

Elon Musk’s misguided attack on New York Times - MRSallee
http://dubdux.tumblr.com/post/43138764461/teslas-elon-musks-misguided-attack-on-new-york-times
In essence, Elon Musk doesn’t think the New York Times author went far enough out of his way to make sure the car succeeded. (In fact, the author made way more concessions than a normal user would. He drove under the speed limit. He let the cabin temperature drop. He called Tesla HQ for tips and triage recharging locations. I wouldn’t have done any of that.)
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danielsamuels
This post completely reflect my thoughts on the whole saga - but there's one
more thing which sticks out for me, something briefly touched upon in this
article: filling up a petrol car to do 500+ miles takes <5 minutes. Charging a
Model S to do 500 miles takes over 2 hours. I think that's one of the main
issues people have, that to do a journey which would typically be
insignificant, it requires a large amount of preparation.

If I woke up in the morning and went to my car to drive to work and I found I
didn't have enough mileage - despite it having twice as much as I needed the
night before - I'd be pretty annoyed. Yes, everyone says that you should leave
the car plugged in over-night, but it's such a different way of working with
cars and something which feels like it shouldn't be required, which I think
makes people a little unsure about buying electric cars.

~~~
parfe
Most people regularly drive short distances to and from work. An electric car
charged overnight perfectly fits that model and covers 99% of most people's
driving habits. Just like most people don't need to own a pickup truck. They
borrow one once a year. Most people aren't driving hundreds of miles in a day
on a regular basis. And if you do need to drive hundreds of miles? Then an
electric car isn't for you.

I ski most weekends which is ~350 miles of driving and plugging in the car
really isn't a huge deal. I did it when I had a diesel with an engine block
warmer.

The exception receiving so much focus is kind of baffling. People seem really
invested in finding faults with electric vehicles.

~~~
ripter
This has always bugged me about people complaining about the rage of electric
cars. How often do you really drive 150 miles in a day? Not very damn often.
If you do then maybe an electric car isn't for you. It doesn't have to be
perfect for everyone.

If you are travelling long distance in a gas car, do you put in just enough
gas to get to the next station? Hell no, you fill that sucker up.

It takes longer to charge a car than it does to put in gas. Duh, we all know
that. If anything having to wait an hour between charges is a great
opportunity for restaurants and shopping centers.

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niggler
"Perhaps most worrying is the single-mindedness of the Internet hive mind that
has, over the past few days, eaten up every word of Elon Musk."

Very untrue. From the beginning, a lot of people found fault in Musk's twitter
and CNBC performances, and its clear in ensuing discussion here and elsewhere
that people who initially sided with Musk are adjusting their views based on
the blog post and the NYT defense.

This isn't to say that there aren't Elon evangelists, but the response wasn't
as uniform as the visceral reaction to SOPA

~~~
MRSallee
I was looking mostly at 1) Reddit, 2) Hacker News and 3) Twitter. I saw very,
very few signs of critical thought that questioned Musk.

But yes, I am certain I am not the only person to see that Elon was
exaggerating when he called the article "fake."

~~~
niggler
It's hard to read these sources to determine the nature of the hive mind
because the sorting algorithms gives higher weight to a few people with a lot
of karma or popularity, so if you just looked at the top post you would see
those people and erroneously conclude that the Internet agreed with them.

On twitter, for instance, you are most likely seeing tweets from popular
people (which is not really representative). On reddit and HN the position on
the page isn't representative of the pool's view.

I brought up the same problem in the thread regarding HN hiding stories:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5226147>

~~~
jug6ernaut
If you see it from ppl who have lots of karma/popularity or popular ppl on
twitter is exactly the point. These people are singled out because they have
been promoted by others who agree with them. Just the same if someone who had
the opposite view were upvoted/popular they would be singled out.

~~~
niggler
The claim was that he saw very few people question musk. And I am saying that
its true if all you did was look at the first few comments. If you actually
read the comments deeper in the discussion, you find a bevy of critical posts.

I don't disagree with what you are saying in general but I am refuting the
claim about the quantity. My complaint is really with the algorithm used to
determine what shows up at the top here.

------
jwoldan
It's been strange to watch this saga unfold and see how quickly the idea that
this data unequivocally discredits Broder has propagated. All the data shows
me is that humans aren't as precise with data as computers can be. The one
solid point of dispute is that Broder says he was cleared by Tesla
representatives to leave Norwich with a very low charge, and Musk says he was
not. Unfortunately, unless there are recordings of the conversations released,
we may never know the truth of that.

