Not sure I follow, unless you are talking about auto industry shills.

ynniv• 13 years ago

From now on

Top Gear already had this exact interaction with Tesla. Either the Times didn't do their homework, or there is a high return on negative Tesla reviews.

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

See below (right now it's below, but it probably deserves to be upvoted some more)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203228

for a more detailed discussion in this same thread of the Top Gear review and the litigation surrounding it.

lnanek22• 13 years ago

There is a high return on anything news breaking or extreme. Bloggers make up things constantly, report unsupported anonymous tips, etc.. Many of them or paid and fired based on the number of page views they get. Not really surprising this behavior is creeping into traditional media.

Shivetya2• 13 years ago

The reporter claims the car informed him that "charging complete". That is not the same thing as "you have full range". He also clearly states he was in contact with Tesla throughout the drive and they provided advice, sometimes wrong.

Plus the real negative part of the article that Musk is glossing over is, having to turn off heat in a vehicle just to get somewhere, got to be loads of fun in the summer too.

So what we have is possible confusion on part of the reporter or bad UI design. Either way it only points out that a 100k electric car is not a road trip car. Its a trip for suburbanites or similar. Sure you "can" do a long trip but you don't have the range of alternative a normally fueled vehicle has.

battery powered cars are an interesting technology, I am not quite in agreement they are ready for prime time. Considering the range limits of the top of the line I doubt many would be satisfied with the entry level model.

The big automakers are investigating many different fuel systems simply because they know any replacement to truly take hold has to be simple enough for anyone. It just has too work, there is no place for a list of "buts"

jonknee15• 13 years ago

> Plus the real negative part of the article that Musk is glossing over is, having to turn off heat in a vehicle just to get somewhere, got to be loads of fun in the summer too.

You "have" to do the same thing in a gas powered car if you don't fill up the tank when given the chance.

timdorr8• 13 years ago

Once the Supercharger network is in place, I'll be driving my Model S up to my parent's house next Thanksgiving from Atlanta. That's 1000 miles, without any concerns about heating or AC usage.

The reporter in this article both failed to charge his car as much as needed and took a large detour that took off some range of the car. If you want to drive recklessly, sure, you're going to run into issues. But there is a significant enough Level 2 charging infrastructure already and Tesla's Level 3-ish Supercharger network is going to supplement that entirely. As it is, I can already take long trips. I just have to wait longer for a full Level 2 charge than I will on a Supercharger in the very near future.

Cushman• 13 years ago

> It just has too work, there is no place for a list of "buts"

Of course there is! Here are some example buts for ICEs:

  Gasoline is a dense energy source, but...
  it stinks.
  it's toxic.
  it's too noisy.
  its price is too determined by foreign politics.
  it puts high stress and heat on the car, requiring constant maintenance.
  it's not shelf stable.
  its performance is dependent on altitude.

ANH• 13 years ago

On several occasions I've had to judiciously use A/C in hot weather in my petrol powered car, so that sort of power/thermal management seems to be a "real negative" of cars in general.

cma2• 13 years ago

"Plus the real negative part of the article that Musk is glossing over is, having to turn off heat in a vehicle just to get somewhere, got to be loads of fun in the summer too."

If that is the negative part then write an article about that and see how many views it gets. Fabricating a bunch of stuff will get more hits.

freyr2• 13 years ago

I'm all for Tesla defending itself, but is a barrage of tweets really the best way for Musk to address reviewers (and competitors)? Maybe it's the nature of the medium, but it just seems a little silly to defend your business in fractured, abbreviated little snippets.

jlgreco7• 13 years ago

It might not be the best way, but it does seem plenty trendy.

Also, assuming a more 'official' response is in the works, a tweet is still faster so both are probably a decent idea during a time-sensitive event like bad publicity.

wahsd2• 13 years ago

Actually, I think it is quite appropriate for the situation. It's a tool for immediate, tactical damage control. Long, arduous responses to accusations take just a long as the, in this case, article that made the accusation. For argument's sake, if the NTY journalist is a tool, Musk, Tesla, and, really, all of us have a lot riding on lies and manipulation be squashed as soon as they happen. On the other hand, if it's true, which would come out one way or another anyways, then maybe electric vehicles aren't really mature enough.

I really hope that this guy gets canned if he wove a narrative that is deceptive and false. Too much is riding on the public impressions. That being said, there are, at least, two Tesla roadsters in my area and they don't seem to have a problem driving around.

Am I the only that likes a good ol' throw-down! Put up or shut up, suckers.

timdorr8• 13 years ago

Those same tweets say that a blog post refuting the review is forthcoming...

smackfu10• 13 years ago

The other way to look at is intimidation by Musk. If you are going to get called a liar if you print a negative story about Tesla, because the product is so great it can't possibly have flaws, maybe you just spike a story that has a negative slant. Are we really well served by that?

scrabble2• 13 years ago

If logs in the car indisputably show that the journalist's article did not match the experience, then he should be called a liar and we would be well served by it.

slantyyz3• 13 years ago

NYT published their version of the log (via the Verge): http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/02/10/automobiles/10t...

gojomo• 13 years ago

According to that chart, reviewer stalled out after traveling 51 miles (point 7) after seeing an estimated range of 32 miles (point 6). Except for the cold overnight loss-of-estimated-range, the car's reported range estimates all seem accurate and conservative.

So, was the 'detour' Musk refers to mixed in with the overnight drop? Or perhaps there was another unreported drain on the battery, overnight?

Looking back at the original article - www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?pagewanted=all - it seems that at low-power-charge point 6, "after an hour [Tesla] cleared me to resume the trip to Milford". Presumably, that's why the reporter set out on a 118-mile journey (6-7, 7-8) with a car whose self-reported estimated range was only 32 miles.

So some things to look for in Musk's reply: (1) Why the severe overnight range drop? (2) Why the mixed-signals about whether it was OK to depart Norwich (point 6)?

kingkawn2• 13 years ago

The NYT does not seemingly have the incentive to fabricate this much data. Musk on the other hand is defending his company.

I look forward to their being more information released, but given the above chart, I do not immediately believe that the NYT reporter lied just because the company that was being reviewed says so.

kryptiskt• 13 years ago

Everybody else for that matter, this seems to be a very cavalier use of what should be private data. Not at all what I would like to see as somebody who cares about privacy. Is it possible to turn off the logging?

sp3322• 13 years ago

Near the top of the article: Tesla data logging is only turned on with explicit written permission from customers, but after Top Gear BS, we always keep it on for media.

VBprogrammer• 13 years ago

I would guess that when Tesla allow you to borrow one of their cars for the purpose of writing a review one of the lines on the contract says they are allowed to record your journey. The original article mentions it is normally turned off for customers.

entropy_• 13 years ago

From the article:

"Tesla data logging is only turned on with explicit written permission from customers, but after Top Gear BS, we always keep it on for media."

