Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-with-precision-and-judgment-but-not-integrity-in-tesla-test/

by rrreese • 13 years ago

86 99 13 years ago

publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com

"I could recite chapter and verse of the test drive, the decisions made along the way, the cabin temperature of the car, the cruise control setting and so on. I don’t think that’s useful here."

Yes, yes it would be, especially when addressing the integrity of one of their journalists! She wore kid gloves when she rendered the comments regarding his "mistakes". Kid gloves are not appropriate.

It appears the sentiment of this editor's blog post is essentially "we'll defend our journalists even when their articles have been exposed as unfairly biased." It feels like the journalistic equivalent of the thin blue line.

wpietri4• 13 years ago

I was blown away by that as well. She might as well have written, "I have come to my conclusion, which is that we are fine, but since you people on the internet are meanies who are just going to argue your preconceived conclusions, I'm not going to tell you how I got there."

The weird thing is, I think she's probably right. But I think the job of the public editor is precisely to address controversies of their reporters in sufficient detail that we don't have to trust her. Ombudsmen have to be seen as scrupulously fair to outsiders or there's no point in having them.

stcredzero9• 13 years ago

Well, to be fair, from the POV of an insider, I could see how it's a gray area when you get to the point of saying someone thought they were doing a good job, but it looks like he's incompetent at getting facts right and curbing his own bias. Sometimes you have to stop short of even being close to saying a colleague needs to be fired, and let those matters play out quietly later on.

tunesmith• 13 years ago

Well, that said just about nothing at all.

fiendsan• 13 years ago

absolutely... especially for an editor! she talked a lot and said nothing! she has no opinion and leaves it absolutely open, aparently there is no fault by anyone? ... well at least the CEO of Tesla gave facts and not just his opinion (like the new york time journalist and editor)!

taligent4• 13 years ago

So which is it ? Does the editor have an opinion or not have an opinion.

Also Musk gave his interpretation of the facts. One person's deliberate deceit is another's innocent mistake.

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

Elon Musk seems satisfied: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/303585941304537090

jug6ernaut2• 13 years ago

Of course he is, he is as happy as the NYTimes is to put this fiasco to a close. Disregarding opinions on the matter this was not good PR for ether of them.

taligent4• 13 years ago

Problem is that the battle scars from this little fight lie almost exclusively with Musk and are going to persist for years to come.

Tesla now has a reputation as being unusually aggressive in defending its position. Which has to be making media institutions wonder why on earth they would bother to review this ?

wamatt3• 13 years ago

Strange reaction from Musk. He seemed awfully quick to jump fully onboard with a rather pallid response from the NYT's Public Editor[1] (a position somewhat analogous to the head of PR in a corporate).

While there could be many reasons, two more probable IMHO could be:

1) The "out" he was looking for: absolution for a somewhat strong initial overreaction.

2) He's simply being naive, and not reading between the lines.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_editor

kintamanimatt2• 13 years ago

I can understand this and he's just picking his battles wisely. There's a difference between defending your company and being a battleaxe, and he's not crossing that line. Appearing to be unnecessarily combative would backfire.

stdbrouw2• 13 years ago

Err, a public editor is not at all like a PR person. They may have some loyalty to the company they work for, but they work independently of the newsroom and in fact reporters tend to distrust them or consider them a nuisance. At worst, it's soft PR, but at best, it's a true ombudsman position.

stcredzero9• 13 years ago

> Mr. Broder and The Times have maintained that the article was done in good faith, and that it is an honest account of what happened

So, in our public discourse, "honesty and good faith," have drifted down to the level of "deniably but somehow consistently fudged."

In the words of Richard Feynman, there is: "a specific, extra type of integrity that is not [just not] lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong." It's this level of integrity that is needed in our public discourse concerning the complex and technically sophisticated world of today. If the NYTimes can't manage this in a simple car review, I wonder how they do with complex political and social issues.

niggler12• 13 years ago

You must have your blinders on. Musk is not a god, and you have been eating up Tesla's story rather than looking at the data.

Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account (heat was turned off, battery dropoff overnight, etc), and the only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. It's interesting that Tesla has the logs yet isn't revealing them. I suspect the logs will show that Tesla engineers didn't properly advise Broder on what to do, which is Tesla's fault, not any sort of fraudulence on NYT's part.

stcredzero9• 13 years ago

> Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account

I see you have it all wrong. I'm not in disagreement with that. (And there goes the basis for your comment.) Either you are willfully misreading my comment, or you're trying a subtle sleight of hand. The facts mostly fit Broder's account. I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction. A reporter should have some facility in curbing his own bias. Apparently, Broder has insufficient competence in figures and self awareness for this.

This is precisely what Feynmann is talking about in the quote.

JamisonM• 13 years ago

I never understood why Musk went so hard after Broder from the start, as soon as I saw the data what I saw in it was something that correlated with his story reasonably well. Musk pointed out that he never got down to 45 but he was at something like 50-52 most of that time and he is reading a dial gauge. I assumed then that Musk had the call logs and they would be bad for Broder, either Musk doesn't have them or they do not make Tesla look good. In the end I think Tesla needs this to blow over and consider how this drive from a non-car reviewer indicates to them how they can improve their first-time-driver experience and make their product and their company better.

TechNewb• 13 years ago

I agree, it seems recently that NYTimes appears to be embracing 'blogging' ethics over traditional journalistic ethics. They also have a negative bias against Apple, which I assume is purely for headline attention. (I've thought about gathering statistics to back up this hypothesis, how many negative stories vs positive stories over the last couple years.) As the Foxconn story seemed to inappropriately focus on Apple, when the entire manufacturing industry could have been explored. Maybe this is what real time statistics of what people are reading on a news website does to journalism...

Kylekramer• 13 years ago

Feynman's quote is about the search for scientific truth. He intentionally said that in the context of scientists accurately conveying information to laypeople and specifically points out that "extra" truth is different than truth in other situations. Science is a tough SOB, wanting nothing less than 100%. It wants peer review, replication and no counter examples. But science is also patient and willing to be wrong. Scientific truth is a fine ideal but it just isn't generalizable. When you ask for scientific truth in other fields it is a hornet's nest. Just look at the debate around medical malpractice lawsuits.

Asking journalists to be scientists removes the need for journalists. You can say maybe we don't need journalists, but there clearly has to be different standards for science and journalism, even if only because of the vast differences in expected timeframes in each field.

stcredzero9• 13 years ago

> Asking journalists to be scientists removes the need for journalists.

Aww, crap. Just asking journalists to be a little less careless and fuzzy would be a good start. Opinions on this seem to be divided along two lines: 1) People familiar with getting quantitative things right in their jobs vs. others and 2) People who have had run-ins with careless/incompetent journalists vs. others.

> specifically points out that "extra" truth is different than truth in other situations.

I don't think he's saying that about truth. I think he's saying that about a field. It applies to truth -- it's just that our mish-mash of a culture hasn't caught up to that level of rationality yet.

crazygringo2• 13 years ago

> It's this level of integrity that is needed in our public discourse concerning the complex and technically sophisticated world of today. If the NYTimes can't manage this in a simple car review, I wonder how they do with complex political and social issues.

Yeah... they don't. Except in a few long-form investigative-type pieces, where they really shine. Remember that they're putting out over 100,000 words every single day. Imagine if you were a company that had to put out just 5,000 SLOC every day without bugs, everything perfectly refactored? Puts it into perspective a bit.

Asking for that kind of integrity in journalism, or anything really, it would be great, but that's not really what the market usually supports. Just remember, that at the end of the day, the NYT is far better than most any other daily newspaper out there, and nobody's perfect. Journalists are people, these are their day jobs, not their religions.

And I don't know where you're getting "consistently fudged" from.

