Techdirt. Stories about "tesla" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "tesla"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 13 May 2013 09:48:00 PDT Politicians, Car Dealers Trying To Make It Illegal To Buy A Tesla In North Carolina Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130511/02014623044/politicians-car-dealers-trying-to-make-it-illegal-to-buy-tesla-north-carolina.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130511/02014623044/politicians-car-dealers-trying-to-make-it-illegal-to-buy-tesla-north-carolina.shtml bitching about the fact that electric car company Tesla sells their cars directly. It has "stores" but you can't buy your cars from those stores, due to antiquated and ridiculous regulations about car sales. Most states have laws that basically say that car companies can't sell directly. These laws serve no purpose other than to protect (often politically powerful) independent car dealers from being disintermediated.

In North Carolina, however, they're taking it up a notch. They're basically trying to make it illegal to sell a Tesla in North Carolina at all. About 80 North Carolina residents have already bought one, but they may be the last:
A legislative proposal, backed by the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association, would make it illegal for Tesla, or any other car maker, to bypass dealerships and sell directly in the state. The proposal cuts at the heart of Tesla’s business model: selling luxury cars over the phone or Internet and then delivering them to the front door of high-net-worth customers.
The North Carolina State Commerce Committee approved the proposal unanimously.

This is the same thing we see over and over again in other contexts. Companies in an entrenched legacy position trying to use regulations to block disruptive upstarts. There is no good reason for this law other than to block Tesla and to prop up dealerships. It's somewhat disgusting to see politicians actively seek to stamp out innovation.

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]]> hating-on-disruptive-innovation http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130511/02014623044 Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:54:07 PST What The Tesla / NY Times Fight Teaches Us About The Media Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130215/10432722000/what-tesla-ny-times-fight-teachs-us-about-media.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130215/10432722000/what-tesla-ny-times-fight-teachs-us-about-media.shtml less than enthusiastic review of the experience of trying to drive a Tesla S (the company's flagship electric car sedan) between a pair of Tesla's new "superchargers." You can read the full review yourself, but the short version is that it did not get the mileage expected, and at one point a flatbed truck needed to come pick up the totally dead car. I will admit that I'm impressed by the Tesla car in general, and most of the reviews have made it out to be about as close to a perfect car as you can imagine (which is pretty impressive considering that it's the first year of the car's existence and it's the first "mass" produced Tesla vehicle). But this review was less than thrilled, since the whole point was to test out the ability to drive between these "superchargers."

Upon publication, Tesla's famous CEO, Elon Musk, began tweeting up a storm about how the article was "fake" and that he had the vehicle logs to prove it. The author of the review, John Broder, responded to many of the tweeted charges, arguing that Musk was misrepresenting things -- leading many watchers to suggest that Musk was making a big mistake in attacking the NY Times.

Then, Musk published a blog post with a graphical representation of the log data they had, in which he argues that Broder lied and even purposely tried to run the car out of juice in order to write a negative story. Musk claims that after their dispute with Top Gear, they now keep logs on any media test drives (though it's unclear if they tell reporters that before giving them the cars). And, suddenly, a lot of people flipped sides, arguing that the data won and clearly the NY Times and Broder had some answering to do. After all, there were charts like this one:
Except... then some people started to look more closely at the data and realize that perhaps Broder's story wasn't so crazy and Musk made a number of assumptions that aren't necessarily backed up by the data. For example, Musk insists that Broder claimed he turned down the climate control to low to conserve energy at 182 miles, and points to the fact that at 182 miles, Broder actually increased the temperature over 72 degrees. However, as Rebecca Greenfield points out, in her piece (linked above), it really looks like Musk may have simply assumed incorrectly that the point where this happened was 182 miles, and at about 250 miles it's quite clear that Broder does turn the climate control way down and keep it that way for a while (Greenfield added the purple box below).
Then Broder chimed back in as well explaining away most of the accusations, including the charge by Musk that Broder drove the car around trying to run it out of energy:
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.
Except, Broder notes, the "unplanned detour through downtown Manhattan" was not "unplanned" and had been communicated clearly to Tesla beforehand, did not actually go into "downtown" Manhattan, was partially recommended by Tesla employees who thought that the "regenerative braking" might help increase the range and only added two total miles to the trip length. Furthermore, as for the charge of driving around in circles in a parking lot?
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.
Ouch.

In the end this is a fascinating story on many different levels. Dan Frommer makes an excellent point that "everyone's a media company now," noting that it's possible for companies to speak out on their own behalf if they disagree with a story. That used to be a lot harder. He compares that to the Quirky / OXO story we recently covered as well.

