"I could recite chapter and verse of the test drive, the decisions made along the way, the cabin temperature of the car, the cruise control setting and so on. I don’t think that’s useful here."
Yes, yes it would be, especially when addressing the integrity of one of their journalists! She wore kid gloves when she rendered the comments regarding his "mistakes". Kid gloves are not appropriate.
It appears the sentiment of this editor's blog post is essentially "we'll defend our journalists even when their articles have been exposed as unfairly biased." It feels like the journalistic equivalent of the thin blue line.
I was blown away by that as well. She might as well have written, "I have come to my conclusion, which is that we are fine, but since you people on the internet are meanies who are just going to argue your preconceived conclusions, I'm not going to tell you how I got there."
The weird thing is, I think she's probably right. But I think the job of the public editor is precisely to address controversies of their reporters in sufficient detail that we don't have to trust her. Ombudsmen have to be seen as scrupulously fair to outsiders or there's no point in having them.
Well, to be fair, from the POV of an insider, I could see how it's a gray area when you get to the point of saying someone thought they were doing a good job, but it looks like he's incompetent at getting facts right and curbing his own bias. Sometimes you have to stop short of even being close to saying a colleague needs to be fired, and let those matters play out quietly later on.
That is understandable in any other employee at the Times, but it's a total failure in an ombudsman. They don't have to recommend firing; they can just say what happened and characterize is honestly. But they do have to always take the public's side, and they have to do it visibly.
This particular position was created after the Jayson Blair scandal, so it's particularly important that they are frank in calling out bad reporting. Or, in this case, explaining why they think it wasn't bad reporting.
absolutely... especially for an editor! she talked a lot and said nothing! she has no opinion and leaves it absolutely open, aparently there is no fault by anyone? ... well at least the CEO of Tesla gave facts and not just his opinion (like the new york time journalist and editor)!
The editor has an opinion. She knows that Broder is full of it, and condemns him in the strongest allowable terms. She can't flog Broder outright (absent some glaring evidence of fraud or something), so she needs to smooth the waters. If there had been an angle to attack Musk with, I think there's a good chance that she'd have wailed on him.
Of course he is, he is as happy as the NYTimes is to put this fiasco to a close. Disregarding opinions on the matter this was not good PR for ether of them.
Problem is that the battle scars from this little fight lie almost exclusively with Musk and are going to persist for years to come.
Tesla now has a reputation as being unusually aggressive in defending its position. Which has to be making media institutions wonder why on earth they would bother to review this ?
Given that several publications have already reviewed the car in the aftermath of this brouhaha, I doubt very seriously that anyone will avoid reviewing Tesla automobiles in the future.
> But long term I would be very curious to see why anyone would review it knowing that any inaccuracies could result in a PR storm.
I should sincerely hope that future reviews would be devoid of under/over-reporting of numbers by 7 or 15%, all consistently in a single direction of bias, and combined with a lot of WTF decisions which cause people to wonder.
I, too, am sincerely curious to see if media outlets will shy away from empirically based reviews, because they'll need to be done competently.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I feel like the biggest failure in all of this wasn't Musk's response, or the incompetence of the NYT's reporter, but the "support" Broder received over the phone.
The extraordinary event in the original NYT article was that the car "died" during Broder's review. We can debate all we want about the smaller facts in the article, but if the car didn't die during the review, we probably wouldn't even be discussing the article today.
To me, the most glaring issue that came out of the article wasn't a problem with the car. It was clear to me as the reader that Broder was trying to push the mileage limits of the car. But I personally think the car would not have died if the people on the other side of the phone had simply given better advice.
At the very least, Musk should consider retraining (or replacing) the people he allows on the other side of support calls with members of the media. It's better to give inconvenient advice (i.e. "charge it a little longer just to be safe") than give advice that risks getting the driver stranded.
The key decision the reporter made, and that NYT ombudsman acknowledges was bad judgment, was to quit charging early in Norwich without being given the go ahead by Tesla.
The reporter changed his wording on that between the original article and his later rebuttal. He originally said Tesla told him it was okay to unplug and go. Later he reworded that they'd told him it should be okay to charge for an hour and go. He then charged for less than an hour, saw it hadn't given as much fuel as he needed, and unplugged early anyway and without checking with them.
As the NYT ombudsman quote, the journo hadn't even bothered to follow the owner's manual. His behavior was disingenuous at best, even if not pro-oil link baiting at worst.
If Tesla does what other automakers do - i.e., provide expenses paid review junkets where you get to drive a fast car on a private track at high speeds - I think a lot of automotive writers would take that opportunity.
> Tesla now has a reputation as being unusually aggressive in defending its position.
For many (at least among us here), this is a positive reputation. They defended themselves immediately, directly and with hard data. I don't remember ever seeing something like this before.
Strange reaction from Musk. He seemed awfully quick to jump fully onboard with a rather pallid response from the NYT's Public Editor[1] (a position somewhat analogous to the head of PR in a corporate).
While there could be many reasons, two more probable IMHO could be:
1) The "out" he was looking for: absolution for a somewhat strong initial overreaction.
2) He's simply being naive, and not reading between the lines.
I can understand this and he's just picking his battles wisely. There's a difference between defending your company and being a battleaxe, and he's not crossing that line. Appearing to be unnecessarily combative would backfire.
Err, a public editor is not at all like a PR person. They may have some loyalty to the company they work for, but they work independently of the newsroom and in fact reporters tend to distrust them or consider them a nuisance. At worst, it's soft PR, but at best, it's a true ombudsman position.
>"They may have some loyalty to the company they work for, but they work independently of the newsroom and in fact reporters tend to distrust them or consider them a nuisance."
Do you have anything evidence for that claim? Either first hand experience or perhaps a citation?
I will concede they are not directly PR people, but yet the role of "Public Editor" was created in the wake of an ethics scandal and PR tsunami[1] at the NYT. The position is also on the payroll of the NYT.
Occam's Razor would indicate we should follow the incentives.
Keeping an open mind as always, but I don't think there is good cause, a priori for the belief that the "Public Editor" is working tirelessly for the good of the people.
The fact that they work independently of the newsroom and sometimes even independently of the company (as a contractor) is simply the nature of the public editor / ombudsman and how it is set up at pretty much every newspaper that has one.
Re: how the public editor at the Times is perceived: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13pubed.html?_r=0. The money quote: "A writer shaken by a conclusion I was reaching told me, if you say that, I'll have to kill myself." I would hope your company's PR person wouldn't make you feel like that.
You can't really avoid having the public editor on the payroll of the organization he or she works for, unless some wealthy donor is prepared to step in and pay for one. That means we always have to be sceptical of where their loyalties lie and their independence, but it doesn't mean they don't have any.
Also, the New York Times is one of the only papers in the world that tracks errors internally, so they can easily see which of their journalists are playing fast and loose, and will let them go if necessary.
Is it perfect? Obviously not. Are journalists and editors generally really bad at owning up to their mistakes? Yep. But an ombudsman is an attempt to do something about that, not an extension of that culture.
Kudos. It appears you've made a compelling case and I found those links to be interesting reading.
Of course we should still keep a close watch on the future to see how true it remains to the historical record and theory. But in the meantime, I'll be be updating my model, and nudging the needle, a little further toward the left. (if 'for the people' is left, and 'for the company' is to the right, on a 1 dimensional axis).
> Mr. Broder and The Times have maintained that the article was done in good faith, and that it is an honest account of what happened
So, in our public discourse, "honesty and good faith," have drifted down to the level of "deniably but somehow consistently fudged."
In the words of Richard Feynman, there is: "a specific, extra type of integrity that is not [just not] lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong." It's this level of integrity that is needed in our public discourse concerning the complex and technically sophisticated world of today. If the NYTimes can't manage this in a simple car review, I wonder how they do with complex political and social issues.
You must have your blinders on. Musk is not a god, and you have been eating up Tesla's story rather than looking at the data.
Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account (heat was turned off, battery dropoff overnight, etc), and the only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. It's interesting that Tesla has the logs yet isn't revealing them. I suspect the logs will show that Tesla engineers didn't properly advise Broder on what to do, which is Tesla's fault, not any sort of fraudulence on NYT's part.
> Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account
I see you have it all wrong. I'm not in disagreement with that. (And there goes the basis for your comment.) Either you are willfully misreading my comment, or you're trying a subtle sleight of hand. The facts mostly fit Broder's account. I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction. A reporter should have some facility in curbing his own bias. Apparently, Broder has insufficient competence in figures and self awareness for this.
This is precisely what Feynmann is talking about in the quote.
"I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction"
They are not, though. From Broder's account (you should read the original article), most of the bad decisions and inaccuracies can be attributed to advice that Tesla gave Broder. That is the crux of the problem: Broder makes a claim based on Tesla engineer advice, and Musk denies and attributes that to malice.
I am arguing against your implicit assertion that NYT is at fault at each point of divergence between NYT's and Tesla's account. It's still up in the air, and as I said: "only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. "
Going back to the original point -- given how the whole trip turned out, Broder should have mentioned the side-trip to Manhattan, etc. -- anything possible to show where he may have gone wrong.
That said, Broder has an additional problem which is of being fair to the reader versus Tesla. He shouldn't grade Tesla on a curve. Bear in mind, the point isn't to make sure Tesla is treated fairly, but to make sure readers don't find themselves waiting for a flatbed truck in a blizzard.
Imagine how this would have gone with Top Gear doing it, all on video (quite likely including recording the conversations with tech support).
Going back to the public editor's piece: when was the last time you read a manual for anything? I have sometimes resorted to a manual as a last resort, but not when I have instant access to human tech support.
> most of the bad decisions and inaccuracies can be attributed to advice that Tesla gave Broder.
Yeah, if you let him get away with being scientifically illiterate.
> you should read the original article
EDIT: You litter your comments with these off-hand remarks that imply things about other's positions which aren't true.
> I am arguing against your implicit assertion that NYT is at fault at each point of divergence between NYT's and Tesla's account.
What, is putting words in other's mouths the modus operandi now? I'm not saying that. I'm saying that Broder isn't sufficiently competent at curbing his own bias, knowing how to do empirical reporting, and making sensible technical decisions in the field to do a car review. He tried to get it right? Making inadequate efforts at getting at the truth isn't an acceptable level of performance from a national news media outlet. It's basically, "Hey, we tried. Be satisfied with our truthiness."
"I'm saying that Broder isn't sufficiently competent at curbing his own bias, knowing how to do empirical reporting, and making sensible technical decisions in the field to do a car review."
Your statement stems from an attack by Musk. What makes you think that a journalist would be more biased than the CEO of a car companies with billions of dollars at stake?
Your stalwart defense of Musk belies your inability to think objectively. My stance is as it was when I first saw the situation: the only way to resolve this is to reveal the phone logs. It's a he-said-she-said (that's something else I've pointed out multiple times) and somehow HN deems Musk (not a party to the conversation) more credible than the journalist asked to test drive without asking for the key information that would resolve this matter
No, my statement stems from reading his account, then comparing it to Musk's data.
> What makes you think that a journalist would be more biased than the CEO of a car companies with billions of dollars at stake?
Again, this sort of sleight of hand. I'm not defending Musk's bias here, Musk's bias doesn't in any way exonerate the other's, and nice try, if that was intentional. I'm purely attacking Broder's incompetence.
> Your stalwart defense of Musk belies your inability to think objectively.
So it's "objective" to not recognize Broder's bias in his inaccuracies, or at least to excuse it because, hey Musk was probably biased too!
...Okay! You're entitled to your position, man!
> It's a he-said-she-said
Yes, the rest of us are just avoiding the "he-said-she-said" quagmire. It is a quagmire, and the likely ROI is low. Really, the outcome of one car review isn't so important, but the issue brings up plenty of stuff which is. I'll tell you what: When Musk is the head of a national media outlet "of record," and he publishes the same sort of stuff, I'll hold his feet to the fire for shoddy journalism for his hasty comments and interpretation of data -- which he is guilty of. It's not a par-performance, objectively a bit of a PR cock-up, but still understandable from a CEO. Of course he's biased in favor of his product. The journalist is only human, but he's not only supposed to try to be objective as a part of his job, he's supposed to show some competence at it.
The disturbing part of this whole issue for me is the degree to which carelessness about empirical fact is seen as "okay." Elon Musk has a substantial public record which shows a notable degree of diligence towards getting facts right. Broder's article -- best I could say about it is: enh.
I never understood why Musk went so hard after Broder from the start, as soon as I saw the data what I saw in it was something that correlated with his story reasonably well. Musk pointed out that he never got down to 45 but he was at something like 50-52 most of that time and he is reading a dial gauge. I assumed then that Musk had the call logs and they would be bad for Broder, either Musk doesn't have them or they do not make Tesla look good.
In the end I think Tesla needs this to blow over and consider how this drive from a non-car reviewer indicates to them how they can improve their first-time-driver experience and make their product and their company better.
I agree, it seems recently that NYTimes appears to be embracing 'blogging' ethics over traditional journalistic ethics. They also have a negative bias against Apple, which I assume is purely for headline attention. (I've thought about gathering statistics to back up this hypothesis, how many negative stories vs positive stories over the last couple years.) As the Foxconn story seemed to inappropriately focus on Apple, when the entire manufacturing industry could have been explored. Maybe this is what real time statistics of what people are reading on a news website does to journalism...
Feynman's quote is about the search for scientific truth. He intentionally said that in the context of scientists accurately conveying information to laypeople and specifically points out that "extra" truth is different than truth in other situations. Science is a tough SOB, wanting nothing less than 100%. It wants peer review, replication and no counter examples. But science is also patient and willing to be wrong. Scientific truth is a fine ideal but it just isn't generalizable. When you ask for scientific truth in other fields it is a hornet's nest. Just look at the debate around medical malpractice lawsuits.
Asking journalists to be scientists removes the need for journalists. You can say maybe we don't need journalists, but there clearly has to be different standards for science and journalism, even if only because of the vast differences in expected timeframes in each field.
> Asking journalists to be scientists removes the need for journalists.
Aww, crap. Just asking journalists to be a little less careless and fuzzy would be a good start. Opinions on this seem to be divided along two lines: 1) People familiar with getting quantitative things right in their jobs vs. others and 2) People who have had run-ins with careless/incompetent journalists vs. others.
> specifically points out that "extra" truth is different than truth in other situations.
I don't think he's saying that about truth. I think he's saying that about a field. It applies to truth -- it's just that our mish-mash of a culture hasn't caught up to that level of rationality yet.
> It's this level of integrity that is needed in our public discourse concerning the complex and technically sophisticated world of today. If the NYTimes can't manage this in a simple car review, I wonder how they do with complex political and social issues.
Yeah... they don't. Except in a few long-form investigative-type pieces, where they really shine. Remember that they're putting out over 100,000 words every single day. Imagine if you were a company that had to put out just 5,000 SLOC every day without bugs, everything perfectly refactored? Puts it into perspective a bit.
Asking for that kind of integrity in journalism, or anything really, it would be great, but that's not really what the market usually supports. Just remember, that at the end of the day, the NYT is far better than most any other daily newspaper out there, and nobody's perfect. Journalists are people, these are their day jobs, not their religions.
And I don't know where you're getting "consistently fudged" from.
The New York Times reporter was applying that Feynman style of skepticism to a set of advertising claims by the Tesla Motors company, and I sure learned a lot about limitations in the use case for the Tesla Model S by reading the article.
Don't how many of you'd seen this coming, but @homosaur and I'd discussed exactly this discourse [1] a week ago.
Personally I think that entrepreneurs working on products that solve immensely challenging problems should always be given a benefit of doubt. Or two or three or may be even five times. Clearly this did not happen in Tesla's case.
And yet in the original post from OP this part still seems a bit questionable: Mr. Broder’s irresponsibility in fuel management was in hope that something beyond “inconvenience” would happen to make the story more interesting. (Otherwise, no one, including me, would have paid much attention to his article.)
"Personally, I think that a hard working entrepreneur, particularly those working on immensely challenging problems, must always be given a benefit of doubt in early reviews."
Products should be reviewed based on there merit, "given a benefit of a doubt" is left up to the consumer.
A reviewer should review every product the same, else the reviews are worthless because there is no continuity to compare the reviews.
Do you want your reviews from some person you have never heard of or from someone well established? The answer is obvious.
