As best as I can tell (unless Tesla releases data showing otherwise), the reporter probably did not intentionally sabotage the results, but made a number of errors possibly because he was trying to simulate a "mass consumer" driver. On the one hand, he should have known better. On the other hand, I can imagine similar things happening to some subset of new Tesla owners who fail to read up on what to do with the new technology, and it is fair to point those faults out.
I imagine the reporter's article would have rubbed Musk the wrong way a lot less if the reporter had made it more clear what was going on and that some of the things that happened were the results of mistakes made (whether or not you might expect consumers to make the same mistakes).
For example: if the reporter had explained that he was intentionally trying to simulate "normal use" by not plugging in the car at night. If the article had said, "The owner's manual said to plug in overnight, repeatedly, but I chose not to in order to see what might happen if a less educated consumer were driving the car," I imagine the article would have gotten more sympathy. The article, as I read it, didn't really get into that, and seemed to simply imply a failure on Tesla's part.
"If the reporter had explained that he was intentionally trying to simulate "normal use" by not plugging in the car at night."
That runs at odds with a claim made on Tesla's site: "The Model S battery will not lose a significant amount of charge when parked for long periods of time. For example, Model S owners can park at the airport without plugging in."
(http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts)
Either Tesla is lying when it claims that it won't lose a significant amount of charge, or Tesla is not lying (which would imply that not charging overnight doesn't really matter)
Interesting, the manual says: "Tesla strongly recommends leaving Model S plugged in when not in use" and "The most important way to preserve the Battery is to LEAVE YOUR MODEL S PLUGGED IN when you’re not using it" and "Tesla recommends charging Model S each night or when convenient to maintain optimum driving range and battery health. If you go on vacation, plug in your Model S before you leave."*
But this also doesn't say that you can expect to lose 65 mile range in the cold if it's not plugged in. This is very good information to know and not at all what's implied by the link you provide, but it would have been good if the article had discussed all this in full context.
To be fair immediately above the point you mention it says
"... The Tesla battery is optimized for nightly charging: topping off frequently enhances the longevity of your battery."
So though I agree that the author has a good argument he should have mentioned that Tesla does advise nightly charging albeit for battery maintenance rather than to guard against charge loss.
When explaining why he didn't plug in the car overnight, he says the evaluation was "intended to demonstrate its practicality as a 'normal use,' no-compromise car" and that Tesla can't realistically expect all of its buyers to be "acolytes" who plug in all the time. I took that for him saying he didn't plug in on purpose, but I could be wrong.
I live in ND and have stayed in several hotels here (lived out of one for 6 months). I can truthfully say ND gets a lot colder than where the reporter was driving. I am wondering which hotels have overnight plug-ins because I sure don't see it here?
Honestly, I wouldn't be the person to ask: I don't own any cars anymore. But, a quick google search suggests that a number of the La Quinta Inns, Days Inns, and Super 8s in North Dakota have winter plugins in the parking lot. Maybe you've just never noticed?
Well, if its the Super 8 around here, they are not quite telling the truth. Not sure what a La Quinta Inns is, and the couple Days Inns don't have outdoor outlets either. Must be selected locations only.
It sure would have been nice when it got -20°F so I could have plugged in the head-bolt heater, but my Kia Rio started fine.
[edit 2] Handy tip, turn on the lights for about 15 seconds, turn off lights, then start the car. Warms the battery a bit.
"Elon told him the supercharging stations should actually be closer to 140 miles apart in that area rather than 200 miles."
I'm very surprised that no tesla employee tried the test first. The difficulty of the 200 mile spacing would have been apparent (and niggling about 2 miles seems petty).
I didn't downvote you, but the author says he received advice from tesla when he called them when he was getting angst about the battery range. He says they told him to take it off cruise control to let the regenerative braking help charge.
Clearly that is absurd advice, but that is what he says he is told. Given that advice, and not knowing any better himself, he thought start-stop driving would be more efficient.
It's worth pointing out that compared to ICE, electric engines are much more efficient with city-style start-stop driving.
When you're stopped with an ICE, it's still using fuel to keep the engine idling. When you're stopped with an electric car on a flat surface, the motor isn't using any energy at all. The only energy you're using in the electric car is the power for the radio and any climate control.
Regenerative breaking also helps the electric car, because it recaptures some of the energy lost in accelerating the car.
