Hacker News Reader

Comment by chimi | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk was my hero until this Times feud. I loved him. I thought he was moving the world forward. He is. I just don't respect him anymore, not like I used to. I mean, I do, just not like I used to.

I looked at the chart. I read his response. I read the original. The Times journalist was clearly being honest. He had a really hard time with the car. I had the feeling he wanted the car to be great. He didn't want the disappointment.

Musk is painting him as a villain beset on destroying the future of electric propulsion. It's just not true.

Just fix the car. Make it better. Just make it better, Elon. You can make it better. It's a little broken right now, but you can do it. I still believe in you. I'm a little broken up about your personal issues here, but please, rise above it and make the car better and change the world. I mean, keep changing the world.

This is just a small distraction.

View on HN

Try to be sensitive to the fact that in cases like these, especially with such high stakes involved (a billion dollar company for Elon Musk, a career for the reporter), both sides are bound to throw everything they can into their argument. While such displays of human nature can legitimately be disappointing, at least try to see the whole picture and the motivations of each side.

If you think Elon Musk is 100% correct that the reporter was a liar, or that the reporter was 100% in the right for publishing a big picture of a Tesla Model S being towed, you're going to be disappointed.

Both sides are upset, extremely opinionated, and have their own slant on the matter. Both sides made mistakes, and probably could have held back on a few things they claimed.

Elon Musk should have focused just on the obvious faults of the reporter -- like how the reporter probably should have more clearly highlighted that he literally began a trip for X miles with Y miles range displayed on the dash, where X > Y by a considerable amount (rather than burying this fact in noise). Not little details like air conditioning and driving in circles to find the supercharger.

And similarly, although there's disagreement over what certain Tesla reps may have recommended over the phone, it seems at last slightly disingenuous to post a big photo of a Tesla Model S being towed given the fact that he started and forced a trip of length X when the car showed range Y on the screen, where X > Y by a considerable amount.

Saying that you lost respect for Elon Musk is your right. However I personally haven't lost much if any. He was defending a cause he felt strongly about. What was the reporter's motivations?

The article was clearly slanted. So was Elon's rebuttal, but with every force, expect an equal and opposite reaction.

I'm not condoning the rebuttal, but I would put it this way: I understand and sympathize with Elon's overreaction far more than I do with the reporter's initial motivations to slant the story. And he very clearly did slant it.

> Just fix the car.

That's not really the issue, even if he could fix it. Which is easier said than done; we're dealing with advanced material science here. You can bet his team is hard at work on it, but this is the kind of thing that takes many years of deep research. Let's deal with the issue at hand (slanted articles vs slanted rebuttals), for now.

"If you think Elon Musk is 100% correct that the reporter was a liar, or that the reporter was 100% in the right for publishing a big picture of a Tesla Model S being towed, you're going to be disappointed."

I don't think the OP went into it thinking that Musk or Broder were right.

" just don't respect him anymore, not like I used to. I mean, I do, just not like I used to."

I interpreted that statement to refer to how Tesla reacted to the review. Musk could have taken the opportunity to clearly explain the extenuating circumstances and extended a new opportunity for Broder to take a test drive, but instead opted for this reality-TV-like drama to play out (which, btw, other media sources like CNBC and CNN really enjoyed).

I don't give Broder the benefit of the doubt. I think he intentionally provided readers with information he knew he didn't have.

His numbers, which he took pains to make appear exact, simply do not match the data. So where did he get the numbers? To me it seems extremely likely that he made them up to add veracity to his story. "Yeah, that sounds about right." This would not be the first time a journalist had done such a thing. He would have been fine if he had given approximate numbers, or if he had taken better notes, like a good journalist should. He clearly did neither of those things.

Having said that, the theme of the story, that Tesla has problems in cold weather, seems likely to be true. That seems like a worthy story to tell. With real data, from a test under realistic conditions.

Musk is harming his personal brand now, and he should stop for his own sake. But neither the Times nor Broder are in the clear, nor should they be.