You're right. Reviewer must always be objective and review every product the same. Or at least be careful about the process used to arrive at the reportable opinion (which NYT seems to confess having missed completely! Strange?).
However, here is a beautiful piece from Anton Ego of Ratatouille:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more."
>Personally I think that entrepreneurs working on products that solve immensely challenging problems should always be given a benefit of doubt. Or two or three or may be even five times. Clearly this did not happen in Tesla's case.
Do yourself a favour and don't ever startup a company. Because if you think that as an entrepreneur the world should treat your precious self with kiddy gloves then wow you are in for a rude shock.
Because consumers couldn't care less whether you are a startup or not. They care about how great your product is.
Everyone is really ignoring the real impact of this mess here.
The NYT published something that is absolutely impossible to fact-check outside of an op-ed column. This wasn't even fit for publication to begin with.
Print journalism is in no way superior to the bloggers they are in competition with - in fact, most journalists have to keep their own blogs now just to compete. Margaret's reply basically dances around saying that Broder failed to do his due diligence as a journalist.
If you need any clearer sign that newspapers are not just declining but dead, this is it.
Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news. Op-Ed work needs to be clearly marked as such.
Now, it would be fair to say that the Automotive section, specifically the reviews, contains a fair bit more opinion than the rest of the paper, but there needs to be clear distinction. Going by the headline and the way the article was written, this clearly isn't the case. It was reported as news...as in it was about the car and neglected the fine personal detail that a review would have. It turns out though that the story here is more about Broder and how he drove the car. The way he drove it was more important than anything he reported about the car - it's not news.
Broder writes other stories for the NYT that are genuine news. It's shocking to me that the current editorial format of the NYT allows crap like that to be published in the same venue.
I'm basically saying that if this weren't written by an NYT staff reporter, it would have been an Op-Ed (or similarly labeled) if they allowed it for publication at all. They should not have.
> That's not really the job of newspapers. Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news.
I think you just made that up. According to who?
I read newspapers with movie reviews, play reviews, comics pages, advertising, news analysis, car reviews, industry analysis, foreign affairs analysis, etc etc etc.
Newspaper reporters win Pulitzers for their original research, investigation and analysis.
God forbid if newspapers should ever merely "report the news", it would be a sad day.
> Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test
Oddly, I would write the exact opposite headline. The NYT review has minor problems with precision and judgment, but major problems with integrity.
Imagine a gasoline car review: "I'm here at a gas station with an empty tank, and I have 61 miles to the next gas station. I'm going to put in half a gallon of gasoline, hang up the nozzle and start driving to the next station. Oh no, I ran out of gas! Well, this proves the technology is still immature and that gas cars suck."
Can you imagine this being a publishable review to the NYT editors?
At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars.
Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight unless you park in a really rough neighbourhood. He didn't have any reason to disbelieve his contact at Tesla when they said the lost range would return - hell, I've had Tesla fans tell me that their cars don't really lose range overnight, it's just calculated wrong, and I'm spreading FUD by pointing the range loss out. I bet they'd be going after Broder for that too if he'd waited for more of a charge.
Yep, and he could have talked about that as an issue. That would have been absolutely legitimate - discussing the overall time to complete this trip, including charging time on the way, and comparing it to gasoline.
Intentionally draining the battery, refusing to charge it up at any of the numerous opportunities to do so, and then blaming the car is not.
> Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight
No, but your fuel could gel in a diesel car. Your battery could die. Your cooling system might freeze. I lived in a part of the country where people routinely plug in their gas powered cars for the night.
>At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars.
Well, hold on there one minute. The difference between a 72% charge and a 100% charge at Tesla's Superchargers is something like fifteen minutes. Not 9 to 12 hours. If Broder hadn't stopped the charge early in Milford he wouldn't have needed to charge the next day (even including the overnight range loss in Groton) at a slow charger. Some Model S owner's recently demonstrated that: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreati...!
1) Broder reached out to Tesla on multiple occasions during the trip asking for advice when oddities happened
2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given.
3) The car ran out of charge
Regarding the non-sequitur of charging overnight, Tesla's marketing materials clearly state that you can keep the car unplugged for extended periods of time without a significant dropoff: "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." (pulled from http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts , older discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209639)
The only way to attack the integrity of Broder is to argue that somehow he wasn't advised to do something. Guess what: there are call logs, and those should be brought out. It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist. That's all fine, but in this case Tesla has a way of definitively proving that Broder was being malicious: If the call logs clearly show that Broder wasn't acting in accordance to what he claims was Tesla's judgments, then Broder deserves all the criticism. Otherwise it is Tesla's fault.
Until we see the call logs, siding with Tesla is hero worshipping.
Broder deserves to be called out on his inaccuracies.
But the thing that made the story was your point #3. And it could have been completely prevented if the people who gave out the advice in #2 gave better advice.
We can call Broder an idiot all we want, but it seems like there were bigger idiots on the other side of the phone. They could have erred on the side of caution and just told him to spend more time charging at every opportunity. As a result, #3 would likely not have happened, and Broder's article would have been seen as a mildly negative article, but also a forgettable one.
That is jurisdiction-dependent. Where I live you can record calls as long as one party of the call consents, and a company can get a blanket consent from all employees through an employment agreement. The other party need not be aware that the call is being recorded.
>Broder reached out to Tesla on multiple occasions during the trip asking for advice when oddities happened
That's what struck me the most, relative to how little attention it got. How many other people would have needed to call into a car company's customer service (and that many times!) to finish a simple test drive?
"Mommy, should I charge it all the way at the supercharger station?"
"Mommy it only reads 32 miles, will it last twice that?"
There are a hundred people more competent and deserving of such an opportunity than someone who doesn't even know the current state of vehicle logging tech.
"How many other people would have needed to call into a car company's customer service (and that many times!) to finish a simple test drive?"
If you saw last night that you had a full tank of gas, and woke up this morning and saw the tank was empty, wouldn't you call the car company? If you saw any other critical fluid mysteriously drop in level, wouldn't you call the car company? I've done this multiple times with strange sounds and other things I never expect to happen.
If I were in Broder's situation and saw strange things happening with the range indicator, I absolutely would be calling. Especially if it's a test vehicle -- the courts have decided that journalist drivers are responsible for the cars: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/you-break-it-you-bought-it...
I once had a car that sometimes got the fuel stuck halfway through (even with a full or even empty tank). If I knew I topped the car one day, and the next it was showing slightly above halfway, I would presume it would be an issue with the meter.
Honestly, I know next to nothing about cars, specially electric, but if I had a car that lost 30 miles overnight by doing nothing, I would call support as well. Until this controversy, I had no idea I had to keep the car plugged in at night.
> 2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given.
And you know this how? Musk says very directly that Broder did not behave in accordance with the advice he was given. You were present for this exchange and you know what the truth is? Or you just imagine it to be so?
"It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist."
Tesla didn't deny that Broder reached out, and still hasn't produced the call logs. If I were in Musk's situation I would publicly ask Broder if it was ok with him to reveal the call logs and then release it.
Broder, first article:
> Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford.
Musk:
> The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.
Broder , second article:
> The Tesla personnel whom I consulted over the phone – Ms. Ra and Mr. Merendino – told me to leave it connected for an hour, and after that the lost range would be restored. I did not ignore their advice.
In the first article, it seams that Broder calls after the final one hour charging, but in the second article the redaction is suspiciously vague. Perhaps the conversations in the calls were not recorded, but it would be interesting to know the times of the telephone calls.
I think the second article is clarifying what was meant by "after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford." For example, if the actual phrase was "You're clear to go after you charge for an hour." strictly speaking he was cleared to go (with the stipulation that he had to charge for an hour). Note that this is speculation. I am waiting to see the call logs, but I'm not going to assume that Broder made something up or maliciously misrepresented the conversation.
Tesla has not disputed (1), the claim that Broder reached out to Tesla during the journey (That would be the first thing I would point out if I were Musk and if Broder did not call during the journey)
While musk has cast doubt on the entire storyline, there's a very simple way to resolve the doubt. And if you read what I wrote, it's sitting in the penultimate part of the post you are responding to (reproduced below):
"The only way to attack the integrity of Broder is to argue that somehow he wasn't advised to do something. Guess what: there are call logs, and those should be brought out. It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist. That's all fine, but in this case Tesla has a way of definitively proving that Broder was being malicious: If the call logs clearly show that Broder wasn't acting in accordance to what he claims was Tesla's judgments, then Broder deserves all the criticism. Otherwise it is Tesla's fault."
