I put a graph together showing all the points/counterpoints and here's what I'm left with.
- not charging past 90% at the 1st station is defensible. Especially if Tesla warns it will shorten the battery's life.
- It'd be better if Tesla's software took temperature into account when estimating mileage range.
- Broder is being ridiculous about the cruise control and his speed estimates, and the temperature. He has partial accountability for the NYT graph. Turning the temperature down to 70 does not mean "sharply downward". He turned it down once more at around 250 miles, but that's far after the 182 that the article/graph indicates, and markedly different than "a little over 200 miles". He writes about how his feet were freezing and knuckles were turning white, but he didn't turn the heat down below 70 until (if my math is right) right about the time he got to Manhattan, which was mentioned afterward in his article timeline. On the other hand, it looks like it was turned down for most of the leg between Manhattan and Milford.
- The leg from Manhattan to Milford sounds legitimately stressful, but Broder claims low-speed cruise control that never happened. He tries to blame this on wheel size later, while simultaneously using Tesla's logs as showing that he wasn't driving very fast. That makes no sense.
- Tesla claims they told Broder to fully charge at Milford. He did not, and lists a lot of justifications for not following their advice.
- Broder complains that Tesla didn't tell him more about how to get the most out of charging stations, but Broder's a veteran at electric vehicles even if it's true that he hates them. And his defense for not charging overnight is laughable - plugging in overnight is not the same as plugging it at every Walmart stop. It's overnight in cold temperatures and the car was at less than 50% of its range. He's just being obstinate here.
- It's laughable to say that the Tesla fell short of its projected range when the projected range was from the day before, before not plugging it in on a cold night.
- Tesla and Broder directly contradict each other on whether they gave him the go-ahead to stop charging after an hour in Norwich. Broder's being vague in his wordings - he phrases it as if they approved him to unplug when they might have just said to plug it in for about an hour when they were trying to find him the plugin station ahead of time. Tesla, in turn, says that he unplugged over their objections.
- Broder just can't "account for the discrepancy" about the logs showing him driving close to 55 when he said he was limping along at 45, back from Norwich.
- Broder seems defensible on the parking brake - how is he to know not to turn off the car? - and the driving in circles, although it would be interesting to know just how clearly marked that supercharge station is. Musk is probably guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" here.
Anyway, even after Broder's latest response, it still reads like Broder was trying to stack the deck.
I disagree. I think Broder is doing what a lot of journalists do and has accentuated the overall negative experience to create a better narrative.
In spite of the poor communication and slight exaggeration, I don't feel like there was malice or a great deal of intent on Broder's behalf. He generally had a poor experience. The errors in his story do not negate that, and I don't get the impression that he had intentionally stacked the deck against the car.
Musk on the other hand has intentionally implied that Broder lied and was possibly motivated by a hatred of the Tesla concept. That is a ridiculous assertion to make by someone in his position. The data does not back that up.
Musk should have just presented the facts and let us interpret them.
I agree that this is what journalists do. It's also why the public stops trusting journalists, especially after they've personally experienced this. It's what the rest of us calls "lying".
This may not be an example of individual malice, but it is definitely an example of why journalism that still uses practices that pre-date video, let alone the internet, no longer commands any kind of respect.
Broder lied "because that's what journalists do". Think about that.
This is the expectation mismatch between journalism and its dwindling audience: the general public doesn't expect journalists to "construct a narrative".
Most people expect journalism to be about the cold hard facts, possibly biased in it's tone and interpretation, but not altering the facts in favor of a narrative. Manipulating quotes is another journalistic favorite, because hey, just because it's between quotation marks doesn't mean they literally said that...
In the real world, that is called "lying and deceiving", unless it's marked "fiction" (or "advertising").
Every time people find out the truth doesn't match the reports, journalism loses a little more respect, but for some insane reason journalists insist on maintaining this completely outdated practice that is no longer justifiable in today's world of video, audio and instant global communication. And of course, logs...
the general public doesn't expect journalists to "construct a narrative".
