Tesla has responded,
publishing data they claim shows the NYT journalist (John Broder) outright lied, misled, and otherwise attempted to portray the Model S in a negative light.
Tesla's bullet point summary and my thoughts:
As the State of Charge log shows, the Model S battery never ran out of energy at any time, including when Broder called the flatbed truck.
Pedantic. There's a technical distinction between "running out of energy" and "BMS disabling the battery with a small amount of energy left"; from the end user perspective, the car disabling itself at a low SOC is effectively the same thing as running out of available energy.
The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.
In his article, Broder claims that “the car fell short of its projected range on the final leg.†Then he bizarrely states that the screen showed “Est. remaining range: 32 miles†and the car traveled “51 miles," contradicting his own statement (see images below). The car actually did an admirable job exceeding its projected range. Had he not insisted on doing a nonstop 61-mile trip while staring at a screen that estimated half that range, all would have been well. He constructed a no-win scenario for any vehicle, electric or gasoline.
The Norwich charging station was a J1772 level 2 EVSE, probably a 30A station that could deliver a maximum of 7 kW to the Model S's onboard charger. An hour of charging did heat the battery some, but it only put about 20 miles of charge into the car. Considering that he drove 11 miles in the opposite direction to reach the charger, he barely broke even vs the original amount of charge available.
Mr. Broder is quite clear in the original article: "Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford." This directly contradicts Elon's blog post above.
On that leg, he drove right past a public charge station while the car repeatedly warned him that it was very low on range.
Sounds like he rode it into the ground.
Cruise control was never set to 54 mph as claimed in the article, nor did he limp along at 45 mph. Broder in fact drove at speeds from 65 mph to 81 mph for a majority of the trip and at an average cabin temperature setting of 72 F.
It is curious that his recorded speed was 60-62 mph during a period when Mr. Broder claims he set the cruise control to 54 mph. A small distinction perhaps.. yet it undermines the NYT report.
At the point in time that he claims to have turned the temperature down, he in fact turned the temperature up to 74 F.
The original NYT article isn't exactly specific regarding when the climate control was turned down. I noted it above @ 168 miles, so I assumed that he did so at the time indicated.
It is curious that he suffered so intensely with the climate control set to 64F. "Nearing New York, I made the first of several calls to Tesla officials about my creeping range anxiety. The woman who had delivered the car told me to turn off the cruise control; company executives later told me that advice was wrong. All the while, my feet were freezing and my knuckles were turning white."
The charge time on his second stop was 47 mins, going from -5 miles (reserve power) to 209 miles of Ideal or 185 miles of EPA Rated Range, not 58 mins as stated in the graphic attached to his article. Had Broder not deliberately turned off the Supercharger at 47 mins and actually spent 58 mins Supercharging, it would have been virtually impossible to run out of energy for the remainder of his stated journey.
Curious.
For his first recharge, he charged the car to 90%. During the second Supercharge, despite almost running out of energy on the prior leg, he deliberately stopped charging at 72%. On the third leg, where he claimed the car ran out of energy, he stopped charging at 28%. Despite narrowly making each leg, he charged less and less each time. Why would anyone do that?
The first charge was because he charged in "Normal" mode, which stops at 90%. "Max Range" would be more appropriate for his intended trip. Probably user error.
The second charge is curious. He charged to a point where he had more estimated range than his overnight trip would require - 185 estimated vs 135 map - but he had already seen that estimated range was dropping faster than actual miles traveled in the cold. In hindsight, 10 minutes longer spent charging here - or actually staying the 58 minutes he claimed in his report - would have allowed him to safely return to Milford the following morning.
The third charge is contentious. He was charging on J1772, which would have taken approximately 90 minutes longer to give enough estimated range to reach Milford. Mr. Broder claims Tesla personnel cleared him to leave the charging station. Mr. Musk claims Tesla personnel advised against doing so.
The above helps explain a unique peculiarity at the end of the second leg of Broder’s trip. When he first reached our Milford, Connecticut Supercharger, having driven the car hard and after taking an unplanned detour through downtown Manhattan to give his brother a ride, the display said "0 miles remaining." Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot. When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in. On the later legs, it is clear Broder was determined not to be foiled again.
Broder responded that the Tesla Supercharger station was unmarked and unlit. Acceleration logs would be interesting for Manhattan, but I can buy the "over half a mile" looping through the parking lot hunting for the charger.
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Topic: New York Times vs Tesla regarding Model S roadtrip difficulties (Read 1031 times)