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Comment by taligent | Hacker News Reader

He wasn't trying to find a gas station. He was trying to find one of the Tesla superchargers. And as we can see from the video below they are very, very hard to find (that giant structure is NOT the charger).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw

Musk deserves all that he gets. He overplayed his position.

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Holy spin doctor. You realize that video was explicitly made to make clear the supercharger are not at all hard to find? And you realize that you don't see the 17" screen with the GPS that has the location absolutely pinpointed?

Three things:

1. I didn't see any explicit signs pointing to the supercharger. Admittedly, the glare from the headlights could have obscured a couple of those, but at 25 seconds, there doesn't seem to be any reason for the driver to turn at that point.

2. It's completely unlit. The nearest lighting is on the other side of the parking lane. The gas pumps have plenty of light. That alone makes it hard to find, especially if you're not sure what you're looking for.

3. The car in the video had to make 2 specific turns to get to it. Again, the gas pumps are immediately in front of you, and have signs pointing to them.

Anything is easy to find once you've already been there. Why did the driver in the video take those specific turns? I can't see any signage.

It may also be the case that the car, or the charging infrastructure, or the system that is the car plus the charging infrastructure, is not ready for the NYT's general audience or its writers. It could just be a usability issue that early adopters would not have had a problem with.

Maybe this was too early for a NYT treatment.

>Maybe this was too early for a NYT treatment.

If it's too early for a NYT review then it's too early for anyone.

What is the supercharger? Is it those white pylons that the car was next to when the video ended? If so, then not only does it seem that the driver had zero problems finding them, but they're conveniently located near the entrance to the lot, and the GPS directed him precisely to the correct location.

0.6 mile is what, two or three circles around a large parking lot? Even if you know how the superchargers look I don't think it's impossible to miss them once or twice.

IIRC, the offramp from the highway was .3 miles from the beginning to the first turn, so if Broder missed even one of the turns, .6 miles is pretty easy to get to.

You sir, just made the most disingenuous argument I've ever seen on hacker news. Quite a feat.

They aren't hard to find, especially because Broder had been to a supercharger station before and didn't have any problems finding it then.

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