I couldn't downvote this, but here's why a downvote is merited:
In a Porsche Panamera S, start-stop driving and idling for an hour in traffic going from Secaucus NJ to Manhattan through the lincoln tunnel a month ago (had to install a new server in NY4), I used approximately 2 gallons of gas (less than 10% of capacity). It's certainly not trivial, but it's nowhere near the drain that Musk is effectively claiming.
That, combined with the fact that engaging in stop and start driving was a natural conclusion of the advice that Tesla gave him while he was driving (regenerative braking), really seems to suggest that Tesla gave poor advice (and you can't blame the author for following poor advice).
In reading the rebuttal here, I can't shake the feeling that one cannot take anything uttered from Elon Musk's mouth at face value when it concerns his baby, Tesla (and probably also SpaceX). He appears absolutely dedicated to the success of his companies. He is a visionary, a True Beliver, and he will do anything to advance his cause, even at the expense of personal credibility--so it is important to unspin what he says, and give it the maximum amount of scrutiny, because you can be sure he using every trick at his disposal to put the situation in the best possible light.
In this respect, he sounds like a political candidate, and, to be fair, many other CEOs behave like this.
> I can't shake the feeling that one cannot take anything uttered from Elon Musk's mouth at face value when it concerns his baby ...
There's no need for that -- Musk has the car's logs, which describe the miles driven, the speeds, and the battery's state of charge. Under the circumstances, this is not a case of "he said, she said" -- i's a matter of unambiguous computer records.
If the computer records contradict what Musk said, he's in big trouble, but I doubt it will come out that way. And consider the consequences if Musk reported something different than the records show -- and Musk knows this. Why would he knowingly sabotage his own company?
So why hasn't Musk or Tesla made an official response yet?
If Musk really did reach out to Broder on Friday, then Tesla should have had a skeleton press release ready to go on Monday, pointing out the major mistakes that Broder made, and pointing out that they're planning on getting out more supercharging stations, so this experience won't be repeated. It should have been a neutral response to the criticism, and it would have highlighted the infrastructure work that Tesla is doing.
Instead, Musk has claimed that the Times' account was "fake", which is a huge accusation to make, because that's a personal attack on Broder and the Times, and, let's face it, the NYT is probably much better at CYA and public perception management than Tesla or Musk are.
"Fake" was probably a poor choice of words, and typical of the knee jerk commentary you see on social media.
That doesn't excuse it, but you'll notice in his subsequent interviews that the language he uses is much more tempered, probably because he got a few nervous phone calls from his legal team.
Actually, I think everything Elon said appears to be technically true--the car wasn't fully charged, and the driver took a detour. What he didn't say was whether or not the car can be normally "partially charged" after a "charging complete" status posted on the car (yes? no?), whether or not the lost range due to a incomplete charge was material (the journalist claims the car reported sufficient mileage before the drive began) and whether the detour materially affected the result of the review (if it's really a two mile detour, the answer is probably "no"). Does all this add up to a "faked" review? Not sure, but I wouldn't blindly trust Elon's classification.
> What he didn't say was whether or not the car can be normally "partially charged" after a "charging complete" status posted on the car (yes? no?)
The reporter actually touched on this in his rebuttal. He claims that no one ever told him to set the charge mode to max range, instead of "normal," so the car stopped charging when it got to 90%. However, he stops short of actually saying that he wasn't aware of the existence of "max charge" mode.
He also says that nobody told him to have the car charge while he was sleeping. Personally, I see this as complaining that your interior is wet because Ford didn't tell you roll the windows up before driving through the car wash--it ought to be common sense. Maybe it can be forgiven in a new and unfamiliar car, but it sure seems like the author didn't go out of his way to figure out how to operate it.
In the HN thread about the original story, someone noted that he only mentioned he speed after Tesla told him to slow down. It seems that that was a rather prescient comment in light of the recent claims by Musk that the author was driving well in excess of the speed limit and driving briskly.
You ask if the review is "faked." I don't think "faked" is quite the right word, but there were certainly some omissions in the original write-up. By omitting certain facts, I think the author presented the story in a way that isn't the shining pinnacle of honesty. The Model S may very well not be capable of successfully making the trip the author wanted to make. However, if that is the case, the author shouldn't need hide behind technicalities and loaded language in his review.
Since the story blew up, the NYT has had time to get their graphics department to draw a nice infographic (that was up last night) and now a written defence by the original author of the story.
If Tesla's logs are such irrefutable evidence of fakery, why's it taking so long to post it online?
I'm sure a nice infographic and a simple article that requires zero research are significantly easier to whip up than a good analysis, presented in a way understandable to people, of a detailed set of logs.