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

The New York Times reporter was applying that Feynman style of skepticism to a set of advertising claims by the Tesla Motors company, and I sure learned a lot about limitations in the use case for the Tesla Model S by reading the article.

monsterix3• 13 years ago

Don't how many of you'd seen this coming, but @homosaur and I'd discussed exactly this discourse [1] a week ago.

Personally I think that entrepreneurs working on products that solve immensely challenging problems should always be given a benefit of doubt. Or two or three or may be even five times. Clearly this did not happen in Tesla's case.

And yet in the original post from OP this part still seems a bit questionable: Mr. Broder’s irresponsibility in fuel management was in hope that something beyond “inconvenience” would happen to make the story more interesting. (Otherwise, no one, including me, would have paid much attention to his article.)

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203207

jug6ernaut2• 13 years ago

"Personally, I think that a hard working entrepreneur, particularly those working on immensely challenging problems, must always be given a benefit of doubt in early reviews."

Products should be reviewed based on there merit, "given a benefit of a doubt" is left up to the consumer.

A reviewer should review every product the same, else the reviews are worthless because there is no continuity to compare the reviews.

Do you want your reviews from some person you have never heard of or from someone well established? The answer is obvious.

monsterix3• 13 years ago

You're right. Reviewer must always be objective and review every product the same. Or at least be careful about the process used to arrive at the reportable opinion (which NYT seems to confess having missed completely! Strange?).

However, here is a beautiful piece from Anton Ego of Ratatouille:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more."

taligent4• 13 years ago

>Personally I think that entrepreneurs working on products that solve immensely challenging problems should always be given a benefit of doubt. Or two or three or may be even five times. Clearly this did not happen in Tesla's case.

Do yourself a favour and don't ever startup a company. Because if you think that as an entrepreneur the world should treat your precious self with kiddy gloves then wow you are in for a rude shock.

Because consumers couldn't care less whether you are a startup or not. They care about how great your product is.

monsterix3• 13 years ago

Honestly I have already taken that step of starting a company. A bit late on that, but I do take your heeding very seriously. :)

busterarm3• 13 years ago

Everyone is really ignoring the real impact of this mess here.

The NYT published something that is absolutely impossible to fact-check outside of an op-ed column. This wasn't even fit for publication to begin with.

Print journalism is in no way superior to the bloggers they are in competition with - in fact, most journalists have to keep their own blogs now just to compete. Margaret's reply basically dances around saying that Broder failed to do his due diligence as a journalist.

If you need any clearer sign that newspapers are not just declining but dead, this is it.

tbrownaw• 13 years ago

So newspapers are not permitted to perform original research?

busterarm3• 13 years ago

That's not really the job of newspapers.

Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news. Op-Ed work needs to be clearly marked as such.

Now, it would be fair to say that the Automotive section, specifically the reviews, contains a fair bit more opinion than the rest of the paper, but there needs to be clear distinction. Going by the headline and the way the article was written, this clearly isn't the case. It was reported as news...as in it was about the car and neglected the fine personal detail that a review would have. It turns out though that the story here is more about Broder and how he drove the car. The way he drove it was more important than anything he reported about the car - it's not news.

Broder writes other stories for the NYT that are genuine news. It's shocking to me that the current editorial format of the NYT allows crap like that to be published in the same venue.

I'm basically saying that if this weren't written by an NYT staff reporter, it would have been an Op-Ed (or similarly labeled) if they allowed it for publication at all. They should not have.

jellicle4• 13 years ago

> Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test

Oddly, I would write the exact opposite headline. The NYT review has minor problems with precision and judgment, but major problems with integrity.

Imagine a gasoline car review: "I'm here at a gas station with an empty tank, and I have 61 miles to the next gas station. I'm going to put in half a gallon of gasoline, hang up the nozzle and start driving to the next station. Oh no, I ran out of gas! Well, this proves the technology is still immature and that gas cars suck."

Can you imagine this being a publishable review to the NYT editors?

makomk2• 13 years ago

At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars.

Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight unless you park in a really rough neighbourhood. He didn't have any reason to disbelieve his contact at Tesla when they said the lost range would return - hell, I've had Tesla fans tell me that their cars don't really lose range overnight, it's just calculated wrong, and I'm spreading FUD by pointing the range loss out. I bet they'd be going after Broder for that too if he'd waited for more of a charge.

jellicle4• 13 years ago

Yep, and he could have talked about that as an issue. That would have been absolutely legitimate - discussing the overall time to complete this trip, including charging time on the way, and comparing it to gasoline.

Intentionally draining the battery, refusing to charge it up at any of the numerous opportunities to do so, and then blaming the car is not.

stcredzero9• 13 years ago

> Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight

No, but your fuel could gel in a diesel car. Your battery could die. Your cooling system might freeze. I lived in a part of the country where people routinely plug in their gas powered cars for the night.

bathat4• 13 years ago

>At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars.

Well, hold on there one minute. The difference between a 72% charge and a 100% charge at Tesla's Superchargers is something like fifteen minutes. Not 9 to 12 hours. If Broder hadn't stopped the charge early in Milford he wouldn't have needed to charge the next day (even including the overnight range loss in Groton) at a slow charger. Some Model S owner's recently demonstrated that: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreati...!

niggler12• 13 years ago

The key facts here are:

1) Broder reached out to Tesla on multiple occasions during the trip asking for advice when oddities happened

2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given.

3) The car ran out of charge

Regarding the non-sequitur of charging overnight, Tesla's marketing materials clearly state that you can keep the car unplugged for extended periods of time without a significant dropoff: "The Model S battery will not lose a significant amount of charge when parked for long periods of time. For example, Model S owners can park at the airport without plugging in." (pulled from http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts , older discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209639)

The only way to attack the integrity of Broder is to argue that somehow he wasn't advised to do something. Guess what: there are call logs, and those should be brought out. It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist. That's all fine, but in this case Tesla has a way of definitively proving that Broder was being malicious: If the call logs clearly show that Broder wasn't acting in accordance to what he claims was Tesla's judgments, then Broder deserves all the criticism. Otherwise it is Tesla's fault.

Until we see the call logs, siding with Tesla is hero worshipping.

slantyyz5• 13 years ago

Broder deserves to be called out on his inaccuracies.

But the thing that made the story was your point #3. And it could have been completely prevented if the people who gave out the advice in #2 gave better advice.

We can call Broder an idiot all we want, but it seems like there were bigger idiots on the other side of the phone. They could have erred on the side of caution and just told him to spend more time charging at every opportunity. As a result, #3 would likely not have happened, and Broder's article would have been seen as a mildly negative article, but also a forgettable one.

babesh• 13 years ago

You cannot record someone on the phone without permission so the call log is not available.

SilasX• 13 years ago

>Broder reached out to Tesla on multiple occasions during the trip asking for advice when oddities happened

That's what struck me the most, relative to how little attention it got. How many other people would have needed to call into a car company's customer service (and that many times!) to finish a simple test drive?

"Mommy, should I charge it all the way at the supercharger station?"

"Mommy it only reads 32 miles, will it last twice that?"

There are a hundred people more competent and deserving of such an opportunity than someone who doesn't even know the current state of vehicle logging tech.

jellicle4• 13 years ago

> 2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given.

And you know this how? Musk says very directly that Broder did not behave in accordance with the advice he was given. You were present for this exchange and you know what the truth is? Or you just imagine it to be so?

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

Re: 1)

We actually don't know if he did. I mean, he claimed so, and also claimed the tesla rep told him it was OK to leave. But how do we know he didn't lie?

wpietri4• 13 years ago

I think the first and third are facts. Is the second one really established? Right now, I think it's just a claim.

bathat4• 13 years ago

I'm curious why you think the calls were logged. Certainly, we've all come to expect that recorded, "For quality assurance purposes...," when calling tech support. Still, the Tesla employees named by Broder are not technical support staff. They are from the public relations department (and one unnamed engineer). I'd actually be very surprised if PR departments regularly recorded calls, if for no other reason than to give staff the option of claiming to be mis-quoted by reporters.

