Top Gear Fights Back At Tesla

An anonymous reader writes "Top Gear's producer Andy Wilman responds to Tesla's lawsuit: 'We never said that the Tesla's true range is only 55 miles, as opposed to their own claim of 211, or that it had actually ran out of charge. In the film our actual words were: "We calculated that on our track it would run out after 55 miles."' Interesting points, and as far as I can remember also correct. But I'm assuming Tesla is going the get the PR they want on this regardless of any court rulings."

Comments

Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Anonymous Coward]

Their "justifications" seem pretty laughable to me.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[hedwards]

I disagree, I used to do some acting, and it could take an enormous amount of time to get a short segment filmed. It's not uncommon for a 5 minute piece to take an entire day to film, or at least several hours. And if you're inside or on a sound stage it's not that big of a deal, but if you're having to restrict yourself to the portions of the day that have light, you're in a much less predictable situation. Even the sun going behind the clouds can make shooting a cohesive scene impossible until it returns.

Most of the rest of it is going to be pretty easy to determine and should largely be settled by the time this goes to trial. If Tesla's employees gave them the estimate that will quickly be determined. And Tesla did eventually admit that the breaks had failed, at least in the way that a consumer would call broken.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Anonymous Coward]

Faking results isn't a legitimate tactic in my books.

Battery didn't go flat and the car didn't have to be stopped while the engine was reading hot, but the footage suggested it should.

The brakes issue is legitimate but I don't consider 1/2 a pass.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea because a sports car that can only do 30 miles and hour when the take is low is a feature.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Golden_Rider]

Faking results isn't a legitimate tactic in my books.

Battery didn't go flat and the car didn't have to be stopped while the engine was reading hot, but the footage suggested it should.

The brakes issue is legitimate but I don't consider 1/2 a pass.

Nobody from Top Gear ever said that the battery went flat. What they said was that the battery WOULD go flat after 55 miles of driving, and this number came from the Tesla people who were at the track on that day. same for the engine - nobody from Top Gear said that the car had to be stopped, they said that it only drove with "reduced power". Which was true.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Smidge204]

Nobody from Top Gear ever said that the battery went flat.

So Jeremy looking confusedly at the dashboard then cutting to a scene of crew members pushing the Tesla off the track was meant to imply what, exactly?

Without any other clues as to what actually happened, it is up to the viewer to infer that the batteries had run flat.
=Smidge=

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Kreigaffe]

If the battery would have gone dead after 55 miles, and they drove it 25, of course they stopped before the battery was dead -- the purpose was to demonstrate to the audience in a visceral and entertaining way what would happen when the battery went dead, which would have been after 55 miles of use. There is no need to actually drive it to those 55 miles unless you're trying to verify things, but that figure was given to them BY Tesla. Who are they to argue with the manufacturer when the manufacturer is handing them numbers like that?

Nope, you simply take their word that it's 55 miles -- especially if you drive it a bit and the battery seems to be draining charge at a rate consistent with going dead after 55 miles. So you drive a bit, but not the full 55 miles that would kill the batteries for 18 hours, and then you film as if you had driven the 55 miles and the battery really was completely drained. Yeah, you're not showing reality 1:1, but you're showing what really would happen, according TO TESLA, had they driven 55 miles on their track.

How is that deceptive?

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[PopeRatzo]

You still didn't answer his question.

Here, I'll repeat it in case you forgot:

So Jeremy looking confusedly at the dashboard then cutting to a scene of crew members pushing the Tesla off the track was meant to imply what, exactly?

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Plekto]

My guess is that it did run out at some point in the day. They probably weren't being that careful with it and were doing the typical hooliganism that they do on their test track (best part, IMO). It ran out and they did some napkin math to figure out how much that would be normally (my guess is that it ran out in less than 55 miles due to numerous 0-60 filming takes. They then probably calculated it out to roughly 55 miles of hard driving.

The same thing happened with the Prius that Fifth Gear tested. Ran flat-out on their test track, it got something like 18 or 19 mpg. The new Honda Insight also only got half a "hot lap" as well before the electric assist cut out/wasn't doing anything useful any more). These cars aren't made for sportscar type use but are really made for typical people who trundle along at the speed limit and accelerate like they are on Prozac.

Then again, the Tesla is being marketed as a true sports car. Expecting 50-60 miles range while being driven as such isn't that unreasonable. Most other electric vehicles wouldn't last 10 miles driven that hard.(which IIRC, both shows had also shown with other EVs in the past) If my EV got 55 miles in Top Gear's hands, I'd consider myself to have won the lottery.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Galactic Dominator]

How is that deceptive?

Do they push every car off the track to demonstrate what happens when fuel runs out?

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but they do point out that if you drive the Veyron flat out, it runs out of fuel in 12 minutes, which assuming it's doing 400 kph the entire time (and it can't be, right?) is about the same range: 50 miles. :)

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Kreigaffe]

They don't have to -- with every other car, if it runs out of fuel, someone grabs a gallon canister and trots over, drops in enough fuel to get it off the track, and there you have it.
now, they may push it in to the warehouse regardless.. but running out of gas on the track is not a big issue for an IC car. An electric? Yes, you would need to push it.

There's a huge difference between running out of juice in an IC car and an electric. I've run out of gas before. Hell, I ran out of gas the first time in 1998 -- note the year, cell phones weren't huge. It was a 3 mile walk for me to my buddy's house, but after that -- after they all had their chuckles -- we just nabbed their car and the gas for his lawnmower, threw about a half gallon into my tank, problem solved. Had I been in an electric car, it would have needed to be towed.

It's a not-very-subtle distinction between the two that I think was well-illustrated by the scene in question. What actually happened to them is irrelevant -- they were demonstrating what actually would happen to you, and in THAT light, the whole shebang is accurate.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Nerull]

How isn't it deceptive?

It's as bullshit as when they 'helped' the alkali metal reactions in Brainiac by adding explosives. For a review show to present what they expect to happen as fact, without bothering to test what actually happens is worthless and deceptive. Why have a test track at all, if you're just going to recite numbers out of a spreadsheet for your results?

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Hognoxious]

Reminds me of the guy rowing across the Atlantic ... 2/3 of the way over he got tired and turned round.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Galactic Dominator]

Don't let your ignorance prevent you from continuing to post FUD.

There are portable(and some wireless) chargers for situations where an urgent charging is needed. About as fast and inconvenient as trying to scrounge up some proverbial gas can that's full of good gas just around the corner.

It is no more necessary to push an electric car than it is a liquid fueled one, unless of course you're going for the dramatic effect.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Dog-Cow]

I have never seen a portable charger that would move an electric car more than a couple of inches before running out of power. I know half a dozen people with gas cans.

You are an idiot, a moron, and a piece of shit. EVs are bad because they are completely impractical for many situations. And they cost way more than an IC to own.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[spire3661]

Nice try tying that together but the logic falls short unless portable quick chargers are as common as lawnmower gas cans. The point is the infrastructure is simply not there to quickly get an EV back on the road in anywhere near the same time frame as an IC vehicle (given the same problem of no fuel). As of right now, if you owned a Tesla and ran out of gas you would either be towed, or have someone bring your custom portable charger (citation needed btw) out to the car and then you WAIT for it to charge. The only dramatic effect is you pushing the bounds of logic to support your weak hypothesis.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[iamhassi]

Maybe he needs to watch the Top Gear video again

I think Top Gear is actually helping Tesla by suggesting people buy two tesla's, one to drive and one to charge.

P.S. Tesla: suing the media... not a great idea. They have viewers, lots of them, and can bash Tesla every episode if they wished for FREE. OH and suing makes Tesla look guilty as hell, and every news outlet will now cover the tesla-looks-guilty lawsuit. Better idea: play nice. Make an excuse and let them test again with a car that does get 200+ miles per charge. Everyone's happy.

P.S.S. Tesla: lots of luck with the lawsuit. Unless you were standing there with video cameras (like top gear was) to prove the car lasted more than 55 miles or the brakes didn't fail, I'd say Top Gear probably has this one in the bag.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[somersault]

Why have a test track at all, if you're just going to recite numbers out of a spreadsheet for your results?

To test the handling? Also, they do quarter mile tests etc sometimes, so they don't always rely on the figures.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Kreigaffe]

... portable, really?

Still hundreds of pounds.

If there was a portable system which could rapidly transfer a charge to a battery, that did not weigh as much as that battery, we'd be using it instead of the battery. Think about what you're saying. The Tesla's battery weighs 1,000 pounds. A portable system to transfer 1/10 of the battery pack's capacity would weigh... about 1/10 of the battery. 100 pounds. That's about the same as what, a gallon and a half of gas? Which weighs maybe 10 pounds?

There's also absolutely no other use for such a beast. Can of gas? Who doesn't have a can of gas. if you have a lawn, you have a lawn mower. If you have a lawn mower, YOU HAVE A CAN OF GAS.

Ohhh, you're an urbanite, no lawn mower, no can of gas? Sounds like a personal problem to me.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[definate]

Everybody points to the fact that they didn't SAY it, however it was implied, as many people have pointed out.

To the point that I've had the following conversation over and over again:
"I wouldn't get a Tesla, their batteries run flat in no time! I saw it on Top Gear, he was going around the track, and then it just died."
"No, they don't. That was a dramatized fake thing they showed on Top Gear."
"Really? Because I thought that's what happened."

Seriously, I've had these conversations over and over again. Same as a lot of their "stunts", "challenges", and similar. I end up having the same "No, it's bullshit, please recognize it's a stupid fucking show." conversations.

So in this case, while what they said was "our calculations show", a reasonable bystander likely takes the rest of the contextual information to mean "the car died on us".

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Smidge204]

the purpose was to demonstrate to the audience in a visceral and entertaining way what would happen when the battery went dead

And nowhere is that explained in the show - only in an after-the-fact comment prompted by Tesla's complaint. So again: Jeremy looking confusedly at the dashboard then cutting to a scene of crew members pushing the Tesla off the track was meant to imply what, exactly? The car didn't need to be pushed and it was never explained why it was.

I'm sure the expected range whipping one of those high-end sports cars around the track is much less than the official rating too, but you'll never see one of those being pushed back to the hangar...
=Smidge=

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[jusdisgi]

...suing makes Tesla look guilty as hell, and every news outlet will now cover the tesla-looks-guilty lawsuit...

Er...maybe being sued would make them look guilty. Not sure I see how filing a civil lawsuit as a plaintiff makes one look guilty...

Make an excuse and let them test again with a car that does get 200+ miles per charge.

The car they were driving does get 200+ miles per charge...on the EPA combined cycle. Which is exactly what Tesla claimed. No car Top Gear has ever driven achieved the rated miles-per-tank or miles-per-gallon numbers. This is really basic.

Unless you were standing there with video cameras (like top gear was) to prove the car lasted more than 55 miles or the brakes didn't fail, I'd say Top Gear probably has this one in the bag.

Perhaps if Top Gear was denying the facts you'd be right. As it stands, they admit that the car never died during their testing. That is to say, they admit to staging the scene where Clarkson says "uh-oh" as the car "dies" and then staging the scene where a bunch of guys push the car back to the hangar! I'm sorry, but if you don't call that misrepresentation, I don't know what else to say.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[jusdisgi]

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. They could have (and in fact did) note that the car would only go 55 miles the way they push it on the track. That much is fine. But in this case they didn't just note that...they pushed it off the track after showing it "dying." Which of course never happened.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[jusdisgi]

First, saying "that's what could have happened" doesn't excuse them from lying about what happened. But more importantly, this statement: "...they were demonstrating what actually would happen to you..." is false. Because that's not what would have happened to you. You'd drive it like hell for about 35 miles on the track, and then the computer would warn you that you were low and reduce power, and you'd go, "hey maybe I shouldn't strand myself like a dumbfuck" and drive home. Which is another way of saying that even playing by Top Gear's own rules ("we can say anything happened if it theoretically could have") they are liars. It wasn't even a correct representation of what would have happened if they had driven it until it complained.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[jusdisgi]

I won't excuse GP; I'm unaware of any really portable charger that would get your Tesla Roadster home. But when you say, "EVs are bad because they are completely impractical for many situations." you've gone way too far. They are impractical for about 5% of the driving public, and that in no way makes them "bad." Then you compound the situation with "they cost way more than an IC to own." which is just total nonsense. The beauty of EVs is that they cost next to nothing to maintain and fuel. You absolutely can't find an IC car with performance anywhere near the Roadster's with a total cost of ownership that can touch it. Once the Model S comes out this will be even more apparent...it'll likely have a TCO about the same as a Ford Taurus.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[jusdisgi]

My guess is that it did run out at some point in the day.

Good guess. Completely wrong. Both Tesla and Top Gear agree that it never ran out. Therefore the rest of your post is bunk.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[jusdisgi]

Everybody points to the fact that they didn't SAY it, however it was implied...

No, dammit, it wasn't just "implied." They showed it happening. That's every bit as explicit as saying it. If I'm watching a video and some guy gets shot in the head and falls down dead, his death was not "implied" just because the narrator didn't say, "that guy just died."

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Joce640k]

... the breaks had failed.

"Brakes".

The word is "brakes".

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[definate]

Yeah, good point.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Joce640k]

Yep. If Tesla is right then they could lend Top Gear another car for a couple of days to test in front of a crowd of reporters and let the Pesky Facts(tm) speak for themselves.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Joce640k]

...doing 400 kph the entire time (and it can't be, right?)

Well, technically it could ... but good luck finding a suitable road.

I don't see what Tesla's problem is. If you can thrash the hell out of a Tesla Roadster for 55 miles then I'd say that's pretty good for an electric car. Every over car ever built also gets low mileage if you thrash it, why should theirs be any different?

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Plekto]

While it didn't "run out", if it was in reduced power mode (which appears to be the case) with 10-20% left (not "out", technically), it'd surely be time to stop testing it and consider it to be done for the day. They probably drove it 45-50 miles and extrapolated the data that maybe they could get 5-10 more miles out if it but didn't want to drive at lower speeds to find out (no point, really). It's like Honda's Insight when Fifth Gear tested it. It lasted about 1/2 - 3/4 lap before it was providing barely any assistance. Sure, some, but 10-20% extra power isn't enough to be considered meaningful. The exact term Fifth Gear used, IIRC, was "it's gone" - now, technically, it wasn't *100%* gone, but it made no real difference. The second lap was no better than what you'd expect from the car with the engine providing all of the power.(not too good)

You didn't hear Honda complaining. The Insight isn't made to do track days and when driven at full throttle yes, the small battery pack depletes ridiculously fast. Neither, unsurprisingly, is the Tesla. It's quick - very quick - but it assumes that such acceleration will be brief and that the majority of your trip will be fairly normal driving or at fairly constant highway speeds once you get going that fast.