What, so Musk couldn't just give out the raw logs for the nerds to digest with the message that a more consumable version was on its way? It takes less than 2 minutes to post the raw logs.
In any case, for Tesla to present an analysis without also giving the raw logs removes any ability for the public to fact check the analysis.
Personally I would not expect them to release 'raw' logs. That would probably be confusing to most people and like many propriety logs contain lots of info that any geek bystander could not properly interpret fully accurately.
However, given the visibility of this I would expect that they would make releasing appropriately annotated logs a priority.
But when you are basically screaming out "You're lying, and I have proof of it" and then take your time delivering the proof, it doesn't look very good in the court of public opinion.
You're assuming that it's appropriate for Musk to release the raw logs. I have no idea what's actually collected, but it's quite possible that the logs contain data that either should not, or cannot, be released.
As a simplistic example, just because the journalist agreed to let Tesla collect the logs from his trip doesn't mean that the journalist agreed to let the precise details about his driving habits get released to the public. And there could be more than just privacy concerns. Maybe the logs contain data related to Tesla trade secrets.
If they can't release everything related to that trip, then it leaves Tesla wide open to the question that they just doctored up the analysis of the trip.
In the same way we shouldn't take NYT's story at its word, we should not take Tesla at their word.
But look at the posts in the threads related to this story. There's plenty of paranoia going around, with the automatic presumption that the NYT had some axe to grind with the original story or financial incentives to embellish the story.
I just think that any claims that Tesla makes deserves the same level of scrutiny that people here have been giving the NYT article.
> And consider the consequences if Musk reported something different than the records show -- and Musk knows this. Why would he knowingly sabotage his own company?
Wouldn't a privileged DBA be able to make the data look like just about anything? Also, the location logging system as a whole isn't necessarily infallible.
And if the NYT ever got a hold of any reasonable evidence of doing so, at best (for Tesla) it'd ruin Musk's credibility and at worst they could turn it into libel charges of their own.
Plus being publicly traded, I believe the SEC might have words on the subject.
> Plus being publicly traded, I believe the SEC might have words on the subject.
The SEC would only get involved in the event of an IPO, an insider-trading scandal, or some other market-related event, not a dispute about accurate media reporting.
> Indeed, if that location data's GPS, it can get pretty distorted in the city. Especially if there's a lot of thick cloud coverage.
No, city GPS readings tend to be either plausible or nonexistent. Most receivers are able to detect absurd apparent positions created by building reflections (they do it by comparing different combinations of satellites and accepting the majority result).
Wet forest and country road, yes -- big problem for GPS. City driving, no, no really. And cloud cover doesn't significantly affect GPS performance:
If you read the article carefully you'll see that the author is sort of trying to weasel his way out of a bind.
From what I can tell the author 1) only partially charged the battery 2) didn't plug it in overnight 3) pushed the car to it's limit for a bit 4) took a detour through the city
Probably through the combination of all those factors he essentially sabotaged the test and then wrote a damaging review in the New York Times.
I also understand the author in that he was 'just pretending to be your average Joe' but given that this is a special car that needs to be handled with special care that comparison just doesn't hold up.
edit: Could whomever is downvoting these comments please explain me what part of this is not constructive discussion?
I don't know about points 3 and 4. I'm willing to wait until the logs are published and the full facts are out before I pass judgement. But on points 1 and 2, I think the article clearly contradicts your claims.
With regards to only partially charging the battery:
When I first charged the car, which was equipped with
the highest-capacity battery available, of 85 kilowatt-
hours, at the Tesla Supercharger station in Newark,
Del., I left it connected to the cable for 49 minutes
until the dash display read “Charging Complete.” The
battery meter read 90 percent full, with a range of 242
miles.
This seems go pretty clearly against Tesla. When your cell phone tells you "charging complete", do you expect the battery to be only 90% full? When your put gas in your car, and the needle is on F, do you expect the tank to be 90% full, or full to (rated) capacity?
As for not plugging it in overnight, well, it's not always going to be possible to plug in the vehicle overnight, especially if you're out on a road trip. Sure, it'd be optimal if every owner could plug in their Model S every night, but the world isn't optimal and the Model S has to be robust enough to go a night without being plugged in if it has a hope of being a practical vehicle rather than a $101,000 toy.
I also understand the author in that he was 'just pretending to be your average Joe' but given that this is a special car that needs to be handled with special care that comparison just doesn't hold up.
Except that's not what Tesla's marketing claims. They claim that, unlike the Roadster, for example, the Model S is a practical car that can be used without owners paying obsessive attention to battery management and charging infrastructure.