But, of course, if you're going to rebut charges made in a newspaper review, the information had better hold up, and it's not clear that it does here. Even worse, it really seems like Musk is making a much bigger deal of this than ever needed to be made. Sure, the initial review wasn't great, but it really didn't strike me as that bad. It basically said that if you try to drive it too far, or if you're unable to charge it enough, you might run out of juice. You know what? Same thing is true of a gas-powered car as well. But Musk has called much more attention to the story in a manner that doesn't necessarily lead to Tesla coming out on top. Carl Malmud's summary seems instructive:
Musk was offended that a reporter didn't operate the hardware properly. Blame the manual, tech support, PR, but not the user.
Musk is obviously quite passionate about the companies he runs and their products. And that's something that's actually quite appealing. Having followed his work for a while, you know that he really is striving to build "insanely great" products. So I can absolutely understand how his first emotional reaction is to lash out at someone who wrote a less than kind review (I've been there myself too many times). But, in the end, it seems like there would have been much better ways to handle this. I'm still a huge fan of the Tesla, and still dream of one day actually getting one, but I'd say that Musk's response probably made me more skeptical of the company than Broder's original article ever did.

When "everyone is the media," amazing and powerful things can happen. And, certainly, the ability to correct the record against questionable stories is something that really changes the game. But, at the same time, everyone is now a fact checker, and that makes for an interesting dynamic for both traditional media companies and those who wade in to respond to them.

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]]> the-world-is-changing http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130215/10432722000 Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:06:05 PDT Auto Dealers Complain That Tesla Stores Are Illegal... Despite Not Actually Selling Anything Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20121008/15521020645/auto-dealers-complain-that-tesla-stores-are-illegal-despite-not-actually-selling-anything.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20121008/15521020645/auto-dealers-complain-that-tesla-stores-are-illegal-despite-not-actually-selling-anything.shtml now complaining that Tesla and its high end "stores" violate that law -- despite the fact that you can't actually buy a Tesla car in a Tesla store. In order to stay on the correct side of these idiotic laws, you can go into the stores and learn all about the Tesla... but if you want to buy, you have to go online and put money down via Tesla's website. The dealers are arguing that "anything that gets you to the executed contract is part of the sale," but that's ridiculous. A magazine ad. A TV commercial. Plenty of other things can "get you to the executed contract" and are perfectly reasonable.

What's really going on here is that states have passed these protectionist laws to help out independent dealerships who worried that car companies might decide to cut out one of the more annoying middlemen in the world and go direct to consumers. So they passed these laws which serve no purpose, whatsoever, other than to encourage greater annoyance and overhead for car buyers. Just the fact that you can't actually buy a Tesla at a store should highlight how silly this -- but the fact that these dealers are still complaining and arguing that the company violates the law shows just how petty they can be.

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]]> stupid-regulations http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121008/15521020645 Wed, 7 Mar 2012 19:19:12 PST Tesla Fails Again In Suing Top Gear For Mocking Tesla's Range Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120301/02504617922/tesla-fails-again-suing-top-gear-mocking-teslas-range.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120301/02504617922/tesla-fails-again-suing-top-gear-mocking-teslas-range.shtml sue the BBC and Top Gear because of an episode that involved a Tesla roadster, which the Top Gear crew mocked, at one point claiming it only got 55 miles before the batteries ran out of juice. This was a marginally amusing segment on a show that's known for tossing around a (somewhat joking) insult or six about lots of cars. In other words, no big deal. Except to Tesla -- and specifically its founder, Elon Musk, who lashed out angrily about the show and then sued for "libel" over the episode. Apparently that strategy failed even faster than a Tesla battery* and did so twice. After having the first lawsuit tossed out, an amended lawsuit met the same fate with the judge saying that the claims were "not capable of being defamatory at all, or, if it is, it is not capable of being a sufficiently serious defamatory meaning to constitute a real and substantial tort." In other words, go away.

The thing is, I can't see how this made any sense at all. Most people would have just moved on, but by suing it seems to only call more attention to the original claims and generate much more interest in that episode. If Tesla had just let it go and focused on, you know, building great cars, no one would have cared much about a jokey comment from a TV show.

* This, too, is a joke, so don't sue me for making a joke about your batteries. I'm actually a big fan of Tesla and am eagerly looking forward to the company's future models which look pretty damn cool.

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]]> let-it-go http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120301/02504617922 Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:40:00 PDT Does Your Car Need Its Own App Store? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110318/01354713533/does-your-car-need-its-own-app-store.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110318/01354713533/does-your-car-need-its-own-app-store.shtml Slashdot points us to the news that Tesla has announced that (as many predicted) the giant touchscreen console on its Tesla S sedan will have support for third-party apps. Don't like the stereo interface? Download a new one. Want a program that provides you better analytics on your driving habits? Download it. While I'm still pretty skeptical about the appification of everything, I am intrigued by the idea of being able to customize a car via apps. The real question is if there will really be enough demand to make it worthwhile for developers... and if this means that we're going to face another standards battle as people try to standardize what in-dash apps look like.

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]]> apptastic http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110318/01354713533 Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:32:14 PDT Tesla Motors Pays Fine For Lacking Emissions Certificate Of Conformity... Even Though It Lacks Emissions Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100830/04304510822.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100830/04304510822.shtml pay a $275,000 fine for lacking a "Certificate of Conformity" from the EPA, needed to comply with the Clean air Act. As is noted in the article, it doesn't seem like Tesla should have to get such documentation in the first place, seeing as it doesn't even have a tailpipe, but such is the nature of regulations being a bit behind the technology times.

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]]> funny-how-that-works http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100830/04304510822