Tesla's scathing response accuses NYT of 'changing the facts' in Model S review

Tesla's scathing response accuses NYT of 'changing the facts' in Model S review

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk promised to refute a negative New York Times report on the Model S electric car, and today he's followed through with a lenghty blog post that counters John Broder's "factually inaccurate" criticism. The post includes data that Tesla logged during the test drive, and Musk uses it to make the case that Broder's piece was fuelled by an anti-EV agenda. "We were played for a fool and as a result, let down the cause of electric vehicles," says Musk. "When the facts didn't suit his opinion, he simply changed the facts."

Seems like there is definitely something going on, because one of them must be lying, and I dont believe its Elon Musk. The Big Oil's minions caught red handed in a filthy anti-propaganda game against new electric vehicles?

reply to post by Maslo


I love this car!! I was really investigating buying one for my next car.....

Screw the reports, Tesla is an awesome car manufacturer!!!

I would still buy one regardless of a review.......They aren't priced that bad $50,000 to start, but they are hard to find dealerships that sell them....

reply to post by Maslo


I have no way of telling if the graphs made available by tesla are correct or not..

If they are, then the NYT article was a lie..

There was a documentary recently, maybe a year or two old about Tesla, predominatly featuring Elon Musk and whatever his good intentioned ideals seemed to be, he pretty much just came across as a crazy con man who has lost most of his fortune but has now sinced replaced it with other peoples, constant production delays, people not getting money back from orders etc. Just seemed all in all a bit of a strange one. Sorta like an investment bubble in all honesty.

Journalists can be influenced by corporate interests to misrepresent information? Not a chance...

CNN journalist currently driving on the same route J. Broder drove with the Tesla Model S, live twitter updates. Altrough the temperatures are higher now, so it might not be fully comparable. I guess we would need to wait for the same conditions to repeat again to test it conclusively.

reply to post by Maslo


What's the effect of temperature on the car? Is this just depending on energy used to make the car comfortable(heat/ac)? Or is it that the batteries don't like cold weather?

The major problems with EV that they don't tell you is that they are easy to brick.

Once you brick it you have to replace all of the batteries your self at I/3 the price of the car or more.

Now that is a problem that has not bin fixed there is no way to fix this other than a generator in the car it's self.

that's it.

reply to post by jsettica


I must be missing something here. Bricking a car is easy no matter what energy systems it is running. Lift brick, crank back arm, lob brick through passenger window. If you are talking about something else, please be specific as to what it is you are refering to!

Originally posted by Dustytoad
reply to post by Maslo

 

What's the effect of temperature on the car? Is this just depending on energy used to make the car comfortable(heat/ac)? Or is it that the batteries don't like cold weather?

It is both.

Tesla cars are just an expensive novelty for the Oligarchs' rich kids or for showoff greens who think they can save the planet by burning the same fossil fuel in another place to make electricity which goes into the battery of the car. Note that these people usually have multiple cars and the Tesla is just their showoff toy.

The only problem is that it costs upward of 50K for the basic model and around 90K for the top. Now if anybody sane would pay that much money they would honestly expect the car not to lose more than half its charge overnight on a cold night! Or to be able to keep their AC on and be comfortable and safe. Speaking of safety, trying to drive UNDER the speed limit on the freeway is just begging for an accident to happen. Tesla told the NYT guy to go 55 in a 65 stretch. Generally speaking a car is a heavy duty industrial device not a basket of eggs that you have to baby and plan your life around it before using it for its intended purpose!

The other thing they don't tell you is that if you let the battery drain (which it does on its own even when you leave the car in the garage unplugged for a few days) you brick the car and the only way to fix it is you must buy a replacement battery because it's not covered by the warranty.

Also those fabled superchargers kill the battery and invalidate your warranty.

Finally, the CEO of Tesla acted like a kid throwing tantrums around the media. He should have either gone for more schooling on how to be a public speaker or let the PR people handle it. I guess if you're a rich kid with the proper connections you can act whichever way you want with your stock holders' money!

So... if you want an expensive car that wastes its own energy overnight and can't be comfortable on a cool or hot day and takes forever to charge, and it's only good for short trips then go ahead!

If you want a useful alternative you should consider the Volt or similar gas/electric hybrid from a reputable car maker with many decades of experience.

Originally posted by Tuttle
There was a documentary recently, maybe a year or two old about Tesla, predominatly featuring Elon Musk and whatever his good intentioned ideals seemed to be, he pretty much just came across as a crazy con man who has lost most of his fortune but has now sinced replaced it with other peoples, constant production delays, people not getting money back from orders etc. Just seemed all in all a bit of a strange one. Sorta like an investment bubble in all honesty.

I wrote my final paper in History on Tesla. When researching I came across these book that I got from the library.


Works Cited

Cheney, Margaret. Tesla: Man Out Of Time. Barnes & Noble Books, 1993. Print.

Hunt, Samantha. Nikola Tesla: My Inventions and Other Writings. New York: Penguin Group, 2011. Print.

Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light. New York: Random House, 2003. Print.

Tesla was cheated outta money by Edison, but I think that what he did for Westinghouse is what hurt him financially.

Westinghouse had run into financial problems and came to ask for Tesla to give up his royalties and patents with A.C. In exchange Westinghouse promised to continue to develop Tesla’s inventions. Not concerned with making money, but helping improve the world, Tesla ripped up his contract with Westinghouse and told him to save his company (Empires of Light, 228-229).

