[JPKab]

"Convincing? No. His other chart shows the mile range dipped below zero, which would indicate the car could not move. "

Wow, I wish I could be as sloppy and awful at my job as these journalists are. Had he actually bothered to truly read the response he is commenting on, he would see that Musk states that, when the car's range dips below zero, it is running on reserve power. It takes some miles after "zero" for the car to actually stop moving.

What a hack. There is truly nothing worse than reading something by someone who has no education in comprehending quantitative data try to critique it.

However, I do agree with his statement on the climate control. That was something I noticed when I read Musk's response. Clearly, the Broder turned the heat down, just not as early as he thought/claimed.

[deletes]

I was written by a woman actually. :)

Can I add on argument 6.: >>No. That wasn't the point of the article. Broder wanted to see how the car would do on a long range road trip relying on Tesla's two official Supercharger stations. <<

Ok, he wanted to rely on only official stations, but did he really have to completely discharge the car? Why couldn't he just stop and charge when he was super low at any normal charge station, and explain in the article that the two supercharge stations, failed? Well that's because then he couldn't post a nice article titled >>Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway<<

[JPKab]

Yeah, I've seen journalists trying to defend Broder, acting as if he had zero incentive to have the car die on him. Funny how they say that, yet the article went to the front page of virtually ever link aggreagator out there, while glowing reviews are old news and are thus ignored.

Broder knew it, and he wanted the car to die. We all know that. What is in debate here is to what degree he went to make the vehicle die that differs from what an average driver who wants to get to point B would have done.

[davidiach]

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Broder might not have wanted to "be evil". He might be like the guy who doesn't actually want to hurt the company he is working for but still spends all his day playing games at work.

Given that his job was to write an accurate review, the fact that he didn't really want to wait until the car is fully charged and was bored driving the car at normal speed and so on, we can say he did a poor job with the review.

[specialist]

As someone who's tried, with varied success, to work with reporters on technical stuff, I don't subscribe to "the somewhere in the middle" view.

To us geeks, often, stuff is either true or not true, with no room for maybe.

To reporters, they're both trying to understand what's happening without direct knowledge as well as convey that in a way a layperson can understand. Unfortunately, in that game of telephone, a lot of important details get lost.

I also think reporters deal with imperfect information and rely on their judgement to determine if any particular detail is important to the overall narrative, often influenced by the competing agendas of the players involved.

What's great (rare) about this story is there's published data, the validity of which no one disputes (yet), to chew over.

[slantyyz]

>> What's great (rare) about this story is there's published data

I've only seen precompiled analyses, including the charts and graphs from Tesla's blog.

There is no real data per se - Wired requested the raw logs several times and have been declined by Tesla (http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/tesla-logs-nytimes/ - last sentence).

And I don't get how there's this perception here on HN that Tesla's data is ironclad.

The logging routines were probably written by humans, so there could be bugs in them. Logs are usually written to text files, which can be edited. The people interpreting the data could be making mistakes with the analysis before it even gets to Musk (look at all the posts about the problems with Excel on HN in the past couple of days).

Tesla's a startup. Startups can be a little chaotic. Their procedures and controls with respect to their data may not be as robust as, say a credit card company's, yet there's this big presumption that the data is all good and pure.

I would give Tesla the benefit of the doubt, since it would be very stupid to doctor up the data, but let's not all kid ourselves and not assume that Tesla's not going to shade their "analysis" in a way that is favorable to their argument. It's not much different than what the NYT reporter and the NYT are doing.

[specialist]

Sorry, I assumed the logged data was public information. My bad.

[grecy]

> Given that his job was to write an accurate review

Why do you assume that?

His job was to attract readership and hits for the NYT. Nothing does that better than controversy.

[adnrw]

From the NYT Company's "Guidelines on Integrity" [1]:

"... it is imperative that The Times and its staff maintain the highest possible standards to insure that we do nothing that might erode readers’ faith and confidence in our news columns. This means that staff members should be vigilant in avoiding any activity that might pose an actual or apparent conflict of interest and thus threaten the newspaper's ethical standing. And it also means that the journalism we practice daily must be beyond reproach."