Musk was completely out of line in trying to assert something in a conversation he was not a part of. Right now the only first-hand source discussing the conversations is Broder, and I am not going to assume that he is telling the truth or lying until Tesla reveals the call logs. Assuming that musk, notably not a party to the phone conversations, is telling the truth seems foolish. Let's all hear the phone conversations and then judge.
The wording is nuanced. Supposing that his account of the phone calls is accurate, Broder's behavior demonstrates no malice (and Musk argued past the point when he said that the advice doesn't align with "common sense").
The part that is up for debate (and I mentioned this in the later paragraphs) is the content of the phone calls.
I'm curious why you think the calls were logged. Certainly, we've all come to expect that recorded, "For quality assurance purposes...," when calling tech support. Still, the Tesla employees named by Broder are not technical support staff. They are from the public relations department (and one unnamed engineer). I'd actually be very surprised if PR departments regularly recorded calls, if for no other reason than to give staff the option of claiming to be mis-quoted by reporters.
Still, not even Broder claims that Tesla advised him to end his Supercharge early in Milford. I'm unsympathetic to claims that he received bad advice from Tesla later in his trip. As several Model S owners have demonstrated [1], it is entirely possible to drive round-trip from Milford to Groton on a single supercharge. Moreover, they demonstrated that it is possible to do so with a comfortable cabin temperature, a normal highway speed, and, perhaps most importantly, without charging the car overnight in Groton (and they, too, experienced some range loss during the night).
Of course, none of this proves that Broder was malicious. It is still the case, however, that each time he had the opportunity to choose between following Tesla's advice or his own common sense, he chose the option that put him in greater danger of being stranded. Perhaps the test drive was simply a disastrous chain of honest, yet abysmal, decision-making, followed a well-written essay describing how the fault was everyone's but his.
"I'm curious why you think the calls were logged."
This is not Tesla's first time dealing with the media. After the Top Gear controversy, I would expect them to be more circumspect.
"I'm unsympathetic to claims that he received bad advice from Tesla later in his trip"
It's not his car, and if he didnt obey Tesla's advice and bricked the car he could be liable for the damages (I discussed this in more detail in a nephew post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240745)
"As several Model S owners have demonstrated [1], it is entirely possible to drive round-trip from Milford to Groton on a single supercharge."
Just like the CNN "test" the situation was much different, and the temperature played a significant and undeniable role, so that's an apples-to-oranges comparison
"Of course, none of this proves that Broder was malicious. It is still the case, however, that each time he had the opportunity to choose between following Tesla's advice or his own common sense, he chose the option that put him in greater danger of being stranded. "
You are choosing clever words here. He chose to follow Tesla's advice, and you can imagine the vitriolic reaction if Broder disobeyed Tesla's advice and ran into trouble.
The main reason my pitchforks aren't out is laid out in the parent reply: when you actually filter through all of the arguments, the essence of the dispute is the nature of the advice that Tesla gave Broder while he was on the road. And Tesla failed to present any evidence that Broder received different advice (other than Musk's claims, but he has so much riding on this and wasn't actually part of the conversation, so he wouldn't necessarily know what was said -- so I definitely believe there's a chance Musk is lying and there's a chance Broder is lying). As another person mentioned http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240988 , I wonder if other customers get the same type of phone support
In general, I'm genuinely surprised by the extent to which HN treats Musk's words as if they are from god. He's a human, he has biases, and I wouldn't put it past him to improperly start a witchhunt against those who disagree with him or refuse to drink his kool-aid. Let's separate the fact that it's Elon Musk from the discussion of the facts of the trip.
Can we discuss this civilly, without resorting to ad-hominem attacks? I'm not drinking Musk-Aid, though that is certainly your implication. I don't fully trust Musk, but there are strange inconsistencies in Broder's account, and his rebuttal to the rebuttal has many statements that are nonsensical[0]. We can't apply our bullshit detectors to only one party.
>Just like the CNN "test" the situation was much different, and the temperature played a significant and undeniable role, so that's an apples-to-oranges comparison
Sure, and the owner's test involved snowy conditions (Broder's drive had clear weather), which generally increases energy consumption. So what? If they repeated the test, but put the car in a refrigerated warehouse at 10F overnight in Groton, would that satisfy you? Can you propose any test that would satisfy you? I don't say this to be combative. It just seems like the goalposts keep moving.
I'd actually love to see a test with the car kept in a freezer, but I don't think the results would be significantly different. In the owner's test I cited above, the remaining range when returning to Milford was greater than the range loss experienced overnight by Broder. The only thing they did differently (besides leaving the heat on while driving) was to fully charge the car before leaving the Milford Supercharger.
>You are choosing clever words here. He chose to follow Tesla's advice, and you can imagine the vitriolic reaction if Broder disobeyed Tesla's advice and ran into trouble.
But that is entirely the point, my friend. Broder sometimes followed Tesla's advice, and sometimes he didn't. Yet he seemingly only followed Tesla's advice when it was bad advice [1]. He ignored Tesla's advice when they gave him good advice[2]. That is precisely why there has been such a strong reaction on HN.
[0] Broder attributes the speed discrepancy to a difference in wheel diameter. That would actually make the speedo read higher, but there's a more fundamental point: The wheel diameter isn't relevant; the tire tread diameter is. There is less than a 0.7% difference in tread circumference between the two wheel options.
[1] For example, let's assert for the sake of argument that Tesla did tell him it was ok to leave the Level 2 charger
[2] Like that he should fully charge at Superchargers
> Sure, and the owner's test involved snowy conditions (Broder's drive had clear weather), which generally increases energy consumption. So what? If they repeated the test, but put the car in a refrigerated warehouse at 10F overnight in Groton, would that satisfy you? Can you propose any test that would satisfy you? I don't say this to be combative. It just seems like the goalposts keep moving.
The goalposts haven't been moving. That was the single most important factor of the entire trip on battery life. Period, end of story. Any attempt to "replicate" the experiment without replicating the actual event that led to failure (leaving the car unplugged overnight in sub-freezing temperatures) is missing the entire point.
Alright, but you've carefully evaded the question. So let me ask you again: Would you acknowledge that Broder acted in bad faith if someone were to drive a Model S round trip between Milford and Groton at a reasonable speed, with the car in a freezer at 10F and without plugging in overnight?
> 2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given.
I think that's not clear. In particular, in the event the NYT ombudsman calls out as bad judgment on the reporter's part, the one hour charge at Norwich, the reporter changed his story about Tesla's advice in a crucial way, but in a way that most readers didn't pick up on.
Originally, he claimed Tesla told him he'd charged it enough and could unplug and go, despite it still showing insufficient range.
Later, he weasel worded that they'd told him up earlier, before charging, that an hour charge "should" be enough, and so after an hour (that was really 3/4 hour) he took off. This was deliberately weaselly, both in the not really and hour, and in the taking off despite not having range back on the gauge.
Many readers, even here on HN, are still under the impression that Tesla was consulted after an hour of charging and told him it was okay to unplug and go (his original article's language). Instead, after less than an hour of charging and warming the battery, he unplugged knowing the range was insufficient and without checking with Tesla.
Mr. Broder stated that he unplugged his car and departed on a 61-mile leg of his journey with the car telling him it had 32 miles of charge remaining. So the answer to your snarky question is "no".
It seems like the 32 mile thing has been a bone that is constantly being picked in discussions about the article. Broder continued the drive based on Tesla's advice:
"It was also Tesla that told me that an hour of charging (at a lower power level) at a public utility in Norwich, Conn., would give me adequate range to reach the Supercharger 61 miles away, even though the car’s range estimator read 32 miles – because, again, I was told that moderate-speed driving would “restore” the battery power lost overnight."
Consumer Reports confirms that when the batteries warm up a little, they'll start reporting a longer range:
"Anyhow, after a seven-hour overnight park (unplugged) and temperatures dropping below freezing, the "rated" range dropped to 65 miles." ...