Top Gear drove it hard and well, it only lasted a short time in their hands.(I'm shocked they didn't make it explode or die like half of the stuff they test - heh) That said, it completely pummeled the other EVs that they had subjected to similar treatment in the past. Tesla needs to get off of their high horse and admit that it's not a race car and that when it's subjected to abnormal driving, range will suffer accordingly.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Galactic Dominator]

Still hundreds of pounds.

More mindless, ignorant bullshit. You can get a nice L1 charger that maybe weights in at all of 20 lbs. 20 minutes of charge would get you far enough to finish in a more convenient location. There are plenty of ways to get a depleted EV charged. For someone as smart as you, it's interesting you can only think of one method and that's the one that makes EV's seem totally unusable for real world activities.

There's also absolutely no other use for such a beast. Can of gas? Who doesn't have a can of gas. if you have a lawn, you have a lawn mower. If you have a lawn mower, YOU HAVE A CAN OF GAS.

Ohhh, you're an urbanite, no lawn mower, no can of gas? Sounds like a personal problem to me.

As a matter of fact, I'm anything but an urbanite. I live in quite a rural area, and frequently utilize gas cans for far more than just lawn mower usage. If you would bother to read what I said, I wrote "good gas". The problem with gas in gas cans is that it ages rapidly and frequently attracts water and sometimes more contamination. Some of my gas cans contain 2-stroke mixed fuel. I'm not about to allow gas out a gas can into my $30K car unless I've had the chain of custody on that gas/gas can the entire time.

What's the matter, you don't have simple extension cord? Where do you live?

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[hairyfeet]

Riiight, because I can knock on the door of any neighbor and they ALL have...wait a minute, who the fuck owns one of those?

What you seem to be missing on purpose is that nearly everyone has a gas can whereas the odds that the guy down the street has a portable charger that 1.-has enough power to actually give an electric car enough juice to move more than 4 inches, and 2.-just happens to have said magical charger all juiced up and waiting for me is practically non existent. Hell I bet if you figured the odds you would have better odds of winning $500 with scratch off tickets than actually finding that charger in ANY random sample.

So whether you choose to face it or go "la la la" is your business but the simple FACT is the current infrastructure doesn't support EVs and ICs simply don't have that problem. I guarantee in just my apt building if I started knocking on doors I'd find at least 3 that had gas cans in their cars, how many of these electric chargers am I gonna find? None. And THAT was the point OP was trying to drive home that you seem to be missing. So here is your WHOOSH thanks and have a nice day.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[TRRosen]

What's the matter, you don't have simple extension cord? Where do you live?

Not a lot of outlets in the middle of the highway moron. No matter what you have to push it to an electrical source.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[TRRosen]

So again: Jeremy looking confusedly at the dashboard then cutting to a scene of crew members pushing the Tesla off the track was meant to imply what, exactly? The car didn't need to be pushed and it was never explained why it was.

I was meant to show you what would happen if Tesla wasn't interfering with the testing and prohibiting Top Gear from showing the Car running out of juice. They could have run it down to 0 but weren't allowed too.

I'm sure the expected range whipping one of those high-end sports cars around the track is much less than the official rating too, but you'll never see one of those being pushed back to the hangar...

Nope most of the time when there pointing out a high end exotic's short range it's just left by the roadside as the presenter walks away. Been done many times.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[TRRosen]

One simple test would what they showed have happened if Tesla allowed them to drive until the batteries where depleted. YES. All TG did was illustrate the very true fact that once it runs out of juice you have to wait hours to recharge it. Not a huge factor when driving a leaf 15 miles to work everyday but you don't buy a $100,000+ sports car to drive for an hour at a time.

Jeremy was very correct. In the real world pure electrics just don't work.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Andy Dodd]

That L1 charger won't work away from a power outlet.

A gas can will.

The point is, anything that actually STORES energy and allows it to be transported a significant distance away from a wall socket is going to have a far worse energy-to-weight and energy-to-volume ratio than gas.

A portable generator MIGHT do it - but these are rare nowadays. 1-2 decades from now this might change as EVs become more commonplace and standardized, but not right now.

Re:Doesn't pass the bullshit test

[Smidge204]

I was meant to show you what would happen if Tesla wasn't interfering with the testing and prohibiting Top Gear from showing the Car running out of juice. They could have run it down to 0 but weren't allowed too.

Wow, really? They did it out of spite because Tesla was interfering with the tests? That doesn't exactly help their image you know. How do you know this? It wasn't mentioned in the segment.

Nope most of the time when there pointing out a high end exotic's short range it's just left by the roadside as the presenter walks away. Been done many times.

Context is what's most important here, don't you agree? So if you could provide specific examples I could review in context that'd be swell.
=Smidge=

"is going the get"????

[rwade]

Really?

Re:"is going the get"????

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, settle down. It's a typo. It happens.

Re:"is going the get"????

[Sene]

Ummm no, typo would be for example "is going ti get", this is just stupidity. "A typographical error (often shortened to typo) is a mistake made in, originally, the manual type-setting (typography) of printed material, or more recently, the typing process. The term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger,[1] but usually excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors."

Re:"is going the get"????

[peragrin]

yes really.

The trick with the 211 miles the tesla promises is that it is at 35 MPH, Or was it 30? Either way electric cars get a fraction of their range going highway speeds.

I am not sure Tesla really wants to fight this. if their testing comes out and more people realize the absurd limitations the current batch of electric cars have. speed and range combinations, etc.

yes I realize you can go farther with a gas car going 40-50mph than at 70mph. However for most modern vehicles they can go 300-500 miles at 70 MPH, at 40-50 Mph they go much farther. Yet electric cars can barely go 200 miles at 35 MPH.

Re:"is going the get"????

[Wild_dog!]

I wouldn't say "stupidity" as much as racing ones typing too fast. More of a mind/finger disjunction. Happens to most people who are more concerned with throwing words on paper instead of being uptight anal retentive about the perfection of their grammar. I have always felt that informally, grammar isn't really worth that much, just refer to Shakespeare. Anyhow, for those superior minded folks who worry about slamming folks over mistakes of the typing sort, you can be assured a minor mistake is not indication of stupidity or even bad grammar tendencies by the person making such a lowly mistake.

For the AR's here are some more terms.
" In some cases, someone will type a homophone for a word by mistake, in which case the error may be referred to as a “thinko,” acknowledging that the error is grammatical in nature, but caused by a genuine mistake. Some common thinkos include the substitution of its for it's, or there for their, and vice versa.""

Perhaps for other types of errors we could use the more general term, Grammo. That would be nicer than referring to such an error as "stupidity".

Re:"is going the get"????

[jusdisgi]

The trick with the 211 miles the tesla promises is that it is at 35 MPH, Or was it 30?

Actually, it's on the EPA combined cycle...the same test that gives us the MPG ratings on every other car. Next...

Re:"is going the get"????

[cynyr]

Which is nothing like chucking it around a track. I would not expect to get 211 track or "play" miles out of it, and i would expect to treat it nice and get a few more than 211 out of it.

Re:"is going the get"????

[Phoghat]

Car & Driver has this to say about the new 2012 Tesla models:

Claims of a 300-mile range, seven-passenger seating, 0-to-60-mph sprints of 5.6 seconds, a 45-minute recharge time, and a base price below $60,000 before government tax incentives—which would be hard to deliver, even if you’re Toyota. Or God. And Tesla is neither.

I'm siding with Top Gear on this.

Then again ,it's been often said that bad publicity is better than no publicity.

Re:"is going the get"????

[N0Man74]

I don't understand the issue... Could someone give a car analogy?

Re:"is going the get"????

[Sene]

Well I'm not here to be nice or to invent new words :) I think it is just stupid not to proof read what you are going to post especially when the word count is so low.

Frosty Piss???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, PR about a vehicle that average people can not afford in the midst of the 2nd Great Depression. They can enjoy their pittance from self-absorbed elitists who think buying shit and throwing money at a problem is tantamount to giving a fuck about the environment. This vehicle is one of those overpriced and useless gadgets you can get at Hammacher-Schlemmer or Sharper Image which are just money pits.
If Tesla wants to be innovative then they damned well better appeal to a broader audience rather than calling Coca Cola champagne.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If Tesla wants to be innovative then they damned well better appeal to a broader audience rather than calling Coca Cola champagne.

Tesla is like Segway. They create a luxury product because that makes money and they use the income to scale up and create more mainstream products, like Tesla's upcoming consumer grade sedan. They are the closest thing to an innovative car company the US has left and to my mind instead of bailing out the big players we should have taken the public share in them after the unions refused to take control and handed it over to Tesla and let someone actually doing something smart have a shot at turning the US auto industry around.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[Kreigaffe]

we did bail out tesla, and that was a mistake

company just isn't going to make any money. end of story. all electric vehicles? not ready for prime-time. the tesla is a car to sit in a showroom, or to ferry yourself to a luxurious event. it's not going to translate into a production vehicle for general use -- the market is abysmally small, and made up almost entirely of people living in dense urban areas. You know, the sorts of people that aren't as likely to own a car. It's a car for people who don't need a car for 18 hours a day. If you don't need a car for 18 hours a day, you probably don't need a car.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[westlake]

Tesla is like Segway. They create a luxury product because that makes money and they use the income to scale up and create more mainstream products, like Tesla's upcoming consumer grade sedan.

When you look at the history of the American automobile, the "driving force" has always been the mass-matrket car.

That is where the money is.

When you put 20 million cars on the road, as Henry Ford did, you generate truckloads of cash that can be pumped into R & D.

No matter how matter how good the impression your electric or steamer made on the streets in 1905 you are not going to be able to compete against that kind of investment in alternative techologies.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

When you look at the history of the American automobile, the "driving force" has always been the mass-matrket car.

It takes a huge up front investment to enter that market, so it is not practical for a smaller company, the way the luxury/performance car market is. Economy of scale is hugely important in the mainstream market and basically does not apply at all to the luxury market. It is just the same as Segway, gyroscopic systems are very expensive, but people will pay it for a cool toy. Once you're making enough from the toys, you scale up and can make affordable systems for the handicapped.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

all electric vehicles? not ready for prime-time.

Sure they are, but the US infrastructure isn't ready for them. That's the point of starting with the luxury market.

it's not going to translate into a production vehicle for general use -- the market is abysmally small, and made up almost entirely of people living in dense urban areas. You know, the sorts of people that aren't as likely to own a car.

Your assertion is ignorant. The vast majority of the US market is multi-car homes where at least one car is used for local commuting much less than 250 miles a day. Electric cars fit perfectly for that application.

If you don't need a car for 18 hours a day, you probably don't need a car.

Yeah, because nobody commutes to and from work as 90% of their driving? Well, except fricking everyone!

Re:Frosty Piss???

[Mindcontrolled]

Well, if the US are mainly populated by idiots like you - and I leave that open for debate for now - then they indeed won't make any money. But, hey, who cares if you continue on your slide back to third world status. The rest of the world moves on.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[swalve]

If you think what we just saw is an economic depression, you are sorely mistaken.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[definate]

LOL WHO THE FUCK NEEDS TO BE DRIVING FOR 18 HOURS A DAY?

I'm thinking you're not asserting people drive for 18 hours a day, but that it takes 18 hours to recharge. This is a common mistake made by morons who forget that you don't empty your tank everyday. So, in the same way that you don't have to fill up your tank everyday, your entire charge isn't drained, everyday. Meaning it takes less time.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[definate]

Exactly! This is what I've been trying to say about Ferrari, Pagani, Lambourghini, Koenigsegg, Porche, McLaren, Maybach, and similar. Those poor struggling producers will never make it in the automobile industry. If you want an American example, Saleen.

While I'm being facetious here, I know that those companies above have eventually merged with others, however some of them haven't, and some have different financing arrangements such that they are independent. However, none of them started from the mass-market, most of them started with fuck all capital, and most of them make a fuck load of money.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[Falconhell]

I need a car for 1 1/2 hours a day, and cover 100KM. There is no other way to travel to work. Therefore I need a car,
and something that has the range of this car would do nicely. In fact a friend of mine drives his Tesla to work every day, and charges it for a 10KW solar array on his home.

Could you be more worng?

Re:Frosty Piss???

[jusdisgi]

When you look at the history of the American automobile, the "driving force" has always been the mass-matrket car.

Get your history straight. The Model T was not the first automobile. There were a lot of cars for a long time that fit the "too expensive for the mass market" description. And eventually we got a Model T. This will happen again.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[jusdisgi]

Name one time government did any good.

Rural electrification. Interstate highways. Public education. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. THE FUCKING INTERNET.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[Anonymous Coward]

Rural electrification.

Rolling blackouts in california. Massive blackout that took out the Northeast a few years ago.

Interstate highways.

Crumbling infrastructure. Bridges to No where.

Public education.

Called on of the worst amoung developed nations.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Poverty has become even worse among African Americans

THE FUCKING INTERNET.

Some of the slowest broad band speeds among developed nations. Back bone traffic got routed through china a few years ago.

Re:Frosty Piss???

[Bertie]

Weren't the rolling blackouts caused by people like Enron speculating with the energy supply?

Re:Frosty Piss???

[GooberToo]

Yes, the blackouts came from massive market fraud from the likes of Enron. Power was always available. The power problems came from periods where supplies were unwilling to purchase massively inflated and artificially manipulated price as a result of illegal practices.

Tesla

[wideBlueSkies]

It's about time that Nikolai stands up for himself and goes after the use of some of his inventions. Poor guy - if he doesn't he's likely to end up broke, broken, and dead in a hotel on 34th Street in NYC.

Re:Tesla

[Anonymous Coward]

too soon...

Re:Tesla

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time that Nikolai stands up ...

Nikolai? Why forcefully russify the name of an ethnic Serb, born in Croatia, which was at the time a part of Austria? Given how Tesla never even visited the Russian Empire and spent most of his life in the U.S., "Nick" would be far more appropriate. Or is it that if a white guy's name is not English, German, or French-sounding, "he must be Russian"?

Re:Tesla

[wideBlueSkies]

Lighten up Francis. It was a typo.

Re:Tesla

[SniperJoe]

Nick Tesla? That sounds like someone who should be doing movies and screaming a lot.

Re:Tesla

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree. It's also likely he might end up dead in room 3327 of that hotel.

Re:Tesla

[Umbriel]

Nikolai is his equivalent russian name, but Nikola is his true serbian name, so a bit of respect ;)

Re:Tesla

[sh00z]

That would be Nic Tesla.

