Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This article has confirmed crucial aspects of Broder's version with third parties, such as the truck driver who picked up the inert car (it doesn't matter if the battery still has 28% power if the parking brake won't turn off, iirc Priuses also refuse to discharge their batteries below a critical threshold), and used Google Maps to verify other issues (finding the Milford supercharger).

I haven't seen anyone attempt to verify actual speeds based on computing the area under the speed graph, but I suspect that this won't help Musk's case. 19/22 (ratio of the wheel size of the car driven and the wheel size specification) is actually the perfect ratio to explain the variation between recorded speeds and reported speeds. Perhaps one is based on GPS and another on wheel rotation.

The correct response to this story was: we need to improve our customer service, software, reporting of range (especially w.r.t. temperature) and messaging; customers need to better understand the tradeoffs of gas vs. electric cars, and not claiming a senior NY Times reporter will lie to generate some extra hits on a pretty minor story.



> I haven't seen anyone attempt to verify actual speeds based on computing the area under the speed graph ...

Area under the curve -- then that would be to establish average speeds, yes? I think the recorded road distances and travel times would be a simpler way to establish that.

> The correct response to this story was: we need to improve our customer service, software, reporting of range (especially w.r.t. temperature) and messaging ...

Yes, that would have been a nice alternative to what actually happened. My pet gripe about Tesla in this affair was their advice to Broder to engage in stop-and-go driving as though that would help the car's range (it can't do that, it can only hurt compared to driving at a steady speed).


Area under the curve is distance. (Integral of speed over time is distance.) We know what the actual distances are so the actual distance could be compared to the area under the graph to verify its accuracy.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: