NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk 609
DocJohn writes "NY Times' John Broder responded to Elon Musk's blog entry. Accused of driving around a parking lot for no reason, for instance, Broder notes he was simply looking for the poorly marked charging station. Worst of all, much of Broder's behavior can be attributed directly to advice he received from Tesla representatives — something Musk fails to mention."
Re:You clearly didn't review the charts given. (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. Can you guess why?
You don't read much?
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/intensive.html [wsu.edu]
Re:A couple of points (Score:5, Informative)
A charging station he had previously been to...which makes his claim seem pretty suspect to me.
When? On the way up?
Not true: there are separate service plazas on each side of the highway. Furthermore, if you look at Google's "satellite" photo [google.com], they are not symmetric -- the parking lot is a completely different layout on the two sides, and the Tesla charging station (marked on the Google image) is in a different location.
Re:Does Broder not know how to fill'er up????? (Score:5, Informative)
He was at a "regular" charging station, not a supercharging station. It was an unscheduled stop and he charged it for an hour, which he says Tesla support staff told him would be enough to get back to the supercharging station. Reportedly, they said that the lost range would be recovered as he continued to drive, warming the batteries. It would have taken as much as five hours to fully charge the car at that station.
Source: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A couple of points (Score:5, Informative)
Because it's an electric car. It's not like a gasoline car where filling the tank takes twice as much time as filling half a tank. The charge you get doesn't ramp up linearly with time. It starts off charging quickly, then slows down. If you charge it up to max, you're going to be sitting at the charging station for several hours. The quickest way to get from one place to another (minimizing charge times) is to use about a 50% quick-charge at each stop (supposed to take a half hour).
If you look at the logs Tesla posted, you can see that's exactly what he did. The two interim supercharges gave him approx 200 and 150 miles in range. The controversial Norwich charge was not a supercharge station, so he would've been there overnight if he'd charged to full there. He did the prudent thing - take on only as much charge as needed to get to the next supercharge station. Except according to him, Tesla employees told him he could get there with a smaller charge than the mileage meter showed was needed. According to Musk, his employees told him no such thing.
Re:How do I know if Musk is truthful about the log (Score:4, Informative)
Considering two other reporters from Consumer Reports and Motor Trends drove essentially the same route without any of the problems Broder had, ...
Actually that's not entirely true. The drop in battery charge overnight that doomed Broder by his account happened to the Consumer Reports [slashdot.org] author as well, and that was in slightly warmer conditions.
Re:The speed difference between them is huge... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not about the .6 miles. It's about trying to say "the car died right in the parking lot" in his review.
Who said that? That's not either stated or suggested in the review [nytimes.com] or in the rebuttal [nytimes.com]. If you're saying that's what the author was trying to do, maybe you ought to offer some evidence.
Re:The reporter does not like electric vehicles (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The reporter does not like electric vehicles (Score:5, Informative)
A chart is just a presentation of data. A remarkably useful one, as humans have a much easier time analyzing trends and patterns in a picture compared to a presentation based on a list of numbers.
Oh, by the way, to make your own inference you typically need contextual information (metadata). If the data is presented as numbers or as charts is of much less importance.
Re:A couple of points (Score:2, Informative)
the Tesla charging station (marked on the Google image)
Indeed; so that means that the charging station position is well known to navigation systems.
In the much smaller parking lot at my apartment my satnav still insists on directing me to within a few meters of my assigned space, ie. GPS has sufficient accuracy to find a particular position within a parking lot.
Which means that either the satnav in this car has the exact location of the charging station incorrectly mapped (which would be a big fail on Tesla's part), or this reporter failed to use the inbuilt nav tool Tesla supply to help drivers stay charged, a big fail on his part.
Re:You clearly didn't review the charts given. (Score:5, Informative)