Re:Tesla

[juasko]

yep, and a great scientist is out of the question.

fucking brits

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking semantics. what is the real difference between claiming that you calculated that on your track it would run out after 55 miles, and saying that it's range is only 55 miles?

is something green, or a mixture of 50% yellow and 50% blue?

Re:fucking brits

[fratermus]

I would not expect the normal consumer experience to mirror that of the drivers on the TG track. I also would not expect published petrol MPG figures to match the MPG TG gets on their track.

Re:fucking brits

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the difference between a joke and test results.

Re:fucking brits

[mr100percent]

I assume while it's on the track they're flooring it to autobahn-esque speeds. Standard ranges (the ones you'd find on a car sticker) don't usually assume you're going beyond the posted speed limits.

Re:fucking brits

[Anonymous Coward]

so in a single word, "nothing"?

Re:fucking brits

[stealth_finger]

fucking semantics. what is the real difference between claiming that you calculated that on your track it would run out after 55 miles, and saying that it's range is only 55 miles?

is something green, or a mixture of 50% yellow and 50% blue?

You don't see car manufacturers complain when *motoring show/magazine* says that on a track a car with stated MPG of say 15 averages say 7.5. Heavy sustained driving like that takes more juice, regardless of if its juice juice or just regular juice. I bet their 211 range claim is based on driving at 30 without turning or stopping or such nonsense.

Re:fucking brits

[twidarkling]

No, in a single word, "everything." TG's track is pretty much worst-case scenario. You are never going to drive a car in anything resembling that fashion in real life. It's like the difference between saying "most people will get 4 hours out of their laptop battery," and then someone coming along and running 5 video cameras off it while playing Crysis over a 4G stick, with 5.1 speakers, and then going "Yeah, it'd last about 5 minutes." Their results are still accurate, but hardly fucking useful.

Re:fucking brits

[bigpat]

I would expect if they said "calculated" and then showed the car running out of juice that they had actually tested the car and run out of charge at 55 miles rather than pulled a "calculation" out of their butt and then made it look like it was based on actually driving the car. I think there is a simple solution. Actually run the car at track speeds until it runs out of juice. If I were on a jury I would want to see those results. If TG was right about 55 miles, plus or minus 10 miles then they win. If Tesla is right and it is significantly over that then Tesla wins.

Re:fucking brits

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

fucking semantics. what is the real difference between claiming that you calculated that on your track it would run out after 55 miles, and saying that it's range is only 55 miles?

I don't know - is that the same difference as claiming they claimed they calculated it, or that they claim Tesla themselves calculated it?

Re:fucking brits

[fratermus]

This is the difference between "calculated" and "observed".

Re:fucking brits

[Kreigaffe]

55 miles wasn't TG's number -- RTFA ;)

Tesla gave TG that range for their track, so it's not much of a jump to presume the maker of the car is correct

Re:fucking brits

[bigpat]

Actually, sorry they said "worked out" not calculated just after they portrayed the driver losing power on the track. The meaning is clear and the meaning was misleading. But like I said just run the car at its top speed and see how far it goes. Would take less time than talking about it on Slashdot.

Re:fucking brits

[wagnerrp]

This is a high end sports car. You are supposed to take it out on the track, accelerate and brake hard. Driving the car as it is designed to be driven will get you all of 50 miles or so on the battery. Driving the car as a typical commuter will get you over 200 miles on the battery.

Following with your laptop comparison, think of this as a big 'desktop replacement'. Running Crysis, with the quad core processor and memory at full speed, 17" monitor at full brightness, powering your big surround headphones, charging your phone and gameboy, you might only get half an hour of battery life. Using a spreadsheet with the processor and memory downclocked, three of the four cores gated off, monitor on low brightness, no headphones, and no USB devices, you will get several hours out of the battery. The system was designed for gaming, and using it as such will drain the battery very quickly. Using it for typical office work will get you several times the battery life.

Why buy the big heavy laptop if you're not going to play intensive games on it? Why buy the expensive sports car if you're not going to take it out on the track and have fun? The show was reporting that if you DO use it as intended, those are the consequences.

Re:fucking brits

[nosferatu1001]

Tesla themselves gave them the numbers.

Should TG have not trusted them?

Re:fucking brits

[bigpat]

It does add an interesting twist to the story to hear TG claim that Tesla engineers told them 55 miles. But that is not what they said in the episode. According to the clip I saw they portray the driver running out of charge (which didn't actually happen) and then they say that "we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles".

I think the only thing that really matters is if around 55 miles is an accurate number for its range at track speeds or not. I think it is crap that TG didn't actually run the car for 55 miles on its track on a full charge and it is also crap that Tesla doesn't just run the car around a similarly configured track and similar speeds and tell us what the range really would have been.

Re:fucking brits

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

It does add an interesting twist to the story to hear TG claim that Tesla engineers told them 55 miles. But that is not what they said in the episode. According to the clip I saw they portray the driver running out of charge (which didn't actually happen) and then they say that "we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles".

So Tesla is suing because they had the copyright on the 55 mile range calculation?

Re:fucking brits

[postbigbang]

Running for your very life, and jamming it full throttle to the floor isn't sporting. It's racing, where you try to keep your vehicle in front of all the others.

Sporting is going down US1 between SF and LA and getting to Santa Barbara in 3.5hrs. Racing, and chancing becoming cliff decoration can be done in 2.5.

I find doing a video where you make a viewer presume you ran out of fuel when you didn't is disingenuous. Being red-faced hopping mad when you ran out at 57 and they told you 55 could be understood, after all, a 55mi range is rather small even for gas gulpers.

Drawing a conclusion before the test(s) have been done is also disingenuous, even if you are prepared to change the scores should you find out that reality flies in the face of your pre-conclusion.

Was it fair to Tesla? Not as written, IMHO.

Re:fucking brits

[Anonymous Coward]

No they are suing because Top Gear pointed out the inherent flaws of electric powered cars instead of saying the Tesla was the second coming of Jesus.

Re:fucking brits

[DarkVader]

Google says that's 325 miles. You'll never make it in one day with a Tesla.

And that's their point. It's not a realistic car. There's nothing at all disingenuous about that.

Sure, you could use it to commute to work. But there's no fun in that with a sports car. I believe Nissan makes an electric more appropriate to that market.

The Tesla is an expensive toy, and as such, cannot perform to the general expectations of other expensive toys in its class, due to the current inherent limitations of its power source.

The problem was dramatized. Top Gear is an entertainment show. I don't see why this is an issue, especially since the problem with the car is real and verifiable.

I saw the show. I would still want to have a Tesla if I could afford it, but it would have to be my second high-end sports car, because I'd want to have one I could actually drive long distances if I wanted. As it is, I can't afford the first one, so I'm not getting a Tesla anytime soon.

Re:fucking brits

[postbigbang]

You say it's not a realistic car. In my realism, my truck gets 14mpg with a 17gal gas tank. That's 238 miles. That's 119 miles round trip. Yes, I can fill it up at the end and go for a lonnnnnng way, until I have to switch drivers, etc. My Metro gets 44mpg, but has only an 8gal tank. One way is 352.

The dramatization is indeed falsehood until it's proven. Entertainment? No.

Re:fucking brits

[jusdisgi]

...what is the real difference between claiming that you calculated that on your track it would run out after 55 miles, and saying that it's range is only 55 miles?

Wrong question. There's no difference there that matters. But Tesla's complaint is not with them saying that it would have run out after 55 miles. Their complaint is that they showed it "dying" and being pushed off the track, when neither of those things actually happened. And furthermore, neither of those things would have happened if they had run the battery down...the car would have warned them and reduced power, and they would have puttered around the last lap (or another 30 miles if necessary) to the hangar. Please...go watch the clip. They really do act like it totally failed on them. And that never would have happened.

Re:fucking brits

[jusdisgi]

Guys, you have just totally fallen for Clarkson's straw-man. The problem is not that the 55-mile claim is inaccurate. The problem is that they showed the car dying when it didn't and would not have even if they had run it down. They showed people pushing a perfectly drivable car! Defamation!

Re:fucking brits

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they showed the car dying when it didn't and would not have even if they had run it down.

What? Do you not understand how electricity works?

If the battery is dead it won't go anywhere. The point Top Gear is saying is that when it does die you can't go anywhere for hours. Now you may say that 90% of your will be covered by its range. That also means then that it's 10% less car. If it's 10% less car it should cost 10% less than the Lotus Elise it's based on. Except it doesn't. It cost 3 times as much.

So you are paying 3 times as much for 10% less car.

All topgear did is rightfully point out what a terrible car it is and that's not including the reliability problems it has with the motor overheating and the brakes failing.

Re:fucking brits

[TRRosen]

That's because Jeremy Clarkston (JC) is the second coming of Jesus. They have stated that many times on the show.

Re:fucking brits

[TRRosen]

I think it is crap that TG didn't actually run the car for 55 miles on its track on a full charge

Well then get pissed at Tesla. They would not allow TG to run the batteries out.

Driving in circles

[burnin1965]

You might think a 60+ mile per gallon Kawasaki Ninja 250 with a 4.8 gallon fuel tank will have a range of over 200 miles but it seems if I drive around in circles in my driveway it only has a range of a few hundred feet.

Re:Driving in circles

[WrongSizeGlass]

You might think a 60+ mile per gallon Kawasaki Ninja 250 with a 4.8 gallon fuel tank will have a range of over 200 miles but it seems if I drive around in circles in my driveway it only has a range of a few hundred feet.

Based on my analysis, the problem is that you need a bigger driveway. Clearly a larger driveway results in better gas mileage and should be included with any new vehicle purchase to allow for optimal MPG.

Re:Driving in circles

[davester666]

I'll take Nürburgring. I mean, if they are just going to include something...

Re:Driving in circles

[Anonymous Coward]

You might think a 60+ mile per gallon Kawasaki Ninja 250 with a 4.8 gallon fuel tank will have a range of over 200 miles but it seems if I drive around in circles in my driveway it only has a range of a few hundred feet.

Actually, I bought a Ninja 250 for my first bike and practiced going around in 29ft circles at just slightly above idle (~1600rpm) for about 6 hours over a couple days before taking my DMV test (Passed first try!) and I still got about 80 miles out of that tank. Now I ride it and I average about 68mpg.

Re:Driving in circles

[Stevecrox]

I ride a Suzuki GSR 600, commuting to work gets me 52MPG, holding ~70MPH for a long distance nets me around 65MPG. Blasting the throttle like they do on Top Gear gets me closer to 45MPG.

Driving/Riding vehicles differently nets different results, if Top gear tell me something got 20 MPG on their track I'd expect something like 30-35 MPG in real life. Top Gear were told by Tesla that the car would have a range of around 55 miles on the Top Gear Track. When Top Gear portrayed this with a bit of humour, Tesla get mad 2 years later? What about the BBC journalist who wanted to take an Electric BMW Mini Cooper from London to the north of England, it took him more than a week and his opinion was Electric cars just aren't ready for long distance driving. Are BMW going to sue him?

Even if Tesla do release a sensible car I'll be avoiding it, can't stand to support such pathetic companies.

Re:Driving in circles

[alex67500]

Oh sorry, I didn't mention... I thought you'd seen that leak in the tank!

Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like a bad product is protected by law from being told or reported as a bad product.

Re:Protection

[antifoidulus]

In Tesla's defense, it's not like actually driving the 55 miles would have taken that long. An hour, tops. If they cannot be invested enough in their review to actually you know, review, the product, then they shouldn't be reviewing the product, period.

Re:Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

In Tesla's defense, it's not like actually driving the 55 miles would have taken that long. An hour, tops.

What?!? What are you talking about?

FTFA:

The second point is that the figure of 55 miles came not from our heads, but from Tesla’s boffins in California.

Top Gear said that it would run out after 55 miles according to the way they were driving it.; which, Tesla gave them that figure.

So, you're defending Tesla's obfuscation and attempt to hide the truth?

The GP is right: they're suing to shut up the Top Gear people. But, it's just going to be the Streisand effect and it's really going to bite Tesla in the ass.

I'd like to point out that Tesla was founded by PayPal's founder, Elon Musk - I'll leave it at that.

Re:Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why the American version of Top Gear sucks big ol' donkey dick. Boo fucking hoo, we don't like our review so we're going to sue. Stupid cry babies. It's like Americans are demanding the end of our empire and we're trying our best to make it happen in our lifetime.

Re:Protection

[PopeRatzo]

It's like Americans are demanding the end of our empire and we're trying our best to make it happen in our lifetime.

Your "empire" has been gone for quite a long time. Certainly since before your lifetime began.

Re:Protection

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

In Tesla's defense, it's not like actually driving the 55 miles would have taken that long. An hour, tops.

Too bad that of the two cars, one had an overheating motor and couldn't be tested at anywhere near full speed, and the other one was taken out of the race by Tesla because of a break problem.

Re:Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm American and we still have an empire. There was one when I was born but there might not be one when I die.

Re:Protection

[PopeRatzo]

I'm American and we still have an empire. There was one when I was born but there might not be one when I die.

Does it bother you that there might not be an "empire"?

Re:Protection

[bhtooefr]

This isn't the American version, this is the UK version.

The American version would have had Tesla pre-screen the review before it aired, most likely.

Re:Protection

[CowboyBob500]

Exactly, the BBC are doing it wrong. The correct response to a US lawsuit in this country is to photocopy your cock and send it off with the words "shove this up your arse" scrawled across it in marker pen.

Re:Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

because of a break problem.

Typo? Or stupidity?

Re:Protection

[tehcyder]

It's like Americans are demanding the end of our empire and we're trying our best to make it happen in our lifetime.

Your "empire" has been gone for quite a long time. Certainly since before your lifetime began.

It is just possible that there are slashdot readers born before 1939 or 1956 or whenever you want to mark the end of Britain as an empire.

Re:Protection

[juasko]

Just broadcast the english version, the rest of the world don't need a special edition for their country, we're happy with the original.

Or is it that Americans don't understand english?

Re:Protection

[TRRosen]

Telsa forbid Top Gear from doing that. They were not allowed to run the batteries out.

Re:Protection

[PopeRatzo]

whenever you want to mark the end of Britain as an empire.

1776?

Audi and Toyota

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla is going the get the PR they want on this regardless of any court rulings.

FTFA:

They now say that all that had happened was that the fuse to the vacuum pump had failed, which meant that the brake just had to be pushed down much harder than usual. Well – to my mind, if the brakes are broken, then they’re broken, and if this happened to your car, you’d take it to the garage to get it fixed. Odd it seems so trivial to Tesla now, because on the day of filming they insisted on repairing the fuse before we could carry on driving the car.

