Conflicting Assertions Over an Electric Car Test Drive | Hacker News Reader

Conflicting Assertions Over an Electric Car Test Drive

publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com

43 pointstokenadult30 comments

There was an extensive, and on the whole rather favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance...

submitted to HN while most participants were discussing the John Broder New York Times review. (Most participants missed the discussion on the article from The Verge.)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154

The author of the report in The Verge takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it’s still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world."

"Here's the most important data point: Musk says Broder unplugged the charger after charging to a range of 32 miles and then drove off for the final segment of his trip which spanned 61 miles. The car made it 51 miles. If Broder can't contest that, there isn't much use quibbling over Musk's other accusations." [1]

[1]: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks...

I applaud the NYT attempt to come out and acknowledge what happened and ask for a "fair fight" from both parties. This is much stronger than a lame PR statement. Also the links to Reddit conversations off-site are a great testament to just how much journalism has changed in the past decade. Can't wait to see who wins this heavyweight fight.

slowly reaches for popcorn

Wouldn't it have been nice if the NYT went out and bought a couple of GoPros before the test drive? Musk obviously improved his recordkeeping, how hard would it have been for the NYT to up their game as well?

This is what blows my mind in both directions:

1) A reporter not recording everything he does in the age of GoPro and a 2 TB harddrives at Best Buy.

2) Tesla did record damn near everything: GPS, battery, display, temperature (internal and target), charge duration, etc.

Metrics are king, and I think we are ushering in a new age of "you can't bullshit me, I recorded it too" journalism.

Or, we are entering in a new age of "if you can't write your story with the same rigor as a top law firm would write an M&A contract, I'll hang you with your every choice of wording".

It's possible a damning story in an influential newspaper could have as much impact on Tesla's business as an M&A contract.

If I were the journalist I would have got my facts checked with Tesla. If I were Tesla, I would have checked that my response was ironclad, especially when accusing a journalist of lying. Now, they have two problems.

I think a raw recording of the entire trip inside the cabin is a pretty personal thing to ask for someone used to only having a heavily reviewed and edited public facade. Then there's the matter of hosting all that video, and of successfully summarizing it into a form that's both properly balanced and digestible by a the audience. Certainly doable, but it's a new skill-set that would take time to develop.

I was not trying to imply that this data should be generally available, just that he should have access to it as definitive proof, at least to his superiors.

Same here. Since you really can't take notes while driving, I would have used some in-car video as a form of notetaking and nothing else.

Well, let's remember, Musk didn't start recording so much until the TopGear thing happened.

Everything was great up until the end. I thought this line was completely unnecessary:

  I hope to post again Friday with some conclusions but for 
  now, based on a day’s reporting, I will say this much: I 
  reject Mr. Musk’s central contention that Mr. Broder’s 
  Sunday piece was faked in order to sabotage the Model S or 
  the electric-car industry.

I also reject that Broder was in the pocket of the oil industry as redditors are claiming, but I have little doubt that Broder didn't embellish parts just make the story juicier and more readable. Since he writes about energy mainly, his role was probably more to review the supercharging network than the car. But reviewing the network makes for a pretty boring story and having an article that is controversial and paints the tesla as a dud, looks like a classic news hook. This reminds me of the death of Jan Berenstein, author of the Berenstein, and the Slate article that declared that she was a bore and exclaimed "good riddance" [0]. After that post came out there was a good follow up analyzing the journalist motivations in that piece and the allure of the "news hook" [1]

It's unfortunate that this journalist was willing to trade their integrity for more pageviews. Karma's a bitch.

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/02/27/jan_berensta...

[1] http://www.themillions.com/2012/04/the-berenstain-bears-and-...

In the end I expect both parties to be at fault, no one to apologize, and all of us to be unclear as to what exactly happened.

Tesla has a chance to come out of this with more positive publicity than before.