Most people expect journalism to be about the cold hard facts
this is a very old way of thinking about journalism and contrasts bizarrely with your assertion that building narratives is an outdated practice. in today's world of A/V/Instant communication, its becoming more and more clear that not only will people not pay attention to "cold hard fact" journalism, but what a lot of people actually want isn't merely narratives, its narratives that they agree with.
> I wouldn't characterise it as lying. Broder constructed a narrative around his experience, and got a couple of the details wrong.
Not having a dog in this fight, I would also characterize it as lying. I have the expectation that a journalist will not construct a narrative, but will endeavor to faithfully report events as experienced and informed, as well as revealing personal biases and possible sources of error.
Actually, Broder constructed an experience around the narrative that he had wanted from the beginning.
Driving like a normal person would - letting the car charge and trying to keep it near full - wouldn't have matched the narrative he had in mind, so he didn't do it. The narrative he had in mind involved desperately limping from station to station trying to get a little juice, so that's the experience that he constructed.
How an unbiased reporter would have done it: charge to full, pay attention to mileage and time to charge, repeatedly charge to full throughout trip, discuss the time limitations (must stop for an hour+ on long trips instead of a ten minute gasoline stop...), see if mileage matches expectations, and so on.
> In spite of the poor communication and slight exaggeration, I don't feel like there was malice or a great deal of intent on Broder's behalf. He generally had a poor experience.
I don't know much about electric cars, but I do know this: They aren't great for long distrance driving.
I have no doubt that Broder had a bad experience. When it's 10 degrees outside, I don't want to turn off the climate control. When I'm driving between cities, I don't want to stop at gas stations for over an hour. The list goes on.
This test was all about driving longer distances using fast (cough) charging stations. It seems clear to me no matter how you cut this up that the experience, compared to a gas powered vehicle was lousy. Who the hell wants to wait 1.5 hours at a gast station?
Tesla sounds great for driving around your city but I wouldn't think twice about buying one if I was driving great distances.
Right? While everyone's arguing about who's right, I can't help but think this is THE LAST car I'd ever want to take on a long trip. Ten minutes at a station is far longer than I could humanely accept, let alone hours (in a best case scenario no less!). If I ever buy an EV, it'll be a simple grocery getter, and that's it.
Not too long ago we had a week or so of 0-10deg [F] weather in the midwest, and my _petrol_ car didn't give me heat for most of my commutes.
What little heat I did have, I voluntarily left to the engine so it could get up to temp [knowing this is better for my car, and my emissions].
If it's going to be that cold, I bring an extra pair of socks and gloves. I don't blame my car that I _know_ is struggling to keep itself at operating temperature.
Not to mention, he had heated the cabin up to 74degF prior to that; no journalist can reasonably expect me to believe that a _brand new_ luxury electric car has worse insulation than an 01 Camry with cracked weather seals on the rear doors.
I'm sorry, but unless you didn't read the weather report and packed shorts and t-shirts, there is no way that 10degF ambient temp, in a well sealed cabin that has previously been heated to 72degF, is "white knuckle" weather.
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I certainly agree with you, and with what I think was the larger point of Broder's review: this is not a _no compromises car_, even CNN's reviewer said that he had a bit of range anxiety on the longest leg.
Charging for an hour is a _compromise_, and criticizing it is well deserved.
A photo-op of the Model S on a flatbed truck, saying it broke down? That's no longer fairly deserved criticism: especially when you pulled out of a station with 32mi. of est. range for embarking on a 61mi. trip _knowing_ the battery was having range problems b/c of the weather.
That being said, considering this is a performance oriented car, I think the mileage was quite remarkable for an all electric vehicle. I'm honestly impressed, and I'm a petrolhead.
Once the fast-charge network is a bit more built-up? I can easily see myself planning long road-trips around it. -- On vacations we regularly spend 30-45 minutes at a filling station between tanks. Not because we _have to_, but because we need to stretch our legs, rotate seats, eat lunch, buy more snacks, maybe pick up a book, double check routes and reservations, etc. etc.
I don't think an hour at a station that has plenty of amenities is unreasonable for 200+mi. legs.
> Broder should have just presented the facts and let us interpret them.