This reply to Musk's criticism essentially concedes its truth -- the correspondent didn't fully charge the battery, just as Musk claimed, he did add some gratuitous miles to his route as Musk claimed, and he exceeded the speed limit as Musk claimed.
There are factors that made this a tough (some will say "realistic") test, particularly the low temperature. But the correspondent's ignorance might have been the biggest obstacle: "... I was under the impression that stop-and-go driving at low speeds in the city would help, not hurt, my mileage." Really? Repeated acceleration and deceleration will help the overall mileage? The fact that the car has regenerative braking can only reduce the losses created by stop-and-go driving, not eliminate them entirely (the best regenerative braking schemes can only recover a fraction of the energy lost in braking).
Musk's reaction to this account is understandable -- this technology is in its infancy, and public perceptions, accurate or not, could make or break Tesla.
Two miles is "gratuitous"? That's a rounding error, even on my bicycle!
and he exceeded the speed limit as Musk claimed
Does Tesla expect drivers to adhere to posted speed limits even when prevailing speeds are much higher (as they are on I-95)?
edit: CamperBob2 wrote "Apparently the reporter was averaging 81 MPH, going by an earlier comment."
As far as I can tell, that figure is based on a Reddit post from yesterday (http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/18c15x/tesla_ceo...) which in turn is assuming that the times and mileage on the travel map were exact. It could be. But then again, those times could be estimates (note that 7 out of 9 time stamps appear rounded to the nearest 5 minute mark). I guess we'll know when Tesla releases the logs.
Apparently the reporter was averaging 81 MPH, going by an earlier comment. I don't know if that's true or not, but that is a very high average speed and it will have serious effects on fuel economy.
To average 81 MPH in traffic, you are going to need to spend a fair amount of time north of 90 MPH. If the charging station intervals were based on expected speeds closer to 55-65 MPH, then the idea that the trip could be made at 80+ was questionable from the outset.
So, yeah, there's adhering to posted speed limits for best fuel economy, there's driving with the traffic for maximum safety, and then there's full-blown Mad Max mode, which is apparently what you do when you want to make the car you're testing look bad.
Does Tesla expect drivers to adhere to posted speed limits even when prevailing speeds are much higher (as they are on I-95)?
Expected or not, I've flown past Model Xs, doing 65 MPH myself, on the odd stretch of highway where I suspected the Tesla driver might have some 20-30 miles to go before finding a home port. If you're cruising on, erm, fumes, you'll baby your speed to increase mileage.
Even in a gasoline-powered automobile, I've noted (and adapted to) highly variable range depending on driving conditions and speed, of up to 150 miles' delta per tank. Not inconsiderable, particularly if operating in areas where services are infrequent (also a possibility for conventionally fueled vehicles).
The last paragraph is the guilty admission by Tesla, "He said that the East Coast charging stations should be 140 miles apart, not 200 miles, to take into account the traffic and temperature extremes in this part of the country."
Musk is trying to get ahead of the story. Instead of the headlines being, "driver stranded in the cold" it was "NYT faked article".
Musk/Tesla is yet to show any data, the jury is still out. But given, it's taken them this long, it seems to me, Tesla got the effect they wanted and will most likely not publish anything that will drastically contradict NYT's reporter.
In fairness, that's what he was told by Tesla Motors when he expressed his concern with his remaining range.
It's also not completely insane: Energy requirements for driving go up approximately as the square of the velocity. This would normally make city driving exceptionally efficient.
The reason it's not efficient is because of all the energy lost due to idling and from being dissipated in the brakes. If the Tesla is able to idle at a much lower energy than a gas-powered car (which should be true) and if it can reclaim energy from braking by using regeneration then it could very well use less energy to "take a shortcut" through Manhattan.
Whatever gains he might have obtained were eliminated by the extra distance though (and it's not even clear there were gains to be had). The right answer is even simpler (albeit frustrating): Drive slower.
Well, that's the beautiful thing about regenerative braking: The "external force" required to slow down the car comes from the electric motor itself, from the counter-torque of the motor acting as a generator to charge the battery. It's not lossless but it's far better than letting all the kinetic energy dissipate as heat.
There's no reason for an electric car to idle at all - if you're stopped in traffic, why would you need to provide any power to the motor when the start up time for an electric motor is near instantaneous.
As has been brought up in previous discussions, his primary role is as a "Green" correspondent, not an auto columnist. However, his inference wasn't all that crazy- consider, for example, that published mpg for the Prius is higher for city driving than on highways.