"But by now I've gained enough familiarity with our Tesla to assume the car would readjust once I started driving and things warmed up. (Owners would likely pre-condition the car before leaving, using household current to raise the battery temperature and heat the cabin.) Indeed, 30 miles into my trip, the car predicted 55 miles of range."
Ah, I see this detail is in the follow-up article and seems to be egregiously missing from the original article. It seems that, if we take Broder's word, that he believed the car would mysteriously regain lost range after being charged for an hour, but he left a charging station knowing the range readout was lower than the distance he needed to travel and -- and no-one seems to have pointed this out on either side -- never having received such a pleasant surprise in the course of the journey.
He did the first two times. He didn't at the unscheduled third charging stop after it lost range overnight, supposedly on the advice of Tesla staff. (There were reasons why they may not have wanted him to linger there too long - it was at a much slower 240V charger which made the car look bad compared to the Superchargers he was meant to be demonstrating in the article.)
1. so it looks like the editor concedes that the truth is somewhere in between the original review and Musk's rebuttal. But the original review is up as is. It's not amended, not corrected in any way.
2. Elon Musk said his faith in the NYTimes is restored over twitter. This to me looks like Elon made a deliberate decision to pick a fight with a single contributor and not with the entire newspaper. Besides, Elon knows other people will continue fighting on his behalf, so he can now take the high road and back off. Good tactics here.
3. The spin by the NYT editor is really clever. By quoting another person who mostly sides with Tesla and agreeing with that person she comes across as responding to the conflict with substance. But because the words aren't her own she can keep her status as a mostly impartial arbiter. And because she didn't say which parts of the quoted response she agreed with she can deny any part of it if needed! What she did here is equivalent to composing a list of 7 statements and adding to the bottom "I agree with 4 out of the 7 statements above". Sneaky sneaky.
4. Her final conclusion is that "people will go on contesting these points" but ultimately "few conclusions are unassailable". That's pretty much a classic "it's all relative" sort of response. The fact that people are in vocal disagreement doesn't mean you can just wave your hands and say essentially "well, the situation is just complex" and use that to justify keeping the original article up unchanged.
This statement by the New York Times public editor certainly reads like a rebuke of reporter John Broder for how thoroughly he (didn't) take notes during his reporting drive, and suggests that reporters will have a responsibility to bring along more electronic data-recording devices in future reporting. The latest blog post by Bruce Schneier
moments ago) suggests that even with a journalist leading a quantified life to submit quantified stories, there will still be issues of interpretation of the data that will be very hard to resolves, especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy while a news organization wants to preserve a reputation of hard-hitting, non-toadying journalism.
I would have thought that a Tesla's fancy trip computer would be able to account for, among other things - elevation changes, cold weather performance and provide smarter advice than what a human support agent would. Instead, the range estimator seems to project current usage over the remainder of the entire trip.
The problem with this "wrap-up" of the drama is that it fails to leave the reader with a clearer understanding of if the Tesla Model S is an automobile that has serious engineering problems. Instead, it dives deeper into the "controversy" which isn't really the point. Politics and Musk/Broder egos aside, any competent third party observer can come to the conclusion that the review was flawed and hence should not should influence the buying decision of a potential Model S customer one way or the other. This is the entire role of the NYT in this issue: to inform the consumer. Instead of providing clarity for the consumer the NYT continues to prefer to dive into meta-talk about itself and its story (as the media loves to do, report on itself) and fails to call a spade a spade. Pathetic.
So, Broder had admitted to braking the law by going 85 to "keep up with traffic." That's the most bizarre omission here -- we don't get to pick and choose which laws we decide to follow!
The good thing to come out of this is that the next time someone is given a test drive for a review that they'll be very aware that everything is being electronically monitored. At least that should help keep people honest.
1. Musk jumped to conclusions. For example, he claimed the car was driven in circles with the intent of running it out of battery. I think the innocent, "I was looking for the charger" explanation made sense. He concocted his own narrow explanations without verifying the facts or asking questions.
2. Broder failed to understand the car and the advice given to him. We can only speculate on the quality of that advice. What Tesla didn't log were the conversations. Broder also trusted the "one hour charge" despite failing to confirm he was good to go, or listen to common sense.
Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult.
The resulting situation is almost poetic. Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Broder's mistakes provide their own unique insights on the importance of understand human communication. I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom.
Maybe next time Tesla should log the conversations, too.
"I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom."
You should read the discussions. I brought this up many times:
>Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult.
Broder claimed in his first response that Musk had reached out to him for another go at the trip, once more stations are up. Musk has not denied that that took place, so I don't see any reason to believe that this isn't the case.
A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs, which Mr. Musk has used, in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) ways possible, as he defended his vehicle’s reputation.
Personally I agree, and to the suggestion that people read the manual and blah blah blah...how many people in the real read it in detail? So this is /was more of real person test drive. Moral of the story: buy an electric car or a Tesla only for short term drives and if you are willing to go through a series of hoops to charge and care for it. From the review--and especially from Musk's attitude--Tesla would not be for me, even if I had the money.
Elon needs a rule, like holding off any comments for 24-48 hours, he needs to calm down. Driving 0.6 miles is not grounds for "he was trying to run the battery down on purpose to fake the interview." He is a loose cannon and does his company no service.
101 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadYes, yes it would be, especially when addressing the integrity of one of their journalists! She wore kid gloves when she rendered the comments regarding his "mistakes". Kid gloves are not appropriate.
It appears the sentiment of this editor's blog post is essentially "we'll defend our journalists even when their articles have been exposed as unfairly biased." It feels like the journalistic equivalent of the thin blue line.
The weird thing is, I think she's probably right. But I think the job of the public editor is precisely to address controversies of their reporters in sufficient detail that we don't have to trust her. Ombudsmen have to be seen as scrupulously fair to outsiders or there's no point in having them.
This particular position was created after the Jayson Blair scandal, so it's particularly important that they are frank in calling out bad reporting. Or, in this case, explaining why they think it wasn't bad reporting.
Also Musk gave his interpretation of the facts. One person's deliberate deceit is another's innocent mistake.
Tesla now has a reputation as being unusually aggressive in defending its position. Which has to be making media institutions wonder why on earth they would bother to review this ?
But long term I would be very curious to see why anyone would review it knowing that any inaccuracies could result in a PR storm.
I should sincerely hope that future reviews would be devoid of under/over-reporting of numbers by 7 or 15%, all consistently in a single direction of bias, and combined with a lot of WTF decisions which cause people to wonder.
I, too, am sincerely curious to see if media outlets will shy away from empirically based reviews, because they'll need to be done competently.
The extraordinary event in the original NYT article was that the car "died" during Broder's review. We can debate all we want about the smaller facts in the article, but if the car didn't die during the review, we probably wouldn't even be discussing the article today.
To me, the most glaring issue that came out of the article wasn't a problem with the car. It was clear to me as the reader that Broder was trying to push the mileage limits of the car. But I personally think the car would not have died if the people on the other side of the phone had simply given better advice.
At the very least, Musk should consider retraining (or replacing) the people he allows on the other side of support calls with members of the media. It's better to give inconvenient advice (i.e. "charge it a little longer just to be safe") than give advice that risks getting the driver stranded.
The reporter changed his wording on that between the original article and his later rebuttal. He originally said Tesla told him it was okay to unplug and go. Later he reworded that they'd told him it should be okay to charge for an hour and go. He then charged for less than an hour, saw it hadn't given as much fuel as he needed, and unplugged early anyway and without checking with them.
As the NYT ombudsman quote, the journo hadn't even bothered to follow the owner's manual. His behavior was disingenuous at best, even if not pro-oil link baiting at worst.
For many (at least among us here), this is a positive reputation. They defended themselves immediately, directly and with hard data. I don't remember ever seeing something like this before.
While there could be many reasons, two more probable IMHO could be:
1) The "out" he was looking for: absolution for a somewhat strong initial overreaction.
2) He's simply being naive, and not reading between the lines.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_editor
Do you have anything evidence for that claim? Either first hand experience or perhaps a citation?
I will concede they are not directly PR people, but yet the role of "Public Editor" was created in the wake of an ethics scandal and PR tsunami[1] at the NYT. The position is also on the payroll of the NYT.
Occam's Razor would indicate we should follow the incentives.