[1]http://www.nytco.com/company/business_units/integrity.html

[hhw]

Shouldn't that be "ensure" rather than "insure"? You would expect better English, especially on the integrity guidelines page, from a highly regarded news publication like the New York Times.

[taligent]

The New York Times is not some Murdoch trashy paper that deals with gossip and controversy.

The integrity of their work is important because that is what is keeping the paper alive whilst the others are falling by the way side. Maybe you should actually try reading it sometime.

[fpgeek]

Correction: For the NYT's business, their reputation for integrity is what's important, not the actual integrity of their work. For example, it could be better (or just safer) for that reputation to make up a story that agrees with the conventional wisdom than to tell an unexpected truth that does not.

[rhizome]

Pace your sense of the NY Times motivations, I offer Judy Miller:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#New_York_Times_ca...

[taligent]

I am well aware of Judy Miller and the many other occasions where their work has been dreadful. But we are talking about a paper that has been around 150+ years.

My point was that they aren't the type of paper who writes flamebait articles just to get more online hits.

[rhizome]

The Judy Miller incidents directly refute your assertion that they don't deal in controversies (and arguably gossip). Arguing that they don't do those things at all, except when they do, isn't very convincing, and your conclusion is a non-sequitur at any rate. "Many other occasions!"

[grecy]

In the first paragraph you acknowledge there have been "many occasions" of "dreadful" reporting.

In the second paragraph you state they are not a bad paper.

You are very confused.

[DanBC]

Broder turned the heat up before turning the heat down. But he didn't mention turning the heat up; he only mentions having to suffer with a cold cabin.

[ceejayoz]

Also, that's the heater setting, not the cabin temperature. I can set my car's internal heat setting to 50 degrees after getting it nice and toasty, and as long as I don't turn the A/C on it's going to stay warm for quite some time.

[sk5t]

Quite a few newer cars don't draw a distinction between running the heater or A/C: you just set a desired temperature, and the climate control system figures out what to do based on internal and exterior conditions. (Whether this is a good approach for a car's climate control system is another question, however.)

[ceejayoz]

I doubt the Tesla does that. If it did, Musk would've said something along the lines of "setting the cabin temp to 50 kicked on the A/C".

[brown9-2]

The author noticed her mistake and has since corrected it. Sometimes even the un-hackiest of us make mistakes.

[taligent]

> someone who has no education in comprehending quantitative

You need to a degree to understand a pretty basic line graph ? Give me a break.

People on here (and in the article's comments) need to stop acting like sanctimonious assholes. Electric cars are not some advanced technology that only the precious genius of Musk and IT nerds can comprehend.

The fact is that the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle here. Big surprise.

[JPKab]

I get why you're irritated, but when I say "education" I don't mean necessarily a degree. I mean just some fundamental, working knowledge, whether that's from a degree, course, autodidactic, whatever. I did sound sanctimonious, but you know what? I didn't write a critique of someone's data dependent analysis. And if I lacked quantitative analysis experience, I wouldn't try to.

But to be fair, I have no way of knowing the author lacks this experience. My intuition told me this with the numerous mistakes made in the article.

[achompas]

What mistakes? I work with data for a living, and I agreed with The Atlantic's points (having reached the same conclusions last night when the story broke).

The particular mistake you cite results from a lack of domain knowledge, not analysis skills. The chart says "rated range remaining." If you're not familiar with EVs, you'd think that means the car will not move anymore. That assumption has zero to do with chart-reading abilities.

[dfxm12]

It is unreasonable for someone to expect the truth from a journalist? This is an issue about integrity. If the truth does, in fact, lie in the middle, it doesn't matter if the NYT author had a hidden agenda or not, it matters that the NYT author did not tell the truth.

I expect Tesla employees to be biased toward Tesla. I expect journalists to tell the truth.