Still, not even Broder claims that Tesla advised him to end his Supercharge early in Milford. I'm unsympathetic to claims that he received bad advice from Tesla later in his trip. As several Model S owners have demonstrated [1], it is entirely possible to drive round-trip from Milford to Groton on a single supercharge. Moreover, they demonstrated that it is possible to do so with a comfortable cabin temperature, a normal highway speed, and, perhaps most importantly, without charging the car overnight in Groton (and they, too, experienced some range loss during the night).

Of course, none of this proves that Broder was malicious. It is still the case, however, that each time he had the opportunity to choose between following Tesla's advice or his own common sense, he chose the option that put him in greater danger of being stranded. Perhaps the test drive was simply a disastrous chain of honest, yet abysmal, decision-making, followed a well-written essay describing how the fault was everyone's but his.

[1] http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreati...!

Terretta2• 13 years ago

> 2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given.

I think that's not clear. In particular, in the event the NYT ombudsman calls out as bad judgment on the reporter's part, the one hour charge at Norwich, the reporter changed his story about Tesla's advice in a crucial way, but in a way that most readers didn't pick up on.

Originally, he claimed Tesla told him he'd charged it enough and could unplug and go, despite it still showing insufficient range.

Later, he weasel worded that they'd told him up earlier, before charging, that an hour charge "should" be enough, and so after an hour (that was really 3/4 hour) he took off. This was deliberately weaselly, both in the not really and hour, and in the taking off despite not having range back on the gauge.

Many readers, even here on HN, are still under the impression that Tesla was consulted after an hour of charging and told him it was okay to unplug and go (his original article's language). Instead, after less than an hour of charging and warming the battery, he unplugged knowing the range was insufficient and without checking with Tesla.

Tloewald3• 13 years ago

Did he not in fact charge it until it reported sufficient range?

jellicle4• 13 years ago

Mr. Broder stated that he unplugged his car and departed on a 61-mile leg of his journey with the car telling him it had 32 miles of charge remaining. So the answer to your snarky question is "no".

makomk2• 13 years ago

He did the first two times. He didn't at the unscheduled third charging stop after it lost range overnight, supposedly on the advice of Tesla staff. (There were reasons why they may not have wanted him to linger there too long - it was at a much slower 240V charger which made the car look bad compared to the Superchargers he was meant to be demonstrating in the article.)

gizmo• 13 years ago

A few thoughts:

1. so it looks like the editor concedes that the truth is somewhere in between the original review and Musk's rebuttal. But the original review is up as is. It's not amended, not corrected in any way.

2. Elon Musk said his faith in the NYTimes is restored over twitter. This to me looks like Elon made a deliberate decision to pick a fight with a single contributor and not with the entire newspaper. Besides, Elon knows other people will continue fighting on his behalf, so he can now take the high road and back off. Good tactics here.

3. The spin by the NYT editor is really clever. By quoting another person who mostly sides with Tesla and agreeing with that person she comes across as responding to the conflict with substance. But because the words aren't her own she can keep her status as a mostly impartial arbiter. And because she didn't say which parts of the quoted response she agreed with she can deny any part of it if needed! What she did here is equivalent to composing a list of 7 statements and adding to the bottom "I agree with 4 out of the 7 statements above". Sneaky sneaky.

4. Her final conclusion is that "people will go on contesting these points" but ultimately "few conclusions are unassailable". That's pretty much a classic "it's all relative" sort of response. The fact that people are in vocal disagreement doesn't mean you can just wave your hands and say essentially "well, the situation is just complex" and use that to justify keeping the original article up unchanged.

knowtheory• 13 years ago

Okay. I'll bite. What corrections would you like them to make?

Seems like a lot of this is a matter of degree and a bit of embellishment. But I would hardly call the original article a hit piece or anything.

