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Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

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Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#51

Post by VMG »

I have the feeling that Musk shot himself in the foot with his original blog post. He accused Broder of a host things, that now are being reduced by some to seemingly critical points to the story while others debate minor points like the point at which the AC was turned on and if Broder missed the charging station or was trying to empty the battery.

I think it boils down to this:

1) Does Broders trip represent a typical experience driving a Tesla Model S?

2) Could Broder have avoided running the car down to empty and having it toed?

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#52

Post by adamnemecek »

Shivetya wrote: post #36
gfodor wrote: post #21

I guess it's time to muddy the waters. The truth is in the middle! Of course, the entire debacle can be summed up with the following exchange: Q: "How many miles did you have left to drive on the final leg?" Broder: "61" Q: "And how many miles did your car tell you that you could travel before recharging?" Broder: "32" Of course, Broder claims that Tesla told him it was OK to leave. I think this is bullshit, but will…

did he think he added 32 more miles? I wonder if this is still a problem of UI and such... still its a 100k car and Musk is quibbling over temperature settings... really?

Tesla S is 50k.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#53

Post by specialist »

davidiach wrote: post #20
JPKab wrote: post #7

"Convincing? No. His other chart shows the mile range dipped below zero, which would indicate the car could not move. " Wow, I wish I could be as sloppy and awful at my job as these journalists are. Had he actually bothered to truly read the response he is commenting on, he would see that Musk states that, when the car's range dips below zero, it is running on reserve power. It takes some miles after "zero" for the c…

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Broder might not have wanted to "be evil". He might be like the guy who doesn't actually want to hurt the company he is working for but still spends all his day playing games at work. Given that his job was to write an accurate review, the fact that he didn't really want to wait until the car is fully charged and was bored driving the car at normal speed and so on, we can…

As someone who's tried, with varied success, to work with reporters on technical stuff, I don't subscribe to "the somewhere in the middle" view.

To us geeks, often, stuff is either true or not true, with no room for maybe.

To reporters, they're both trying to understand what's happening without direct knowledge as well as convey that in a way a layperson can understand. Unfortunately, in that game of telephone, a lot of important details get lost.

I also think reporters deal with imperfect information and rely on their judgement to determine if any particular detail is important to the overall narrative, often influenced by the competing agendas of the players involved.

What's great (rare) about this story is there's published data, the validity of which no one disputes (yet), to chew over.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#54

Post by adastra »

codex wrote: post #28
adastra wrote: post #24

The "Norwich Charge" data point is all you need to understand what happened here. Notice how vague Broder is in his original account: "After making arrangements to recharge at the Norwich station, I located the proper adapter in the trunk, plugged in and walked to the only warm place nearby, Butch’s Luncheonette and Breakfast Club, an establishment (smoking allowed) where only members can buy a cup of coffee or a pla…

Earlier in the article, Broder claims that Tesla blamed the mileage inaccuracies on a computer glitch, and that some battery reconditioning would restore the range lost overnight. So it's not impossible that either he, or Tesla, (or both) believed the mileage readout to be inaccurately low, caused by a bug triggered by low temperature readings. I think the author implies that this was the situation, but it is indeed…

That all comes down to what Broder claims someone told him on a phone call. Except he doesn't quote them verbatim and never provides the name(s) of the people he was talking to.

Given all that they had at stake, namely a disastrous NY Times review, how likely is it that Tesla would knowingly say "Oh, your reading says 30 miles, but you have more than twice that still to travel? Meh, it's probably just a computer glitch. Carry on."

Not bloody likely.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#55

Post by jlgreco »

duaneb wrote: post #50
fleitz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to a BMW dealership, take an M5 for a test drive, when the car says it was 32 miles left try to drive it 60. It's a 100k car and it won't make that feat either.

I mean, I've never driven a car with a digital gas meter before, but on all the cars I've driven they always have tens of miles when the gas light comes on. EDIT: To be clear, it is extremely stupid to do so.

