Posted on 02/16/2013 10:33:20 AM PST by Vince Ferrer
You may have heard recently about an article written by John Broder from The New York Times that makes numerous claims about the performance of the Model S. We are upset by this article because it does not factually represent Tesla technology, which is designed and tested to operate well in both hot and cold climates. Indeed, our highest per capita sales are in Norway, where customers drive our cars during Arctic winters in permanent midnight, and in Switzerland, high among the snowy Alps. About half of all Tesla Roadster and Model S customers drive in temperatures well below freezing in winter. While no car is perfect, after extremely thorough testing, the Model S was declared to be the best new car in the world by the most discerning authorities in the automotive industry.
To date, hundreds of journalists have test driven the Model S in every scenario you can imagine. The car has been driven through Death Valley (the hottest place on Earth) in the middle of summer and on a track of pure ice in a Minnesota winter. It has traveled over 600 miles in a day from the snowcapped peaks of Tahoe to Los Angeles, which made the very first use of the Supercharger network, and moreover by no lesser person than another reporter from The New York Times. Yet, somehow John Broder “discovered” a problem and was unavoidably left stranded on the road. Or was he?
After a negative experience several years ago with Top Gear, a popular automotive show, where they pretended that our car ran out of energy and had to be pushed back to the garage, we always carefully data log media drives. While the vast majority of journalists are honest, some believe the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a salacious story. In the case of Top Gear, they had literally written the script before they even received the car (we happened to find a copy of the script on a table while the car was being “tested”). Our car never even had a chance.
The logs show again that our Model S never had a chance with John Broder. In the case with Top Gear, their legal defense was that they never actually said it broke down, they just implied that it could and then filmed themselves pushing what viewers did not realize was a perfectly functional car. In Mr. Broder’s case, he simply did not accurately capture what happened and worked very hard to force our car to stop running.
Here is a summary of the key facts:
When Tesla first approached The New York Times about doing this story, it was supposed to be focused on future advancements in our Supercharger technology. There was no need to write a story about existing Superchargers on the East Coast, as that had already been done by Consumer Reports with no problems! We assumed that the reporter would be fair and impartial, as has been our experience with The New York Times, an organization that prides itself on journalistic integrity. As a result, we did not think to read his past articles and were unaware of his outright disdain for electric cars. We were played for a fool and as a result, let down the cause of electric vehicles. For that, I am deeply sorry.
When I first heard about what could at best be described as irregularities in Broder’s behavior during the test drive, I called to apologize for any inconvenience that he may have suffered and sought to put my concerns to rest, hoping that he had simply made honest mistakes. That was not the case.
In his own words in an article published last year, this is how Broder felt about electric cars before even seeing the Model S:
"Yet the state of the electric car is dismal, the victim of hyped expectations, technological flops, high costs and a hostile political climate.”
When the facts didn’t suit his opinion, he simply changed the facts. Our request of The New York Times is simple and fair: please investigate this article and determine the truth. You are a news organization where that principle is of paramount importance and what is at stake for sustainable transport is simply too important to the world to ignore.
I’ll take your advice and stick with my nearing $4/ gal gas
Paladin. That’s true but in a gas car I would not feel uncomfortable travelling anywhere off the main interstate for a side trip or change of course. I guess I could be described with a 1/2 a tank as HAVE GAS WILL TRAVEL.
Obviously one with ~125mi range and a long refuel time and spotty "gas" stations is significantly worse.
Let's just say that I've slept by the pumps for a couple of hours waiting for a morning opening. It can happen without adequate planning, even if you don't have an electric vehicle.
Smear? The reporter wrote what it's like to drive a modern, electric car.
Now, I'm no fan of the NYT, but neither am I one of Tesla -- a company that's received half a billion in loan guarantees from the Federal Government and has each vehicle it sells subsidised by $7,500 and even more in some states.
But, for all that, we're supposed to be happy with a product that requires hours mapping out a simple trip such that you can hit charging stations along the way? We're supposed to take it in stride that electric batteries lose charge when it gets cold?
They're not ready for prime-time even as beautiful as Tesla's coachwork is. They ought to just dump a V8 in one of them and start making some money.