Volpe• 13 years ago

Read the article.

It states you have to explicitly sign to have your data logged, and they have it on by default for media reviews due to some incident with Top Gear.

001sky• 13 years ago

isn't the temperature variability of li-ion a rookie mistake? have you ever taken a camera skiing? I did last week and it froze in 15-20 minutes, due to neg 15 wind chill and and exterior placement. Warmed it up, it worked fine.

If tesla is selling the car on the east coast, this is not a "fake" scenario. From a PR perspective, the damage is done. Gotcha;s aside by either NYT or Tesla (whoever is right) it sorta doesn;t matter...

lnanek22• 13 years ago

Tesla S has a battery heating system, although that's why you are supposed to plug it in overnight, which didn't happen in this case, apparently. So "not working in the cold" becomes "uses extra power to keep itself warm in the cold".

ams6110• 13 years ago

Of course you still have to basically chose whether you believe Musk's log data or the NYT's test results (that is to say, either could be faked).

jonknee15• 13 years ago

It was a bizarre piece, especially for the NY Times. It read like someone who got a car that had a 30MPG sticker on the window, put in exactly 10 gallons of gas and planned a trip of exactly 300 miles. In the snow. Any normal person wouldn't have even been in that situation, but the reporter then proceeded to use every opportunity to double down on his bad choices.

Tucked towards the end was a note about how the mileage estimate is indeed an estimate and that cold weather (or hot!) among other things can affect milage. Shocker.

Now finding out that the facts may not have been represented is even more curious.

Thrymr3• 13 years ago

To be fair, the reporter did leave a margin of error. He may not have understood the uncertainty in the mileage estimates, but he wasn't planning things to the mile. It doesn't seem unreasonable for him to have believed that a range greater than the distance planned by a factor of 2 was safe before parking the car overnight.

jonknee15• 13 years ago

He neglected to fully charge when he had the chance (chances actually) or to plug it in overnight. He had a story to write and made sure it ended up like he wanted.

barney54• 13 years ago

The NY Times is standing behind the review. https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/301071288326307840 https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/301071386141667329

Let's see that car data Mr. Musk.

GeorgeTirebiter• 13 years ago

NYT's Judith Miller lied about WMDs. So the paper isn't exactly known for accuracy.

taylorbuley• 13 years ago

Forgetting to turn off the tape recorder: classic journalism trick.

lotso2• 13 years ago

Even if the reporter fabricated parts of the story, aren't the concerns about driving in cold weather still relevant? Any Tesla owners want to weigh in?

jonknee15• 13 years ago

No more so than the concerns of driving in warm weather (AC uses electricity). You get less than optimal mileage in less than optimal conditions. This is true for any vehicle. My gas powered car jumps around on its range calculation too.

marvin2• 13 years ago

As a Norwegian and Tesla investor, I must admit I'm a bit worried by this story. Isn't range also affected by the batteries performing worse in cold weather? If this effect is worse than Tesla had anticipated (weather this cold is routine where I live, Norway, and this is slated to become the second biggest Model S market after the US), I am worried that they might have missed other things as well.

Tesla is located in California. It's a really hot and really dry climate. How about cabin fogging and moisture? How about the #1 killer of cars in wet and icy climates, rust? It seems elementary, and it should be. But like I said, I must admit I'm a bit worried.

WiseWeasel3• 13 years ago

One big difference is that heat (and thus warm air) is a by-product of internal combustion, so a typical car's heater will ALWAYS work, which turns out to be critical for survival in certain climates. Having the A/C go down in extremely hot weather will leave you uncomfortable; having the heater go down in extremely cold weather can kill you.

lotso2• 13 years ago

Sure, but my gas powered car doesn't take hours to charge and the mileage does not fluctuate as much as an electronic car does due to weather.

cjensen• 13 years ago

NYT takes facts seriously and they issue written corrections for even the most trivial inaccuracies. If the allegations by Musk are true, the article's author will be looking for a new job soon.

lclarkmichalek• 13 years ago

That's good, as according to everyone in this thread, all journalists do is lie and every action they take is malicious.

Ygg2• 13 years ago

I had experience with journalist and they don't so much as lie as much as they "enhance the truth". Like your battery was lowish on cold weather but you still got there, but in your journal you write "Battery took cold badly and I was unsure if it would get there with the charge I had. By grace of gods and not Tesla I managed to get there". Compare that sentence to this "Battery worked below optimal when weather was below freezing, but I still got where I wanted." Which one sounds more appealing to general public? Which one is more sensational.

TL;DR http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623#c...

arjie• 13 years ago

Experience shows that this is a myth. Judith Miller was peddling rubbish for months (years, according to Salon.com) before she was stopped. The NYT isn't special and belief that it is so is dangerous.

abat• 13 years ago

The thing about product reviews in mainstream publications like the NYTimes, is that their goal isn't just to tell you how good the product is. Most of the readers aren't actually on the market for a Tesla, they just want to be entertained and feel like they learned something new. To reach these casual readers, the reviews really need to be narrative stories. "Range anxiety" makes for a very good narrative because it adds a layer of suspense (ie "will he make it?"), so it makes sense that the reviewer would have a motive for faking the review even if his goal isn't to hurt Tesla.

That being said I have no idea if the allegations are true and am eagerly awaiting Tesla's full blog post with evidence.

michael_miller• 13 years ago

I'm skeptical of Musk's claim that the review was fabricated. What motive would the author have to fake the review? He would lose all of his credibility as a reporter, essentially killing his carer if anyone found out. Seems like a really high price to pay.

That said, Musk also has a lot to lose by calling out a reporter for fabricating data. It's a pretty serious allegation, and he could get into hot water over it. Therefore, my intuition is that either: 1) Musk is not reading the data correctly, missing some important details, or 2) The data was recorded incorrectly by the car. My bets are on (2).

el_cuadrado• 13 years ago

According to this logic, reporters should not lie about anything.

Unfortunately, this phrase: "lose all of his credibility as a reporter" is already an oxymoron.

stdgy• 13 years ago

I'm not particularly optimistic about modern journalistic integrity, but the New York Times is a far cry from being a 'TMZ'.

They're an organization I respect and trust, and I suspect I'm not alone. I'll be very upset if the data clearly supports Musk's claims.

yajoe• 13 years ago

Apparently lying or exaggerating is common in 'journalism.' Probably based on our desire to weave narratives. I don't disagree with you or know anything about this case, but let me provide an anecdote where (1) seems more likely despite the abundance of attention, reputation, and high stakes (I just read this on plane yesterday by coincidence):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732395190457829...