Originally posted by SilentKoala
Journalists can be influenced by corporate interests to misrepresent information? Not a chance...

Corporate interest influenced to refute objective data? Not a chance....

Pendulum swings both ways in this instance. Find the middle and that is probably the truth.

reply to post by DarkSecret


While all that may be true (I don't get the fabled supercharger bit) without certain people leading the way there would be no innovation. I'm sure back in the day everyone with a horse mocked those who could afford a car. People hate NASA despite the fact that without them we would be living in a very different world.

Now all that being said, and my smugness for snubbing your smuggeiness aside, I think they're stupid too. Anyone pretending they are trying to help the environment by driving one can kiss my sumptuous behind. If you can afford one you can afford to adopt some kid and have him pull a rickshaw while feeding him some organic zero carbon swill.

I keep seeing a Fisker Karma rolling around in my neighborhood and one of these days I'm going to buy some pigeons and tether them to the arrogant jackasses antenna. At least the jerk offs in Ferraris and Lambos around here aren't pretending to be environmentally responsible when they show off.

And yes, I am mildly jealous and need a snack.

reply to post by IntrinsicMotivation


Ha, not Nikola Tesla, but the modern line of electric cars named after him. The most well known model is the Tesla Roadster that is based on the Lotus Elise (I think).

reply to post by IntrinsicMotivation


Ah sorry, cross of wires there buddy, I was meaning Tesla Motors and the crazy con man I was talking about, I was referring to Elon Musk.

What he should do instead of hemorrhaging millions of dollars on trying to create a fast and glamorous sports car for rich people and publicity, he should have actualy hired some proper engineers to develop a low performance, efficient electric car that can range for thousands of miles. Sure not as flashy and hipster cool as his chic california roadster, BUT the world would undoubtedly be a better place for it.

The one private individual who has so far been willing to invest this sort of money into bringing electric cars into the mainstream has developed this idiotic sports novelty toy car and ruined it. But then its his dream I guess, he can do as he pleases and all that, I just think he is a moron.

gee...
if a viable electric car comes to market, and people can make energy from solar panals on their roofs, the oil companies would lose tens of billions a year.....yeah, i'm sure the oil companies want electric cars

reply to post by jimmyx


Oil companies dont really care about solar panels, cars, oh for sure. Solar panels?, nah, doesn't specificaly conflict with there interests.

And even if the more luckier high tech western countries did actualy start to use future technology to support there way of life any loss will be generated by exploiting developing markets.

Its really the car manufactures themselves that want nothing to do with electric cars because they just dont have the money to invest in research and production to make them especialy viable.

reply to post by Maslo


They (big oil + military industrial complex) helped kill it once. Who's to say they won't do it again?

Originally posted by Domo1
reply to post by DarkSecret

 

While all that may be true (I don't get the fabled supercharger bit) without certain people leading the way there would be no innovation. I'm sure back in the day everyone with a horse mocked those who could afford a car. People hate NASA despite the fact that without them we would be living in a very different world.

Let me backtrack on that supercharger part a bit. The whole test was meant to prove that the expensive novelty car can drive from DC to Boston using ONLY the superchargers (2 of them installed on that route). And he would have made it but he spent the night at a hotel and overnight the battery pack drained itself causing the whole issue.

These superchargers are basically bypassing the electronics that control the charge levels of the battery by injecting massive amounts of power directly into the cells. It's like taking out your laptop battery cells and directly connecting them to a massive DC power source. They will charge very quickly but in the process lose their ability to charger properly if done too often.

Tesla says you should use these superchargers and you will be OK on roadtrips but they don't tell you that this is going to reduce your battery life and it's not covered by the warranty. These batteries are extremely expensive, I think around half the value of the car.

Back to the electric car - the only way we'll ever have a viable model is a replaceable battery system. I've seen a documentary years ago where the car would basically drive over something that looks like an oil changing station and from below you had a lift that lowered the used battery and replaced it with a charged one. Took only 5 minutes and would alleviate most issues related to supercharging or slow charging.

Overall the electric cars are something we'll never really implement unless we start living underground. Right now the exhaust systems of cars are filtered by catalytic converters and computers so there's no more smog or dangerous stuff when you use the car in a city or the open road.

I'm not against the electric car but considering the amount of complexity that's being introduced by all these hybrids and the expense of maintaining and repairing especially toward the end of their lives, as well as the final disposal of these hybrids - I'd rather stick with the good old ICEs. The price of a regular gasoline car plus the gasoline plus the maintenance costs you less than a hybrid or electric and you don't save the environment by moving the pollution away to a power plant or to some battery producer in Asia. It all comes from oil based resources anyway. Plus think of all the losses from the electricity conversions, power lines and pure need to keep the battery warm overnight or cool during warm days - or shipping the batteries from Asia to the US. How is that more efficient than burning the fuel right in the car?

If anyone wants to make a real difference to the environment then stop having kids, stop consuming anything other than what's strictly needed, reuse old clothing, furniture, etc and minimize the use of the heating/cooling systems. But we all like to think that others should make the sacrifices to save the planet while we keep our lifestyles and commute 40 miles daily (on average in the US) from our mcmansions to work... Feel-good lies is all we get from solar panels and electric cars!