Keeping an open mind as always, but I don't think there is good cause, a priori for the belief that the "Public Editor" is working tirelessly for the good of the people.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fab...
Re: how the public editor at the Times is perceived: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13pubed.html?_r=0. The money quote: "A writer shaken by a conclusion I was reaching told me, if you say that, I'll have to kill myself." I would hope your company's PR person wouldn't make you feel like that.
And a broader look at how journalists handle criticism: http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2010/06/why-cant-journalists-hand... but also http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2011/04/theres-no-problem-newsroo...
You can't really avoid having the public editor on the payroll of the organization he or she works for, unless some wealthy donor is prepared to step in and pay for one. That means we always have to be sceptical of where their loyalties lie and their independence, but it doesn't mean they don't have any.
Also, the New York Times is one of the only papers in the world that tracks errors internally, so they can easily see which of their journalists are playing fast and loose, and will let them go if necessary.
Is it perfect? Obviously not. Are journalists and editors generally really bad at owning up to their mistakes? Yep. But an ombudsman is an attempt to do something about that, not an extension of that culture.
Of course we should still keep a close watch on the future to see how true it remains to the historical record and theory. But in the meantime, I'll be be updating my model, and nudging the needle, a little further toward the left. (if 'for the people' is left, and 'for the company' is to the right, on a 1 dimensional axis).
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
So, in our public discourse, "honesty and good faith," have drifted down to the level of "deniably but somehow consistently fudged."
In the words of Richard Feynman, there is: "a specific, extra type of integrity that is not [just not] lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong." It's this level of integrity that is needed in our public discourse concerning the complex and technically sophisticated world of today. If the NYTimes can't manage this in a simple car review, I wonder how they do with complex political and social issues.
Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account (heat was turned off, battery dropoff overnight, etc), and the only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. It's interesting that Tesla has the logs yet isn't revealing them. I suspect the logs will show that Tesla engineers didn't properly advise Broder on what to do, which is Tesla's fault, not any sort of fraudulence on NYT's part.
I see you have it all wrong. I'm not in disagreement with that. (And there goes the basis for your comment.) Either you are willfully misreading my comment, or you're trying a subtle sleight of hand. The facts mostly fit Broder's account. I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction. A reporter should have some facility in curbing his own bias. Apparently, Broder has insufficient competence in figures and self awareness for this.
This is precisely what Feynmann is talking about in the quote.
They are not, though. From Broder's account (you should read the original article), most of the bad decisions and inaccuracies can be attributed to advice that Tesla gave Broder. That is the crux of the problem: Broder makes a claim based on Tesla engineer advice, and Musk denies and attributes that to malice.
I am arguing against your implicit assertion that NYT is at fault at each point of divergence between NYT's and Tesla's account. It's still up in the air, and as I said: "only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. "
That said, Broder has an additional problem which is of being fair to the reader versus Tesla. He shouldn't grade Tesla on a curve. Bear in mind, the point isn't to make sure Tesla is treated fairly, but to make sure readers don't find themselves waiting for a flatbed truck in a blizzard.
Imagine how this would have gone with Top Gear doing it, all on video (quite likely including recording the conversations with tech support).
Going back to the public editor's piece: when was the last time you read a manual for anything? I have sometimes resorted to a manual as a last resort, but not when I have instant access to human tech support.
Yeah, if you let him get away with being scientifically illiterate.
> you should read the original article
EDIT: You litter your comments with these off-hand remarks that imply things about other's positions which aren't true.
> I am arguing against your implicit assertion that NYT is at fault at each point of divergence between NYT's and Tesla's account.
What, is putting words in other's mouths the modus operandi now? I'm not saying that. I'm saying that Broder isn't sufficiently competent at curbing his own bias, knowing how to do empirical reporting, and making sensible technical decisions in the field to do a car review. He tried to get it right? Making inadequate efforts at getting at the truth isn't an acceptable level of performance from a national news media outlet. It's basically, "Hey, we tried. Be satisfied with our truthiness."
Your statement stems from an attack by Musk. What makes you think that a journalist would be more biased than the CEO of a car companies with billions of dollars at stake?
Your stalwart defense of Musk belies your inability to think objectively. My stance is as it was when I first saw the situation: the only way to resolve this is to reveal the phone logs. It's a he-said-she-said (that's something else I've pointed out multiple times) and somehow HN deems Musk (not a party to the conversation) more credible than the journalist asked to test drive without asking for the key information that would resolve this matter
No, my statement stems from reading his account, then comparing it to Musk's data.
> What makes you think that a journalist would be more biased than the CEO of a car companies with billions of dollars at stake?
Again, this sort of sleight of hand. I'm not defending Musk's bias here, Musk's bias doesn't in any way exonerate the other's, and nice try, if that was intentional. I'm purely attacking Broder's incompetence.
> Your stalwart defense of Musk belies your inability to think objectively.
So it's "objective" to not recognize Broder's bias in his inaccuracies, or at least to excuse it because, hey Musk was probably biased too!
...Okay! You're entitled to your position, man!
> It's a he-said-she-said
Yes, the rest of us are just avoiding the "he-said-she-said" quagmire. It is a quagmire, and the likely ROI is low. Really, the outcome of one car review isn't so important, but the issue brings up plenty of stuff which is. I'll tell you what: When Musk is the head of a national media outlet "of record," and he publishes the same sort of stuff, I'll hold his feet to the fire for shoddy journalism for his hasty comments and interpretation of data -- which he is guilty of. It's not a par-performance, objectively a bit of a PR cock-up, but still understandable from a CEO. Of course he's biased in favor of his product. The journalist is only human, but he's not only supposed to try to be objective as a part of his job, he's supposed to show some competence at it.
The disturbing part of this whole issue for me is the degree to which carelessness about empirical fact is seen as "okay." Elon Musk has a substantial public record which shows a notable degree of diligence towards getting facts right. Broder's article -- best I could say about it is: enh.
I would chalk it up to a combination of ego, thin skin and impulsiveness.
Had he came back with a much more measured rebuttal (think OXO vs Quirky), this story likely would have died earlier.
Asking journalists to be scientists removes the need for journalists. You can say maybe we don't need journalists, but there clearly has to be different standards for science and journalism, even if only because of the vast differences in expected timeframes in each field.
Aww, crap. Just asking journalists to be a little less careless and fuzzy would be a good start. Opinions on this seem to be divided along two lines: 1) People familiar with getting quantitative things right in their jobs vs. others and 2) People who have had run-ins with careless/incompetent journalists vs. others.
> specifically points out that "extra" truth is different than truth in other situations.
I don't think he's saying that about truth. I think he's saying that about a field. It applies to truth -- it's just that our mish-mash of a culture hasn't caught up to that level of rationality yet.
Yeah... they don't. Except in a few long-form investigative-type pieces, where they really shine. Remember that they're putting out over 100,000 words every single day. Imagine if you were a company that had to put out just 5,000 SLOC every day without bugs, everything perfectly refactored? Puts it into perspective a bit.
Asking for that kind of integrity in journalism, or anything really, it would be great, but that's not really what the market usually supports. Just remember, that at the end of the day, the NYT is far better than most any other daily newspaper out there, and nobody's perfect. Journalists are people, these are their day jobs, not their religions.
And I don't know where you're getting "consistently fudged" from.
Personally I think that entrepreneurs working on products that solve immensely challenging problems should always be given a benefit of doubt. Or two or three or may be even five times. Clearly this did not happen in Tesla's case.
And yet in the original post from OP this part still seems a bit questionable: Mr. Broder’s irresponsibility in fuel management was in hope that something beyond “inconvenience” would happen to make the story more interesting. (Otherwise, no one, including me, would have paid much attention to his article.)
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203207
Products should be reviewed based on there merit, "given a benefit of a doubt" is left up to the consumer.
A reviewer should review every product the same, else the reviews are worthless because there is no continuity to compare the reviews.
Do you want your reviews from some person you have never heard of or from someone well established? The answer is obvious.
However, here is a beautiful piece from Anton Ego of Ratatouille:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more."
Do yourself a favour and don't ever startup a company. Because if you think that as an entrepreneur the world should treat your precious self with kiddy gloves then wow you are in for a rude shock.
Because consumers couldn't care less whether you are a startup or not. They care about how great your product is.