Context on cultural significance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood

nlh2• 13 years ago

I have absolutely no idea what the facts of this case are - BUT - to your point, an author's motive to "enhance" his reporting a very simple: It makes for a more interesting story. A more interesting story gets more views, more people talk about it, and it enhances the (perceived) reputation of the reporter.

Also, as much as it pains me to say it, there's precedence for this sort of thing. Simply put: reporters make shit up from time to time.

Again, however, I have absolutely no idea who's right/wrong here and won't make a single assumption until the facts are out.

roc2• 13 years ago

> "Seems like a really high price to pay."

And yet Jayson Blair and Judith Miller rolled those dice. And that's just to name two high profile cases at that same paper.

I wouldn't be so sure that's such a rare thing.

Swannie2• 13 years ago

Why?

Writers are expected to deliver a "good read". Nothing beats a bit of tragedy!

Writing a review that stands out against lots of positive reviews can give you a reputation as someone who isn't scared of controversy. This could have been a career boosting "critical" review.

The industry at large is still pro-petroleum. Want a reputation as pro-electric? Annoy your mainstream motoring marketing departments - the ones that lend you a stream of high quality vehicles to try, take you to track days, invite you to nice launch events, if you're lucky, fly you to their German HQ for new launches...

mikec3k2• 13 years ago

That's it exactly. You don't want to piss off the oil companies, so you always make electric or hybrid vehicles look as bad as possible.

iooi• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

PeterisP2• 13 years ago

While not lying, it is common to exaggerate details as putting them in a more colorful light makes for more interesting articles that attract more readers. Pretty much all major media are doing that.

Steko• 13 years ago

"What motive would the author have to fake the review?"

No one is saying he faked the whole review just that he omitted a couple heavily mitigating details. Since there were multiple legs where the car was claimed to come up short it will be interesting to see if all of those are refuted by the data or not.

hullo• 13 years ago

Elon Musk: "NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/301049593385340928

From another article the "long detour" appears to have been getting stuck in traffic in lower Manhattan. Now, I don't know if Elon does much NYC driving, but IMO it's not worth pinning your credibility on a quick trip back to the interstate from the city.

imjk2• 13 years ago

It's interesting that they put an energy/climate journalist on this review as opposed to an automobile specialist. You can see the authors article archive here: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b...

VeejayRampay• 13 years ago

One of the motives I can think of is rather simple: oil in the USA is a BIG economy, one that the likes of Tesla Motors would more than likely disrupt. Maybe it is in the best interests for some people to keep at the status quo for a while longer.

beedogs• 13 years ago

> What motive would the author have to fake the review?

Have you ever noticed who advertises heavily in newspapers? Lots of auto dealerships and car manufacturers.

smackfu10• 13 years ago

The main thrust of the article seemed to be that Tesla's charging stations aren't sufficient in the Northeast, being almost at max range apart. I doubt even Musk would disagree with that.

jonknee15• 13 years ago

No, the crux was that this car is useless because Tesla's charging stations are sufficient in the Northeast and that the car doesn't have the range that it should and that if you get this car it will leave you stranded.

Tesla has just started making their charging network so of course it's not sufficient in the Northeast, it's not sufficient anywhere. It's also not intended to be the sole supplier of electricity for your car, and the indented use of a Tesla vehicle is not long road trips. Most people will leave their home every day with a full charge and arrive home at night with almost a full charge.

srlake• 13 years ago

I'm impressed that he doesn't hesitate to call out the NY Times. Musk clearly doesn't care about politics or tiptoeing around sensitive issues.

natural219• 13 years ago

The length of the detour really matters here. Even if Tesla's claims were true, unless there was truly malicious reporting going on, I think even this kind of basic negligence is still a valid point against the Model S. Consumers might forget to charge their car properly, or not take into account detours/pitstops when planning for the Model S's range.

Note -- I absolutely love Tesla and I can't wait for them to prove everyone wrong, but that still doesn't make the initial claim entirely invalid. I want to see the data before I make conclusions.

rthomas6• 13 years ago

I don't really see how this is different than forgetting to put gas in a car, other than the larger amount of time it takes to charge a Tesla.

codex5• 13 years ago

It is different, because range can change depending on external factors you have no control over. You can charge the car thinking you have 300 miles of range, and you do. Then you make the same trip again, but an overnight frost takes a huge chunk of that away from you, and now you can't make it back. That's the apparent situation, anyway. It won't happen often but can happen in special situations: ski trips, having to park your car outside due to lack of indoor spots, an extra day in the airport parking lot, etc.

jessaustin7• 13 years ago

It's different because when you realize your mistake with a gasoline engine, as long as you aren't driving in eastern Utah or some similar remote location, you can easily stop at any one of thousands of convenient gas stations to correct your error. Perhaps that will be true someday for Tesla, but it isn't today.

Jabbles• 13 years ago

I haven't seen one, but I'd think it's pretty hard to think you've fully charged it when you haven't.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

If anyone even doubts whether the NYT are going to respond to this (of course they are), you can ping their public editor @sulliview, who's an immense treasure to the paper. She'll report on it, no doubt.

Zimahl• 13 years ago

Tesla blog coming soon detailing what actually happened on Broder’s NYTimes “range test”. Also lining up other journalists to do same drive.

I'm not a journalist but I would be more than happy to test drive and do a write-up! I would think it would be pretty easy to find 1000 journalists willing to do this.

codex5• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, it's not an exact repro, as the original journalist's problems had to do with cold weather, and the weather is getting warmer as we speak.

protomyth2• 13 years ago

How can someone do the same drive unless the temperature and weather conditions are the same?

eli4• 13 years ago

Tesla previously accused BBC's Top Gear of airing a "phony" review and sued them. The case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the review was essentially true and that no reasonable person would draw untrue conclusions from it. (my words)

I haven't read every last word on the case, but it seems to me that Top Gear gave Tesla a very harsh review... but that they didn't cheat or do anything really wrong.

IMHO, I would at least give the NYTimes a chance to respond before jumping to any conclusions.

Top Gear's take on the lawsuit: http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2011/04/02/tesla-vs-to...

Tesla's reply: http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/how-we-see-it-top-ge...

Article on case being thrown out for a second time: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/23/top-gear-libel-c...

smackfu10• 13 years ago

And that's with the UK libel laws, which wikipedia describes as:

"English defamation law puts the burden of proof on the defendant, rather than the plaintiff, and is considered an impediment to free speech in much of the developed world. "

ImprovedSilence2• 13 years ago

I like Tesla, and wish them really well, but it's TOP GEAR... I love Top Gear, but to expect any sort of honest, unbiased, and completely factual review from them is madness in the first place. That's really what makes the show so great is that it is nothing but jokes. The only thing in it though, is that there's a little bit of truth behind every funny joke...

