

Musk extends Times feud, calls Model S review "ethics violation" - MikeCapone
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/09/us-musk-review-nyt-idUSBRE9280HX20130309

======
chimi
Elon Musk was my hero until this Times feud. I loved him. I thought he was
moving the world forward. He is. I just don't respect him anymore, not like I
used to. I mean, I do, just not like I used to.

I looked at the chart. I read his response. I read the original. The Times
journalist was clearly being honest. He had a really hard time with the car. I
had the feeling he wanted the car to be great. He didn't want the
disappointment.

Musk is painting him as a villain beset on destroying the future of electric
propulsion. It's just not true.

Just fix the car. Make it better. Just make it better, Elon. You can make it
better. It's a little broken right now, but you can do it. I still believe in
you. I'm a little broken up about your personal issues here, but please, rise
above it and make the car better and change the world. I mean, keep changing
the world.

This is just a small distraction.

~~~
electrograv
Try to be sensitive to the fact that in cases like these, especially with such
high stakes involved (a billion dollar company for Elon Musk, a career for the
reporter), both sides are bound to throw everything they can into their
argument. While such displays of human nature can legitimately be
disappointing, at least try to see the whole picture and the motivations of
each side.

If you think Elon Musk is 100% correct that the reporter was a liar, or that
the reporter was 100% in the right for publishing a big picture of a Tesla
Model S being towed, you're going to be disappointed.

Both sides are upset, extremely opinionated, and have their own slant on the
matter. Both sides made mistakes, and probably could have held back on a few
things they claimed.

Elon Musk should have focused just on the obvious faults of the reporter --
like how the reporter _probably_ should have more clearly highlighted that he
literally began a trip for X miles with Y miles range displayed on the dash,
where X > Y by a considerable amount (rather than burying this fact in noise).
Not little details like air conditioning and driving in circles to find the
supercharger.

And similarly, although there's disagreement over what certain Tesla reps may
have recommended over the phone, it seems at last slightly disingenuous to
post a big photo of a Tesla Model S being towed given the fact that he started
and forced a trip of length X when the car showed range Y on the screen, where
X > Y by a considerable amount.

Saying that you lost respect for Elon Musk is your right. However I
_personally_ haven't lost much if any. He was defending a cause he felt
strongly about. What was the reporter's motivations?

The article was clearly slanted. So was Elon's rebuttal, but with every force,
expect an equal and opposite reaction.

I'm not condoning the rebuttal, but I would put it this way: I understand and
sympathize with Elon's overreaction far more than I do with the reporter's
initial motivations to slant the story. And he very clearly did slant it.

> Just fix the car.

That's not really the issue, even if he could fix it. Which is easier said
than done; we're dealing with advanced material science here. You can bet his
team is hard at work on it, but this is the kind of thing that takes many
years of deep research. Let's deal with the issue at hand (slanted articles vs
slanted rebuttals), for now.

~~~
niggler
"If you think Elon Musk is 100% correct that the reporter was a liar, or that
the reporter was 100% in the right for publishing a big picture of a Tesla
Model S being towed, you're going to be disappointed."

I don't think the OP went into it thinking that Musk or Broder were right.

" just don't respect him anymore, not like I used to. I mean, I do, just not
like I used to."

I interpreted that statement to refer to how Tesla reacted to the review. Musk
could have taken the opportunity to clearly explain the extenuating
circumstances and extended a new opportunity for Broder to take a test drive,
but instead opted for this reality-TV-like drama to play out (which, btw,
other media sources like CNBC and CNN really enjoyed).

------
rossjudson
Elon Musk cares. He has everything on the line, and everything he's worked for
(and his employees and investors too). They're trying to change something
fundamental.

Years of effort by thousands of people, doing something that matters.

To have that put at risk by a lazy/incompetent reporter, who's got nothing on
the line but 24 hours of his ass in a car, someone who can't even take his job
seriously enough to even attempt to get it right...it's got to be infuriating.

Put the echo chamber idiocy out of mind. There's someone who's _right_ here.
And it's not Broder.

Say, why hasn't Broder offered to repeat the drive? He's probably too busy
figuring out how to review rocket technology without learning anything about
that either.

~~~
niggler
You've fallen into the trap of accepting Musk's false dichotomy here. Try to
separate your emotions when you analyze what happened here.

What's clear, from an objective point of view, is that there were issues that
could be attributed to Tesla. Musk still hasn't refuted the fact that Tesla
engineers gave Broder really poor advice during the trip. Musk didn't produce
the call logs, and the "data" corroborates most of Broder's claims regarding
what happened during the drive.

"Elon Musk cares. He has everything on the line, and everything he's worked
for "

Gives him more incentive to fight the NYT and try to paint Broder as an evil
man. CEO has billions of dollars on the line, NYT reporter has his career on
the line, yet if this were any other traditional company you would side with
the reporter.

"To have that put at risk by a lazy/incompetent reporter, who's got nothing on
the line but 24 hours of his ass in a car, someone who can't even take his job
seriously enough to even attempt to get it right...it's got to be
infuriating."

Broder _did_ get it right, and Musk's data and nonsequiturs proved it. The
core facts were that Broder followed Tesla's advice and, by following the
advice, the car ran out of charge. You are letting your blind faith in Musk
cloud your reasoning abilities

"Say, why hasn't Broder offered to repeat the drive? He's probably too busy
figuring out how to review rocket technology without learning anything about
that either."

Why hasn't Musk revealed the call logs with the advice Tesla gave Broder
during the trip? Is it because they would corroborate Broder's story? Most
likely.