The NYT published something that is absolutely impossible to fact-check outside of an op-ed column. This wasn't even fit for publication to begin with.
Print journalism is in no way superior to the bloggers they are in competition with - in fact, most journalists have to keep their own blogs now just to compete. Margaret's reply basically dances around saying that Broder failed to do his due diligence as a journalist.
If you need any clearer sign that newspapers are not just declining but dead, this is it.
Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news. Op-Ed work needs to be clearly marked as such.
Now, it would be fair to say that the Automotive section, specifically the reviews, contains a fair bit more opinion than the rest of the paper, but there needs to be clear distinction. Going by the headline and the way the article was written, this clearly isn't the case. It was reported as news...as in it was about the car and neglected the fine personal detail that a review would have. It turns out though that the story here is more about Broder and how he drove the car. The way he drove it was more important than anything he reported about the car - it's not news.
Broder writes other stories for the NYT that are genuine news. It's shocking to me that the current editorial format of the NYT allows crap like that to be published in the same venue.
I'm basically saying that if this weren't written by an NYT staff reporter, it would have been an Op-Ed (or similarly labeled) if they allowed it for publication at all. They should not have.
I think you just made that up. According to who?
I read newspapers with movie reviews, play reviews, comics pages, advertising, news analysis, car reviews, industry analysis, foreign affairs analysis, etc etc etc.
Newspaper reporters win Pulitzers for their original research, investigation and analysis.
God forbid if newspapers should ever merely "report the news", it would be a sad day.
Analysis usually is either a summation of another publication (with citations) or is an Op-Ed.
Investigative journalism is pure news.
Oddly, I would write the exact opposite headline. The NYT review has minor problems with precision and judgment, but major problems with integrity.
Imagine a gasoline car review: "I'm here at a gas station with an empty tank, and I have 61 miles to the next gas station. I'm going to put in half a gallon of gasoline, hang up the nozzle and start driving to the next station. Oh no, I ran out of gas! Well, this proves the technology is still immature and that gas cars suck."
Can you imagine this being a publishable review to the NYT editors?
Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight unless you park in a really rough neighbourhood. He didn't have any reason to disbelieve his contact at Tesla when they said the lost range would return - hell, I've had Tesla fans tell me that their cars don't really lose range overnight, it's just calculated wrong, and I'm spreading FUD by pointing the range loss out. I bet they'd be going after Broder for that too if he'd waited for more of a charge.
Intentionally draining the battery, refusing to charge it up at any of the numerous opportunities to do so, and then blaming the car is not.
No, but your fuel could gel in a diesel car. Your battery could die. Your cooling system might freeze. I lived in a part of the country where people routinely plug in their gas powered cars for the night.
Well, hold on there one minute. The difference between a 72% charge and a 100% charge at Tesla's Superchargers is something like fifteen minutes. Not 9 to 12 hours. If Broder hadn't stopped the charge early in Milford he wouldn't have needed to charge the next day (even including the overnight range loss in Groton) at a slow charger. Some Model S owner's recently demonstrated that: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreati...!
1) Broder reached out to Tesla on multiple occasions during the trip asking for advice when oddities happened
2) He behaved in accordance with the advice he was given.
3) The car ran out of charge
Regarding the non-sequitur of charging overnight, Tesla's marketing materials clearly state that you can keep the car unplugged for extended periods of time without a significant dropoff: "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." (pulled from http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts , older discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209639)
The only way to attack the integrity of Broder is to argue that somehow he wasn't advised to do something. Guess what: there are call logs, and those should be brought out. It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist. That's all fine, but in this case Tesla has a way of definitively proving that Broder was being malicious: If the call logs clearly show that Broder wasn't acting in accordance to what he claims was Tesla's judgments, then Broder deserves all the criticism. Otherwise it is Tesla's fault.
Until we see the call logs, siding with Tesla is hero worshipping.
But the thing that made the story was your point #3. And it could have been completely prevented if the people who gave out the advice in #2 gave better advice.
We can call Broder an idiot all we want, but it seems like there were bigger idiots on the other side of the phone. They could have erred on the side of caution and just told him to spend more time charging at every opportunity. As a result, #3 would likely not have happened, and Broder's article would have been seen as a mildly negative article, but also a forgettable one.
That's what struck me the most, relative to how little attention it got. How many other people would have needed to call into a car company's customer service (and that many times!) to finish a simple test drive?
"Mommy, should I charge it all the way at the supercharger station?"
"Mommy it only reads 32 miles, will it last twice that?"
There are a hundred people more competent and deserving of such an opportunity than someone who doesn't even know the current state of vehicle logging tech.
If you saw last night that you had a full tank of gas, and woke up this morning and saw the tank was empty, wouldn't you call the car company? If you saw any other critical fluid mysteriously drop in level, wouldn't you call the car company? I've done this multiple times with strange sounds and other things I never expect to happen.
If I were in Broder's situation and saw strange things happening with the range indicator, I absolutely would be calling. Especially if it's a test vehicle -- the courts have decided that journalist drivers are responsible for the cars: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/you-break-it-you-bought-it...
Honestly, I know next to nothing about cars, specially electric, but if I had a car that lost 30 miles overnight by doing nothing, I would call support as well. Until this controversy, I had no idea I had to keep the car plugged in at night.
And you know this how? Musk says very directly that Broder did not behave in accordance with the advice he was given. You were present for this exchange and you know what the truth is? Or you just imagine it to be so?
"It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist."
Tesla didn't deny that Broder reached out, and still hasn't produced the call logs. If I were in Musk's situation I would publicly ask Broder if it was ok with him to reveal the call logs and then release it.
Musk: > The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.
Broder , second article: > The Tesla personnel whom I consulted over the phone – Ms. Ra and Mr. Merendino – told me to leave it connected for an hour, and after that the lost range would be restored. I did not ignore their advice.
In the first article, it seams that Broder calls after the final one hour charging, but in the second article the redaction is suspiciously vague. Perhaps the conversations in the calls were not recorded, but it would be interesting to know the times of the telephone calls.
We actually don't know if he did. I mean, he claimed so, and also claimed the tesla rep told him it was OK to leave. But how do we know he didn't lie?
While musk has cast doubt on the entire storyline, there's a very simple way to resolve the doubt. And if you read what I wrote, it's sitting in the penultimate part of the post you are responding to (reproduced below):
"The only way to attack the integrity of Broder is to argue that somehow he wasn't advised to do something. Guess what: there are call logs, and those should be brought out. It's a he-said-she-said right now and everyone sides with the car CEO rather than the journalist. That's all fine, but in this case Tesla has a way of definitively proving that Broder was being malicious: If the call logs clearly show that Broder wasn't acting in accordance to what he claims was Tesla's judgments, then Broder deserves all the criticism. Otherwise it is Tesla's fault."
Musk was completely out of line in trying to assert something in a conversation he was not a part of. Right now the only first-hand source discussing the conversations is Broder, and I am not going to assume that he is telling the truth or lying until Tesla reveals the call logs. Assuming that musk, notably not a party to the phone conversations, is telling the truth seems foolish. Let's all hear the phone conversations and then judge.
The part that is up for debate (and I mentioned this in the later paragraphs) is the content of the phone calls.
Still, not even Broder claims that Tesla advised him to end his Supercharge early in Milford. I'm unsympathetic to claims that he received bad advice from Tesla later in his trip. As several Model S owners have demonstrated [1], it is entirely possible to drive round-trip from Milford to Groton on a single supercharge. Moreover, they demonstrated that it is possible to do so with a comfortable cabin temperature, a normal highway speed, and, perhaps most importantly, without charging the car overnight in Groton (and they, too, experienced some range loss during the night).
Of course, none of this proves that Broder was malicious. It is still the case, however, that each time he had the opportunity to choose between following Tesla's advice or his own common sense, he chose the option that put him in greater danger of being stranded. Perhaps the test drive was simply a disastrous chain of honest, yet abysmal, decision-making, followed a well-written essay describing how the fault was everyone's but his.
[1] http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/13905-Recreati...!
This is not Tesla's first time dealing with the media. After the Top Gear controversy, I would expect them to be more circumspect.