Jamiecon• 13 years ago

Agreed. I love Tesla. I'm really excited by what they're doing, and have nothing but admiration for Elon Musk.

However, Top Gear have made their reputation winding people up. He was being pretty touchy by responding.

Here's what I posted at the time: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856821

Of course, only time will tell in the case of the NYT.

cowkingdeluxe• 13 years ago

So in summary, while Top Gear was correct in saying it had a 55 mile range with the way they were driving it on their race track, they falsely claimed that the car ran out of charge and had to be pushed into a garage. Instead they just turned off the car and pushed it into a garage.

But the judge said that this is the kind of thing you expect from Top Gear as an entertainment show and it was ok to say it ran out of charge?

eli4• 13 years ago

Well, a claim can't be libelous if it's true, regardless of how entertainingly it is presented. I didn't mean to re-litigate the case. You can read what the judge actually wrote here: http://www.onebrickcourt.com/files/cases/tesla_73294.pdf The more interesting bits are towards the bottom.

aeturnum• 13 years ago

If I remember correctly, Top Gear did not say the roadster ran out of batteries and had to be pushed. Rather, they said if it ran out of batteries, you may have to push it, and demonstrated with the car turned off. This looks bad, but isn't technically libel.

aidos• 13 years ago

HN discussion on it at the time:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400822

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Top Gear's review was mostly very positive. Tesla picking up on the "bad" only advertised the "bad" to any one who hadn't seen the Top Gear review. Now we might see the same thing again here with the NYT.

I'm all for electric cars, seems to me to be the future. But if Musk and Co will insist on reacting like a scolded car every time some reviewer says something negative, in a really over sensitive way, they aint never gonna look good.

On top of that, they are aggravating relationships that could be crucial in the future. Dunno about the NYT, but I can see Top Gear just ignoring them, even when the car does improve. And there would come a time when TG does say, "yes this car is now practical". Well, there might have been. Who knows now.

Sad that Musk is still crying over the TG "BS" too. Seems a bit of a grudge holder, even when proved wrong in law.

I really like Musk's usual style and what he stands for, I also think he is doing a great job developing these cars, and soon, he will get there, but all this is a real turn off to me. And I can't help thinking he is making his own life worse with these reactions.

stcredzero3• 13 years ago

> Sad that Musk is still crying over the TG "BS" too. Seems a bit of a grudge holder, even when proved wrong in law.

Ronald Reagan's publicists used to love it when Frontline would have some scathing exposé of the administration, so long as they accompanied it with stock video of Ronald Reagan going around looking presidential, cutting ribbons at new senior care centers and such. It didn't matter if the announcer was discussing his cutting funds for such places. The text of the message didn't matter to them at all, only the images.

We think of ourselves as lofty, intelligent Homo sapiens, but we really mostly operate on an ape-like, "monkey-see, monkey do," level.

If you put yourself in shoes where such effects are really significant and cost you money or valuable publicity, I think you'd start to understand a bit more. It's much the same with various forms of prejudice and "oversensitivity." It's difficult to really understand the costs to all parties involved, short of direct experience.

omni• 13 years ago

> proved wrong in law.

There is no such thing. Law is inherently subjective.

dave1619• 13 years ago

For those interested, here's an interview with Elon Musk on CNBC this morning. He explains his reasoning pretty clearly.

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000147320

I'm sure Elon Musk and Tesla are glad that they have the data logs for the trip. In my view, this is going to be key. All you need to do is compare the account by the journalist with the actual data and see where the discrepancies are.

It might be too earlier to tell w/o looking at the data ourselves, by if I had to bet I'd bet on Elon/Tesla for this one.

ricardobeat3• 13 years ago

Well said: "if you had a gas vehicle, filled the tank halfway, meandered through downtown manhattan, and then expected to reach your previous destination people would just think you're a fool"

artursapek2• 13 years ago

raced to your previous destination

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revelation4• 13 years ago

Since the video player on their site is both Flash and not working for me, get the raw MP4 from here:

http://pdl.iphone.cnbc.com/VCPS/Y2013/M02D11/3000147320/2ED3...

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imjk2• 13 years ago

It's easy to write off Elon Musk's attacks on Top Gear and the NYT as an overzealous founder defending his company or as a savvy PR strategy against bad press, but you also have to keep in mind the number of parties that want to to see Tesla fail and the huge amount of influence they have, namely the oil and traditional auto industries. Most "revolutionary" companies come under similar resistance. I'm interested to see what facts Musk lays out.

Also, it's interesting to note the archive of the article's author: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b.... Seems like he's a climate/energy specialist rather than an automobile specialist as I had assumed.

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vor_2• 13 years ago

Implying that the the oil and auto industries have gotten to the NYT is a serious accusation. Incidentally, the NYT is sticking by its story and has called Musk's accusations "flatly untrue".

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foobarqux4• 13 years ago

Serious but obvious. Media companies make money primarily from large advertisers.

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smackfu10• 13 years ago

Jalopnik has a response from the Times:

"The Times's February 10 article recounting a reporter's test drive in a Tesla Model S was completely factual, describing the trip in detail exactly as it occurred. Any suggestion that the account was "fake" is, of course, flatly untrue. Our reporter followed the instructions he was given in multiple conversations with Tesla personnel. He described the entire drive in the story; there was no unreported detour. And he was never told to plug the car in overnight in cold weather, despite repeated contact with Tesla."

http://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-super-pissed-about-new-york-ti...

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jonknee15• 13 years ago

From the land of common sense:

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts

> Tesla recommends charging Model S each night or when convenient to maintain optimum driving range and battery health. If you go on vacation, plug in your Model S before you leave.

The reporter is either an idiot or he wanted to become stranded.

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smackfu10• 13 years ago

That doesn't make it seem like the charge should go down overnight, just that you should top it up whenever you can because the range is pretty limited.

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axusgrad• 13 years ago

If Tesla sold millions of these cars, lots of people would not read the web page or manual about special maintenance conditions. It makes perfect sense to write a review from the perspective of average or below intelligence.

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mongol• 13 years ago

The review gave me the impression that the vehicle did not provide accurate (over a period of time) predictions of how much mileage was left. If that is the case, why should the vehicle logs be more accurate? If the car measures something wrong, the logs would reflect that.

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CamperBob25• 13 years ago

Presumably the vehicle is logging its GPS position at regular intervals. That's a pretty uncontroversial thing to do.

Then, the car uses the GPS mileage data alongside numerous other inputs to update its cruising range estimate based on what it thinks the batteries' current state of charge is. As anyone who has ever used a laptop or a cell phone knows, that is a far-from-solved problem.

