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

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.

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.

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

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.

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)?

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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

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

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.

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.

"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."

Because then his expose would have been, "Great road trip, no problems."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?"

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.

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.

2. Almost never happens

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

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.

There is no such thing. Law is inherently subjective.

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.

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.

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.