REDO. With supervision. Seems worthless to yak back and forth when we can just find out how the car performs. It's still cold on the east coast, right?
That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
61–70 of 281 posts
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#62Two 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…
> That does not make any sense either. Any kind of consumption will ultimately reduce the available range, you don't restore by removing joules from a pack. I think what is happening is that he thinks the battery actually does have the charge, but the estimate is incorrect because of the cold. What he thinks is going to happen by driving is that the battery will heat up and become more efficient, and the estimated ra…
That seems to be plausible explanation, but I don't see how you give such advice to somebody on the road. You have two potential situations:
1. Battery has lost some charge for unknown reason, and has to be recharged. 2. Battery has proper charge, but the estimate is wrong.
If you act according to true scenario, client is happy in both cases. If true scenario is 2 but you act like it's 1, the client wastes and hour to recharge (which isn't necessary) but arrives at the goal. If true scenario is 1 but you act like it's 2, the client is stuck in the middle of the road and curses you.
Clearly, you should always choose to act as if the true scenario is 1 and recommend proper recharging, and try to debug why charge indicator was potentially wrong later. If the support person gave different advice, he was setting himself and his company for the mess up, and the mess up ensued.
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
A car in motion uses ten times the power of a house. The engineers apparently wanted him to slowly pull power from the battery, which would be consistent with "sitting in the car with the heat on low." If it turns out Tesla denies telling him how he can condition the battery, that would be significant.
Musk already flatly denied that he had ever been "cleared" by Tesla for the next leg of the journey. Somebody's wrong.
> The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#64The logged data does support the broad lines of Broder's story (large drop in battery charge overnight, slow driving, turning down heating) and the 10-15% imprecision (driving at 52 mph instead of 45, heating goes down at 200 miles instead of 182, charge time of 47 minutes instead of 58) is well to be expected from what is a journalistic review and not a scientific experiment. So this all comes down to what customer…
> and the 10-15% imprecision is well to be expected from what is a journalistic review and not a scientific experiment
Sorry, but your standards are a bit low. A lot of things like a 10-15% imprecision, all biased in the direction of making the car perform less -- that's exactly what I'd do if I were trying to fix the drive's outcome.
If Consumer Reports had multiple things 10-15% off, all pointedly to support a given agenda, there would be an outcry. I see no reason why the NYTimes, in an article in which they are reporting data, should be held to a lesser standard.
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#65The tit-for-tat details here don't matter. The story is simply, "The Tesla lost a ton of range overnight, unexpectedly. Tesla said it would come back after an hour of low-power charging." Is that true? Clearly the former statement is true but the latter is not. The only question is whether Tesla gave the reporter bad advice, or whether the reporter lied because he wanted to sabotage the test. Given Tesla's focus on t…
I agree with you that the tit-for-tat details don't matter; I don't agree with you that the only question is whether Tesla gave the reporter bad advice.
This is a textbook example of how not to solve a PR problem — to get in a public, internet-driven slanging match with a journalist. Instead of "publicly refuting", Musk should have called up and got a full account of what went wrong; put the journalist on side, and got an at least somewhat positive follow up account from the journalist saying "I spoke to Musk and he had some questions and we talked through it and we realize that rather than the car being at fault, a database with current locations of chargers hadn't been updated etc etc etc".
Right now, instead, Musk can't win. And he's drawing a HUGE amount of publicity to a fact that's already in the back of a lot of consumers minds — that these EVs aren't ready for primetime.
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#66From 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?
He is the energy and environmental issues reporter now.
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
On the other hand, Brody has known record of exaggeration and distortion of truth. Whereas Musk is an honest, no-nonsense engineer. (Although I'd be interested if you could point me to a situation where Musk was caught blatantly lying about something.)
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#68[deleted]
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#69Overall 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…
> 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.
And someone who had an axe to grind, or who might benefit from pictures of a Tesla being towed, might decide differently.
Re: That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t
#70If he had just driven the fucking car and recharged as necessary, from looking at the battery meter, it would've been a fine trip.
As the reporter noted, and Tesla itself has confirmed, the charging meter gets decalibrated in extremely cold weather (i.e., near or below freezing) and does not accurately state the charge level of the battery.
In a nutshell, the decais the root cause of the scandal.
Note that this problem is shared with all other EVs currently on the market (i.e., the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf). It's a basic problem of physics and chemistry.