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wcchandler• 13 years ago

FTA:

> "the tested Tesla was filmed being pushed into the shed in order to show what would happen if the Roadster had run out of charge."

Is this true? Is there no "emergency portable charge kit" that one could haul to anyplace with electricity and get a quick charge, possibly good for ~15 miles? If not then I smell a business opportunity.

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ricardobeat3• 13 years ago

AFAIK every car comes with a portable charger that works from standard wall outlets.

http://www.teslamotors.com/charging#/outlet

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codex5• 13 years ago

What is it about Elon Musk's companies constantly suing people? Tesla sued Top Gear for libel. SpaceX sued a safety consultant asking clarification about a rumor [1]. Now this tiff may well end in a lawsuit.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/20/spacex_sues_consulta...

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jlgreco7• 13 years ago

Actually reading that article you link, that seems like a pretty massive mischaracterization of that lawsuit.

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codex5• 13 years ago

Yeah, it's a bad article, but the best I could find. The article is slanted because the it only contains quotes from SpaceX, so you hear only one side of the story, with nothing from the defense. The case was settled.

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neurotech1• 13 years ago

So how many lawsuits is that? 1 for SpaceX and 1 for Tesla...

The SpaceX lawsuit seems justified, since it was basically extortion, as a thinly veiled consulting offer. SpaceX have real astronauts, with real experience, to advise them. This includes retired astronaut & shuttle commander Mark Kelly.

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mikec3k2• 13 years ago

I'm willing to bet that guy was paid off by an oil company.

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twoodfin• 13 years ago

Really? I'll take that bet. Shall we say $1,000?

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solsenNet• 13 years ago

I think we've proven that we don't need the East Coast for: the PC revolution, the Internet revolution and the Mobile revolution.

They can sit out the electric car revolution as well...

Who the hell wants to go to "Milford, Conn." anyways ;)

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tokenadult2• 13 years ago

From the update to the submitted article: "Update: A New York Times statement as reported by CNBC

https://twitter.com/CNBC

doesn’t mince its words: 'Jan. 10 article recounting a reporter’s test drive in a Tesla Model S was completely factual [...] Any suggestion that the account was "fake" is, of course, flatly untrue.'"

Well, that joins issue directly with what Musk is claiming. Now it will be interesting to check the facts.

Earlier Hacker News thread about the New York Times review:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5191086

AFTER EDIT: I wonder if the reporter had a GPS-enabled tracking device on his person while he was doing the reporting? Maybe, maybe not, but that would be one more way to establish where the reporter (and, thus, presumptively the vehicle) was at different times during the test drive.

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revelation4• 13 years ago

The car has a GPS on it, and (for owners) theres a REST API from Tesla that will relay its coordinates to you. I assume they are logging positions when logging is enabled.

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spikels• 13 years ago

I used to take for granted that what I read in the NYT and learned from other highly regarded sources was factual and thoughtful. Then I read an articles about a subject I knew really, really well and the reporter got it completely wrong. Then it happened again and again. This made me worry about the quality of the information on subjects I don't know about.

I began to realize that journalists are not experts in all things or sometimes even one thing. Instead they are usually simply good writers operating under tight deadlines. And their goal is to write pieces that attract the attention of readers not simply provide accurate information. Lastly they are humans who make mistakes and have biases.

Take everything you read with a grain of salt. Think about how likely it is to be correct and not sensationalized or biased in some way. Check with others sources before you add what you read to your knowledge. The most dangerous thing is to think you know something that is either not known or wrong.

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ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Challenging thing. I agree the NYT article read like a hatchet job but still. Nobody likes having their baby called ugly, the response though could be a bit more measured. Looking forward to Tesla's log analysis and their take on the situation.

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krschultz• 13 years ago

I went to school in Newark Delaware and lived in Groton Connecticut.It's a long drive. There is almost always traffic somewhere.

I wouldn't expect an electric car to make it without a charge. I would usually fill up my gas tank twice. The fact that they made it close is great. The fact that the charging stations are that far apart sucks.

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vilda2• 13 years ago

That's a chicken and egg problem. Electrical charging stations are far cheaper to build than gas stations. At least until there's enough electrical cars to require an upgrade of the whole infrastructure.

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jasonkolb2• 13 years ago

From the NYT: "[The reporter] was never told to plug the car in overnight in cold weather, despite repeated contact with Tesla."

This sounds like a customer service failure to me.

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grecy5• 13 years ago

If a person writing a car review were test-driving a brand new Ferrarri, and was in constant contact with customer service about something-or-other, do you think they'd tell them to fill up the gas tank? or drive carefully in snow?

No. They would assume a person writing a car review is not an idiot and understands basic car concepts.

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friendly_chap• 13 years ago

But there are a lot more people familiar with gas based cars than electric cars.

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codex5• 13 years ago

It's a bit disingeious of Musk to propose that journalists repeat this trip, knowing full well that the problems reported in the original article stem from cold weather. The weather on the East Coast is getting warmer by the day. It is almost spring. Even if Tesla can tell each journalist to stop charging at Norwich at the same point they did originally (assuming they can determine that reliably), the battery state at that point, and going forward, will be different because of the weather.

The sensationalist part of this review is the bricking of the car. This happens shortly after the reporter claims that "after an hour they (Tesla) cleared me to resume the trip to Milford." So, any detour is only meaningful to the outcome of this review if it occurs after this clearance, because at that point Tesla HQ knows what the range of the car should be, and whether or not he will make it, and when to tell him to stop charging. Milford is a straight shot from Norwich. If a detour did occur in this critical period, it would reflect very badly on the author.

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joering2• 13 years ago

hmmm lets see: a journalist of media behemoth that major stake is in hands of the same people that have stakes in gasoline car manufacturers drafted a negative review for a company with a product that may forever shift the way we drive cars and how much we spend for this privilege...

> Tesla Model S was completely factual [...] Any suggestion that the account was ‘fake’ is, of course, flatly untrue.”

Yes of course, CNBC never lied in the entire history of a written word! [1].

Also, my memory ma not serve well, but weren't the CNBC journalist send to take photos from camps in Afganistan and when it turned out that there were no camps, they found some fence and faked the story of a reporter being inside the "camp" by taking photos through said fence?

[1] http://www.imediaethics.org/News/3061/Cnbc_corrects__apologi...

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salimmadjd• 13 years ago

Horrible reporting by TNW! Musk claims, "NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn't actually charge to max & took a long detour"

If you read the NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the...

The reporter doesn't claim he had charged the battery fully in all occasions. He states how long he charged the car for and what the milage indicator provided.

I can argue Musk is trying to get ahead of the story and create doubt among potential buyers about the veracity of the story. That's all he needs to do.

