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That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

wheels.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#41

Post by majormajor »

SilasX wrote: post #35
majormajor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile “in a tiny 100-space parking lot.” While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly mar…

>Is being able to spring a "gotcha" on a reporter for publishing a "fake" review preferable to sharing the info with the reporter so that, if malicious intent is suspected, the reporter knows that Tesla knows exactly what the facts are? Yes, if it helps us spot liars who are so far behind the times they don't realize we have the technology to catch them in their lies.

I meant from Tesla's point of view. They need to sell cars more than they need to expose liars. Assuming the reporter was told they didn't have exact data, and assuming the reporter did slant the story to paint as negative a picture as possible, does this back and forth gain Tesla back enough desirability/credibility to offset the additional loss of face from the extremely slanted initial report?

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#42

Post by nikcub »

The biggest mistake Elon made in his response was to dump all that data and to attempt to tear apart each part of the review. This means that the rebuttals now involve taking pieces of that and disproving them in the aim of disproving Tesla's entire argument.

Tesla should have posted nothing more than a single line statement saying that Broder left the last charging station for a 65 mile trip with 32 miles on his range meter.

Tesla had the opportunity to define the territory of this argument very narrowly. Because Tesla placed everything on the table in the response, this has become a case of he-said, she-said.

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#43

Post by slantyyz »

logn wrote: post #33
slantyyz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind, the whole thing that turned this into a soap opera was Musk's knee jerk responses on Twitter. Had he come back with a more measured response (like OXO did with Quirky) and just politely pointed out the inaccuracies of the article and made his same offer of "We'll provide a car to any journalist to do the same test and see what happens", I don't think we'd be discussing this right now.

I agree. If you subtract Musk's twitter posts and the few inflammatory sentences in his rebuttal to the review, I think he did a fine job of defending himself and pointing out that the reviewer was trying to push the limits of the battery (as the reviewer should). Musk should have simply made the point that no average person would have ended up towing their car. It would be like if I complained about my new Android n…

After reading the original article myself, I didn't think it was that bad. My main takeaway was "If you're a Tesla owner, make sure you charge your battery if you're driving a reasonably long distance on a really cold day".

I didn't think the article was that big a deal. Now we have what is essentially a "blogfight" with both sides parsing out every little word that the other published.

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#44

Post by HelloMcFly »

nirvana wrote: post #34
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Two bits are completely non-sensical to me, is there any battery technician or otherwise knowledgeable person that can indicate in what conditions this makes any sense? > Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product p…

The answer is very simple: Brody is lying about what Tesla told him, just like he's told many other lies in his article and in the rebuttal. Putting it into a "he said / she said" is a smokescreen. The car might be a lemon but the idea that Tesla told him to run the heater to charge the battery is beyond credulity. This is not exactly the first time the NYT has told lies for ideological reasons. The paper does it reg…

Good thing Musk is willing to "stand up to them" given that he's the truly unbiased one in this situation, right? He's playing an angle here too. And the other article (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks...) casts some doubt on his loud protestations. And they've only released their summarized charts, not the raw log data, anyway. It's already a "he said / she said" situation, it's just that much of the HN crowd is more apt to be on one side vs. the other.

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#45

Post by relic »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

From the article, "Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product planner at the company’s headquarters in California." That quoted sentence includes the interesting phrase "Tesla's spokeswoman at the time," seemingly i…

On the point about the data logging, it was stated in Tesla's first response article that they "always carefully data log media drives". It is entirely possible that they were logging/monitoring far more data for Broder's adventure than they would for private consumers.

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#46

Post by jacquesm »

danielweber wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Two bits are completely non-sensical to me, is there any battery technician or otherwise knowledgeable person that can indicate in what conditions this makes any sense? > Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product p…

Any kind of consumption will ultimately reduce the available range, you don't restore by removing joules from a pack It's entirely possible that the amount of energy you can get out a battery depends on its current temperature, and that by sitting around to let it slowly warm up, the total power you can get out of it would be faster than if you tried to pull it all out as fast as possible.

Sure it is. But that will only work when you warm up the pack, not when you warm up the car. The draining of energy will also warm up the pack (it should, to some extent because the pack will have an internal resistance which the current passes through, which will turn into heat) but this is still much less efficient than using that energy to propel the car forward.

The band where draining at a lower rate would warm up the battery to the point where the aggregate power taken from the pack would be higher if you drained it at a lower rate for a 1/2 hour and then at a higher rate is a very thin one if it exists at all.

The good news is that that is a thing that could easily be proven or disproven with a bunch of LiPo batteries, a freezer and a bunch of resistors.

I'd be quite surprised if the Ri of the batteries was low enough to allow sufficient current to flow, yet high enough to heat up to have this effect.

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#47

Post by stcredzero »

> I do recall setting the cruise control to about 54 m.p.h., as I wrote. The log shows the car traveling about 60 m.p.h. for a nearly 100-mile stretch on the New Jersey Turnpike. I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires.

Okay, someone please explain to me how tires with a smaller circumference are going to result in faster speeds?

John Broder already came across as someone who's hazy on basic physics. Maybe he's not so hot on geometry, either.

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#48

Post by nbouscal »

luigi wrote: post #7

Overall I think Broder acquits himself well, and his explanation about circling the Milford parking lot makes sense. Also, the Tesla engineer he was on the phone with at the time should have been able to tell Musk that happened (or Tesla should have just asked Broder to comment before posting the rebuttal). His action here is still hard to understand: > The Tesla personnel whom I consulted over the phone – Ms. Ra and…

Yeah, there are really two major problems with the story. First, that he drove off with 32 miles left. Even if they did say it was okay, a rational consumer would be pretty skeptical. This also creates the problem that the story depends on what was said in a telephone conversation that we don't have access to, so there's really no way to know who is telling the truth. The other problem is this quote: "If there was a public charging station nearby, no one made me aware of it." When I go on a road trip and I'm running out of gas, I don't wait for a call from someone to tell me where the gas station is. I stop and I find out where the gas station is, and then I drive straight to it and fill the car. Broder says that he was trying to simulate a real trip, but that just doesn't square with his behavior. Only filling to 72% is not what an ordinary consumer does on a long trip. You fill the tank, because like your mother always told you, "Better safe than sorry."

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#49

Post by waterlesscloud »

nikcub wrote: post #42

The biggest mistake Elon made in his response was to dump all that data and to attempt to tear apart each part of the review. This means that the rebuttals now involve taking pieces of that and disproving them in the aim of disproving Tesla's entire argument. Tesla should have posted nothing more than a single line statement saying that Broder left the last charging station for a 65 mile trip with 32 miles on his ran…

Agreed. They've allowed Broder to just ride this out by muddying the waters. He walks away from this only slightly tainted now.

At the very least, his notes and the resulting article are not accurate. He confirms this himself.

This isn't surprising, and not necessarily malicious. But it's extremely common, as anyone who has ever dealt with a journalist knows.

As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work.

Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t

#50

Post by pilsetnieks »

From the article: "In my 16 years at The Times I have served as White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent."

I don't mean to insult or slander Mr. Broder but how does one go from a White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent to reviewing cars and charger stations?

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