No, I think Broder was describing with words and memory an experience he had with the car and it was probably as accurate as any mortal could write. Our brains aren't designed to log data like a car. When I read the article and looked at the chart, I could completely believe Broder's recollection of the events. Humans are fallible. Broder may have made some mistakes with the precision of his account, but it doesn't make him a liar. It makes him human and when we consider changing the world, we have to understand that our personal experience with the change is relevant.

The important point from the article is that, even with professional help, it's still difficult to fit an electric car in a gas car world. That's a reality.

That doesn't mean we don't keep moving forward.

If he doesn't remember with precision, that's fine. Of course. Report it that way. Simple standard.

What isn't fine is reporting precision that doesn't exist.

The point of such is to strengthen his reporting in ways it doesn't deserve. That's dishonest.

Giving a reporter a pass on that kind of thing is not the way we should go. He's not some casual person casually telling a story to a friend. He's reporting, in "the newspaper of record", and as facts, details that he doesn't have.

I honestly don't care one way or the other about Tesla. It's a long way from ready for mass use.

But I do care that reporters make up facts they don't have. That matters.

Why are Elon's defenders hung up on this? It's a red herring. The car performed terribly in cold weather. That's the point. Elon accused Broder of faking the review and it's been clear that was the distraction he wanted from the beginning.

Because it doesn't perform terribly if you're not incompetent in how you use it, but that's not the picture that the NY Times article put into everyone's minds, and that's a very large problem for Tesla. It requires that you plug it in at night, and that you charge it to have a longer range than your total trip distance, and add a little range to that if you know you're going to use power for things like the cabin heater. Every Tesla owner is well aware of this before they start driving it, and it's pretty much in line with other battery powered devices, and so should be intuitive to anyone who's very familiar with a laptop. There are a good number of owners in much colder climates who are using theirs quite happily, and don't feel it performs terribly in cold weather. The NY Times has a responsibility to portray things accurately, because they have a huge amount of power. It's not acceptable to have a casual attitude towards factual accuracy in that line of work.

"If he doesn't remember with precision, that's fine. Of course. Report it that way. Simple standard. What isn't fine is reporting precision that doesn't exist."

"Why are Elon's defenders hung up on this? It's a red herring."

I don't see how it's fine to just push blatant dishonesty to the side..yea it's understandable for people not to remember with precision - which is why journalists/reviewers take notes. We as the reader accept that when a journalist presents (and later defends) precise numbers that are put toward their argument that there is some basis of accuracy to it. When logs show up refuting these claimed accuracies then you start to wonder where else have similar things been 'skewed'.

"Just fix the car. Make it better. Just make it better, Elon. You can make it better. It's a little broken right now, but you can do it. "

I highly doubt he can fix it. At least, not on his own.

1) There needs to be more accessible infrastructure. Having superchargers 200mi apart isn't sufficient. They need to be < 50 miles apart, ideally more concentrated in urban areas, and FTLOG why isn't there a charger in manhattan? The car may be able to reach the full range under ideal conditions, but in any non-ideal circumstance like the NYT trip the range will be diminished.

2) They need more realistic marketing. It's not a panacea, and to sell it as such is a misrepresentation. There are issues, the car must be coddled, and until that is explicitly admitted by Tesla marketing material people should not be expected to treat the car gently

One way would be to alter the algorithm calculating potential distance achieved based on temperature and energy storage capabilities of the batteries. Batteries don't power as well in cold temperatures, it's something many of us have experienced and there must be a formula for it. Figure out what the formula is and build it into the dashboard. That's a small fix that probably would have alleviated a lot of Broder's emotionally bad experience with the car.

"alter the algorithm calculating potential distance achieved based on temperature and energy storage capabilities of the batteries."

This gets back to the marketing issue. If they made those issues clear, then Broder would have expected the effect.

I still question the claim made on http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts

"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."

"Model S is engineered to perform in both hot and cold climates."

I'm sure if those types of claims were dialed down then the expectations would be more reasonable

100% agree. Unfortunately I am fairly certain that Elon is the kind of type-A, Narcissist genius that once he enters combat will not let go.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com