Basically, Tesla will probably come out with data that shows the battery was not fully charged and hence why lower milage. However, the reporter says he only charged the car for the distance he thought he needed. Therefore, Tesla will be a head of the story and the headlines his PR will create is that the car was not fully charged. And most people, including readers of this site, will not do further investigation. Rest assure those who are still considering buying a Tesla will buy it not knowing if the battery might have a temperature range issue.

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newman314• 13 years ago

I'm looking at this from a different angle. Based on what I read from this article [1], Tesla is able to send data from a car back to the factory and on at least one occasion has done so without the permission and knowledge of the owner.

"In at least one case, Tesla went even further. The Tesla service manager admitted that, unable to contact an owner by phone, Tesla remotely activated a dying vehicle’s GPS to determine its location and then dispatched Tesla staff to go there. It is not clear if Tesla had obtained this owner’s consent to allow this tracking5, or if the owner is even aware that his vehicle had been tracked. Further, the service manager acknowledged that this use of tracking was not something they generally tell customers about."

"There appears to be no reference to Tesla having the ability to track a vehicle’s location at its discretion in either the data recording section of the Roadster Owners Manual [Page 1-2, Column 2: PDF] or the addendum that covers the GSM connection [Page 9: PDF] "

AFAIK, Tesla has never addressed this publicly.

[1] http://theunderstatement.com/post/18030062041/its-a-brick-te...

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jessaustin7• 13 years ago

I agree this is troubling, but sadly I don't think it will be much longer until most of us submit to this sort of monitoring by our insurance companies.

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Vinnix• 13 years ago

Yeah I met an owner of one of these and not a single problem was with it...As enthusiasts we read articles to know about what makes something great.

FWIW, NYT is the last place I would go for a good car review ;)

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Lazare• 13 years ago

Tesla really does themselves no favours by their confrontational stance with the media. I hope - for their sakes - they are on stronger ground here than they were with their embarrassing lawsuit against the BBC.

Backstory: The BBC show Top Gear reviewed a Tesla, and gave it a glowing review, but noted that it was very expensive, that it would only last 55 miles if driven hard on a race track, that the brakes broke once during testing, that if you run out of charge you'd have to push it, and that at one point it overheated and suffered reduced performance. Tesla hit the ceiling and sued for libel over every negative comment in the review. But as even they eventually admitted, every single claim was absolutely true, and a judge threw the lawsuit out as completely groundless. Tesla's argument was that it may have been true, but it was misleading, but even in Britain the truth is an absolute defence for libel, as 30 seconds with Google would have told them.

Now they're going after another news organisation, again claiming that a review contained lies. If they can't substantiate this one either, they're going to look like idiots.

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hristov3• 13 years ago

Top Gear did not use the truth as a defense. On the contrary the judge ruled that the truth did not matter. In other words the judge ruled that Tesla would not be entitled to win even if Top Gear had lied. The case never got to the fact finding stage.

Tesla did have evidence that Top Gear lied -- the car had never run out of charge, even though Top Gear said it did. But the case never got to the stage where Tesla would present this evidence.

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jusben1369• 13 years ago

I admire Musk and love what he's doing in general. I think he's an inspirational entrepreneur. It makes sense that he's defending his company. Having said that I think this is an interesting tack to take. Firstly, this is the New York Times. I'm sure they take their integrity pretty seriously. Secondly, Musk has sued before so that would make them particularly sensitive to ensuring that they got their facts and figures correct if they're going to post a negative article. Thirdly, I'm not sure how much of an argument Musk is really mounting here. There are still a bunch of charges left unaddressed. That the charge dissipated much faster than it was telling the driver. That cutting things like heating and speed were solutions? That it didn't have a sufficient charge to unlock a handbrake etc.

Why does this matter? Well, we all know Tesla is a cutting edge technology. Those who buy that car understand that they're going to take on additional hardships and risks vs a gasoline vehicle. Culturally, what message is Musk sending by attacking the author and avoiding many of the issues raised? If you buy a Tesla and experience problems do you want a company that questions your honesty and integrity or one that says "Sounds like a horrible experience let's do everything on our power to fix it?"

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mncolinlee• 13 years ago

This is why range extenders will stay popular even as battery technology improves.

In ten years' time, I predict that straight battery-only electric vehicles will cost less than the gasoline equivalent and be VERY popular as commuter vehicles because gasoline prices will be over $6/gallon (especially if we build the Keystone XL pipeline to send more oil overseas).

One car in many households will likely require some kind of range extender, which increases the purchase and maintenance costs. There's a reason why SUVs are so rare in Europe: we've been spoiled by cheap gasoline in America.

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DigitalJack2• 13 years ago

Hopefully we'll be on capacitors by then. Perhaps backed by a battery, in a similar fashion to some hybrids today having a battery backed by gas.

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gdeglin• 13 years ago

The NY Times article didn't pass the sniff test the first time I read it.

If you look at the map on the article, it clearly shows that the writer chose not to charge in Manhattan when remaining range read 79 miles and destination was 73 miles away (he barely made it). Later he leaves Norwich after only charging the car up to 32 miles of range remaining while the destination is 68 miles away... No wonder he ran out and had to be towed after 51 miles.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/02/10/automobiles/10t...

Oddly, some of this data is conveniently excluded from the article. The writer claims Tesla cleared him to drive from Norwich to Milford (68 miles). But he fails to mention that at the time the car reported 32 miles of range remaining (As indicated in the data on the map). Something is very fishy here.

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danielweber8• 13 years ago

It does seem colossally stupid to drive a 79+ mile trip when the meter says you only have 32 miles left.

There are issues with how Tesla reports its charge and maintains it charge, but, seriously, why try a trip that the car is telling you you cannot make? (EDIT: and that's after the car has been over-reporting its range for you the whole time. What, did you think it suddenly flipped the way it makes mistakes??)

ANOTHER EDIT: The writer says in his article: "after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford." The trip wasn't 79+ miles, it was about 46 + 11 miles. I wonder if it's going to be he-said-she-said about whether he was approved to make the drive.

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stcredzero3• 13 years ago

Our culture is badly broken. When "the social contract" for broad swathes of society is so little regarded that lying is a matter of course, then we have already reached worrying levels of dysfunction, of the sort that historians point out when they discuss the fall of the Roman Empire, Czarist Russia, or the USSR. A point all of those have in common: The denizens came to assume public information was false as a matter of course, as a time and sanity saving measure. Large swathes of our society think of lying, even when deceiving large swathes of the public, as a kind of sport, and profiting from such lying as a kind of serendipitous fortune to be exploited without conscience, like finding cash on the sidewalk.