Edit: Further, Tesla's own blog states the following, which could probably influence many to infer what Broder did:
In contrast slower city driving speeds are more efficient and electric vehicles have a unique benefit in stop and go, low-speed driving due to regenerative braking
At some speed, driving fast on the highway will eventually be less efficient than driving in very bad gridlock. It isn't entirely unreasonable to incorrectly estimate the intersection of two causes of inefficiency in driving.
It's probably possible to design a car so aerodynamically inefficient at 35+ mph that stop and go is preferable to cruising at even moderate speeds.
...although it should be noted that the Model S has the second best drag coefficient on the market today (it was the first before a new Benz was released in 2013):
Unless the NYT has two John M. Broder's on staff, he's not exactly only a "green" correspondent, either. He was, at one point, the White House correspondent for the paper:
Well, I did say "primarily." Further, from your link (which is about a discussion on Climate Change and Energy legislation):
After covering the 2008 presidential campaign, Broder took over coverage of energy and environment in Washington. He is responsible for following domestic legislative issues, advances and energy technology and international climate-change negotiations.
Well, in fairness, my Prius lists the City/Hwy mileage as 60/53. In reality, it's more like 40/52. There certainly seems to be some disconnect between the EPA calculations for city driving and actual reality.
He called Tesla and acted on the advice they gave him. In this respect, he was acting like a normal consumer, not an automobile expert, which is precisely why I like his review. One shouldn't have to drive a Tesla like a auto expert to avoid getting into trouble.
And yet somehow all the real people who paid good money to buy this car have managed to figure out not to become stranded on their first drive. It's not rocket science (though Elon could help there too).
Do we have good data on this, that no one who set out on their first long distance drive on the east coast in cold weather came up short in power between stations? A quick search of their forums turned up at least anecdotal evidence of owners running out of juice in their Tesla Roadsters.
I think they're falsely assuming that electric cars work like hybrids, in that regenerative breaking will help boost economy vs. driving on a highway where you don't get this benefit.
This isn't out of the question, you would assume that the Tesla's regenerative breaking would help it in the city.
When you're writing for an unsophisticated audience, it's generally more profitable to be a good writer than particularly knowledgeable about the subject.
Honestly, the simple fact that there is a discussion regarding the range of the Model S shows that its still an issue. Will it work for some? Sure. Will it work for most? Probably not.
I can pick fights on the internet about evolution, but that does not have any bearing on the reality of the situation. If these cars got 5k miles to the charge I could still start "discussion" about the range, but that wouldn't show that range is still an issue.
The fact that anything is "being discussed" means nothing at all. You have to analyze the validity of the points being raised in that discussion.
"If these cars got 5k miles to the charge I could still start "discussion" about the range, but that wouldn't show that range is still an issue."
Sure there would be, but it would be a positive discussion.
Allow me to be more specific since you want to nitpick my choice of words. The simple fact that there are questions regarding the range of this vehicle shows there is an issue.
If this vehicle had a similar range to that of the majority of vehicles no one would be arguing about the range, because no one would care. If anything everyone would be raving about this car because it would literally be the future of the car industry.
> Sure there would be, but it would be a positive discussion.
Not at all, I could start a conversation with any tone I wished.
I'm not trying to nitpick words, I just don't think that you can make any conclusions about reality just by noting that people are discussing something, in a positive manner or otherwise. There just isn't any relationship between reality and what people discuss.
Will it work for most people most of the time - I think that answer is yes. How often do you drive >200mi/day? Remember you start off every morning with a "full tank."
This car is clearly not intended for long distances. These charger stations seem like a hassle. Waiting 1 hour at a Charge station for your "tank" to fill seems crazy since it adds on an hour of traveling time to any road trip. Seems painful to me. This car would cause me anxiety.
I'm curious if it would be practical even for some workday commutes on a very cold day.
I live just outside of Toronto (there's a Tesla store here), and while it's not as cold as Calgary or Winnipeg, it can get pretty damned cold. Power outlets aren't widely available in all parking lots.
I know people who make ~75 mile round trips commuting from the burbs. After reading the NYT article, I'd be a little nervous to make the trip home if I had to leave my car out in the blistering cold for a full work day where there was no charging station even if I did charge the battery fully the night before.
--edit-- I also read somewhere that there are no Supercharger stations in Canada... yet.
How has this fallen of the front page so quickly, yet the story from Musk's perspective is treated as irrefutable? Right now this is still mostly in hearsay mode, proving the bias in HN readers (at least those ostensibly flagging and down-voting this story into oblivion).
