[Synthetase]

Driving back and forth in front of the damn charger speaks for itself.

Straws. You maybe holding some.

EDIT: Two words. Occam's Razor. Your explanation is so tangled that an entire battalion of Viet Cong could hide in it.

[mythrowaway0]

Speaks for not being able to find the charging point in the parking lot, perhaps? Don't forget that Musk formulated his assertion of Broder's motivation based on a data log of the car traveling between 5mph and 15mph for 0.6 miles. That sounds almost exactly like my average journey to find a parking spot at the mall.

But no, you're right, let's assume a long-term New York Times veteran lied in the paper, intentionally. That's a safer explanation in the face of your call for Occam's Razor...

[veemjeem]

John Broder does have an affinity for writing articles about big oil. I don't exactly want to assume he was paid under the table to denounce electric cars, but it's odd for a writer to have 90% of their articles being related to oil: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/peopl...

On Feb 8, 4 days before the controversial tesla article, he wrote one about how poorly the Chevrolet Volt & Ford Transit performed. I think he already decided on the tone of the article before he drove the Tesla.

His other articles about oil drilling claim that they help with job creation... you be the judge.

[newhouseb]

Here's a satellite view of the rest area with the charging stations:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=milford+travel+plaza&hl=e...

The street view here is outdated but I'm pretty sure you would see them immediately as you exit off the highway and, end to end, the rest area is about 0.25 miles. I don't think there's any other way to accumulate 0.6 miles in this rest stop without driving around in circles.

[jasonlotito]

If this was the only discrepancy, I'd be more skeptical. However, there are a large number of problems with the reporting. Large enough that said reporter has an obligation to respond.

> let's assume a long-term New York Times veteran lied in the paper

What you are asking us to believe than is that Musk faked all this data. Because if he didn't fake the data, then the NYTimes story still doesn't add up, regardless of speculation on his activities.

Furthermore, you are asking us to believe that numerous other reviews by respectable, veteran reports, were wrong.

Maybe this report is the one man speaking out against a large conspiracy of a company and numerous reporters. But it's on him to prove now.

[crusso]

let's assume a long-term New York Times veteran lied in the paper, intentionally

If anything, I think that some veteran reporters get full of themselves and become unafraid of slanting things according to their biases as they get older. Look at the trouble Dan Rather got into at the end of his career because he was determined to sink George W. Bush.

[enraged_camel]

What does his being a veteran have anything to do with his affinity to lie?

The main factor that affects someone's likelihood of lying is whether they think they can get away with it. Broder most likely knew that the car was logging data. However, he probably didn't know just how detailed the logging was, and assumed it was too rudimentary to refute the kind of story he was cooking up in his head before he even started the drive.

[Robin_Message]

It doesn't seem likely the reporter lied intentionally - or at least, not consciously.

However, didn't we see that long apology yesterday about how easy it is to lie to yourself and others, even when truth is everything to you? This is why we have double blind medical trials etc. – because people are biased and can't help but lie to keep their preconceptions true.

[raverbashing]

It's a valid point, but if he did really have difficulties in finding the charging station he should have said so.

[anonymouz]

Can be entirely harmless: The car displays 0 miles range, and he is at the charging station. Why not try to figure out how much reserve he still has before it shuts down? He didn't report negatively about this either.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Maybe, but that's a different article. That article's headline should be more like: "Let's Drive This EV Past Its Limits and See What Happens."

[maushu]

Yes, this would make sense, but he didn't mention it though.

[drostie]

Maybe, but I do think Occam's Razor favors the "expected 90, saw 50 in bad lighting, misread it as 90, could not misread it when it dropped to 45" explanation over both the "battery suddenly dropped from 90 to 45" explanation and the "NYT reporter saw 50, lied his butt off and said it was 90 to tech support for no reason, then ran with the lie in his article because he's a shill for oil and hates electric."

Driving back and forth in front of the charger doesn't seem quite so crazy given the distances involved. The distance the Tesla logs for is ~0.5 miles at a speed of ~10mph, but that's only 3 minutes of malfeasance, if it's anything at all.

And I'm not sure it's malfeasance -- because it's certainly not led to anything in the report. Maybe he wanted to park and get some food but then remembered that the charging takes a while and did it in opposite order. That could take 3 minutes easily off.

[DannyBee]

Uh, "he's lying" explains everything quite simply, you just added a lot of extraneous stuff to it to make it seem otherwise.

[neuralnetwork]

Digital displays are easier to read in bad lighting, not harder. So it's impossible to have misread 5 as a 9 at night.

[xanados]

The drop from 90 to 45 is shown in Tesla's own graph.

[free652]

I can attack Musk easily:

a) Lincoln tunnel isn't in NYC's downtown. Even Holland isn't. NYC downtown generally defined as below Canal St. So how NYT reporter drove through it, I have no idea.

b) .5 mile is too short for driving back and forth. I can easily walk .5 mile in under 10 minutes.

c) As the _average_ temp setting was 72F... So the next statement is funny, the NYT reported turned the temperature up to 74F? From what? The average temperature? That doesn't make any sense at all.

[mncolinlee]

The spirit of pedantry is clearly alive and well on this forum.

The commenter here is guilty of forcing his impressions on the situation in the same way Broder seems to be forcing a slant on the Tesla story. How far you walk is completely irrelevant. I know people who run marathons. They don't spin around a 100 car lot many times.

If the temperature setting in the thermostat increased when he said he decreased it, which is the actual claim, that could be a smoking gun. The only innocent explanation could be that he couldn't see what he was doing while he was driving.

However, there are FAR too many BIG screw-ups and coincidences here for that to make sense. How could a professional journalist be so damn incompetent to:

1. mistake "50" for "90". 2. increase the temperature when he meant to decrease it. 3. start each leg of the journey with less and less energy after filling each time. 4. leave the car unplugged for a good part of the time he claimed to be charging it.

The commenter doth protest too much.

[mimiflynn]

In NYC, downtown is anything that is down from the part of town you are referencing. Realistically, if the drive drove from the Lincoln tunnel and down the west side hwy, he would be driving downtown.

Anyway, to anyone outside of NYC, downtown is where the streets are crazy and one way and lots of business takes place... so, really, by that definition, anywhere below Central Park can be considered 'downtown'... especially if you are uptown.

[combray]

Not to nit pick, but uptown starts at 60th and above, and most people would consider midtown to be below that to 34th, then the no mans land, and the village to be downtown i.e. below 14th street. Maybe if you were being a jerk about it you'd say that the numbered streets were "uptown", which would make the line to be houston. What you are saying here is that the east village, lower east side, and soho aren't "downtown" which is crazy.

Lincoln tunnel though, clearly not downtown.

[arscan]

Or maybe Hanlon's razor applies instead: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[omni]

Given the repeated circles in the parking lot, we'd be talking about near-unprecedented levels of stupidity.

[dclowd9901]

Tesla says he spent five minutes driving around a parking lot. I don't know about you but in a busy station, I've spent far longer trying to find an open spot.

[jcc80]

Article states it was a small lot with only 100 total spaces. Not exactly a mall parking lot.

[cube13]

>Two words. Occam's Razor. Your explanation is so tangled that an entire battalion of Viet Cong could hide in it.

Tesla's logs show that the range dropped from 90 to 30ish at mile 400.

It shows that Broden was 100% correct.