While no fan of either the NYT or electric vehicles, the journolist while deliberately sabotaging the test, unwittingly exposed a flaw in electric vehicles overall:
You can't rely on them in an emergency.
If the car had to be used in an emergency, say -- get the wife to the hospital to deliver a baby -- and hadn't been charged "enough" what would've happened? Baby born on the side of the road, that's what.
And therein lies the problem with Tesla. They fit a specific use case, but don't anyone with a fully functioning brain rely on one in an emergency unless you know damn' well it's got a full charge to go the distance required.
Let’s see... The Tesla is extremely expensive and the company is dying. So the NYT is safe in attacking them. The evil corp is selling cars the “people” can’t afford and they are on the way out. Not hard to figure out. It’s like taking Obama skeet shooting only to have him shoot old birds tied to a string.
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this couldnt be happening because the Telsa is a direct competitor to the Volt which is the car and company supported by the Administration? We all know that NYT is an Obama minion.
I bet that Telsa did not contribute enough to the Democrats.
Takehisa Yaegashi, the inventor of the Toyota Prius recently said that battery technology and electric/hybird vehicles had reached their technology capabilities and that he expected new advances in gasoline/diesel technologies to surpass the mileage that electric/hybrid vehicles could reach.
So the father of the hybrid vehicle now admits that electric/hybrid vehicles are destined to fail and not reach mainstream acceptance.
This country needs a "manhattan project" to create the next new battery technology if we're ever to get to electric vehicles. (And I know a few people at Argonne National Labs, 30 minutes from my home doing just that. Even they say it'll take years, perhaps decades to achieve.)
Unless a new major breakthrough comes along that enables high voltage/high energy batteries used to propel electric vehicles and recharge them within minutes comes along, we're sure to see the end of electric vehicles.
I'm currently around fork trucks all day long. 100% propane.
You might be referring to what box stores is called an electric stair, used in ware houses and big box stores.
An electric fork lift has been tried and found to be wanting. They don't have sufficient lift/weight ratio capacity, and are constantly down for recharging.
I do not see there ever being a way to rapidly charge a battery to the point it can be as practical as liquid fuel.
Rapid charge makes heat. Heat is what kills batteries and a hot battery will not take as much charge as a cool one, nor live as long.
Only way I see an electric being practical is if you just need something to get from home to work and back a short distance and that’s it.
I’ll stay with big horsepower V8’s and turbo diesels.
In my >700 mi range TDI, I can safely carry at least 12 5-gal Diesel “cans”, theoretically giving me a ~3750 mi. range.
The idea of big brother monitoring every move you make in a vehicle is creepy
I like your style! Ditto.
I don’t follow the electric car story, so:
Does anyone know how much average hydrocarbon consumption is required to charge one of these? And how does that scale?
For example, say 30 000 vehicles park at the Pentagon on a Monday morning and all plug in. Are the hydrocarbons burned in the next 8 hours greater than, less than, or equal to 30 000x, x being the energy required to charge one car?
Between 1981 and 1983 I worked in a warehouse (Sweetheart Cup Corp. in Chicago) driving an electric forklift moving product from production lines to the warehouse & onto shipping platforms. In an 8 hour shift, I'd have to get the battery changed out two, often three times. That was 15 minutes of downtime everytime the battery had to be swapped. On an 8 hour shift, that could've easily been 45+ minutes of time wasted.
Your point's 100% valid except for one small correction: a fully charged battery in an electric forklift can lift as much as a propane forklift. The battery adds an awful lot of weight to the vehicle. The problem of electric vs. propane is actual run-time, that's where propane excels.
Why did Trotsky wind up with an icepick in his skull?
It's what they do.
I don't disagree with you, but the old electrics could only do a twenty foot lift at weight to 20 feet height 1 0r 2 time before recharging..
But you're right: the real heavy loads would drain the battery after only a few lifts, that's what the Propane lifts were for. We had propane powered clamp trucks that would pick up 4,500+ pound rolls of paper and either stack them 6 high or put them on the line to make the cups. Those were MASSIVE machines.
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