Basically, everybody assumes that they are correct and that all fair rational people would draw the same conclusions as them given the same information.
When that doesn't happen, it can't be because the person is wrong; their interlocutor must be wrong. If the interlocutor continues to deny that they're wrong, they must be intellectually or morally defective.
That's what's happening here: people are assuming that since Broder doesn't agree with them, he must be deliberately deceitful. You can search any Tesla thread on the net and find the word "liar" or "lies".
Personally I think that Broder made some factual errors but that the big picture -- the battery ran flat in spite of the advice given -- is what matters. Maybe there's an RTFM problem here, maybe there isn't. I don't really care at this point because I happen to know that all new technologies ever have had embarrassing teething problems. When Musk's rockets blow up nobody seems to blame the journalists.
Musk overreacted because it's his baby and because surely anyone who disagrees with the wonderfulness of Tesla must, by the reasoning of Naïve Realism, be intellectually and morally defective.
Sprinkle in the way that humans love to form themselves into tribes, the "hostile media effect" and attitude polarisation and basically we're just hearing the same tunes that are hummed about Microsoft / Google / Obama / Bush / Rails / node.js / whatever.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)
Thank you for keeping HN great. I am in your debt.
ohstopityou.jpg
I'm getting a tub of popcorn so I can be adequately prepared for his next crusade. I'm sure that this time it will paint him in a positive light...
So while I wouldn't call it a perfect review, the points it made were relevant. You can't expect people to change cabin temperature settings to be uncomfortable, drive 45mph on the freeway, not drive when it's cold out, and to know the nuances of the car's range estimator. (If the range display says "0 miles", it's reasonable to assume that the battery is dead.)
Remember: the car mostly worked fine, which is a huge coup for electric cars. The article emphasizes the negatives, but the negatives are all things that can be fixed -- many with a simple software upgrade. So on that note, I don't think the review was particularly bad, and I certainly don't think the Times was compensated to make the car look bad, as Musk accuses.
(The article is also a good human factors and UI case study. When customer service and an electronic read-out disagree, one implicitly trusts the read-out more. It happens to airline pilots, too.)
No real-world fault of the Tesla justifies a reporter trying to bend the facts or going out of the way to manufacture a story. Broder clearly set out to drain the Tesla and get it on a tow truck, and he tried his damnedest to make that happen.
That is a heavy charge and the evidence just doesn't support throwing it around so haphazardly. Musk's jumping to that conclusion did this entire discussion a disservice.
Remember, Musk stated as fact that Broder "drove around in circles" for 0.6 miles trying to run the batteries out. His casual accusation on just that point alone makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis (of his company-provided data) without a grain of salt.
Imagine getting up in the morning, you check your phone, 25% ohh well i am not going to talk a lot to day so says my crystal ball. How many would do that? The NY journalist did his first drive in the Tesla S, and decided to base his drive on his experience, which was zero. Normal people, and other reviewers knew better, better charge to the max when i am actually testing the limits of the car. Not the limits of the reviewers knowledge.
If he had done as he should he would still have been able to write all the negative parts, the drop over night the limits because of the cold etc. it might have been a worthwhile article, like this one.
I'm posting these without commentary:
Broder: While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly marked Tesla Supercharger.
That someone found the charger faster than him is neither here nor there (it's irrelevant to the review he wrote). His story stands, and Musk's accusations look increasingly like complete libel.
The video makes it seem as if the charger is easy to find, but only if you know where it is already. I can't see how anyone who has never visited that station before would be able to make the same bee-line for the charger without circling the parking lot at least once.
Again, accusing a journalist of maliciously fabricating anything is a huge deal. It is not something that is taken lightly, and if there's is an inkling of truth to it the folks at the NYT will deal with it and we will know about it.
Well good, I posted them without commentary for that reason specifically. The goal was to allow you to guide your own thinking.
Journalism is not science.
(lest you doubt this, go dig up some of the Boeing 787 threads and see what people were saying about him there -- the level of outright worship of him in the HN comments was more than a little bit scary)
The outrage seemed normal: Broder and Consumer Reports seem to think that leaving the car unplugged overnight is normal or should ever be done. Or they combine 2 days+1 overnight unplugged, and call that a day, knowing that the cold overnight storage sapped the battery.
So either they are acting stupid, or don't really know how to test battery-powered vehicles. Sure, you don't have to follow instructions, but if you don't, you will have problems, no matter what excuse you have about 'testing something'.
If Broder can't remember what happened, farting around for details, he should have been a professional and videotaped at intervals so he could check the facts.
It's a big deal when it labels someone as a liar and a fraudster. It's a big deal when tens of thousands of knee-jerk readers are calling for someone's immediate firing. It's a big deal when someone's entire career is threatened by a bunch of people "not taking things seriously" on the internet.
Not taking things seriously is the problem. People in internet-mob-outrage-mode are flippant, quick to judge, and unreasoned, believing that just because it's a bunch of electrons that there are no consequences.
Hell, this situation in specific is lighter than it could be. On Reddit we've seen in the past vigilantes who turned internet-angry-comments into real-life threats against lives, we've even seen one case where someone committed suicide after being hounded by thousands of "random internet comments" that are (according to you) "no big deal" - the accusation was molestation, btw.
Accusations of fraud are Serious Business(tm) for a journalist - there are real consequences for real people when that is tossed around. Just because you don't take your own words seriously doesn't mean other people don't.
Yours is the worst kind of defense - akin to a bully saying "gosh, I was just horsin' around" when called on the awful things that have been coming out of his mouth.
In addition, the Tesla can lose range even when not parked overnight; it can simply be driven when it is very cold outside.
You can "instruct" people not to do these things, just like Steve Jobs "instructed" people not to hold their iPhones "like that", but you will be ignored.
> Anyhow, after a seven-hour overnight park (unplugged) and temperatures dropping below freezing, the "rated" range dropped to 65 miles. (Because we're tracking energy poured into the Tesla at our track, I resisted the temptation to top off at home, like a typical owner would.)
That reads to me like CR says that charging at night is the expected normal.
Rather than an error of memory, I think it's far, far more likely he just made them up to create an illusion of accuracy that he simply did not do the work to record.
You're prepared to take Musk's interpretation of his logs (which we know were wrong about whether the car would move or not - the flat bed operator corroborates Broder) over Broders notes.
I'm familiar enough with logs telling you things different to what you expected to not think it's all that cut and dried. In fact, our QAs use stop watches and keep notes, and we trust those over what the software thinks is happening for certain kinds of issues.
And it's impossible to tell either way. So clearly the over the top attitude of Musk was unwarranted.
Sure he can.
I recall one very long-winded rant here on HN where a commenter described Broder as having an axe to grind, a shyster, and concluded his comment with "Fuck the NYT. Fuck Broder."
All of this, in the grand scheme of the automotive industry, are small ripples. Tesla will survive this, and electric sales will proceed more or less unimpeded.
The real takeaway here is keeping your cool and turning off the "mob outrage" circuit in your brain. The drummed up pitchfork-wielding mob was, in the end, a more sobering spectacle than any electric car issue.
I must sound like a broken record by now. It seems every month some one-sided account will splash onto HN's front page, stir up a hornet's nest of indignation, resulting in long, angry rants and calls for heads to roll. Inevitably a more balanced picture emerges - but the usual suspects will be back the next time someone writes a blog post manipulating their outrage.
Whenever a blog post is so utterly absurd and ridiculous that it demands unfettered and unrestrained anger, there is a strong chance you're being played.