From the article, "Beginning early in the morning of my second day with the car, after the projected range had dropped precipitously while parked overnight, I spoke numerous times with Christina Ra, Tesla’s spokeswoman at the time, and Ted Merendino, a Tesla product planner at the company’s headquarters in California."
That quoted sentence includes the interesting phrase "Tesla's spokeswoman at the time," seemingly implying that the company has a new spokesperson in just the last few days. Who speaks for the company to the press now? It appears that Christina Ra used to work for Honda
with the title "senior manager, communications" for Tesla.
"I spoke at some length with Mr. Straubel and Ms. Ra six days after the trip, and asked for the data they had collected from my drive, to compare against my notes and recollections. Mr. Straubel said they were able to monitor “certain things” remotely and that the company could store and retrieve 'typical diagnostic information on the powertrain.'
"Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile 'in a tiny 100-space parking lot.'"
So just what is the spatial resolution of the data stored by Tesla? Who can speak for the company on that exact issue, for the record?
I'm amazed, by the way, that commenters here and elsewhere claim that something is easy to see because it can be seen in a Google aerial photo in broad daylight in the summer, when the actual visibility issue is seeing the same thing from a car, while driving, at night in winter. I know lots of drivers who can drive right past things without seeing them, even while looking for those things, if they are driving in an unfamiliar location at night.
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments in reply to this comment. I'll use my edit window to dump in some links from earlier threads on HN. There was an extensive, and on the whole rather favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge
submitted to HN while most participants were discussing the John Broder New York Times review. (Most participants missed the discussion on the article from The Verge, which is too bad, as the article has interesting photographs of the car and a lot of thoughtful commentary about its trade-offs as a vehicle for regular use.)
The author of the report in The Verge takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it’s still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world."
ONE MORE EDIT: Reasonable taxpayer and consumer minds can differ, and the differing opinions are widely expressed here on HN, but on the issue of the data-logging, I trust Tesla LESS after the back-and-forth about how Tesla thinks the reporter drove than I did before I saw Tesla's response. Tesla has HUGE taxpayer subsidies keeping its business afloat. Its response to questions about its technology's actual usefulness seems to be to go into attack mode whenever a reporter raises questions about the Tesla driving experience after driving a Tesla car. That doesn't make me think I want to drive a Tesla car. If the cars are really great for driving in places that have snow in winter, word of mouth should be able to tell that story, without any corporate P.R. spin. I note that there are many other news stories out right now, some of which have already been submitted to HN or mentioned in comments, in which onlookers express their opinion that Elon Musk has come out of this looking defensive. The product seems to be lacking in basic features I would need where I live, namely reliable estimates of remaining driving distance in winter, and that seems to speak for itself.
"Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile “in a tiny 100-space parking lot.” 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. He did not share that data, which Tesla has now posted online, with me at the time."
That bit is particularly curious. Is being able to spring a "gotcha" on a reporter for publishing a "fake" review preferable to sharing the info with the reporter so that, if malicious intent is suspected, the reporter knows that Tesla knows exactly what the facts are?
The problems for Tesla here seems to be that the batteries don't like the cold (unsurprising this may be) and that the Supercharger network is still sparse at this point in time. Regardless of whose spin you buy, those points remain, and are good to know.
You could probably go either way on that strategy. If you had this capability, and you suspected your adversary may be malicious, it is probably better to keep quiet and then destroy their credibility afterwards. If they are malicious, and know that they are being monitored, they might be more inclined to keep you blind to them. If Tesla knows that the monitoring can be disabled (it obviously can - how easily is the question), or thinks a reporter might go so far as to switch cars, they probably would not want the monitoring known.
On the other hand, if I had very little monitoring ability, I would probably overstate these abilities so that the adversary doesn't test them.
Broder's implication that there is a privacy scandal there seems like a weak distraction. Elon said plainly that they do not monitor customers by default, but they turn this on for reviewers, citing the Top Gear review scandal. This is totally reasonable, and so is lying to a reviewer about whether or not it is enabled (even if they didn't lie). It's not comparable to lying to customers.
'turning it only on for X' is the same philosophy as having a back door in your software. "Oh, don't worry, only we will use it, and only for legitimate reasons. Trust us!"