Such attitudes are shoved in my face when I see exclamations like, "Pictures or it didn't happen!" It's the same when big media corporations trade in innuendo and conspiracy theories and deliberately sabotage the dissemination of knowledge for their own ends. Such attitudes are so pervasive, that large swathes of the population actually disbelieve in any kind of objective truth, and accept mere social proof as its substitute and superior.

It's entirely possible that the journalist in question is innocent of deception and only guilty of poor journalism and/or poor trip planning and/or insufficient UI design. However, the issue with the review and that of the social contract are entirely related. In a world where reality itself is relative and subject to social proof, there is no need to double check your facts or to prove the null hypothesis. In a world where science is just another fabricated self-serving belief system, there's no need to apply one's scientific literacy or application of physics learned in school when doing things like taking a car trip in winter. One only need know enough to read the dials and gauges to be a good consumer, then complain loudly if things do not go one's way.

True competence, be it in programming or journalism or any significant endeavor, requires diligence with and prostration to the truth. Our society as a whole has forgotten this and our society as a whole is oblivious to the price it is paying as a consequence.

Another way to think of it: Our society as a whole doesn't have the epistemological foundation needed for the level of technical sophistication it has.

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iyulaev4• 13 years ago

There's an interesting thread from the Tesla Motors club, with lots of input from actual Tesla owners:

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13633-NYT-arti...

From actual Tesla owners, the performance seen by the NYT reporter appears to be par for the course. To date most all-electric vehicles have struggled in the cold. The Nissan Leaf has a terrible time of it, with the range decreased significantly. I was honestly excited to see how Tesla S card would fare in cold weather, and how the Tesla engineers got around this problem. Disappointingly it looks like they didn't, and (anecdotally) the problem may be even worse on the Tesla S than on the roadster or even the Leaf. Bummer.

To everyone comparing the cold weather performance of the Tesla to an ICE: yes, ICEs do get harder to start and less efficient in the cold. But for an ICE, that kind of cold is significantly under 0 farenheit - most of the U.S. is at a low enough latitude that temperatures like this are rarely seen and modern ICE cars will start happily without the need for block heaters and other measures. The reporter had significant trouble at temperatures around 30F which even an air-cooled car from decades ago will shrug off. We're talking about maybe 10% of the population having to take special measures during especially cold times of the year (block heaters for temps < 0F) vs >50% of the population (plugging in overnight, every day, for temperatures <= 30F). HUGE difference

Another blog post which sounds a bit more horrific than the NYT experience, although the Tesla owner really takes it with a good attitude:

http://andwediditourway.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-not-so-ev...

Other interesting information gleaned from the thread - 120V is useless for electric cars, you really have to have a dedicated circuit for them. And did I mention they hate the cold?

I'm rooting for Tesla and for electric cars. But I do wish they were rated to perform at lower temperatures, and that everyone (Tesla and reporters alike) was more transparent about this. I'd rather see a few people turned off on electric cars and the rest informed and trained with the care and feeding of the cars during winter, than to see people stranded out in the cold because they weren't aware of their cars' performance envelopes.

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insaneirish• 13 years ago

To be pedantic, it is not that 120 V is not enough. It's that the amount of current you need at that voltage is prohibitive because of wire sizing, which is needed to minimize resistive voltage loss and dangerous wire overheating.

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iyulaev4• 13 years ago

Absolutely right. I was using 120V as shorthand for "the 120V/20A circuit that we're all used to."

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dredmorbius10• 13 years ago

Per Tesla's own charging estimates 110v/12A is good for about 5 miles/hour of charging. http://www.teslamotors.com/charging#/outlet

That's not particularly meaningful. 60 hours to a full 85kWh charge.

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revelation4• 13 years ago

ICEs are significantly less efficient at startup and until they get up to their normal operating temperatures. That's not so much a problem for long range trips, but taking multiple single-digit mile trips spaced apart in the time dimension.

EVs have no problem "starting" in low temperatures. You might not be able to draw as much power for the drive train as the pack is heating up, but it's not a primordial "fuel-air-mix won't explode" problem.

There is no "problem" to get around; you either risk your battery pack getting damaged or you have an active battery management system that regulates the packs temperature. That will consume power, no way around it.

Now there are some conflating issues we have to consider. Tesla recently disabled in a patch the sleeping modes of some onboard components, and this vampire load might be contributing greatly to the large loss of energy reported overnight. The other is the drivers mentality; you don't drive it to the point of 5% remaining and then fuel up, thats how you do it with ICEs. Instead, you just simply plug it in whereever you can. And frankly, if you are going to keep it outside overnight at very very low temperatures (thereby forcing the battery management system to expend energy for heating), plug it into a 120V. They can (contra to your statement) get enough power from even from a 120V to keep the battery pack (and your range) at least at the same level, if not adding range.

---

A side remark: I very much think this is a complete non-issue. 90% of driving is commuting, it is decidedly not long-range trips. And then this is mostly an issue of infrastructure; if there were at least 120V plugs at every parking lot, you wouldn't ever have to worry about these vampire loads. Infrastructure, since we are at it, is of course a much much bigger problem for gasoline cars; think of all the steps necessary to refine oil into gasoline and make it available at gas stations. Driving an ICE across states at the time of their advent would not have been a particularly enjoyable experience due to the general unavailability of fuel.

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majormajor• 13 years ago

It's blown out of proportion for the normal use case, but I still think it was a very interesting review. I didn't expect them to be great road-tripping vehicles at this point, but was a bit disappointed by how the weather affected things. Even Musk's comments so far don't change my impression of that: so it's fine for a road trip if you make sure you don't get stuck in traffic, and make sure you never ever miss a chance to get it fully charged up, especially if the weather is cold? That's just not going to be competitive convenience-wise for long trips right now, no matter how much spin you want to put on it. The open question to me is just how fast the driver was going on the highway (90+ would make me raise an eyebrow or too), I'm not really sympathetic to the rest of Musk's claims at all. And unless he can provide some conclusive log evidence, collaborated by outside evidence, that's far more damning than what his comments so far describe, it reflects pretty poorly on the company to me. Much more poorly than the original review, since I expected that to be pretty much a worst-case scenario—and was very interested in just how well it would handle that kind of stress test.

Edit: the thing that really bugs me about the response is that it's empty so far. If you've got conclusive evidence, show the evidence. Don't go all he-said-she-said in the meantime.

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Spooky23• 13 years ago

If you live in the Northeast, its a big deal. Give me a Prius or Volt any day.

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gcv• 13 years ago

> 90% of driving is commuting, it is decidedly not long-range trips.

Would you buy a second vehicle to accommodate your needs for the remaining 10% of your driving?