I suppose if i had my druthers it'd be nice for the original piece link to the public editor's post, or some other compendium of the saga.

cma• 13 years ago

I'd like them to correct "freezing toes"... look at the cabin temperature graph

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

This statement by the New York Times public editor certainly reads like a rebuke of reporter John Broder for how thoroughly he (didn't) take notes during his reporting drive, and suggests that reporters will have a responsibility to bring along more electronic data-recording devices in future reporting. The latest blog post by Bruce Schneier

http://schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/automobile_data.ht...

(just submitted to HN,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5241508

moments ago) suggests that even with a journalist leading a quantified life to submit quantified stories, there will still be issues of interpretation of the data that will be very hard to resolves, especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy while a news organization wants to preserve a reputation of hard-hitting, non-toadying journalism.

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

>...especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy

Know a lot of domestic car companies who aren't on the dole?

teyc• 13 years ago

I would have thought that a Tesla's fancy trip computer would be able to account for, among other things - elevation changes, cold weather performance and provide smarter advice than what a human support agent would. Instead, the range estimator seems to project current usage over the remainder of the entire trip.

gfodor• 13 years ago

The problem with this "wrap-up" of the drama is that it fails to leave the reader with a clearer understanding of if the Tesla Model S is an automobile that has serious engineering problems. Instead, it dives deeper into the "controversy" which isn't really the point. Politics and Musk/Broder egos aside, any competent third party observer can come to the conclusion that the review was flawed and hence should not should influence the buying decision of a potential Model S customer one way or the other. This is the entire role of the NYT in this issue: to inform the consumer. Instead of providing clarity for the consumer the NYT continues to prefer to dive into meta-talk about itself and its story (as the media loves to do, report on itself) and fails to call a spade a spade. Pathetic.

jwatte• 13 years ago

So, Broder had admitted to braking the law by going 85 to "keep up with traffic." That's the most bizarre omission here -- we don't get to pick and choose which laws we decide to follow!

headbiznatch• 13 years ago

Funny - I feel precision and good judgement are the primary qualities by which the integrity of a journalist should be measured.

Osiris• 13 years ago

The good thing to come out of this is that the next time someone is given a test drive for a review that they'll be very aware that everything is being electronically monitored. At least that should help keep people honest.

ignostic• 13 years ago

Here's what seems clear from the whole thing:

1. Musk jumped to conclusions. For example, he claimed the car was driven in circles with the intent of running it out of battery. I think the innocent, "I was looking for the charger" explanation made sense. He concocted his own narrow explanations without verifying the facts or asking questions.

2. Broder failed to understand the car and the advice given to him. We can only speculate on the quality of that advice. What Tesla didn't log were the conversations. Broder also trusted the "one hour charge" despite failing to confirm he was good to go, or listen to common sense.

Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult.

The resulting situation is almost poetic. Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Broder's mistakes provide their own unique insights on the importance of understand human communication. I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom.

Maybe next time Tesla should log the conversations, too.

niggler12• 13 years ago

"I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom."

You should read the discussions. I brought this up many times:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240527

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240237

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228442

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223681

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223448

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222275

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220019

You can find these by searching for call logs niggler in the HN Search

cube13• 13 years ago

>Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult.

Broder claimed in his first response that Musk had reached out to him for another go at the trip, once more stations are up. Musk has not denied that that took place, so I don't see any reason to believe that this isn't the case.

OGinparadise• 13 years ago

A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs, which Mr. Musk has used, in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) ways possible, as he defended his vehicle’s reputation.

Personally I agree, and to the suggestion that people read the manual and blah blah blah...how many people in the real read it in detail? So this is /was more of real person test drive. Moral of the story: buy an electric car or a Tesla only for short term drives and if you are willing to go through a series of hoops to charge and care for it. From the review--and especially from Musk's attitude--Tesla would not be for me, even if I had the money.

Elon needs a rule, like holding off any comments for 24-48 hours, he needs to calm down. Driving 0.6 miles is not grounds for "he was trying to run the battery down on purpose to fake the interview." He is a loose cannon and does his company no service.

Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test

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