[gfodor]

I guess it's time to muddy the waters. The truth is in the middle!

Of course, the entire debacle can be summed up with the following exchange:

Q: "How many miles did you have left to drive on the final leg?"

Broder: "61"

Q: "And how many miles did your car tell you that you could travel before recharging?"

Broder: "32"

Of course, Broder claims that Tesla told him it was OK to leave. I think this is bullshit, but will never know. The fact is he basically was stupid enough to essentially leave a gas station with half a tank when he had a full tanks worth of distance to travel. The only way you would do this is if you want to get stuck. I don't care how scientific you are trying to be, you wouldn't risk being stuck out in the cold with a dead car unless you really wanted that to happen. Why we should take anything this man writes about cars seriously is beyond me.

[haberman]

Yeah, I think it's a little unfortunate actually that Elon Musk threw in so many other more minor points of contention. While they did help him spin a narrative of intentional malice (useful for his purposes but debatable as truth), they are also easier to quibble about (well maybe the driving around the parking lot was just trying to find a spot, etc).

The most sensational part of the article was the photo of a cutting-edge luxury car on a flat bed. That situation was directly caused by ignoring common sense. That's the main point Tesla's blog entry should have made; the rest is noise.

[smackfu]

> The fact is he basically was stupid enough to essentially leave a gas station with half a tank when he had a full tanks worth of distance to travel.

Part of the problem is that apparently the Tesla's displayed range can show one value after a cold night, then will increase when the battery warms up and is providing more energy. So you legitimately can start driving with too little range, and then it will come back. I assume that's why the Tesla rep cleared it too.

[schiffern]

You would think the range calculations would account for that effect. They already have temperature sensors in the pack, and storing some historical data is cheap.

[dublinben]

The batteries do have a reduced capacity when cold, so the range calculation is accurate. Tesla can only unofficially expect the range to recover, not guarantee it.

[fleitz]

I'll second this...

If he was in death valley, or the arctic with no cell reception, and it was 61 miles to the next station and the car said 32 no sane person would ever begin that journey.

[dlss]

I'll third this. Here are his quotes from the article about Broder's motivation:

> [for why he didn't fully charge:] He wanted to show the real world experience of a real driver, who might not want to endure the hour and a half it takes to charge up, when only needing a certain amount of energy to get to point B.

> [for why he didn't use any of the non-supercharging stations:] Broder wanted to see how the car would do on a long range road trip relying on Tesla's two official Supercharger stations.

These two goals are simply not compatible.

[makomk]

They're entirely compatible. Non-Supercharger stations like the one he stopped at are really, really slow at charging compared to Supercharger ones - we're talking "leave your car overnight" slow here!

[therandomguy]

The point being, he was not.

[Shivetya]

did he think he added 32 more miles? I wonder if this is still a problem of UI and such...

still its a 100k car and Musk is quibbling over temperature settings... really?

[fleitz]

Go to a BMW dealership, take an M5 for a test drive, when the car says it was 32 miles left try to drive it 60.

It's a 100k car and it won't make that feat either.

[willtheperson]

What if I'm in the car and it says 32 miles and I ask the BMW sales guy if we'll make it 60mi. He says, yeah, it is a 100k car and has a new engine you've never used before, it's just the cold weather which as it warms up will cause the reading to show more range.

Still my fault?

[duaneb]

I mean, I've never driven a car with a digital gas meter before, but on all the cars I've driven they always have tens of miles when the gas light comes on.

EDIT: To be clear, it is extremely stupid to do so.

[rayiner]

All cars, including the Tesla, will run for awhile after the meter tells you "zero." But when you nonetheless run out of gas at some point after hitting that mark, you blame yourself not the car.

[jlgreco]

Similarly, the car traveled 19 miles past it's projected range, and still has reserve power when it claims to be empty.

[duaneb]

I'm not trying to claim that it doesn't, but perhaps the tester was a little optimistic about the mileage he would get after it emptied.

[EvanKelly]

My Volkswagen has it, and I've gotten it down to 5 miles remaining before, but at that level they fluctuate pretty heavily based on how you're doing with MPG.

I never try to play that game though because I don't want to dry out my fuel pump.

[bjourne]

Doesn't it damage the engine to run completely out of gas? If no, are you sure about it? Really sure? So sure you would take your brand new $100k car and run it out of gas just to see what happens? :)

[dlss]

If you read the article, Broder ignored repeated warnings to stop and use a charging station...

[redm]

> Go to a BMW dealership, take an M5 for a test drive, when the car says it was 32 miles left try to drive it 60.

Leave that same BMW overnight in a parking lot and it's range wont go from 90 miles down to 32 either.....

[pbreit]

I think we all know that batteries and battery gauges work quite differently from gas. Or do we?

[seanp2k2]

Very much related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5124170 "We don't know why lithium batteries work"

Measuring usable capacity left in a battery is much more art than science still. You can model the drain rate and change your estimates based on historic usage and do all kinds of fancy FFT and other signal processing, but in the end it's still an estimate, batteries are not immune to physics, and li-ion batteries won't save the world (but they will create lots of hazardous waste in creation and disposal).

[adamnemecek]

Tesla S is 50k.

[fnordfnordfnord]

That's the base model $52,400, smallest battery, one charger, no moon-roof, no scotchguard, no undercoating, no pinstriping, or roof-rack.

[jug6ernaut]

The model tested was not.

[MarkMc]

This seems to be the killer argument from Elon Musk.

What's interesting is that Rebecca Greenfield doesn't see it as convincing argument at all. Here's her explanation for siding with Broder:

"Broder also explains that he did not charge fully because of the time it took to charge. He wanted to show the real world experience of a real driver, who might not want to endure the hour and a half it takes to charge up, when only needing a certain amount of energy to get to point B"

What?? In what 'real world' would someone needing to travel 61 miles leave a charging station with an estimated range of 32 miles?

I get the feeling that Rebecca Greenfield realised that an article titled "Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims" would generate more interest than "Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up Most Of His Claims, But For One Of His Claims the Data Is Compelling"

[kamaal]

No but in real world no one expects a fuel loss of 50% on a car that is just parked and left overnight.

[brown9-2]

The goal of "review this car for everyday use" is not the same objective as just "get from A to B sanely".

A lot of comments here seem to miss that the reviewer was putting the car through a test, and the test required only abiding by certain parameters (the super charger stations).

[BiosElement]

Incorrect. He blames the car, not the charger stations. If he wanted to review the stations, he wrong the wrong article.