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iyulaev4• 13 years ago

Overblown, at least for modern cars. Girlfriend sometimes drives an ICE 1.5 miles to work, Gas mileage suffers ~30% versus freeway driving. When I did ~7 mile trips to work and back efficiency was <20% worse than freeway driving. Combustion chamber temps warm relatively quickly.

In theory you're correct. In practice, ICEs will start and operate at temperature of -40F (perhaps with a bit of help heating the oil). The Tesla in the article was brought to its knees in temperatures within the positive teens.

And then this is mostly an issue of infrastructure; if there were at least 120V plugs at every parking lot, you wouldn't ever have to worry about these vampire loads.

Except now you have to convince everyone to install 120V plugs in parking lots, wire them up, figure out a way to bill for this or provided it for free, AND you have to remind the consumer to plug in every time they park their car.

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refurb• 13 years ago

The reviews from Tesla owners who have their own experience with the car in cold weather is interesting.

Can anyone tell me why the car discharges when plugged into a 120V supply? It's mentioned in one of the links above and in the NYT article.

I'm aware that you can't supply much current with a standard 120V supply, but why would it discharge? I would imagine at a minimum you'd have a very slow charge rate, but from these two anecdotes, it appears in cold weather it still slowly loses charge when plugged into 120V.

Is the car constantly heating the battery? I could see that being the issue as engine block heaters draw a ton of current and they take a long time to heat up an engine block. I'm assuming the battery has a lot more thermal mass than a 300 lb engine block.

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ooorrr• 13 years ago

It's not discharging because it's plugged into 120V. It's discharging faster from the cold than the 120V is charging, so there's a net loss.

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hatcravat2• 13 years ago

I speculate that it is a interaction of several things:

1) The current firmware assumes there is "unlimited" energy available when charging, so it can keep the battery warm with little impact on charging rate (this is not a bad assumption for everything other than 120V/15A charging).

2) The current firmware assumes that the battery needs to be kept warm when charging (this is not a bad assumption for everything other than 120V/15A charging, but may not be correct for low-power charging).

3) The power required to keep the battery warm in near-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures is nearly the same as the maximum continuous power available from a 120V/15A outlet (1.44kW, because the maximum continuous load is only 80% of the maximum load), at least initially.

The firmware probably needs to be tweaked for cold-weather, low-power charging. The firmware needs to know how to estimate state of charge when the battery is colder than normal. It could probably prioritize charging ahead of heating until the battery reaches a higher state of charge.

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Tloewald3• 13 years ago

Great thread. Thank you for linking it. My recurring thought as i read through it was of the iPhone first and second generation when battery life was pretty awful and you tended to carry a charger and nurse your phone through the day (much as with my first GSM cellphone). The iphone 4 had battery life to the point where you just didnt need to care any more (like my motorola razr).

Problem is, Tesla doesn't have moore's law to make the car run faster on the same charge or allow more empty space for bigger batteries, so the only real solution is more charging stations and faster charging.

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hakaaaaak• 13 years ago

Good for Elon. Every CEO should stand up for his product like that.

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notdrunkatall2• 13 years ago

Tesla needs to pay gas stations to install 220v receptacles and include an adapter kit with every Model S that will fit all of the common plugs out there. That's all there is to it. Consumers aren't going to want to buy these cars en masse if they're scared of being stranded somewhere, and they're going to be scared of being stranded somewhere if it's 100 miles either way to the nearest charging station, regardless of how much range the car has left.

Are you reading this, Elon? Pay gas stations to install 220v receptacles, and map the locations of those stations onto your cars' GPS systems. Make the kit, and make a compartment for the kit. Make an announcement that you're going to start doing this, and start doing it NOW.

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kennethcwilbur• 13 years ago

This is silly. It's like buying a toaster and then complaining when it fails to make panini.

You don't get an electric vehicle for the purpose of driving from DC to New York.

I have always plugged my EV in on a 120 volt circuit. It gets about 50-60 miles of charge per night. My commute is 10 miles. The car is full every morning, no matter how cold it is.

YMMV

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anona• 13 years ago

Based on Tesla's past claims against Top Gear (that turned out in favor of Top Gear in court), I would give the NY Times the benefit of the doubt here. Especially since Tesla hasn't produced any evidence yet.

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hristov3• 13 years ago

That court case does not mean as much as you think it does. Just because Top Gear won, does not mean that they were truthful. The judge merely said that even if Top Gear lied their lie would not be legally actionable.

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lectrick• 13 years ago

I own a Chevy Volt and it gets about 20% less range in the ~32 degrees F temperatures we have around here in NYC environs right now.

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rtrunck• 13 years ago

NYT says the author drove the first 114 miles in 84 minutes (~81 mph avg)....

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ck2• 13 years ago

I'm curious if a private owner tried to sue Tesla for range claims if Tesla would magically show up with the logging data for the customer.

This will a be moot point with drones in the near future though, most vehicles will have a 24/7 travel log from the government, just like they track all phone calls domestically without warrants. It will be super easy for a cluster of drones to track every car from start to destination.

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bobsy• 13 years ago

Is this a design problem with the Tesla? With my petrol car I know when the car is completely filled with fuel. It is obvious in Tesla?

Pure speculation. This could be a UI problem. The journalist thought the car was charged and ready to go but it wasn't.

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ed_blackburn• 13 years ago

Is it terribly smart picking fights with the media when you're in the consumer business. Good luck to him for taking it on.

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cardine• 13 years ago

If you are rich enough to own a Tesla, you probably also are rich enough to have a second car or to fly. I've been considering getting a Tesla, and long distance doesn't matter that much to me because I'd take a 2 hour flight over a 7 hour drive any day.

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martinced• 13 years ago

I told you so right here on HN, just after the journalist posted his sensational article.

This is all too common from car journalists: some of them will try to fake any test they can to try to harm the reputation of an upcoming car many people do believe in.

I'm not saying that journalist did it: all I said is that you should always be suspicious of claims like that by journalists. Many of them are little attention whores so you have to read between the lines.

And wait for more tests, counter-claims, car owners reports, etc.

It's sad that the journalists (not this one specifically) lack integrity because you can never know if an article was honestly done or not (like in this case).

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Gravityloss2• 13 years ago

Maybe when Tesla becomes a more global brand, they'll start using heat pumps for heating.

It takes some effort to make a car that works in different conditions. Some brands that might work great in Central Europe have bad reputation in cold climates. Failure to start, puny indoor heating power, door insulation freezing shut, water lodging in concave spots and freezing. It is common enough that it is probably a conscious strategic choice to just not test / fix it. Then again, locally built houses also often fail in the weather. I guess humans never learn.

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Elon Musk calls NYT review of the Tesla Model S ‘fake,’ citing vehicle log data

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