~~~
rossjudson
"Low-grade ethics violation" is an apt description of what occurred, in my
opinion.

Musk hasn't painted Broder as evil. Publicity-seeking and/or incompetence
aren't evil. It's just amplified by the backdrop of electric cars.

If Musk _hadn't_ called bullshit when he saw it, it would have been open
season on Tesla by every copycat hack trying to get a piece of the action.

You can be sure that journalists covering Tesla for publications of record
will be quite careful and accurate with their facts, good and bad, from now
on.

I don't think Musk can ask for more than that.

~~~
niggler
"Low-grade ethics violation" is appropriate only if you think the journalist's
mandate was to brown-nose.

"Musk hasn't painted Broder as evil."

Musk wrote (source: <http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-
drive>):

    
    
         In Mr. Broder’s case, he simply did not accurately capture what happened and worked very hard to force our car to stop running.
    

I'm sorry, but that's absolutely painting Broder as Evil. I'm going to repeat
the claim, because for some reason you don't see this as nefarious: _worked
very hard to force our car to stop running._

"If Musk hadn't called bullshit when he saw it, it would have been open season
on Tesla by every copycat hack trying to get a piece of the action."

Instead, it was open season to attack NYT.

"You can be sure that journalists covering Tesla for publications of record
will be quite careful and accurate with their facts, good and bad, from now
on.

I don't think Musk can ask for more than that."

What Musk is asking for is the media to be his lapdog. And that's fine. But
don't delude yourself into thinking he's asking for objectivity. You are
belying your own inability to think.

~~~
jlgreco
With a bar for _"evil"_ so absurdly low, it strikes me as rather silly to
become so indignant over such labels.

------
haberman
Why on earth is he still talking about this? There is nothing to be gained
from it at this point. The story played out with words back and forth,
whatever opinions people have formed about who was "right" have been formed.
No one is going to think better of Tesla from Elon Musk continuing to talk
about it. It was an unfortunate little kerfuffle, let sleeping dogs lie and
move on already.

I also think it's a mistake for Elon to continue claiming that the reporter
acted in bad faith. There's no way to prove that; the data can show where the
car went but not what was going on in the reporter's head.

Elon's passion is changing the world, and I admire him immensely. The problem
with passion is that it can sometimes cause a person to act rashly. If I were
Elon, I'd find a cool-headed trusted friend to help me choose my battles a
little more wisely.

------
niggler
The most hilarious part of Musk's ego-trip is that the longer he extends the
feud, the worse _he_ looks and the better _Broder_ looks. Musk lost on the
merits, and trying to re-litigate the arguments only reinforces that fact.

------
schiffern
> _Musk has said Tesla lost $100 million in sales and canceled orders as a
> result of the Times' review_

Nice game of Telephone. Musk actually said the damage to Tesla's _reputation_
was a big part of that.

------
codex
Given that Elon libeled the NY Times and Broder with claims of "fakery"--an
extraordinary claim which was not supported by the meager evidence presented--
I'd say Tesla itself is guilty of quite a bit more than an ethics violation.

------
drucken
Given how little is known of Musk and Tesla in general, this continual public
airing must be one of his cheapest sources of marketing...

------
tonylemesmer
Why doesn't Tesla spend its effort on improving the product instead of
shouting at reviewers who criticize it?

------
SODaniel
Elon Musk is one of those bona fide type A geniuses that I would HATE to see
go the way of Rise and McAffee.

------
taligent
For a smart guy Musk is being incredibly stupid.

It's one thing to attack a show like Top Gear. It's a whole other to attack
the New York Times. People around the world have a lot of respect for the
paper and whilst nobody claims that they are always right there is the
assumption that they wouldn't intentionally be dishonest or biased.

So by continually picking a fight with them people will tune out and just take
the "truth lies in the middle" position which is not good at all for Tesla.

~~~
DeepDuh
I've just watched that clip for the first time:
[http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/electric-
shocker?VideoBrows...](http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/electric-
shocker?VideoBrowserMode=this-week&Page=1)

Defamation? Really? I think Clarkson was actually pretty fair, considering his
usual style. What they showed at least seems believable to me.

~~~
jlgreco
Yeah, I for one think that Musk was being entirely unreasonable when he got
upset with Top Gear (I mean come on, this is a show that gave a good review to
a car because they were able to drive it upside-down in a tunnel...).

His issues with the Times seem _far_ more reasonable.

~~~
waterlesscloud
"gave a good review to a car because they were able to drive it upside-down in
a tunnel"

Musk aside, is there a youtube link for that?

~~~
sliverstorm
Perhaps he is speaking of this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TbpgZ2Dt0A>

I think they also mentioned when reviewing one of those crazy open-wheelers
that it was supposed to be able to drive upside-down simply due to downforce,
but I don't think they demo'd that.

~~~
jlgreco
Yup, that's it!

F1 teams also commonly claim their cars could drive upsidedown, but the
logistics of actually trying that would be absurd. You'd probably need a
robotic driver at least...

------
samstave
Anecdote: I was in the Facebook Menlo park campus parking lot, and just in
front of the single building I was entering were parked a total of (7) tesla
model S cars.

Comment: musk has made two of the most incredible companies of our decade,
Tesla and Space X, they will mature. Any issues will resolve and the world
will be better because of it.

Screw the Times.