Fixed. A journalist's job is to present the facts as fairly and accurately as possible, not to massage (and sometimes distort) the facts into a narrative that triggers an emotional reaction. If anything, I expect the CEO of a company to bend the facts into a story, but I expect the journalist covering that company to unbend those facts, not to bend them the other way.
You say that it's not "stacking the deck" for Broder to exaggerate for the sake of a better narrative, but that Musk should have given us just the facts. That's absolutely bullshit. If you think it's okay for Broder to editorialize, then at the very least Musk should be allowed to argue against it. After all, Broder's supposed to be a journalist, held to higher standards than Top Gear.
As mentioned a lot of journalists will attempt to create a narrative. They need to capture the readers interest with a compelling read.
If all Broder did was compile a list of facts, he wouldn't be writing for the NYT.
Musk is not in that position. He's the CEO of a company, not a writer. I think his argument would have had more impact had he not implied that Broder had a secret agenda.
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.
> 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?
The "fundamental attribution error" refers to our tendency to overattribute others' behaviors to their dispositions, while reversing this tendency for ourselves.
We tend to see far too direct a correspondence between others' actions and personalities. When we see someone else kick a vending machine for no visible reason, we assume they are "an angry person". But when you yourself kick the vending machine, it's because the bus was late, the train was early, your report is overdue, and now the damned vending machine has eaten your lunch money for the second day in a row. Surely, you think to yourself, anyone would kick the vending machine, in that situation.
I just hate vending machines, the way they stare at you and tempt you with unhealthy treats. Kicking them reminds them they are not yet the dominant species on the planet.
I agree. He's willing to lie about how long he was at the Milford supercharger station by reporting 58 minutes while in reality it was 47 minutes. He's intentionally reducing range whilst reporting otherwise so it can't be a matter of time savings. He's trying to vandalize the reputation of the vehicle.
- not charging past 90% at the 1st station is defensible. Especially if Tesla warns it will shorten the battery's life.
- It'd be better if Tesla's software took temperature into account when estimating mileage range.
- Broder is being ridiculous about the cruise control and his speed estimates, and the temperature. He has partial accountability for the NYT graph. Turning the temperature down to 70 does not mean "sharply downward". He turned it down once more at around 250 miles, but that's far after the 182 that the article/graph indicates, and markedly different than "a little over 200 miles". He writes about how his feet were freezing and knuckles were turning white, but he didn't turn the heat down below 70 until (if my math is right) right about the time he got to Manhattan, which was mentioned afterward in his article timeline. On the other hand, it looks like it was turned down for most of the leg between Manhattan and Milford.
- The leg from Manhattan to Milford sounds legitimately stressful, but Broder claims low-speed cruise control that never happened. He tries to blame this on wheel size later, while simultaneously using Tesla's logs as showing that he wasn't driving very fast. That makes no sense.
- Tesla claims they told Broder to fully charge at Milford. He did not, and lists a lot of justifications for not following their advice.
- Broder complains that Tesla didn't tell him more about how to get the most out of charging stations, but Broder's a veteran at electric vehicles even if it's true that he hates them. And his defense for not charging overnight is laughable - plugging in overnight is not the same as plugging it at every Walmart stop. It's overnight in cold temperatures and the car was at less than 50% of its range. He's just being obstinate here.
- It's laughable to say that the Tesla fell short of its projected range when the projected range was from the day before, before not plugging it in on a cold night.
- Tesla and Broder directly contradict each other on whether they gave him the go-ahead to stop charging after an hour in Norwich. Broder's being vague in his wordings - he phrases it as if they approved him to unplug when they might have just said to plug it in for about an hour when they were trying to find him the plugin station ahead of time. Tesla, in turn, says that he unplugged over their objections.
- Broder just can't "account for the discrepancy" about the logs showing him driving close to 55 when he said he was limping along at 45, back from Norwich.
- Broder seems defensible on the parking brake - how is he to know not to turn off the car? - and the driving in circles, although it would be interesting to know just how clearly marked that supercharge station is. Musk is probably guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" here.
Anyway, even after Broder's latest response, it still reads like Broder was trying to stack the deck.