This comes off as straight negative to me, especially considering the last I saw of them was winning the car of the year award. I would probably have never seen this review, and the fact that Musk is throwing such a tantrum about it (to my initial perception, anyway) does not endear the brand to me.

I doubt this would ever affect my buying decision, but I wouldn't call this positive publicity by any extent. Arguments and conflicts only look good when you are the clear winner.

> This comes off as straight negative to me, especially considering the last I saw of them was winning the car of the year award.

If a bunch of people end up triumphantly tweeting about their successful road trips as they replicate the trip, Tesla will come out ahead.

I don't know. I don't find it impressive for a company to aggressively refute bad reviews. It comes off as insecure to me.

I eventually intend to ask him to fully release and “open source” the driving logs

Wow... how 'open source' has become so mainstream. We can now all look forward to the term getting fully diluted and loose its meaning. Already in this article the term is being abused to, IMO, shift the tone from a "challenge by NYTimes" to a plea to Tesla's values.

How do you feel that the term has been diluted? As far as I can tell, the statement is true to the Collins dictionary definition of "intellectual property, esp computer source code, that is made freely available to the general public by its creators" [1]. The data is intellectual property that will (hopefully) be made freely available for the general public to scrutinize.

[1] http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/open-sou...

It is being diluted in multiple ways:

1. The author is "verbing" the phrase

2. The Collins definition starts like "intellectual property, esp. source code..." I contend that (as does the free dictionary), in current usage, "open source" refers exclusively to source code. The author is using the phrase to refer to data, which is not the same thing.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/open%20source

With regard to your first point:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=open+sourci...

I think that the tech community is the one that verbed "open sourcing".

Are you trolling me? I guess I'll take the bait...

The Collins Dictionary isn't even consistent on the term Open Source. The Collins American Dictionary defines open source as "designating of software whose code is made public and which is thus available to any programmer to develop and customize" [1] where as the Collins English Dictionary defines at as you quoted "intellectual property, esp computer source code, that is made freely available to the general public by its creators" [2]

Even wikipedia agrees that "Generally, open source refers to a program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design." [4] and google does too: https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+open+source

I've never heard the term used to refer to intellectual property but regardless, Collins Dictionary defines intellectual property as "something produced by the mind, of which the ownership or right to use may be legally protected by a copyright, patent, trademark, etc."[3] - Log data from a car doesn't seem to fit into the category of things produced by the mind. So as far as I can tell, to "open source" log data is not true to the definition and is is a misuse of the term.

I think the abuse is using a term that recently society has found favorable...transforming it into a verbal tool to challenge an adversary. How does sharing raw log data fit into what wikipedia succinctly states "A main principle and practice of open-source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product, source-material, "blueprints", and documentation available at no cost to the public." [4]

[1] http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/open-so...

[2] http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/open-sou...

[3] http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/intelle...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

I think it's clear this journalist is not a techie, evidenced by your example and:

>> screen shots of the car driving logs.

I've never thought of jpg graphs as "screen shots".

Their editor may have wanted a clarification for interested but non-technical audiences. And "screenshot", while inaccurate, is a pretty good approximation of "summary, not raw data," in one word.

For that matter, I never thought of JPEG as a good format for graphs.

As an aside, I love that they linked to the discussion on Reddit - even when at the bottom it has its own comment box (with conspicuously no comments?).

I realize that there are two companies' reputations at stake here, but this is feeling a little like arguing over how stupid the driver was, not actually about the Tesla itself.

No, there are not conflicting assertions. There are objective facts on one side, and assertions on the other.

This is incorrect. For example, "Our Model S never had a chance with John Broder" is an assertion. "Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn't actually charge to max & took a long detour" is an assertion ("long detour") and one that Musk backed away from.

There are also assertions in the original post that Musk's data didn't address. For example, Broder said that a Tesla customer support agent gave him inaccurate information about appropriate driving patterns for maximum range. Broder may or may not be accurate there but it's certainly an important part of the argument.

The conflict is over which side has the objective facts.

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