"I'm unsympathetic to claims that he received bad advice from Tesla later in his trip"
It's not his car, and if he didnt obey Tesla's advice and bricked the car he could be liable for the damages (I discussed this in more detail in a nephew post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240745)
"As several Model S owners have demonstrated [1], it is entirely possible to drive round-trip from Milford to Groton on a single supercharge."
Just like the CNN "test" the situation was much different, and the temperature played a significant and undeniable role, so that's an apples-to-oranges comparison
"Of course, none of this proves that Broder was malicious. It is still the case, however, that each time he had the opportunity to choose between following Tesla's advice or his own common sense, he chose the option that put him in greater danger of being stranded. "
You are choosing clever words here. He chose to follow Tesla's advice, and you can imagine the vitriolic reaction if Broder disobeyed Tesla's advice and ran into trouble.
The main reason my pitchforks aren't out is laid out in the parent reply: when you actually filter through all of the arguments, the essence of the dispute is the nature of the advice that Tesla gave Broder while he was on the road. And Tesla failed to present any evidence that Broder received different advice (other than Musk's claims, but he has so much riding on this and wasn't actually part of the conversation, so he wouldn't necessarily know what was said -- so I definitely believe there's a chance Musk is lying and there's a chance Broder is lying). As another person mentioned http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240988 , I wonder if other customers get the same type of phone support
In general, I'm genuinely surprised by the extent to which HN treats Musk's words as if they are from god. He's a human, he has biases, and I wouldn't put it past him to improperly start a witchhunt against those who disagree with him or refuse to drink his kool-aid. Let's separate the fact that it's Elon Musk from the discussion of the facts of the trip.
>Just like the CNN "test" the situation was much different, and the temperature played a significant and undeniable role, so that's an apples-to-oranges comparison
Sure, and the owner's test involved snowy conditions (Broder's drive had clear weather), which generally increases energy consumption. So what? If they repeated the test, but put the car in a refrigerated warehouse at 10F overnight in Groton, would that satisfy you? Can you propose any test that would satisfy you? I don't say this to be combative. It just seems like the goalposts keep moving.
I'd actually love to see a test with the car kept in a freezer, but I don't think the results would be significantly different. In the owner's test I cited above, the remaining range when returning to Milford was greater than the range loss experienced overnight by Broder. The only thing they did differently (besides leaving the heat on while driving) was to fully charge the car before leaving the Milford Supercharger.
>You are choosing clever words here. He chose to follow Tesla's advice, and you can imagine the vitriolic reaction if Broder disobeyed Tesla's advice and ran into trouble.
But that is entirely the point, my friend. Broder sometimes followed Tesla's advice, and sometimes he didn't. Yet he seemingly only followed Tesla's advice when it was bad advice [1]. He ignored Tesla's advice when they gave him good advice[2]. That is precisely why there has been such a strong reaction on HN.
[0] Broder attributes the speed discrepancy to a difference in wheel diameter. That would actually make the speedo read higher, but there's a more fundamental point: The wheel diameter isn't relevant; the tire tread diameter is. There is less than a 0.7% difference in tread circumference between the two wheel options.
[1] For example, let's assert for the sake of argument that Tesla did tell him it was ok to leave the Level 2 charger
[2] Like that he should fully charge at Superchargers
The goalposts haven't been moving. That was the single most important factor of the entire trip on battery life. Period, end of story. Any attempt to "replicate" the experiment without replicating the actual event that led to failure (leaving the car unplugged overnight in sub-freezing temperatures) is missing the entire point.
I think that's not clear. In particular, in the event the NYT ombudsman calls out as bad judgment on the reporter's part, the one hour charge at Norwich, the reporter changed his story about Tesla's advice in a crucial way, but in a way that most readers didn't pick up on.
Originally, he claimed Tesla told him he'd charged it enough and could unplug and go, despite it still showing insufficient range.
Later, he weasel worded that they'd told him up earlier, before charging, that an hour charge "should" be enough, and so after an hour (that was really 3/4 hour) he took off. This was deliberately weaselly, both in the not really and hour, and in the taking off despite not having range back on the gauge.
Many readers, even here on HN, are still under the impression that Tesla was consulted after an hour of charging and told him it was okay to unplug and go (his original article's language). Instead, after less than an hour of charging and warming the battery, he unplugged knowing the range was insufficient and without checking with Tesla.
"It was also Tesla that told me that an hour of charging (at a lower power level) at a public utility in Norwich, Conn., would give me adequate range to reach the Supercharger 61 miles away, even though the car’s range estimator read 32 miles – because, again, I was told that moderate-speed driving would “restore” the battery power lost overnight."
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-w...
--
Consumer Reports confirms that when the batteries warm up a little, they'll start reporting a longer range:
"Anyhow, after a seven-hour overnight park (unplugged) and temperatures dropping below freezing, the "rated" range dropped to 65 miles." ...
"But by now I've gained enough familiarity with our Tesla to assume the car would readjust once I started driving and things warmed up. (Owners would likely pre-condition the car before leaving, using household current to raise the battery temperature and heat the cabin.) Indeed, 30 miles into my trip, the car predicted 55 miles of range."
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/tesla-model-s-w...
1. so it looks like the editor concedes that the truth is somewhere in between the original review and Musk's rebuttal. But the original review is up as is. It's not amended, not corrected in any way.
2. Elon Musk said his faith in the NYTimes is restored over twitter. This to me looks like Elon made a deliberate decision to pick a fight with a single contributor and not with the entire newspaper. Besides, Elon knows other people will continue fighting on his behalf, so he can now take the high road and back off. Good tactics here.
3. The spin by the NYT editor is really clever. By quoting another person who mostly sides with Tesla and agreeing with that person she comes across as responding to the conflict with substance. But because the words aren't her own she can keep her status as a mostly impartial arbiter. And because she didn't say which parts of the quoted response she agreed with she can deny any part of it if needed! What she did here is equivalent to composing a list of 7 statements and adding to the bottom "I agree with 4 out of the 7 statements above". Sneaky sneaky.
4. Her final conclusion is that "people will go on contesting these points" but ultimately "few conclusions are unassailable". That's pretty much a classic "it's all relative" sort of response. The fact that people are in vocal disagreement doesn't mean you can just wave your hands and say essentially "well, the situation is just complex" and use that to justify keeping the original article up unchanged.
Seems like a lot of this is a matter of degree and a bit of embellishment. But I would hardly call the original article a hit piece or anything.
I suppose if i had my druthers it'd be nice for the original piece link to the public editor's post, or some other compendium of the saga.
http://schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/automobile_data.ht...
(just submitted to HN,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5241508
moments ago) suggests that even with a journalist leading a quantified life to submit quantified stories, there will still be issues of interpretation of the data that will be very hard to resolves, especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy while a news organization wants to preserve a reputation of hard-hitting, non-toadying journalism.
Know a lot of domestic car companies who aren't on the dole?
1. Musk jumped to conclusions. For example, he claimed the car was driven in circles with the intent of running it out of battery. I think the innocent, "I was looking for the charger" explanation made sense. He concocted his own narrow explanations without verifying the facts or asking questions.
2. Broder failed to understand the car and the advice given to him. We can only speculate on the quality of that advice. What Tesla didn't log were the conversations. Broder also trusted the "one hour charge" despite failing to confirm he was good to go, or listen to common sense.
Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult.
The resulting situation is almost poetic. Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Broder's mistakes provide their own unique insights on the importance of understand human communication. I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom.
Maybe next time Tesla should log the conversations, too.
You should read the discussions. I brought this up many times:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240527
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240237
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228442
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223681
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223448
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222275
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220019
You can find these by searching for call logs niggler in the HN Search
Broder claimed in his first response that Musk had reached out to him for another go at the trip, once more stations are up. Musk has not denied that that took place, so I don't see any reason to believe that this isn't the case.
Personally I agree, and to the suggestion that people read the manual and blah blah blah...how many people in the real read it in detail? So this is /was more of real person test drive. Moral of the story: buy an electric car or a Tesla only for short term drives and if you are willing to go through a series of hoops to charge and care for it. From the review--and especially from Musk's attitude--Tesla would not be for me, even if I had the money.
Elon needs a rule, like holding off any comments for 24-48 hours, he needs to calm down. Driving 0.6 miles is not grounds for "he was trying to run the battery down on purpose to fake the interview." He is a loose cannon and does his company no service.