This is a valuable lesson for all startups. Tesla's in a dust up around a use case that they don't really need to address for a while longer and can still be very successful. Imagine how many people today fall into the category of i) Being able to afford this car ii) Owning only this car vs having a gasoline car and iii) Caring about traveling such long distances in the extreme cold?
Some, for sure, but not many and not enough to dampen demand. The majority of electric car owners aren't going to undertake this trip at all (vs fly) or would use a second car to do so. Better to have said "We're still 18 months away from having enough charging stations and batter life to tackle this type of trip" and shrugging as you cash checks from people who'll do a 13 mile commute on the 101 or 95.
>> a use case that they don't really need to address for a while longer
Well, there's a Tesla store in Toronto.
Toronto gets pretty cold in the winter, and traffic is pretty nightmarish getting in and out of the city during rush hour. And there's no way you're going to sit in this traffic without a heater on.
There are lots of affluent people who live in the burbs outside of Toronto who make 120+km round trips (~75 miles) who will get stuck in really bad traffic to and from work, and probably leave their car parked in a spot that doesn't have access to an outlet during the work day.
If the battery charge is going to drop that significantly on a cold day, I think it would make some people think twice about a Tesla (for the homeward leg of a winter commute) if they didn't already have a winter car or backup plan.
The key sentence from Broder's followup is: "But the test that Tesla offered was of the Supercharger, not of the Model S, which we already know is a much-praised car. "
The first question is: is that what Tesla proposed, and was the proposal based on a cold-weather long-distance round-trip journey using only Superchargers?
If so, then Tesla bit off more than it could chew. If no, then Broder is misrepresenting Tesla's Supercharger service -- is it a waypoint recharge to extend driving range reasonably in conjunction with normal overnight charging as would ordinarily be practiced, or is it a service on which long-distance travelers can rely on exclusively?
My suspicion is the former (in which case Broder is at fault). This still leaves Tesla with a serious image problem (and a ruffled, if still understanding reviewer at The New York Times). For all the attractions and upsides of EVs, range, and cold-weather range degredation, remain significant issues.
But in this case, Musk's reliance on log data doesn't seem entirely relevant: it's operator behavior and compliance which need to be addressed.
I like the comment on the submitted article that Teslas should come with a bike rack and bicycle as a back-up plan. "On second thought, just buy a bicycle. You will get there faster and more reliably." In this jest is truth for my family, because we live at least 1,000 miles from the nearest currently installed Tesla Supercharger station
so we can be even more environmentally friendly than the buyers of the big, heavy, expensive Tesla Model S by using our bicycles.
As the New York Times reporter follows up,
"Virtually everyone says that I should have plugged in the car overnight in Connecticut, particularly given the cold temperature. But the test that Tesla offered was of the Supercharger, not of the Model S, which we already know is a much-praised car. This evaluation was intended to demonstrate its practicality as a 'normal use,' no-compromise car, as Tesla markets it. Now that Tesla is striving to be a mass-market automaker, it cannot realistically expect all 20,000 buyers a year (the Model S sales goal) to be electric-car acolytes who will plug in at every Walmart stop.
"Knowing then what I know now about the car, its sensitivity to cold and additional ways to maximize range, I certainly would have treated the test differently. But the conclusion might not have been any better for Tesla."
P.S. I see from the pattern of votes so far on this comment that some fellow participant here is not amused by my suggestion that a bicycle is a more environmentally friendly form of alternative vehicle for someone living in snowy Minnesota than a Tesla Model S. But I am serious. There is NO WAY I would sink so much of my family's budget into buying a car like that when I can obtain more reliable transportation at a much lower price. That's the tough squeeze that Tesla Motors is in. There was an extensive, and on the whole more favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge
and the author of that report takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it’s still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world." I'm not going to be lining up to buy the first Tesla car for sale in Minnesota unless both the charging network and the car's cold-weather performance are massively improved.
P.P.S. While I still have my edit window, I should mention that one blogger on business writes "Why Tesla's Elon Musk Should Consult The Communications Playbook,"
> I'm not going to be lining up to buy the first Tesla car for sale in Minnesota unless both the charging network and the car's cold-weather performance are massively improved.
Who cares?
Why does everyone want to voice their opinion so loudly on a product that doesn't even meet their needs?
It is that you can't accept some status-symbol high-tech gadget wasn't made with you in mind?