I don't find the original article damning for the Model S- it just shows that
the range is definitely affected by the cold, and that there are some
additional factors that need to be considered that are different from gas
engines. Any person who is considering an electric car should take those
factors into account- for some they will be dealbreakers, and others they
won't.

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shokwave
tl;dr: They take too long to charge so clearly nobody should wait 58 minutes
instead of 46 or whatever.

Hell, why even bother charging for 46 minutes? Charge it for however long you
estimate it takes you to fill up the gas in your other car, and complain when
the car runs out then, too.

Not a good piece at all; can't say whether that reflects on the author too or
this is just him/her being mindkilled over, of all things, charging time.

~~~
MRSallee
The point is that the author /did/ charge the car sufficiently. The car told
him he could make each leg of the trip, and why would he waste an hour to
charge the car completely? It would be silly to not spend 30 seconds to finish
filling up a gas tank, but -- in my opinion -- it is perfectly reasonable to
fill up an electric car to 50% above the necessary range and spare yourself
significant waits.

Maybe a 58 minute charge at the last leg would've spared him the tow. But how
could he have known? He had 125 miles to drive. He took the car to 185 miles
of battery power.

~~~
ripter
That's like saying "I put just enough gas in the car to drive to the next
station. I don't know how I ran out of gas early!"

There are a lot of factors in driving range. Tesla should be more conservative
on their estimates, but realistically you don't fill a car just enough to get
to the next station. And you definitely don't ignore low fuel warnings (even
if you should have gotten a longer range.)

I'm not saying Tesla is perfect, but I do believe the NYT author wrote the
article to make the car look bad to the average reader.

------
ebbv
Do we really need these third party people chipping in? Tesla has provided
their side, Broder has given his responses, and even CNN has done a story
taking another Model S through the same overall route.

Everybody can take in the info if they're interested and decide for
themselves.

~~~
Someone
Need? No, but if, as in this case, they bring a novel argument, and do that in
a coherent way, I welcome continued discussion.

Having said that, 90% of the comments in this thread repeat arguments beaten
to death and beyond before.

~~~
ebbv
I guess I just haven't found the discussion -- whether the linked article or
the comments -- to be enlightening at all.

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evck
Assuming that the Model S uses the HV pack and a DC/DC to power the 12 V bus
all of the time (like the Roadster), it would make sense that parking the car
overnight in the cold would cause issues.

All other EVs that I know of shut off the battery contactors when the car is
keyed off, and rely on a 12 V SLI battery (usually lead-acid) to support the
vehicle when the power is off. The roadster did not do this, which is
explained in Tesla's BMS documentation [1]. This means that any quiescent
current consumed by the 12 V system will drain the main battery pack.

[1]
[http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadster...](http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf)

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zeru
Honestly, the only fact that should matter is that Broder tried to drive 60+
miles when the car told him it could only do 32. The rest is just silliness
because we don't really know the actual facts, its just heresy from both
sides, until both raw data logs and call logs are released, which I doubt they
will. Sure, that Broder is the NYT oil guy certainly doesnt help him though,
and his lack of common sense and lack of basic understanding of physics may be
the nail in the coffin of this issue, imo.

------
alxndr
Anyone else tired of this controversy?

~~~
jusben1369
I'm learning that if my product or service does something very well don't risk
making it look bad by chasing a use case that isn't (today) critical to our
success. As nice as that car is if I'm going to do a long road trip I'm not
going to inject 45 - 60 minute for recharging stops. I'd still buy one!. Just
if I needed to do a long trip it'd be a rental/plane/train/second car
scenario.

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codex_irl
Electric is all very good, but I can buy a BMW 5 series with a diesel engine
in Europe today & get 81 MPG. A Prius only gets 51.

~~~
MRSallee
To be fair, UK gas mileage numbers are always higher than US numbers, for two
reasons. 1) US and UK use different gas mileage verification (we have EPA,
they have...). 2) A gallon in the UK is bigger than our gallon. It is not
precisely the same unit of measurement.

~~~
codex_irl
When you convert the gallon sizes for US, it gets 52 MPG. No major engine
servicing required until over 200k miles - why is the 5 series diesel not for
sale in the US, seems nuts. Top Gear claimed last year that its pretty much
"the perfect car"...I want :)

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Synthetase
Personally, I'm deeply satisfied Elon Musk stood up for first principles
reasoning and rejected all the niceties of socially created reality.

I've always hated Ayn Rand's writing but he's probably the closest thing to a
Galt-like hero.

