The decline of the Grey Lady and other newspaper errors/misconduct

Yep, my bad. I missed that they said that they charged it to 240 miles, not 265, so they lost between a quarter and a third of that

The car is still way too expensive, but even the shorter 176 miles is pretty surprising!

I mean more would be better obviously, and I'm curious just how much it drops off with battery age, but that's way more driving than I do except for the occasional vacation where you could easily time charging around getting something to eat.

Hopefully the more mass market electric cars can catch up to that. I'm guessing much of a Tesla's extra cost goes into such range though. :-/

The car could definitely use a more intelligent range estimator though, taking into account actual temperature and likely temperature after driving. A simple "gas left" gauge doesn't quite cut it for a battery.

1. It does continuously update the range estimate. In fact, that's one of the complaints that came out of this - that the range estimator on the car was more trustworthy than the engineer's given advice; and that the displayed range dropped precipitously overnight because it wasn't plugged in. Furthermore, the guy said the car stopped at an estimated 0 miles left, not an estimated -20 miles left, despite the fact that he got 20 miles more than what the car initially estimated.
2. You don't actually need to measure the temperature; the effects of low temperature on electrical systems are directly measurable rather than having to be inferred.

1. Well, yeah, obviously range estimates are going to approach perfect accuracy as it runs down to zero. ;-)

2. Knowing the temperate and some data on how a battery reacts could let you get a a more accurate range estimate at the beginning of a trip.

NYT editor weighs in. "Sure, our journalist took terrible notes and showed poor judgement, but we're gonna back him up anyway."

In that sense, I'm sympathetic to the NYT stance, because it's a tricky needle to thread at times between Broder's bad choices and Musk's.

Broder made some bad choices and admitted to them in his original article. Musk accused him of lying his face off, deliberately rigging things to make Tesla look bad, and generally behaving in a fashion that should get him drummed out of his profession. Without any evidence to back it up. Not really the same thing.

In particular, Musk's accusation that Broder lied about the heat in the car when HIS OWN GRAPHS clearly show the heat being turned down is a flat out lie in and of itself. His accusation that Broder tried to run the battery down in a parking lot is prima facie nonsense--why would he have driven in circles for just half a mile, rather than actually running the battery down? He never addresses the loss of power overnight, which again clearly appears on the graph. And his final j'accuse of declaring that Broder should have trusted in the range display and charged the car for longer is something that Broder himself said in the original article.

Once you get past the striking image of the car being towed, the story is not particularly controversial: Batteries perform for shit in cold weather, you need to be careful not to strand yourself between charging stations, and God help you if you do screw up and run down the battery because Musk will personally show up at your front door to punch you in the nose for daring to mistreat his baby.

It doesn't take a PR genius to understand that if you publicly call out a journalist as a liar and crook his publication is probably going to defend him unless you present a pretty damned airtight case. Musk obviously didn't do that.

A smarter CEO, or one with a reasonably competent PR department, would have gone to Broder and NYT with the data privately first and tried to get some sort of mea culpa, preferably from Broder himself. Sure, it wouldn't have been a complete retraction, but even an admission by Broder that he didn't take very good notes would, I think, have been far more effective in making Tesla look like the aggrieved party. Instead, coming from someone who has no dog in this fight, Musk comes off as an unhinged guy who's going to jump at every shadow. I doubt that's going to endear him or the Tesla brand to investors.

I'd also like to see a response from Musk to Broder's claim that the car shut down, necessitating the flatbed. Musk said that the "battery never ran out of energy," even when they called the flatbed, but you'll note that's not quite the same as saying that Broder was lying. It's highly unlikely that the car's computer would ever allow the battery to fully run out of energy, because lithium ion batteries become really difficult to charge if you do, so saying that the battery never fully discharged is sort of a meaningless statement, clearly intended to leave the reader thinking that Broder lied without actually saying that Broder lied. But if Broder really did lie about the car shutting down, why not just say so? Surely the car would have logged such an event. I'd like to hear Musk say, straight-up, that Broder lied about the car shutting down. If, indeed, he did.

I think that's true, which is why I agree with the Times' stance. If you want to interpret my post as a positive claim for equivalence between the two, that's your call. The Times shouldn't have published the article as it was written, and once they made that call, then it's a question of defusing the drama and taking away Musk's opportunity to milk it for further drama. They could take a more aggressive stance, embodying the more principle-oriented analysis you espouse, but it seems to me they would need a stronger foundation in terms of the integrity of the original article.

This is the same Musk that claims there's no such thing as a bricking problem with their roadsters, despite several instances of that happening.

The model S gets the best review of any car, ever, from Consumer Reports.

I saw one of these while driving the 280 in the Bay area a couple weeks ago. Nice looking car.

Yeah it's a quite glowing review. They're not recommending it yet as they don't have reliability data.

I've got a delivery date for mine and articles like this are not helping me relax during the wait :p

The $90k price tag is a little daunting.

I've seen a couple on the roads so far. Pretty car. Much better style than I anticipated from seeing pictures and such. They really don't do it justice until you see one cruising along.

Los Altos, California, seems to be ground zero for these things. I've seen at least a half-dozen on my daily bike rides through that area.

There are a ton of these in Boston, where for four months out of the year its range is apparently 40 miles or something. I think it's nuts, I'm afraid to park my Mazda on the street. Can't imagine my reaction if someone dinged up my $90,000 space car.

There are cheaper versions, which is what I got. In fact my version is so cheap they don't even make it anymore!

Cold weather does do a number on the battery pack, but it's not that bad. Think more like 60-70% of the normal 240 mile EPA range.

I have heard Santa Monica is full of these. Probably anywhere with environmentally responsible people, who have lots of money and like more style than a Prius.

North Carolina fights to remain the leader in legislating away the future by proposing a ban on direct sales of cars (ie without a dealer). This is relevant because it only targets one manufacturer, Tesla.

Interesting. State franchising laws requiring cars to be sold through dealers are common throughout the country. This law, however, may be going a bridge too far because it would presumably ban direct sales from out of state (i.e. internet sales). My con law is a bit rusty, but based on the description in the article, it seems like it might be vulnerable to a dormant commerce clause challenge.

Tesla, start your lawyers!

As an aside, Tesla is one of those things that pisses me off about the Republican party right now. "Man, look how terrible Tesla is, fucking waste of government money!" Tesla is now successul. "Let's do everything we can to make them unsuccessful!" You've already lost the argument, assholes, just die already.

Tesla has had a similar battle in Texas (details here), and are trying to get a law passed now to exempt them (which appears to be dead in the water). To be fair though, the fight against Tesla isn't from the Republicans, it's from the apolitical dealership associations which are possibly worse than Republicans.

Tesla has raised $1 bn dollars from investors, which means it's time to pay off loans and advance their other designs. Apparently, this includes an SUV as well as the more predictable lower tier sedan.

Also, Lum , perhaps if you have a minute it would help to just name this the Tesla Talk Thread or something to that effect. The title was kind of worthless even when it applied to the topic.