Of course the Telsa is not for everyone, it's new and cutting-edge and trying to re-define something common-place, which will likely take years or even decades.
I'm not buying a Ford F-150, or a Porsche, or a freaking smart phone either, but all of those are products that many customers are buying and finding a very good use for. Good for them. I'm going to keep my mouth shut about those products, because they are not for me.
It's not really shocking, is it? When the next big thing that is getting great reviews doesn't work for you, that's a big disappointment. It's like living in Verizon country back when the iPhone came out as an AT&T exclusive.
I try to keep my consumption in check, and I'm shocked people can be so offended when the next big thing doesn't fit their needs. People are actually upset they can't spend their money on it. Unreal.
"Why does everyone want to voice their opinion so loudly on a product that doesn't even meet their needs?"
It's a reflection of HN karma and sorting system: if anyone else posted the remark (and indeed, there are multiple people doing so), it would have seen the normal trajectory down the page. The current algorithm seems to favor remarks from certain people even if they aren't the highest voted remarks.
The bike jibe is unwarranted, and misses the real issue: does the Model S work as advertised, and was the NY Times review a fair test?
Tesla is absolutely not an economic choice at present, though neither are the vehicles it competes with (higher-end BMW and Mercedes models). The purchase decision is one of social status signaling and a vote of faith in the underlying technology, which is generally considered practical but not yet economical. If you're not ready to drop $50-$100k on the car, I can completely understand, as I'm not either. That said, I'm keeping an eye on Tesla, and still think I may have already bought my last 100% conventionally fueled vehicle.
"While Tesla officials and many armchair experts have said I should have accepted the time penalty to top off the battery in Delaware at the Max Range setting, Tesla warns specifically that this shortens the battery’s life."
Is this supposed to be some kind of 400+ horsepower road tripping car, or a great sedan that handles all of your daily driving needs? I'm a bit surprised that this kind of test is necessary. Even 150 miles on one charge should be plenty unless the market for this is drastically different than I thought. Range is important, for sure. But it shouldn't be a primary concern for a 4000 pound electric vehicle. I suppose if Elon thinks that's what it should be then that's what it should be and I really hope it works out well.
"Range Anxiety" is a very real (irrational) concern of a large slice of Americans. Regardless of how many trips they make within an electric vehicle's range, they will place outsize importance on edge cases.
And between range and recharge times, I really can't see all-electric cars taking off among that group. Something like the Chevy Volt's "range extender" ICE seems the only way to reach anyone who's worried about road-trip-style range.
Even if the supercharger network was 100% in-place, those people are going to turn up their nose at a 30-60 minute recharge stop.
It's not all that irrational for... some electric vehicles. Probably not the Tesla Model S, though.
I mean, I normally drive (much) less than 200 miles per day, and I'm sure that 99% of my driving would be fine with a 200 mile range electric vehicle.
But when I do want to go farther, well... I mean... I actually want to go farther. I want to go skiing sometimes, and there is no skiing within 200 miles of me. I don't particularly want to spend even 30 minutes recharging along the way, either -- it's a long day without additional delays.
When I went down to visit my sister when she was in LA, and again when she was up in Eureka, or my family in Mendocino, those are important trips to me. They aren't my usual use profile, but a significant part of the value of the cars I get is that they CAN meet my less usual needs as well as my more usual ones.
Now, all that said, the Tesla Model S is a $50,000 to $100,000 car. Its owners have options. Probably well over 95% of Model S's sold are to multi-car households. And at the very least, its owners are clearly wealthy enough to do something like "go to Enterprise and rent a SUV for their ski-trips, without worrying about a few hundred dollars a few times a year."
On the other hand, I don't think that most of the interest around the Model S is driven by the S per se. I think a lot of people are using it as a proxy for "a future, less expensive car that has similar range." And then we're back to people who can't necessarily buy their hypothetical future EV as a second car, retaining a household gas car for their road trips, or renting one with their large disposable income.
There is something to be said for a vehicle that works just as well for a trip to the grocery store as a trip across the U.S. The thinking is that I can have one car that does everything I need, rather than two cars or one car + renting. Two cars doubles your costs and renting, while possibly reasonable cost-wise, is hugely inconvenient compared to just getting in your car and going.
An electric car would be fine for me, even with a range of just 100 miles (in a Minnesota winter, with the heater on). The 265 miles that the Model S can get would be questionable for my parents, though, given the frequency of long trips they take. They would need charging stations in the same order of magnitude as gas stations to avoid range anxiety.
I don't think range anxiety is irrational. I may be that I only need extended range in 5% of my driving, but unless I own a second vehicle or am prepared to rent a vehicle for that 5%, it essentially makes a it a non-starter. In other words, it doesn't matter how infrequent those edge cases are, if they are necessary and without reasonable workarounds, then the design is a failure (for this specific use case.)
Now, I'm in one of the more sparsely populated states in the union, so my views and needs are colored by long distances it takes to get anywhere here.
To be clear: range anxiety is not irrational because no-one should be concerned about range. Range anxiety is irrational if and when someone is giving outsize importance to the edge cases.
It's specifically about the people who don't do an objective analysis of how often the edge cases happen, whether alternatives are sufficient, etc.
I'm just surprised that now, at this time, Elon is attempting to tackle the range issue head on. It really seems a bit early to do that. I agree that for the people who have a serious issue with range (even for only a small percentage of their trips) the current solution isn't going to be sufficient. I'm interested to see where this goes. But I'd like to have seen a different type of vehicle come after the roadster. Something more reasonable than the S in size, weight, performance and price.
What's unreasonable about the S in terms of size? It's a pretty typical sedan, isn't it?
I don't think it was ever possible to go straight from the Roadster to a car that was, say, $30,000. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd have liked it as well.
Seems like a PR person screw-up. Testing the car at almost maximum range in the winter is just a disaster waiting to happen. You can quibble with the details and things the reporter allegedly did wrong, but I would bet that a decent percentage of these attempted trips would end in failure. What if the reporter had hit traffic in the NY Metro area? I mean, that never happens, right?
That's just dumb for a story you are setting up in the media.
"She said to shut off the cruise control to take advantage of battery regeneration from occasional braking and slowing down."
There's either a fundamental misunderstanding here or Tesla just owned physics. Braking is never, ever a good idea for power preservation. (Slowing down is another story, but if "occasional braking" was actually in the advice, that's abysmal).
It it just me or is Tesla getting all the running in the electric car stakes?
either they are atreets abead of Toyota and GM or are the other car manufacturers simply letting Tesla take all the knocks as consumers get used to the new ideas?
just replace the battery once you stop at the charging station with a fully charged one. you know, hydraulics, robots and stuff.
but give the customer enough time to go to the toilet room. we don't want the customer to be in a hurry and having a bad feeling because her car is just there in the way doing nothing.
heck, you can even populate your station's roof with cheap mirrors that reflect light all at the same point, make energy and call it an art project. don't screw this up. who knows when will EVs see the street if this project dies because of bad user experience.
just replace the damn thing in 5 min and let the machinery do some futuristic sounds so that ppl feel important/ a part of "i'm so cool club". you could check how's the car's computer doing while you're at it...
if nothing else works, edward bernays is your man.
> just replace the battery once you stop at the charging station with a fully charged one.
The Tesla battery weighs 990 pounds and is built into the car. There are proposals like yours for other electric cars, cars that may be designed to simplify battery removal, but in the long term, I think improvements in battery technology will eventually make them more reliable and longer-lasting.
Your battery is for some reason low on energy. You must charge it or call a tow truck. There's no tech that will charge your battery faster than replacing it.
The fact that something monolithic, at the bottom of the car, which causes bad experience thingy isn't easily removed is the designer engineer's problem. It also shows that nobody really thought about the whole everyday experience of this kind of a vehicle.
The problem is not its size but the lack of easily replacing it at the charging station with a fully charged one. Also you could make it modular and increase its size. Maybe that kind of design would help replacing it faster.
You could not do that without also raising the center of gravity of the car. That thing is massively heavy, putting it under the car is the only place that makes sense for it.
There's also the issue that the battery is fairly valuable and can be damaged/depleted. If I normally charge at home, take care of my car, and have a good condition battery, how happy am I going to be if I take my car on vacation, do a battery swap at some station far from home, and only when I return do I realize that the new battery has been heavily used, and only has 80% of the capacity of the one I swapped out?
I imagine the reporter's article would have rubbed Musk the wrong way a lot less if the reporter had made it more clear what was going on and that some of the things that happened were the results of mistakes made (whether or not you might expect consumers to make the same mistakes).
For example: if the reporter had explained that he was intentionally trying to simulate "normal use" by not plugging in the car at night. If the article had said, "The owner's manual said to plug in overnight, repeatedly, but I chose not to in order to see what might happen if a less educated consumer were driving the car," I imagine the article would have gotten more sympathy. The article, as I read it, didn't really get into that, and seemed to simply imply a failure on Tesla's part.