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Comment by manacit | Hacker News Reader

Most of this analysis is spot on in my opinion - the one area I disagree with you in is the portion where he allegedly drove in circles. The graph Tesla shows is misleading and completely blown out of proportion.

0.6 miles is not very far to travel, especially when 0.2 miles are accounted for by the offramp. A drive once around an unfamiliar parking lot in the dark, looking for a small charging station can easily account for 4 minutes and 0.4 miles. Every EV charging station I've seen hasn't had any signage or otherwise aside from what's written right on it, You can't assume he'd automatically know where it is.

Regardless of whether Tesla is right or the NYT is right (and I'm inclined to believe both sides are partially at fault), the fact that Tesla took such offense to a measly 0.6 miles I find laughable.

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> 0.6 miles is not very far to travel, especially when 0.2 miles are accounted for by the offramp.

The graph seems to me to clearly account for the offramp. It doesn't start counting the 0.6 miles until his speed has slowed down to "I'm turning in now" conditions (0.1 mi after the origin point), and the graph itself tops off with the y-axis at 30mph—well below interstate offramp speeds—so at least some of the rest of the 0.2 mi long frontage is simply omitted off the left side of the graph.

I agree that this particular complaint is probably the weakest in Musk's post.

Part of the problem is that in his latest rebuttal, Broder turned off the map layer of the Google image he used. If he had left it on, you would see that many of the "streets" in that rest area are one-way. The only place he could have driven is around the two rightmost rows of parked cars. You really must have a very strong suspension of disbelief if you think he passed the Superchargers five times without seeing them.

What really makes Broder's account unbelievable is that his original story was a review of the Supercharger network. His review completely omitted any mention of the difficulty of finding the charging stations. Why would he do that? As concerned as he claimed to be about not reaching the next charger, why did he never mention that he had to spend precious battery finding the damn thing until Musk accused him of driving in circles? Might it be possible that "searching for the charger" is just an excuse invented after his odious behavior was discovered?

I generally agree with you, maybe I phrased it badly.

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