Similarly, the car traveled 19 miles past it's projected range, and still has reserve power when it claims to be empty.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#56

Post by aqme28 »

OGinparadise wrote: post #19

The problem I have with "he made it up": unless you have a computer keeping track of miles, speed and temperature, you are going to be "lying" about it. For example, I could easily say that I was riding at 67 mph but the computer point out that I actually went as high as 72, as low as 52 a lot of the time. Was I lying? Who the hell is going to remember or write about every speed change on a 500 mile trip? Was it a sc…

Complaining on Yelp is one thing. Hyperbole has no place in journalism of this caliber.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#57

Post by zevyoura »

OGinparadise wrote: post #35
DanBC wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say you are limping along at 45 mph you shouldn't be driving at over 50 mph. > 45 mph or 52mph, it's the same crap to me. Would that work with traffic police?

Would that work with traffic police? who cares, but usually yes, at least in US (you go fast, you slow, fast...and police are looking for the worst offender) . My point is: a car that has to be driven with a gazillion, million, billion specific instructions or else it's a brick, maybe it isn't for me or many others. "Your car died and you're in the middle of nowhere because you went 5mph over the recommended by Tesla…

You're arguing a straw man point; while the speed difference may have contributed to the discharge, I don't believe anyone's arguing it made the difference.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#58

Post by JPKab »

taligent wrote: post #42
JPKab wrote: post #7

"Convincing? No. His other chart shows the mile range dipped below zero, which would indicate the car could not move. " Wow, I wish I could be as sloppy and awful at my job as these journalists are. Had he actually bothered to truly read the response he is commenting on, he would see that Musk states that, when the car's range dips below zero, it is running on reserve power. It takes some miles after "zero" for the c…

> someone who has no education in comprehending quantitative You need to a degree to understand a pretty basic line graph ? Give me a break. People on here (and in the article's comments) need to stop acting like sanctimonious assholes. Electric cars are not some advanced technology that only the precious genius of Musk and IT nerds can comprehend. The fact is that the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle here.…

I get why you're irritated, but when I say "education" I don't mean necessarily a degree. I mean just some fundamental, working knowledge, whether that's from a degree, course, autodidactic, whatever. I did sound sanctimonious, but you know what? I didn't write a critique of someone's data dependent analysis. And if I lacked quantitative analysis experience, I wouldn't try to.

But to be fair, I have no way of knowing the author lacks this experience. My intuition told me this with the numerous mistakes made in the article.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#59

Post by dfxm12 »

taligent wrote: post #42
JPKab wrote: post #7

"Convincing? No. His other chart shows the mile range dipped below zero, which would indicate the car could not move. " Wow, I wish I could be as sloppy and awful at my job as these journalists are. Had he actually bothered to truly read the response he is commenting on, he would see that Musk states that, when the car's range dips below zero, it is running on reserve power. It takes some miles after "zero" for the c…

> someone who has no education in comprehending quantitative You need to a degree to understand a pretty basic line graph ? Give me a break. People on here (and in the article's comments) need to stop acting like sanctimonious assholes. Electric cars are not some advanced technology that only the precious genius of Musk and IT nerds can comprehend. The fact is that the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle here.…

It is unreasonable for someone to expect the truth from a journalist? This is an issue about integrity. If the truth does, in fact, lie in the middle, it doesn't matter if the NYT author had a hidden agenda or not, it matters that the NYT author did not tell the truth.

I expect Tesla employees to be biased toward Tesla. I expect journalists to tell the truth.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#60

Post by uvdiv »

Nathanael47 wrote: post #23

Do people really think that Broder lied about the car dying?

It's obviously true, because Elon would be contradicting it if it weren't. Which he isn't.

Instead he's muddying the issue like so:

"As the State of Charge log shows, the Model S battery never ran out of energy at any time, including when Broder called the flatbed truck." (Technically true and useless)

Broder's towing company further backs him up:

http://jalopnik.com/towing-company-the-nyt-tesla-model-s-was...

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