I assume it has to be enabled with physical access to the vehicle, though I don't know this for certain. If they can turn it on remotely, then yeah, that's definitely bad.
I've been arguing about this article on another forum, and have been looking closely at how Musk is interpreting his own data - and he's being loose and fancy-free with it (both sides have engaged in embellishment, it seems). As a result, I don't think he's a shining bastion of honesty - I wouldn't trust Tesla any more than any other entity.
There is a good chance that the vehicle stores that data for a limited time, not that it is posted through telemetry. If they are snooping on their cars (all of them, that is) then they have other problems. Fleet cars are also routinely fitted out with vehicle tracking systems, sometimes for insurance purposes.
>Is being able to spring a "gotcha" on a reporter for publishing a "fake" review preferable to sharing the info with the reporter so that, if malicious intent is suspected, the reporter knows that Tesla knows exactly what the facts are?
Yes, if it helps us spot liars who are so far behind the times they don't realize we have the technology to catch them in their lies.
I meant from Tesla's point of view. They need to sell cars more than they need to expose liars. Assuming the reporter was told they didn't have exact data, and assuming the reporter did slant the story to paint as negative a picture as possible, does this back and forth gain Tesla back enough desirability/credibility to offset the additional loss of face from the extremely slanted initial report?
On the point about the data logging, it was stated in Tesla's first response article that they "always carefully data log media drives". It is entirely possible that they were logging/monitoring far more data for Broder's adventure than they would for private consumers.
It's quite possible to derive that he was at the rest station in Milford simply by looking at the graphs. There is another possible explanation as well, in that Tesla specifically tracks more data for media drives.
That quoted sentence includes the interesting phrase "Tesla's spokeswoman at the time," seemingly implying that the company has a new spokesperson in just the last few days. Who speaks for the company to the press now? It appears that Christina Ra used to work for Honda
http://automobiles.honda.com/2012/cr-z/blog.aspx?Author=5
and LinkedIn suggests she works for both Tesla and SpaceX
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinara
with the title "senior manager, communications" for Tesla.
"I spoke at some length with Mr. Straubel and Ms. Ra six days after the trip, and asked for the data they had collected from my drive, to compare against my notes and recollections. Mr. Straubel said they were able to monitor “certain things” remotely and that the company could store and retrieve 'typical diagnostic information on the powertrain.'
"Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile 'in a tiny 100-space parking lot.'"
So just what is the spatial resolution of the data stored by Tesla? Who can speak for the company on that exact issue, for the record?
I'm amazed, by the way, that commenters here and elsewhere claim that something is easy to see because it can be seen in a Google aerial photo in broad daylight in the summer, when the actual visibility issue is seeing the same thing from a car, while driving, at night in winter. I know lots of drivers who can drive right past things without seeing them, even while looking for those things, if they are driving in an unfamiliar location at night.
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments in reply to this comment. I'll use my edit window to dump in some links from earlier threads on HN. There was an extensive, and on the whole rather favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance...
submitted to HN while most participants were discussing the John Broder New York Times review. (Most participants missed the discussion on the article from The Verge, which is too bad, as the article has interesting photographs of the car and a lot of thoughtful commentary about its trade-offs as a vehicle for regular use.)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154
The author of the report in The Verge takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it’s still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world."
ONE MORE EDIT: Reasonable taxpayer and consumer minds can differ, and the differing opinions are widely expressed here on HN, but on the issue of the data-logging, I trust Tesla LESS after the back-and-forth about how Tesla thinks the reporter drove than I did before I saw Tesla's response. Tesla has HUGE taxpayer subsidies keeping its business afloat. Its response to questions about its technology's actual usefulness seems to be to go into attack mode whenever a reporter raises questions about the Tesla driving experience after driving a Tesla car. That doesn't make me think I want to drive a Tesla car. If the cars are really great for driving in places that have snow in winter, word of mouth should be able to tell that story, without any corporate P.R. spin. I note that there are many other news stories out right now, some of which have already been submitted to HN or mentioned in comments, in which onlookers express their opinion that Elon Musk has come out of this looking defensive. The product seems to be lacking in basic features I would need where I live, namely reliable estimates of remaining driving distance in winter, and that seems to speak for itself.