When Audi had their "stuck cruise control" issue, it seemed as if everyone with an Audi had that problem and Audi had do to a huge recall - regardless of the NTSB's findings.

Toyota had the "stuck gas pedal" problem and it was amazing how many people demanded that the problem be fixed.

Now, we'll a bunch of Tesla drivers speeding at 100+ and blaming it on the brake pedals or getting into accidents and blaming and suing Tesla.

Tesla is fucking moronic if this is the exposure they want.

Re:Audi and Toyota

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Audi never had a suck cruise control problem. It seems that suburban housewives have a declining ability to differentiate the brake pedal from the gas pedal. Undoubtedly, this was the same problem for Toyota. You'll notice that most of the people interviewed on the national news, claiming to have suffered this problem, were soccer moms, or old and decrepit. I'd bet most were also driving distracted. Some (i.e. most) people, with their current skill set, simply have no business being behind the wheel of an automobile.

And yet, it's the most casual thing in the world to be a driver, never mind that we're slinging multi-ton murder machines around like it's nothing. It's time for better driver training and testing.

dancing bear

[Anonymous Coward]

Samuel Johnson is dead, so I'll speak up, not being quite dead myself. The dancing bear quote is usually attributed to him.

55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Belisarivs]

A lot of the reporting seems to focus on claim it would only go 55 miles. As far as track cars go, that's pretty good. The Ford GT would only go about 60 before it would empty it's tank. A series earlier, they figured a Ferrari 599 only got 1.7 miles per gallon on the track.

Apart from reliability issues (both Tesla cars broke in various ways), the biggest flaw the cars had was that while the range was on par with regular track cars, when you ran out of fuel in the other cars, you took a few minutes to fill up and could go back out. The Tesla, on the other hand, was done for the day as it took something like 12 hours to recharge.

That was the damning conclusion of the Top Gear episode, and it was entirely accurate. Even if Tesla has improved the recharge time, it's still hours long. Tesla is just trying to distract from that fundamental fact - despite the fact it's marketed as a sports-car, it's not suited to track use. Even if people have no plans on taking it to the track, it's allure is tarnished by that fact.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Registered Coward v2]

A lot of the reporting seems to focus on claim it would only go 55 miles.

A claim whose figure was from Tesla's staff. Should be interesting court.

Top Gear was spot on about the real world implications - refueling time is one area electrics need to improve to be viable replacements, as opposed to short trip around town, vehicles.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Osgeld]

neither were road cars the Tesla is

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Top gear puts a comical spin on everything. And they're not above giving biased views based on their personal motives, such as having an irrational love of hydrogen cars. (really?)

As far as the Tesla, the review painted the roadster as a car that goes "whoops! ran out of electricity without warning" which is stretching it. Add to this the fact that the review was 100% track based, it wasn't accurate as to point that many of these cars will become daily drivers which never see the track.

I love Top Gear, but the fact that the cast brings their personal agendas to admonish alternative energy cars is a turn-off. No James & Clarkson, hydrogen is not the only solution and you can stop touting the FCX as solving the world's problems. It makes me wonder if they support a more traditional infrastructure of hydrogen power, as you still have fueling stations and can "fill 'er up" to support the current model.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[timeOday]

The battery of the Tesla Model S can be swapped in 5 minutes. I don't suppose that's true of the roadster though.

I would really like them to go one step further, and divide the battery into about 4 separate packs, so they could be lifted by a single person, but just as importantly so you can only carry 1 or 2 packs if that's all you need. It would greatly reduce the weight of the car, increasing efficiency and performance. My commute is only 20 miles round trip, which is about the national average IIRC.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[burnin1965]

when you ran out of fuel in the other cars, you took a few minutes to fill up and could go back out. The Tesla, on the other hand, was done for the day as it took something like 12 hours to recharge

An issue, yes, an insurmountable issue, no, and an issue that was only in the minds of the Top Gear hosts rather than reality.

Running out of charge and pushing the car to the shop was a stunt, a hoax, it was fake, neither car ran out of charge.

I like watching most of the Top Gear shows but I expect them to flog cars not their egos and stubborn pride.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Belisarivs]

As far as the Tesla, the review painted the roadster as a car that goes "whoops! ran out of electricity without warning" which is stretching it.

No, the review didn't paint any such image. I've seen this opinion expressed repeatedly, and it's just not the case. In the episode, both cars broke down, with the brakes failing on one and the engine overheating in the other. That was explicitly stated. They gave the Tesla an entirely fair shake in the episode.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Osgeld]

I just watched my company spend 4 grand on a forklift battery, and it took a forklift to pull it out, now you suggest my mom do that once on the way to work and once on the way back?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[timeOday]

That scene of the crew pushing the car back to the garage is the main thing I remember from the episode, too. That was a cheap shot. But if it was just misleading, and they didn't explicitly make false claims, I wonder if it is legally actionable.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Tesla has improved the recharge time, it's still hours long. Tesla is just trying to distract from that fundamental fact - despite the fact it's marketed as a sports-car, it's not suited to track use. Even if people have no plans on taking it to the track, it's allure is tarnished by that fact.

Its true for Tesla Roadster, but not all electric cars now on the market. Both Mitsubishi MiEV and Nissan Leaf can take fast charge in 15-30 mins from a Level III fast charger. None of these are worth taking to the track though :(

The point that i am trying to make, is that battery technology has been capable of fast charge cycles for a while now, especially with LiFePO chemistries. Its the charging infrastructure that needs to catch up.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Belisarivs]

The Ford GT and the Ferrari 599 are both road-legal cars.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[aliquis]

Your mom is a racing driver?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[arikol]

not only that, but in track use you are likely to have a higher average speed than 55 miles an hour, meaning that your time of playing around is mighty limited if you don't actually live ON the track. Driving there and home again is a no-go. Heck, only being able to drive on the track for just around 50 minutes would suck! The fuel sucking monsters like the Ford GT can be refueled in minutes, the Tesla takes hours (and hours and hours)

I hope alternative fuels get worked out so that they become usable, but so far they're far off.
Tesla's biggest problem, IMO, is that they are really selling the car as something it's not. As a runabout with Elise handling it may work (a second or third car for taking scenic but short rides on country roads). As a sportscar it's not so brilliant. Heck, it might be beaten by a bicycle in a cross country race...

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Golden_Rider]

when you ran out of fuel in the other cars, you took a few minutes to fill up and could go back out. The Tesla, on the other hand, was done for the day as it took something like 12 hours to recharge

An issue, yes, an insurmountable issue, no, and an issue that was only in the minds of the Top Gear hosts rather than reality.

Running out of charge and pushing the car to the shop was a stunt, a hoax, it was fake, neither car ran out of charge.

I like watching most of the Top Gear shows but I expect them to flog cars not their egos and stubborn pride.

They never claimed the car DID run out of charge, as in "why is it suddenly not moving anymore". The exact words from the film were "we calculated that on our track it would run out after 55 miles". And that number came from the Tesla technicians themselves (see the linked article). Yes, they showed the car stopped on the track, maybe a cheap shot to show "this is what WOULD have happened", but nobody from Top Gear stated that a car actually stopped on the track - neither due to a flat battery, nor due to the overheated engine. Which does not change the fact that a.) one car's battery was not enough to do all the filming, they had to switch to the second car while the first one was recharging b.) the brakes on one car broke (just a sensor apparently, but a normal customer would have had to drive to the shop to get it fixed) and c.) on one car, the engine was overheating so that you could only drive at low speed. I see nothing faked there. All they said was true.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Some say that her cookies are 50% carbon fiber.

All we know is that she's called the Stig's Mom.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[twidarkling]

Actually, I figure it'd be more like getting gas at a full-service station. Attendant pops your hood, swaps a cell or two, and you pay for the power charge. Only as a bonus, if you're not driving a ton, you can just fill-er-up at home, or while you're at work, if you've got a spot with an outlet.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Kaboom13]

If you watch Top Gear for responsible journalism, you are doing it wrong. This same show recently did a comparative review of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, and a Mercedes Benz, but the Bentley was actually a Yugo, because Bentley didn't loan them the real car. It's an entertainment show. They had a point to make, that once you ran the batteries down on a Tesla roadster, you are stuck until it has time to recharge, which takes several hours. It's the biggest fundamental limitation of electric cars. It's what keeps me from wanting to purchase one, that's for sure. The fact that the car did not actually run out of juice during the limited time they were filming doesn't make it any less of a legit complaint. Filming for a series like Top Gear has a very tight schedule, especially filming on the track because you are limited to a narrow window when the sun is in the right spot to get the shots you want. So they faked it, the same way their races are fake (you don't think it's odd they somehow have cameramen in just the right places everytime? How every race comes down to a close finish?) It's television.

Tesla is full of shit, because instead of addressing the fact that what Top Gear said is true, they are trying to cover it up by claiming the means Top Gear used to say it are wrong. They took their car to a show that uses dramatics and hyperbole to make their points, and they are surprised that's what they got? I saw the episode when it came out and thought it was much more positive then I would have expected.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[arikol]

Yeah, and the Tesla battery pack weighs around 450 kilos (about 1000lbs). And costs U$ 36000 (yes, that's 36 thousand US dollars)
Unless there was some sort of lease system and an automatic quick change system (park your car over the sensor, battery packs get changed) then changing battery packs is not a viable option.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[arikol]

true dat
as I wrote above, 450 kg, USD 36.000

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Add to this the fact that the review was 100% track based, it wasn't accurate as to point that many of these cars will become daily drivers which never see the track.

Have you ever seen Top Gear? They review sports cars, supercars and hot hatchbacks. They review them by putting them around their own circuit.

The Tesla is marketed as a sports car. They treated it as a sports car. Boo hoo for Tesla: it can drive like one, but the battery is out of juice at 55 miles if you do. As others have pointed out, that's not all that bad for a sports car: traditional cars run out of fuel around that figure, too. The difference is, as Top Gear rightly pointed out, is that with a traditional car you fill up in a couple of minutes, while with a Tesla you give up for the day and wait 6-12 hours for it to charge.

Everything about the review was fair an accurate. The 55 mile range figure even came from Tesla themselves! This is just sour grapes.

P.S: The ability to refuel quickly is why Top Gear like hydrogen. All the benefits of petroleum cars with none of the downsides of current battery electrics.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Computershack]

I love Top Gear, but the fact that the cast brings their personal agendas to admonish alternative energy cars is a turn-off.

So watch the fucking dead boring Yank version of Top Gear where the presenters and programme makers are so shit scared of being sued every show is basically a commercial for the cars on display.

Personally I'll stick to our British version. If I want to watch a fucking advert, I'll change to the Audi Channel.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[MimeticLie]

I'm sorry, but yes it did. Remember that shot that showed them pushing the car into the warehouse? It happens about about 5 minutes in. They push it into the warehouse to recharge it. The impression I got at the time (and the one that many people got, see The Guardian) was that it ran out of power. Not so, according to Clarkson:

We never said once that the car had run out of power. The car had to be pushed into the warehouse because you are not allowed to drive cars into a building.

Ok, so in what other cases has the show used that shot? Oh wait, they haven't. They were clearly implying it was out of power. Top Gear never explicitly lied in the piece, but they made things appear to be different from what actually happened and then let the viewers make the logical assumption themselves. I don't mind that the challenges are scripted, but I expected some degree of truth from their actual reviews.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[thynk]

I imagine if you have the means to buy a $100k electric sports car, the extra battery pack cost isn't going to be something you have to figure out how to finance.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[ildon]

>Add to this the fact that the review was 100% track based, it wasn't accurate as to point that many of these cars will become daily drivers which never see the track.

During the review, Clarkson mentions that a trip from the south of England to the north of Scotland (a realistic trip for an Englishman) would take over 72 hours if you had to charge from a wall socket. The trip itself is ~12 hrs at most if you don't have to stop, but because it's over 700 miles, you have to charge it at least 4 times, taking ~16 hrs from a wall socket (as there are no fancy charging stations along the route, and even then you're still talking about many hours per charge). This is using Tesla's value of 200 miles per charge. Even if a gas powered car could only go 60 miles per tank, it'd still finish in ~16 hrs, including time taken to find a gas station off the main road and fill up eleven times.

And that is the main thrust of their problem with the car. One which Tesla simply has no defense for.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[ildon]

The "S" in Model S is for "sedan".

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla may be taking the "false light" approach to defamation. Even if the statement is technically true, if a reasonable person would interpret them based on the circumsance to be defamatory, then they basically are. An example is someone telling another "I saw Eve call Amy a slut," while leaving out the detail that this was during the school play, in order to make it so that person does not like Eve. The statement is technically true but the context and malice make it a tort.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

This same show recently did a comparative review of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, and a Mercedes Benz, but the Bentley was actually a Yugo, because Bentley didn't loan them the real car.

Were you at all tricked into thinking the Yugo was really a Bentley?

Now, compare to the number of people who see the TopGear episode in question and think the Tesla "ran out of juice".

They had the opportunity to stick to the facts (where was Captain Slow?) and still make a good show.
Hell, BOTH of the cars Tesla delivered needed repairs.
Instead they had to fabricate the break-down scene, ruining an otherwise good commentary on the issues with EVs.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

You both entirely miss the point. The 55-mile claim has nothing to do with it. They showed the car "dying" and then pushed it back to the hangar. It didn't die...it was a "dramatization" and they didn't bother to mention that little detail. When you show a car breaking down, say "uh-oh" into the camera, and then push it home...when it's working just fine...that's not an accurate representation.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[BillX]

It's fun to bash Yanks and all, but are you kidding? In the US, the onus is on the plaintiff to prove a statement was defamatory, not the defendant to prove that it wasn't; also, truth is an absolute defense against a defamation claim. Not so in the UK, with England being known as "the libel capital of the world".

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but Top Gear not being "responsible journalism" is not an acceptable excuse for them out-and-out lying in their depiction of the car "dying." You can tell that a Yugo isn't a Bently; it's an obvious joke. But the only reasonable belief you could have after watching the Tesla piece is that the car died on the track, unexpectedly, during testing. Which didn't happen.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

or while you're at work, if you've got a spot with an outlet.

Cannot use it for your handicapped car as Steve Jobs has taken that spot!

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time you go and buy a car, feel free to tip your salesman 36% because obviously you have the means.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

All they said was true.

True and as far as I see nothing so embarrassing. Tracks push the cars to the limit and things break. Tracks are full of mechanics, shops, and parts for that. It's testing the limits, pushing it, in controlled conditions. Tracks are for that. Street driving is quite another reality, nobody's racing the car like that on a daily basis on the streets, but the car and knowledge about the car become improved by the track testing.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[cforciea]

There is a huge difference between needing to pull someplace and stop to recharge and randomly running out of battery and having to push your car to a garage, though. There was an additional implication that your battery is going to run out unexpectedly, and that's the real killer.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[kimvette]

Top Gear's tests cover the real-world driving conditions of very few people. Sure, there are people who flog exotic and sportscars on the street and people who have been to the fun side of 185mph, but it doesn't reflect the the expectations of 99.5% of the driving population (except maybe in Germany and Italy), so based on the people criticizing Top Gear, why bother watching the show at all?

That show shows what cars are capable under very demanding driving conditions - as in driving the car flat out. I have a car that would achieve 33mpg on the highway and 27mpg combined under normal driving conditions (with the stock eprom - and that includes Boston-area rush hour traffic on that parking lot Route 128 that we jokingly call a highway) or 26-27 on the highway and 19-23 mpg combined (tuner eprom custom programmed based on OBD data logs plus a few ECM hacks) but over 180 it would be well under 10mpg. That means the range would be maybe 100-150 miles and if that were reported it would not be untrue, even if the real-world range is 375-400 miles.

When was the last time you saw Top Gear give a Consumer Reports review of a car and report long-term real-world fuel economy under commuter-style driving conditions? That Tesla is making a big deal of this is frigging ridiculous. Having said that, I look forward to the day I see one stuck with a dead battery in the middle of Route 128 or Route 93 and hope I have my camera with me when that happens. :-D

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I always lol at people who say "if you can afford blah, then blahblah's price shouldn't even concern you". $36k is a pretty penny even if you're paying $100k for a car. For that money, you could have bought a $136k car ;)

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[chebucto]

They didn't say "this car ran out of charge", but they showed the car stopping on the track, accompanied by the sound of the engine dying... they heavily implied it and it is disingenuous and weasely to pretend they didn't mean to show the car running out of charge.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla is just trying to distract from that fundamental fact - despite the fact it's marketed as a sports-car, it's not suited to track use. Even if people have no plans on taking it to the track, it's allure is tarnished by that fact.

{{cough cough}} De Lorean {{cough cough}}

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I drove my 911 past a Tesla roadster on my commute to work the other day. It was black, and I thought it was a Lotus Elise at first, but then realized it was too big and, well, the logo. His top was down.

My top does not go down, because my car goes to the track. And at the moment of passing him on the road, I also knew that I would not be passing him on the track, but his car would not last long enough at the track to make it worthwhile.

And so it goes. And for a buck nine (the cost of a T-Roadster) you can score a 911 GT3 and play in the big leagues.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Ihmhi]

Yeah, okay. The Tesla would be horrible if you're going to do a road trip in excess of its range. You're right, Tesla has no defense for that.

The thing is, you just don't need that sort of range for everyday use. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average American travels only 29 miles a day. Even at the 55 mile range, that's almost twice as much as is needed.

One of my good friends (and a lot of his friends) are really, really into cars. He's barely 30 and he's been through almost 20 cars - buying, building, rebuilding, tuning, trading, etc. At any one point, he has always owned two cars. No racer or car enthusiast worth their salt would take a drift car, rally car, or racing car out on the street for every day use. Hell, on a drift car alone, you have (expensive) custom suspension work, high quality tires, and perhaps even a custom ECU. Right now, my buddy owns a Skyline R32 and a '86 Corolla. The R32 is on the road maybe an hour a week at most. The '86 is his Daily (the term they use for their everyday use cars).

Would it be a good idea to take a Viper or a Ferrari grocery shopping? Come on now.

Electric cars will not be the be-all, end-all for at least 10 years. However, they will make fantastic daily cars. If you want to take a long-term trip, then you could rent or borrow a regular gasoline-powered vehicle. Actually, that might not even be necessary, considering a study shows that the average American household owns 2.28 cars. You could very easily have one electric and one gasoline car and you'd still be doing a lot to help the environment.

How many road trips or long car drives have involved both cars the average family owns? Typically they'd take the minivan or van or what have you for maximum passenger capacity and cargo storage. Ditto on grocery shopping.

If Tesla had the money to advertise, I think perhaps they should go with an appeal to the facts. After all I've said here, can anyone give me a good reason why owning an electric car with at least a 50 mile range on a day's charge would be a bad idea?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[JoeMerchant]

I like watching most of the Top Gear shows but I expect them to flog cars not their egos and stubborn pride.

I've only watched a handful of TopGear episodes in the past few years, but they ALL seemed to focus on flogging the host's egos and pride.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to miss the point: you don't require one additional battery pack. At 100 mph and 55 miles/pack, you're going to burn through two battery packs per hour. Assuming the 12-hour recharge time is anywhere near accurate, each battery pack is usable only once per day.

Which gives the following price tag:
$100k for the first 30 minutes of fun per day
$36k for every additional 30 minutes

Which means that if you intend to spend more than 90 minutes on the racetrack, the price of the car doubles.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[JoeMerchant]

I consider it an act of "electrochemical empathy" that they did not run the battery so flat that the car would not move to make their point. Whether the battery was in-fact dead or not is irrelevant, they certainly could have run it flat, everybody knows that.

I find it reprehensible that Tesla is using the court system for free PR, and if I were the judge, I would fine them punative court costs to the approximate amount of the PR value they have received. Even when they win on appeal, it would hopefully discourage others from duplicating their stunt.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[nosferatu1001]

They werent allowed to drive the car into the warehouse.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Nerull]

If you're circuit racing and can't afford to compete - the situation these tests involve - maybe you shouldn't be there.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[timeOday]

Hey, I thought we were talking about racing here! You know how much do you think this little Ferrari-on-Ferrari fender bender cost? Even absent any mishaps, you're looking at about $1000 for a weekend of tires alone.

But seriously (outside of racing) the idea is not for everybody to own their own packs - check out Better Place Tesla has said the S will be compatible. Admittedly the fact it "can be done" isn't really the point, until there's one on our near your commute route.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[loosescrews]

Maybe.
I am not familiar enough with racing rules, but it seems to me that it might be possible to just swap out the battery pack in a similar amount of time to refueling. Many new electric cars, including the Tesla Model S, have swappable batteries. While it would likely be prohibitively expensive for a home user to have sever batteries, it would likely be in the scope of a racing budget.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[TheLink]

Meh, if you're that rich, and wanted to race Teslas around you wouldn't be wasting your time and money on extra battery packs.

You'd waste your money on extra Tesla cars. When one stops working for whatever reason, just hop into the next one.

I think some people have no clue on how to be rich properly. Just give me a billion or two and I'll show you how it's done ;).

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, silly economical endurance cars!

Now take the Bugatti Veyron. It can reach a top speed of 253 miles per hour. It would run out of gas in 12 minutes at that speed, and it would wear out the tires in 15 minutes -- after going only about 50 miles.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything I've ever heard says they don't fake the races. they do design them to hopefully be close, and they do go back over the route for all the pickup shots the next day, but the races themselves are not faked.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[ildon]

So what is your point, exactly? I'd argue that people have 2.28 cars because they have 2 adults and one child over 16, all of whom must use their cars in parallel (thus diminishing or destroying the theoretical benefit of having one electric and one gas powered car), but then I'd be playing into your completely tangential argument that doesn't have shit to do with this case specifically pertaining to Top Gear and the usefulness of the Tesla as a "super car".

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The end result is that stupidity is clearly not painful enough. These top gear people should clearly have accidentally suicided already.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fun being a thirteen year old dreamer, isn't it?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

or maybe some kind of swap-and-go system?
you know. like various places have with gas cylinders.
where you just drop off your empty one and pick up a full one.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the reporting seems to focus on claim it would only go 55 miles. As far as track cars go, that's pretty good. The Ford GT would only go about 60 before it would empty it's tank. A series earlier, they figured a Ferrari 599 only got 1.7 miles per gallon on the track.

Isn't this the same series that demonstrated a Ferrari could get better mileage than a Prius? Their point was that mileage depends not just on the vehicle but also on how you drive it. When you drive any car to its maximum acceleration, including the Prius, it gets horrible mileage (of course). When you drive the Ferrari with the same acceleration as the Prius, it is just loafing along, and actually got better mileage. I thought that was an excellent episode and really drove home the point that how you drive is very important for the efficiency you get. Hopefully no one was stupid enough to think they were panning the Prius.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Ihmhi]

So what is your point, exactly?

Alright then, I'll explain it as best as I am able. My point is that the Tesla may be bad for long ranges, but that is irrelevant for the most part as long range driving is not necessary for your everyday, average use. As for being used as a supercar, the great great great etc. grandparent post

shows pretty well that the Tesla has comparable "mileage", as it were, to cars that would go on a track. It's only flaw is its inability to refuel quickly, but that could be solved by swapping out to the backup car and changing batteries while one is out on the track.

I'd argue that people have 2.28 cars because they have 2 adults and one child over 16, all of whom must use their cars in parallel

Valid, and probably true.

(thus diminishing or destroying the theoretical benefit of having one electric and one gas powered car)

Not true. No matter how you cut it, it's still one less gas car on the roads that is fit for daily use. It's still a net gain. And what are the odds that both (or more) family members are going to need each of the individual cars at the same time for a long-distance road trip? I'd imagine that if you're going that far, you're either going by yourself or with your whole family.

but then I'd be playing into your completely tangential argument that doesn't have shit to do with this case specifically pertaining to Top Gear and the usefulness of the Tesla as a "super car".

You're projecting a bit, aren't you? You're right in that my argument has nothing to do with the usefulness of the Tesla as a super car. It is, however, entirely relevant to your post, which I'll quote below and break down from there.

During the review, Clarkson mentions that a trip from the south of England to the north of Scotland (a realistic trip for an Englishman) would take over 72 hours if you had to charge from a wall socket. The trip itself is ~12 hrs at most if you don't have to stop, but because it's over 700 miles, you have to charge it at least 4 times, taking ~16 hrs from a wall socket (as there are no fancy charging stations along the route, and even then you're still talking about many hours per charge). This is using Tesla's value of 200 miles per charge. Even if a gas powered car could only go 60 miles per tank, it'd still finish in ~16 hrs, including time taken to find a gas station off the main road and fill up eleven times.

You're the one who brought up how it was impractical for long-distance trips, but long distance trips are not what most electric cars on the market are suited for. Saying that an electric car is bad for long distance trips is like saying a bicycle is bad for crossing the ocean or an airplane is useless for space travel.

And that is the main thrust of their problem with the car. One which Tesla simply has no defense for.

You're quite right. Tesla has no adequate defense for their car's inability to go long ranges, just as a bicycle company has no defense for their inability to cross large bodies of water and an airplane company has no defense for not being able to break orbit without stalling.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Brakes. It was a fuse that blew which stopped the power brakes from working. The brakes themselves would work normal but would take more force to actuate. Still, even without that fuse, the brakes meet European safety standards. So technically a person wouldn't *have* to get it fixed nor would you *have* to go to a shop to fix it. Unless you can't change a fuse. Which I doubt.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[WelshRarebit]

If you watch Top Gear for responsible journalism, you are doing it wrong.

Gotta love how top gear apologists alternate between "the review was accurate" and "if you wanted accuracy, why did you watch 'top gear'?" seamlessly whenever the situation requires.

Personally, I'm glad Tesla is taking it to Top Gear, those disingenuous fucks need to be put in their place for their tabloid-level bullshit.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[shway]

My Tesla Roadster can fully recharge in 3.5 hours. I am not sure where the 16 hour Top Gear claim comes from. I don't understand why Top Gear had to exaggerate it. 3.5 hours is likely damning enough for a track car.

Also the "dramatization" of the car running out of power is not my experience with my Roadster. It doesn't suddenly stop and then require people to push it. Alarms go off and power is reduced a long time ahead of running out. It goes slower but does not stop. You can also then put it into "Range" mode which allows you to drain the battery beyond what is normally allowed to allow you to limp to an electrical outlet. Also not required to exaggerate the facts - the reality would have been bad enough to show I would think without the lame footage of the car being pushed.

So, Tesla has a sports car which does not make for a great track car. And Top Gear exaggerated the facts to make it look worse than it really was. I am not sure what Top Gear gained from their exaggerations. And I am not sure what Tesla will gain from their libel suit.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[shway]

Top Gear was spot on about the real world implications - refueling time is one area electrics need to improve to be viable replacements, as opposed to short trip around town, vehicles.

I disagree with this... partially. I agree with Top Gear that the Tesla Roadster does not make a great track car. Even though they greatly exaggerated the recharge time, the true recharge time still makes the Roadster a poor track car, and a poor long road trip car.

But I take some exception to the "real world implications" and the "short trip around town" is all that the Roadster is good for. I commute greater than 100 miles a day in my Roadster, and frequently get more than 200 miles at freeway speeds in it (longer if I am not on the freeway). It was plenty good for replacing my Mercedes as my commute car -- far beyond a "short trip around town" - but admittedly also not great for trips > 200 miles. It is a fantastic car for my purposes... and I think for many people. Just not for the track.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

For someone who can afford a Tesla, and a private track to race it on, it might be practical.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only flaw is its inability to refuel quickly, but that could be solved by swapping out to the backup car and changing batteries while one is out on the track.

That is an utterly preposterous "solution" and you should be ashamed of yourself. Yes, Top Gear may be able to arrange to have two Tesla Roadsters on hand on the same day, so they could just "swap out" the dead one, but what about everyone else? Should they buy two?

Top Gear quite rightly pointed out that the Roadster, like every other EV ever made to date, has one massive, deal breaking flaw: the massive amount of time it takes to recharge (particularly the ratio of time to charge v's driving time). That's one hell of a flaw, and one which quite rightly puts people off EV's. Perhaps Tesla should withdraw the lawsuit and invest the money they would have wasted on trying to solve that problem, instead?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Falconhell]

911 the ugliest most overated car in the world! Looks like soemone dropped a large brick on a Volkswagon Beetle.

I would rather a Tesla anyday!

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[HungryHobo]

"They never claimed the car DID run out of charge"

they showed it rolling to a stop on the track, then being pushed into the shed.
Later they claimed to not have any working cars because that one was charging.

neither due to a flat battery, nor due to the overheated engine.

To quote from the episode as the other car rolls to a stop.
"Oh, I don't believe this, the motor's overheating"

a.) one car's battery was not enough to do all the filming, they had to switch to the second car while the first one was recharging

and there's the nub, it never did run out, they could have kept filming but they pretended it ran flat.

and according to the logs in the cars:"At all times, there was at least one Roadster at the ready."

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Tuoqui]

Unless you're planning a cross country trip the 40-80 mile range on most cars is sufficient for day to day driving.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I would rather a Tesla anyday!

For the price of a tesla I would rather have an Aston Martin. Or for the 1/3 the price of the tesla a Lotus Elise.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Top Gear's tests cover the real-world driving conditions of very few people.

Top Gear also pointed out that the most important factor for fuel economy is how you drive your vehicle. They demonstrated this by comparing a Prius's fuel economy to that of a non-hybrid (I believe an M3 or M5...) driving at the same pace. And guess what- the Prius lost in the fuel economy challenge.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[u38cg]

Point one, it's a sports car. They reviewed it the same way they'd review any other sports car. Point two, yes, they do occasionally do high mileage challenges - they got an Audi 6 from London to Edinburgh and back again on a single tank, some 800 miles.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[HornWumpus]

Watch the rest of the show.

Nobody would want to race that pig of a car. It corners like a Cadillac Coupe Deville on bald tires. 1000lb battery pack.

If they did race it they would have to replace the batteries while still almost new or they would all lose to the people that did.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[HornWumpus]

Watch the whole show.

Charge time is hardly it's only flaw.

It's main driving flaw is that it's an overweight pig that corners like _shit_. It's no super car. It's not even a Mustang, much less a 'vette or Viper. Whatever a 'supercar' is the Tesla Roadster clearly is not one.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Sabriel]

The exact narration from the film was "But then..." (shot of surprised driver eyeing car instrumentation etc, saying "oh") (shots of car losing speed and coming to a halt) (mixed with exaggerated sound of car losing power) "... although Tesla say it'll do two hundred miles we worked out that on our track it would run out after just fifty five miles... and if it does run out it's not a quick job to charge it up again" (mixed with shots of car being pushed into some kind of hangar).

If I said "I never stated your car would explode on the track" but the video accompanying my non-statement had your car apparently exploding on the track, what would your opinion of my truthfulness be?

I like Top Gear, I know they like to take the mickey out of cars, and the Tesla does have its cons - taking hours to recharge is one of them - but there's also how they finished that segment: (sad/serious-sounding music and narration) "What we have here then is an astonishing technical achievement... the first electric car that you might actually want to buy... it's just a shame that in the real world... it doesn't seem to work."

Of course then there's the very next piece of dialogue after segueing back to the studio: "... and I guess once they've made a few of them they will get better at the reliability." Top Gear drove back and forth across the line so much I'm not sure where they finished.

TLDR: Top Gear came dangerously close to rear-ending the law, maybe they did but I'm not a lawyer; in any case I can't blame Top Gear for Tesla's bad luck in having both their test cars develop problems on a show that loves to bash the faults in cars let alone in exotic new ones!

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[HornWumpus]

If it had Elise handling that would be fine. The 1Klb battery pack ruined that though. It handles like a pig.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[jackherer]

"When was the last time you saw Top Gear give a Consumer Reports review of a car"

In the early nineties.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Only takes 45minutes to recharge the batteries in the Model S.
http://www.teslamotors.com/models/specs

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as the races go, do you really think they don't have enough cameras or vehicles to follow all three of them? They travel with a caravan of loaded Range Rovers on essentially everything they do outside the studio.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Belisarivs]

My guess is that they weren't exaggerating it, but didn't have access to the specialized wall charger. Using the mobile charger, according to Tesla's own website, can take nearly 48 hours using the most basic wall plug, and 6 hours using the heftiest. I think it's reasonable to assume that Top Gear didn't rewire their garage just for a test-drive of one car.

And both cars broke before they were able to fully drain them. They weren't pushing a working car into the garage, but a broken one. They didn't film them running out of electricity because neither of the cars lasted long enough to get to that point. However, they wanted to address the important point of the drawbacks of a pure-electrical sports car, so they had to use the footage they had.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

5 mins is a tad longer than your average pit-stop.

You're right about the smaller packs, though.
I've contemplated a DIY conversion, but the weight is a killer.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Also it was that episode, or another 'electric episode', in which they reviewed a fuel-cell and said that Hydrogen would be the energy carrier of the future for electric cars... not lithium ion batteries. Reasons stated were practicality, ease of refueling, and performance.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Ihmhi]

It's only flaw is its inability to refuel quickly, but that could be solved by swapping out to the backup car and changing batteries while one is out on the track.

That is an utterly preposterous "solution" and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Wow, you could run for politics; you're an expert at completely misrepresenting a position and taking quotes out of context.

If it wasn't clear, swapping out batteries was a solution presented for potential circuit use.

A lot of racing organizations have a backup car (also called a spare car or test car; you can read about it a bit here). This makes it very feasible for circuit racing in that respect.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Yes, Top Gear may be able to arrange to have two Tesla Roadsters on hand on the same day, so they could just "swap out" the dead one, but what about everyone else? Should they buy two?

If it were used in a racing context? Yes. Damn near every racing organization has two cars per team in the event that one were damaged beyond easy repair.

Top Gear quite rightly pointed out that the Roadster, like every other EV ever made to date, has one massive, deal breaking flaw: the massive amount of time it takes to recharge (particularly the ratio of time to charge v's driving time). That's one hell of a flaw, and one which quite rightly puts people off EV's.

As I said above, it's a flaw in the same way a bike can't float over the ocean. It doesn't matter for everyday use. Most of the time people won't even run the battery halfway down.

Perhaps Tesla should withdraw the lawsuit and invest the money they would have wasted on trying to solve that problem, instead?

Fast charging is an engineering problem that will be very difficult to figure out. Tesla is a car company, not a battery company. I suspect the lawsuit is just to get in the headlines anyway.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Ihmhi]

I've seen that particular episode as I've watched most of Top Gear here and there. I really do love the show; it's like Mythbusters for cars in the sense that it may not always be scientifically rigorous but it's damn entertaining and still mostly informative.

It has poor cornering compared to the car it was based off of, the Lotus Elise. Disclaimer: I'm still learning a lot about how cars work on the level beyond "fill up the gas tank, change the wiper fluid, and rotate the tires". That said, couldn't the poor cornering be compensated for with adjustments in wheel alignment as well as changing out the suspension and tires? I think they run almost all of the cars on the track out of the box, so yeah it does have pretty poor cornering straight from the factory but I don't see why it couldn't be mostly fixed with aftermarket stuff.

It'd be a hell of a drag racer, though, you'd have to admit to that. It has a hell of a lot of torque.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[cynyr]

or a Subaru for the winter.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[kale77in]

to recharge, which takes several hours

Sixteen hours was the figure they gave for a "normal 13A socket"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXfV2hw_2Xo @ 5:10

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[ZosX]

Oh? Anything else they have blatantly lied about that you know? I find their show more entertaining than informative, but then again, I really know nothing about driving Ferraris and what that is like. Do you? They make their biases blatantly obvious so you at least know where they are coming from and they are not apologists, but what do you know, your whole post reeks of a troll anyways.....

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Because both cars broke down before they made it 55 miles? And you think this is a good thing?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[ZosX]

An 80 mile range on an electric is abysmal if you ask me. You can't even drive somewhere that is 1/2 hour away without worrying about getting home ok. That would leave many people unable to even get from say their suburb to town and back comfortably. Something with that low of a range is for really local commutes and that's it. How ultimately useful is that? And what do you do when you run out? This technology really isn't ready for mass consumption. I'm sure people will love their electrics until they get stuck somewhere. When instant recharge batteries start hitting prime time we will have something that can compete with the sheer availability and convenience of gas.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[hitmark]

Iirc, physics is in the way. If one want to refuel a Tesla like one refuel a gasoline car one would be pushing some serious Watts. And unless one is operating at superconducting efficiency, that will result in a whole lot of heat.

I think it is more likely that we humans adapt our lifestyles, we have done so in the past plenty of times, then try to find a replacement for the gasoline car that can slot in neatly without notice. Perhaps something like high speed rail or similar for long distance travel, and renting a EV at the destination to get around the place.

Yes, it removes the freedom of just diving in the car and go. But then that only really came about with the car. Before then at best one could jump on a horse and ride out of there, and that was only really viable in places with a lot of open ground...

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[hitmark]

seems to me the recharge issue is two-fold.

1. long distance where one is likely to run the batteries low and really notice the long recharge times.

2. lack of available and standardize recharge sockets next to parking spots at present, so that one can not set the car to charge while hanging out with friends.

first is unlikely to be fixed any time soon. I suspect we are more likely to change travel habits then fix the issue. The second however is more a indication of how quickly the car have become taken for granted rather then a luxury, and so how transport planning assumes that a significant percentage of the population will have cars.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla has advertised the car the way Top Gear tested it.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares what some "larger" point was. The *REAL* point is that they represented one of the Tesla cars as having run out of batteries in their tests, even when they didn't. And dismissing Tesla's complaints with

>If you watch Top Gear for responsible journalism, you are doing it wrong.

is horseshit as far as a libel suit is concerned. Tesla definitely has grounds.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[FatLittleMonkey]

Later they claimed to not have any working cars because that one was charging. [...] it never did run out, they could have kept filming but they pretended it ran flat.

They didn't say it was flat. Remember the test, Tesla vs Lotus? They started the race, the first Tesla had problems with its brakes, as the Tesla techs worked on it, they brought out the second fully charged Tesla, refuelled the Lotus, and started again. The second Tesla had engine problems, so it wasn't a fair test. By then the first Tesla's brakes would have been fixed, but it had already been driven and so needed to be topped up. For the Lotus, that took two minutes; for the Tesla...

Later, using the data from the two cars, the Tesla boffins worked out that the range would have been 55 miles, so Top Gear included that in the voice-over.

The footage exaggerates the problems, and clearly many people thought the Tesla's were flat, but this is Top Gear! It's not EuroNCAP. Their point remains, the quoted "ranges" for electric cars are misleading, and deliberately so. With liquid fuel, you run out, you stop and fill up. With electrics, you're finished for the day. What's the "range" of the Lotus? You could drive the Lotus across a continent, stopping only for fuel and meals and driver changes. The Tesla, 211 miles a day.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Something like this perhaps: http://www.betterplace.com/the-solution ?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

It corners like a Cadillac Coupe Deville on bald tires.

That should be “Coupe de Ville”.

Typo? Or stupidity?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[abhi_beckert]

A lot of the reporting seems to focus on claim it would only go 55 miles. As far as track cars go, that's pretty good.

Except a Ford GT will fill the tank up in 2 minutes. The Tesla takes many hours to fill up. That was the real reason they pointed out the lack of range.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Registered Coward v2]

I think it is more likely that we humans adapt our lifestyles, we have done so in the past plenty of times, then try to find a replacement for the gasoline car that can slot in neatly without notice.

I agree, but history shows that we don't adapt until either a solution comes along that solves a problem with current solutions and/or is more convenient; or we are forced to change.

Perhaps something like high speed rail or similar for long distance travel, and renting a EV at the destination to get around the place.

Yes, it removes the freedom of just diving in the car and go. But then that only really came about with the car. Before then at best one could jump on a horse and ride out of there, and that was only really viable in places with a lot of open ground...

Which is the challenge - we enjoy the mobility the internal combustion engine offers. We really don't care about what powers the car, as long as it offers the performance - speed, range, cost that we want. EV's will eventually do that, IMHO.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[drinkypoo]

Tesla is full of shit, because instead of addressing the fact that what Top Gear said is true, they are trying to cover it up by claiming the means Top Gear used to say it are wrong. They took their car to a show that uses dramatics and hyperbole to make their points, and they are surprised that's what they got? I saw the episode when it came out and thought it was much more positive then I would have expected.

It's not about being surprised. It's about fraud. It's about leading the viewers to believe some negative thing had happened when in fact it had not. That's fraud no matter how you slice it. This isn't about surprise. Dramatizations are supposed to dramatize actual events, not something they made up to make the car look worse on behalf of their corporate masters.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

cue better place... http://www.betterplace.com/the-solution-switch-stations

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Are you watching the same show the rest of us are?

It's an entertainment show, as one of the later comments remark. You want accurate reporting? Read Consumer Reports.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

45 minutes with enough energy.
They calculated 12 hours for our house power lines. Public rechargers will have a bigger energy output... 45 minutes. Top gear are a bunch of snobs that only like v12 engines...

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've watched most Top Gear shows you should be well aware there are times when they're joking, when what you see on screen is obviously some kind of prank.
For example when one of the hosts dies in a crash and all they say is "If you wanna be the next reviewer, call BBC".
Or with the not-so-old review of the Reliant Robin: In the last shot Clarkson and the car end up drowned in a river.

Just a hint: most of the time the last shot of their films is a pretty obvious joke, the Tesla-pushing action was no exception.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn the difference between a race car and a sports car. Their test makes as much sense as taxying planes down highways and therefore claiming all planes are slow and unfit for use. That's exactly what top gear did.

Top gears' statements are are misleading and purposely liable as one can be while using lawyers in an attempt to lie and misrepresent reality.

Tesla never claims to provide a race car. In fact, they specifically claim to offer a sporty commuter. I can be a complete fucking idiot too and create endless tests which prove all vehicles absolutely such and only fucktards would bother with them. Yes, I would purposely misrepresent the vehicles use to justify my points. Yes that would make me a lying idiot. Yes, that would make me exactly like top gear and their supporters of this matter.

Combine that with their hatrid of all things american plus all things electric, its pretty clear their entire intent is to lie and misrepresent to the full extent they believe the law will allow.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, idiot on slashdot wishes to get excitind to find a driver, who can read, stuck on the side of the road.

All the irrational stupidity and massive ignorance is refreshing to remind us that everyone has an asshole...I mean an opinion; regardless of the fact they are too stupid to legitimately have one.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[elrous0]

What is this "full-service station" and "Attendant" you speak of?

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[RobbieThe1st]

Wait a second. According to the wikipedia page, it can be recharged from empty in less than /4/ hours... with a 70A, 240V connector(Figure less than 2 in the case of TopGear's example). You simply can't -get- any more than ~1600W from a wall socket; If you want speed, you need a much bigger circuit.

I think we can probably get better charging rates, but it'll probably require a decent radiator/cooling system(Like the Tesla has) -and- a 100A+ circuit, if not 150A.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

"Top Gear was spot on about the real world implications - refueling time is one area electrics need to improve to be viable replacements, as opposed to short trip around town, vehicles."

One more thing to note. While most of the electric power in the world still comes from coal or other fossil fuels the electric car will never take off. It is still subject to the same price fluctuation as any gas powered auto. Also the H2O cell cars are not the answer either. The main way they make the fuel is using oil. At the end of the day no one is even close to solving the fuel problem. Don't get me wrong it is good that people are looking do something about it. They have a long way to go. At this time they are giving the consumer the same product except it has a fancy new package.

So Tesla has no real case. Their cars are priced over 100k and the average consumer can't afford to buy one. The people that can afford one will not be deterred by 55 mile track time or 12 hour recharge time. This car will mostly sell only to car collectors. Tesla will not be around for the long hall.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Builder]

Oddly enough, there are still countries where it is unlawful for you to fill your own vehicle tank. Every time I go to SA on holiday, I'm normally out of the car and heading for the pumps while a horde of attendants bear down on me before I remember I'm not allowed to fuel my rental car :)

That only tends to happen once per trip before I start remembering :)

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[TRRosen]

Not going to be discussed in court as Tesla has made no claims in their filing that they are false.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[TRRosen]

Dude Top gear is in Britain. Britain averages 1.1 cars per household. This is why in Britain a car that can do only 90% of your driving is useless. Also the vast majority of british homes do not have garages either again making electrics a poor choice there

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[HungryHobo]

"Remember the test"

I do, apparently you don't, I suggest watching it again. There was nothing about fair tests, they pretended that it was all down to flat batteries.

And apparently you were taken in too, "for the Tesla..." it would have taken a while, they again distorted it massively by talking about how long it would take to charge"with this 13 amp plug" when you'd no more charge the thing off a 13 amp plug than you'd run an electric shower or electric cooker off a 13 amp plug.
Using the kind of connection that you'd actually charge a car with it would charge in about the same time that a laptop takes to charge.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Several posters on here really should have watched the Youtube video of the TG Tesla roadster review before sounding off - as they quote TG as saying things they did not.

Also .... TG may be an entertainment programme but it does not fake its races ( Not true I know for some of it's more jokey jounts ( eg the caravan accidentally catching fire ). To quote ( roughly ) a TG team member ( James May IIRC ) "We do the race in real time and report that ( in-car cameras ) and then "go back" over the race later and redo scenes for extra shots".

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[Geminii]

Camera? So what's the visual difference between a Tesla car out of juice and a regular car out of gas, when they're both stuck on the side of the road?

OK, from a practical point, with a regular car, you can call for a taxi to drive you to a gas station, buy a gas can and a gallon of gas, and have the taxi drive you back to your car. If you have your phone with you. Out in the middle of nowhere, a taxi might take quite a while to turn up. Same for roadside service, although they might be able to bring some gas with them and save a trip.

For an electric car, there's no reason roadside service couldn't use its own hybrid vehicle with a heavy-duty charger cable to zap you enough charge to make it to the nearest electrical outlet. Or you might have a hybrid car yourself, in which case you can lug a gas can like anyone else, while still getting near-Tesla performance and MPG-equivalents in regular use.

Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point

[peawormsworth]

Except a Ford GT will fill the tank up in 2 minutes. The Tesla takes many hours to fill up. That was the real reason they pointed out the lack of range.

The good news is that after you purchase your Tesla, you effectively have your own gas (fuel) station via a plug in the garage. So although it may take longer to refuel, it may actual reduce the time you take to refill it. If your daily usage is covered by the battery range, then the refuelling time is effectively reduced to zero. As you will only need mere few seconds to connect the plug to your Tesla after you park at home. Electric refuelling will continue unattended. This is significantly less refuelling time than would be required for any gasoline vehicle... which I remind you would be MUCH longer then 2 minutes in any real world usage (unless you got a pit crew of your own). It would be interesting if anyone knows the statistics for how long people spend on average per month stopping at gas stations. I would like to see how much real time I will save in my life by moving to electric.

British Greasers

[Doc Ruby]

The Top Gear presenters hate diesel, for example, because it doesn't have as much zooming power as gasoline. They are car guys. They love big, noisy engines more than they love the weather. Since they're in England I can understand their preference for climate change, no matter that they're rolling the dice on it.

FWIW, I see no sign that Top Gear ever mentioned BP ("British Petroleum") in connection with its poisoning the Gulf of "Mexico" last year, but plenty of evidence of BP's ongoing sponsorship of that show. Teslas compete with BP's product line.

The 50s greasers loved their hot rods, and hated the hippies who started Earth Day.

Re:British Greasers

[Fujisawa Sensei]

IIRC they liked the diesel Corolla better than the Prius.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they are just stooges for the BP Man, man. Corporate shills trying to mind numb the populace so they don't see what is really happening to the world. Um no, TG has recommended diesel versions of some vehicles when it makes economic sense and they did mention the BP disaster, they told the US to basically suck it.

PS Everyone hates hippies because they are terminally stupid and smell awful.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish. They've "reviewed" plenty of TDi cars over the year, and raced them too. The reality is most diesels are dull old man cars, whereas top gear concentrates on fast sport and supercars. And yes, they did take the piss out of BP's mess. You're a deluded fool if you think BP are behind Tesla's shit. The reality is their car is rubbish, and they tried to sell a rich boy's toy in the middle of a global recession. Had they built it from scratch and not used an old Lotus design, then tripled the price, they may have head some credibility. As it is, they're just a bunch of weenies crying because they have a failed product.

If fools like you thing Tesla got a bad "review", just wait until the court case is over and Clarkson does a real number on them. 350 million views are going to be pointing the finger at Telsa and laughing.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

British Petroleum? It's Beyond Petroleum and it's roughly equally British and American owned. It's an international company.

As for your insinuation that Top Gear have bias and don't criticise others due to sponsorship, i guess you have no idea how the independence of the BBC works.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they did. The Diesel Corolla has better fuel economy, and is actually greener to produce than the Prius. Hell, the Range Rover is greener to manufacturer and operate over its life than the Prius is to manufacture.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

TG cracked enough BP jokes at the time. Thing is, the spill really wasn't all that of of a deal outside of the US. BP is British in name and not really all that much else, so no-one in Britain really cares about what they do. Why would they? Also, the oil platform didn't belong to BP in the first place, so that's even further removed from anyone in Britain really caring.

If you believed some of the news reports in the US you'd have thought that the Queen herself blew up the rig. Seriously, it was an environmental (and economic) disaster, with several companies involved but not nearly big enough to expect a British TV car show to do a full hour special on it. If they did that for every oil screw up then they'd never actually talk about cars.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC they liked the diesel Corolla better than the Prius.

I think that, in context, it might have the same ringing endorsement of "If you're going to rinse your mouth out with liquefied shit, we liked rabbit shit better than bear shit."

Re:British Greasers

[xMrFishx]

Seeing as Topgear is a BBC production, the show itself doesn't come with sponsorship. The outdoor events, perhaps as they're not run by tax payer's money (see TV License).

Re:British Greasers

[cyber-vandal]

Stick your dumbass Yankee whining up your arse. One word for you: Halliburton.

Re:British Greasers

[Doc Ruby]

Anonymous fool Coward, the issue here is they said the Tesla got only 55 miles on a charge rather than its claimed 200+, based on their "calculations", which are BS. I never said they hadn't reviewed cars. But I've watched the show, where they obviously don't like diesels because they aren't as zoomy as gasoline cars. Which you obviously don't like either, for the same reason. Yet the Tesla is zoomy, and they don't like it either. Though it can't really be because of "55 miles on a charge", because they're not stupid enough to believe their own "calculations" are the reality. It's not because it's
a rich boy's toy in the middle of a global recession", because they love plenty of those, so long as they're gasoline powered.

Where did they "take the piss out of BP's mess"?

The reality is that you and they are oil worshippers. At least they have the courage of their convictions to put their names to their prejudice, unlike you Anonymous Coward.

Re:British Greasers

[Doc Ruby]

Crying "dumbass" is classic Yankee whining, though it's really from Dixie. But thanks for that universally BS logic, that one American oil criminal makes another British one nonexistent.

Re:British Greasers

[Electricity Likes Me]

The "study" reporting that was highly flawed, since it effectively discounted the entire development cost of the Hummer (I've never seen any reports regarding the Range Rover), while including the development cost of the Prius.

Correct it and *oh look* it doesn't add up at all.

Re:British Greasers

[moderators_are_w*nke]

FWIW, I see no sign that Top Gear ever mentioned BP ("British Petroleum") in connection with its poisoning the Gulf of "Mexico" last year, but plenty of evidence of BP's ongoing sponsorship of that show.

Not sure how you managed that. The BBC is publicly funded, paid for by the TV license (mandatory for anyone owning a television in the UK). They do not charge a subscription, nor do they accept advertising including program sponsorship.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous fool Coward, the issue here is they said the Tesla got only 55 miles on a charge rather than its claimed 200+, based on their "calculations", which are BS.

Yes they were BS because they were based on Tesla's calculations.

Re:British Greasers

[Computershack]

I see no sign that Top Gear ever mentioned BP ("British Petroleum") in connection with its poisoning the Gulf of "Mexico" last year, but plenty of evidence of BP's ongoing sponsorship of that show.

Dumb fucking Yank. BP do NOT sponsor the TV show. NOBODY sponsors the TV show. It is fully funded by the British TV Licence payer and the money they make selling the programme around the world. BP sponsor a once a year 3 day long live event held at a car show at the Birmingham NEC.

Re:British Greasers

[Computershack]

BP don't sponsor the TV show you dumb shit. It is the BBC - the programmes are paid for by the TV licence fee and money made selling the programmes overseas.

Re:British Greasers

[Doc Ruby]

If you clicked the link I helpfully included you'd see plenty of sponsorship of Top Gear along the lines you mention.

Re:British Greasers

[cyber-vandal]

Thanks for the original BS logic that because you failed to find Top Gear criticizing BP on Google that there was some conspiracy to protect the shareholders (a large proportion of whom are Americans). You are just a total fuckwit with some ridiculous trans-Atlantic chip on your shoulder. Now do yourself a favour and see if you can actually use Google to look up why BP is not, and has not been for a long time, British Petroleum. That's if you can remove your head from your enormous arse.

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...speaking of dumb shits, I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.

Re:British Greasers

[xMrFishx]

Not convinced a google search result listing attributes to proof. As I said. The live event is an external show, not the tv programme. They aren't really the same thing from the same source. The live event just carries the presenters and brand but not necessarily the blessing of the BBC

Re:British Greasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla made the calculations, idiot

Re:British Greasers

[Carewolf]

If you clicked the link I helpfully included you'd see plenty of sponsorship of Top Gear along the lines you mention.

Of the TV program or of different events outside the TV program?

Sorry. The TV program is not sponsored, and they have made fun of the BP disaster. You are usually pretty well-informed, but on this issue you need to either watch more Top Gear or shut up.

chosen ones holycosters re-invent fake weather

[Anonymous Coward]

the current fake weather is to be re-introduced (by vatanical decree) as the new improved fake weather. several meetings of the royals, holycosters, weapons peddlers, eugenatics etc..., resulted in further plans to kill us all, as it was written, on the georgia stone.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110403/ap_on_hi_te/eu_the_sunshade_option/print

The point I find is the bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Look a normal super car will run out of fuel in around 20 minutes of driving flat out. They also tend to burn through a set of 8 grand tires in the same period of time. Tesla never said it had a range of 200+ miles at it's top speed. The script proved the intention of the episode was to show the limitations of an electric car not to be a fair test of what the Tesla could do. All high end sports cars are tempermental and to varing degrees fragile. The real point is that the car could match cars costing twice as much and that's while hauling around a mass of batteries. The episode was cut together to show the car breaking down and running out of charge constantly which didn't happened. If they wanted to show the limited range Clarkson should have driven from London and tried the make it to Northern Scotland and let it run out of juice. The problem is he knows under normal driving conditions it'd do better than 200 miles and it might actually impress some people. It made for a better coffin nail in electric cars to claim it's true range was 55 miles and not over 200 miles. They also seem to be the only ones making the 55 mile range claim and they never bothered to actually test the range. I always considered the episode biased but I got upset hearing it was mostly scripted ahead of time. As I said in an earlier post it calls into question every review they have ever done.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[uglyduckling]

A normal super car can be refuelled in under 10 minutes. Once it's done its 55 miles, the Tesla needs recharging overnight. That's the issue - as a track car, it's basically useless after the first 20 minutes of driving.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[zippthorne]

Or you, y'know, swap out the batteries. I seem to recall something about that being a planned feature of the Tesla, have they abandoned that idea?

Re:The point I find is the bias

[uglyduckling]

I don't think they are removable at the moment. Apart from anything, the battery packs cost $36,000 so I doubt many cars would be kept with several spares. Interestingly Wikipedia lists the recharge time as about 4 hours, but that still makes the car pretty much useless on the track.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[Golden_Rider]

I don't think they are removable at the moment. Apart from anything, the battery packs cost $36,000 so I doubt many cars would be kept with several spares. Interestingly Wikipedia lists the recharge time as about 4 hours, but that still makes the car pretty much useless on the track.

The recharge time is less than "overnight" if you have a special super extreme power outlet in your garage.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[Electricity Likes Me]

^ This.

The big problem with electric vehicles is that the grid simply isn't designed to dump ~50kWh into a battery pack in 5 minutes - but it can be done over the 20-80% range which batteries in such vehicles get operated at.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[jonbryce]

They have done drives from Lands End to John O'Groats in the past. For example they raced a car against first class mail (Royal Mail won that race). As they comply with speed limits when doing the driving, both cars would get there with pretty much exactly the same road time, bar a small amout of difference in acceleration, but the refueling time for the electric car would be much greater, and it might need to take a longer route to find charging stations along the way.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[Kreigaffe]

that is not something that you or I, the average Joe Schmoe, will ever do on our own. These battery packs are heavy. Think less "swap the battery in my phone" and more "swap the whole engine out in my IC car".

Now, sure, the actual removal and replacement would be easier -- more in and out, less bolts and cables all over -- but the weight? close to the same.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[Mindcontrolled]

On the same note you could have argued against petrol driven cars 100 years ago. Yes, nice idea, but where do you find pharmacies to buy that kerosine from....

Re:The point I find is the bias

[jonbryce]

Petrol and diesel powered cars had not yet been invented 100 years ago, whereas electric cars had been in existence for 83 years at that point. This isn't the new fangled emerging technology a lot of people think it is. It was invented 183 years ago and is now obsolete.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[Cederic]

If they wanted to show the limited range Clarkson should have driven from London and tried the make it to Northern Scotland and let it run out of juice. The problem is he knows under normal driving conditions it'd do better than 200 miles and it might actually impress some people.

London to the north of Scotland? Dream on.

They could get from London to York by driving carefully. There's still a lot of England left before you even reach Scotland, Edinburgh's in the south of the country and York's only halfway to Edinburgh.

They could have demonstrated how fucking useless the car is for travelling from London to Scotland but that would've been a waste of their time, and they actually did use a comparable trip to demonstrate how pointlessly inconvenient another electric car was.

They also seem to be the only ones making the 55 mile range claim and they never bothered to actually test the range. I always considered the episode biased but I got upset hearing it was mostly scripted ahead of time. As I said in an earlier post it calls into question every review they have ever done.

Read the fucking article which addresses all of your concerns. Except for your stupidity - I can see why you've posted anonymously.

Re:The point I find is the bias

[91degrees]

It was quite clear what sort of driving conditions Top Gear was putting the car through. Of course it's not normal driving conditions but a lot of people who want one of these will want to use them on a track.

The car was shown running out of charge. It may not have happened. Are Tesla arguing that this wouldn't have happened had they been running for a few more miles?

Both cars broke down at some point. We didn't see more than that.

If you're planning to drive from London to Scotland, you're not going to go in a Tesla. You might want to try it around a race track. It was made quite clear that that was the situation it was being tested under. They do the same test with every other high performance car. The only thing they don;t usually mention is refuel times because normally that doesn't matter. This time it does so they did,

Re:The point I find is the bias

[CrazyBusError]

Given that several different companies were selling cars in 1911, you might want to revise the claim that 'Petrol and diesel powered cars had not yet been invented 100 years ago'. The first petrol-powered 4 wheeled vehicles appeared in the states in the 1890s.

Calculations are fun!

[Xeranar]

And rarely accurate. At least without relying on the scientific system to justify the positions they hold. I'm not denying that under incredibly lead foot driving the Tesla could be dragged down to 55 miles on the track but the implication is that 55 was a realistic range. Top Gear was trying to imply and quite successfully tied that number to the range fears that people have about electric cars still. Clarkson and Top Gear have an agenda like anybody else, Fifth Gear is more so like Motor Trend, scientific and honest, Top Gear is more like Car and Driver with Clarkson paralleling Yates and his numerous run-ins with environmentalists over the years. This doesn't make them bad people but it makes them irresponsible for doing certain things when they know full well their opinions are firmly set. As a side topic, the Tesla sports car name is "Roadster" and they don't run the car in any track competition as a company. So whoever is declaring that Tesla wants you to use it on the track with confidence is making insinuations about the car that just aren't there.

Re:Calculations are fun!

[kju]

but the implication is that 55 was a realistic range

No it was not. They clearly said, that this would be the range interpolated from their driving test on their track. Anyone who has ever watched this show knows how they drive on their track and that this can't be a realistic range. I vaguely remember the episode and I believe the "on our track" part was even emphasized.

  I don't know your mental capacity, but I am sure that most people got that right.

Re:Calculations are fun!

[Anonymous Coward]

By "interpolated" you implied that the car ran a distance longer than 55 miles, which negates the original statement. Did you mean "extrapolated"?

Re:Calculations are fun!

[Anonymous Coward]

The implication was "based on how the car performed on our track, we say the range is more like 55 miles a charge."

They may have meant to say that it was 55 miles while being driven hard on the track, but the way they said it they made it sound like Tesla was flat-out lying about the 200 mile range.

Regardless of what the film said, I know that the vast majority of viewers thought the car ran out of power on them. Every time someone brings up the Tesla, someone will mention the Top Gear spot and how the car "ran out of power" and they couldn't finish testing it.

As for who will win in court, I have no idea, but there's no doubt that the Top Gear spot hurt public perception of the Tesla.

Re:Calculations are fun!

[arikol]

...and one of the reasons they used their track, and track driving for this range estimate is that the Tesla is marketed as a... wait for it... sports car. Furthermore, the Tesla is based on a VERY popular car used for track days.
The verdict is that the Tesla is not very good at fulfilling its intended purpose and will give an owner who wants to play on a track less than an hours enjoyment, provided that he brings the car to the track on the back of a lorry and takes it out that way too.
So, if the car is driven hard, then range goes down. That's just normal. What makes it so bad for the Tesla is that topping up the tank takes the rest of the day.

Drive to track - 50 miles
Drive from track - 50 miles

That's almost half the Tesla's range at economic driving speeds.
That leaves maybe 25-30 miles of trackday fun.

Drive normally (and normal in a sports car is not te same as normal in a minivan) and range will probably not be 250 miles to begin with. Batteries also degrade pretty fast. All in all, the Tesla is probably great fun, looks great, but isn't even practical as a sports car.

Re:Calculations are fun!

[ildon]

Except that he says it would take "3 days" to drive to the northern end of Scotland from their studios. Given the charge time Clarkson mentioned, that's only possible using the 200 mile range figure from Tesla.

Greater than 55 miles? Just wait a bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it a year or two for its batteries to start crapping out and then its true range will probably be less than fifty-five miles.

There is a much more important quote

[kju]

This: "The second point is that the figure of 55 miles came not from our heads, but from Teslaâ(TM)s boffins in California. They looked at the data from that car and calculated that, driven hard on our track, it would have a range of 55 miles."

So they are suing the BBC over a claim they themselves fed to the Top Gear producers which was only relayed in the show.

Yeah, really, I can see how Top Gear acted in bad faith here. How dare they trust the information from the manufacturer!

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many times have they filmed their crew pushing a petrol car off the track because it eventually ran out of gas?

Re:There is a much more important quote

[RespekMyAthorati]

I have seen the show in question. Clarkson is clearly suggesting that the Tesla ran out of juice before completing the test, and had to be pushed back to the starting point. Neither is true. Most Brits seeing this would just laugh and think "there goes Clarkson again". But, when the show is rebroadcast on BBC America, most Americans wouldn't get it.

I think that part of the problem is a culture clash. Telling outrageous lies is a common form of humor in Britain, and Clarkson is a master. But this kind of humor is not common in the U.S., where people are generally more gullible.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Xelios]

I'd wager none, it would take all of 2 minutes to fill one up with a jerrycan and drive it off the track. I believe that was the point, and it's a valid one isn't it?

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Totenglocke]

I know you're just a troll, but they never said it ran out - they were showing what you'd have to do IF it ran out since you can't just walk to the corner and get a gallon of electricity to carry back with you.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[thomst]

This: "The second point is that the figure of 55 miles came not from our heads, but from Teslaâ(TM)s boffins in California. They looked at the data from that car and calculated that, driven hard on our track, it would have a range of 55 miles."

So they are suing the BBC over a claim they themselves fed to the Top Gear producers which was only relayed in the show.

Yeah, really, I can see how Top Gear acted in bad faith here. How dare they trust the information from the manufacturer!

Absent a transcript of the actual communications between Top Gear and Tesla's "boffins", the substance of the above claim is entirely unclear. It would not surprise me, for instance, to find out that what actually happened was that TG emailed Tesla to ask, "Could your car make it 55 miles on our track?" If Tesla's techs replied, "Sure!" TG could then claim that "Tesla's boffins" gave them a range of 55 miles on their track.

What IS abundantly clear is that TG did NOT themselves drive the Tesla they "tested" on their track until it actually ran out of juice. I think, based on that fact, Tesla has been pretty reasonable in requesting that TG not continue to replay the show in which its purposefully misleading "test" appears to show the car running out of juice and HAVING to be pushed back to the shop. Regardless of TG's spin, they themselves admit that nothing of the sort really happened. It was a bit of scripted snark on TG's part - and deliberately misleading snark, at that.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Clarkson is clearly suggesting that the Tesla ran out of juice before completing the test.

Where? He said it had an estimated track range of 55 miles, and when that happened, they cut to a shot of it being pushed into the garage and talked about charging times. Whether it was actually driven 55 miles and ran out or whether it was staged for TV doesn't change the fact that it's a true statement. If you drive a track car until its fuel tank is bone dry, you'd have to push it too, and don't think that exact scene hasn't made an appearance on Top Gear.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[JoeMerchant]

I have seen the show in question.

Booooo. That's almost as bad as claiming to have read TFA.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to own the car...

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Stevecrox]

How many times have they told us that at top speeds the Veyron runs out of petrol in 12 minutes and the tyres go after 8 minutes. Clarkson loves that car but that particular limitation has been mentioned alot.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[definate]

I know you're just a troll, and you couldn't have missed that the entire reason for the court case, isn't about what they said (though in legal terms that's how its described), and that you couldn't have missed the BILLIONS of replies to this exact same statement, which perfectly address and explain what this case is about.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[sgtrock]

Umm, you clearly don't know Americans as well as you think you do. Top Gear is not exactly regarded as a pristine example of high journalism on this side of the pond, either. It's a popular show because (gasp!) we think it's FUNNY!

Re:There is a much more important quote

[RespekMyAthorati]

Top Gear is not exactly regarded as a pristine example of high journalism on this side of the pond, either.

Which is exactly what I said. Brits laugh, while yanks sue.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[hitmark]

How often do we hear about some politician or celebrity complaining about being quoted out of context?

Hell, it is one of the reasons why journalists get so much hate.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual quote from the show was:
"although Tesla say it will do 200 miles we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles"

The way that Top Gear present it seems to me as if Tesla claim it will do 200 miles but they, Top Gear, know otherwise. And they show footage of it supposedly having run out of charge.

While it's technically true that Tesla say it will do 200 miles under normal conditions, it's deliberately misleading of Top Gear to present it in the way they did. If the figure of 55 miles did come from Telsa then they could have just said e.g. "Tesla say it will do 200 miles in normal road use, although in track use they calculated it will only last 55 miles." And when they claimed it had run out of charge, it hadn't.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[Anonymous Coward]

> I have seen the show in question.

yeah, so have i, it is on YouTube, dozens of times!

Clarkeson say's the car would have run out of juice at 55 miles not that it did.

Re:There is a much more important quote

[sgtrock]

Nice way to selectively quote. Please re-read my post. The word you missed was....?

Hurrah for BBC!

[rogerdugans]

It is great to see the BBC not succumbing to pressure from fools.

I for one would not have been able to use a Tesla as a daily driver once in the last 15 years: between driving to work and travel during the day, 250 miles is not enough range. I would have been stuck someplace I could charge for the night at least half the time. And if anyone tells me I can fully charge an electric car on 120v US standard household current in 30 minutes I will call you a liar at this time in their development.

The cars stopped functioning normally. That means "broken." If you have an internal combustion engined car with 2 of 4 spark plugs fouled and not firing is your car still fine but just operating with reduced power? No. It is broken and needs to be fixed. Next question!

And the brakes were broken, end of story. How easy the fix was is irrelevant: the brakes broke. Done.

As for a previous comment including Motor Trend as an example of "honest" reporting- seriously? That comment alone makes everything else you say suspect by association, man.

If you watch the Top Gear segment remembering who is doing it- an entertainment show that loves fast cars that handle well, you will actually see that they LIKE the car but don't feel it (or any other pure electric) is ready for use by most of the motoring public.
Which is a very accurate assessment.
For the money, a Lotus (which the Tesla was based on) is a far more practical, useful and reliable vehicle and leaves plenty of money left for fuel and purchasing "carbon credits" for those who so desire.
And yes, it goes faster too.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is great to see the BBC not succumbing to pressure from fools

I'm skeptical of the accuracy of anything that happens on Top Gear's "tests"...

Tell me who's more foolish, the skeptic or the sycophant?

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one would not have been able to use a Tesla as a daily driver once in the last 15 years: between driving to work and travel during the day, 250 miles is not enough range.

Good for you, but I'm not sure what your point was there. You drive more than 250 miles a day. Congratulations...that makes you an EXTREME outlier. Even if you are only talking monday-friday, 250 miles/day is more than 65k miles per year. Only a tiny percentage of people drive that much.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Computershack]

I'm skeptical of the accuracy of anything that happens on Top Gear's "tests"...

Halleh-fucking-lujah. A Septic Tank who finally gets the point about the British version of Top Gear. It is an entertainment show, not a factual one. It is not meant to be even remotely serious. All the comments by the Yanks about the British version just serve to illustrate both how stupid and lacking in a sense of humour they actually are.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Totenglocke]

Tell me who's more foolish, the skeptic or the sycophant?

The AC.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me who's more foolish, the skeptic or the sycophant?

The AC.

The poor starving lawyers for Tesla as this is from a show two years ago and they have only got around to dealing with it now. (Is Stan O'Neal their CEO?)

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Mindcontrolled]

You might want to consider a non-retarded lifestyle then. Yep, it takes some work and some self-reflection, but you can do it! Soldier on!

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Firethorn]

I for one would not have been able to use a Tesla as a daily driver once in the last 15 years: between driving to work and travel during the day, 250 miles is not enough range.

Wow... What do you do, and do you realize that the average driving distance in the USA is only 15K miles a year? At 50 weeks/year 5 days a week*, that's 60 miles a day. Or the Roadster having 4x the needed 'average' range. By my calculation - you're driving an estimated 62k miles a year(250*50*5). Or four times the average.

Now, I'm going to flip this on you a bit: You've been hurting from the gasoline prices lately, yes? Pretty much everybody is. Do you realize that if we get like 50% of the city dwellers around the world to switch to something like an EV, that leaves more gasoline at lower prices for you and me? Basically, stop trying to insist that EVs aren't a solution until it's a 100% replacement. Big trucks are generally diesels for very good reasons. Cars are typically gasoline powered for their own reasons. A diesel lawn-mower or weed-eater isn't going to work all that well.

And if anyone tells me I can fully charge an electric car on 120v US standard household current in 30 minutes I will call you a liar at this time in their development.

I think you're arguing the absurd here, do you have any proof of any real EV supporter proposing quick charges off of standard outlets?

Assuming 15A out of a 20A circuit for proper overhead, that's 1.8kwh per hour. Most EVs get around 3 miles to the kwh in normal driving, and 'strong' EVs around 200 miles range. That means a battery size of ~67kwh. At 1.8 kwh/h, that's 37 hours for a full charge. Charging of a regular household outlet is for 'cripple charge' purposes - let it charge for an hour and that's 5 miles of range, hopefully enough to get you home to your dryer outlet (240V@30A) or even your electric range one (240V@50A). Yes, it's 'standard' for US households to be supplied with 240V power. It's just that we do a split phase thing that drops it to 120V for most outlets.

Translation: Electric cars will likely NEVER be routinely charged, much less quick charged, from standard household outlets. Retrofitting in higher power outlets in garages and parking areas is easier than you might think.

*IE they never drive during vacation or weekends

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[rogerdugans]

Or I could quit my job and work for the local Starbucks franchise...
Not gonna do it.

I will stick with a good job that pays well- and an efficient, reliable and usable car for my transportation needs.
And laugh at fools.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Gordonjcp]

You know, not everyone lives in the middle of a city with a Tesco every 100 yards and buses every two minutes. See all the food you just bought in the neat little plastic packet, from the shop that you walked to at the end of your busy little street? Someone grew that. That someone probably has to drive a couple of hundred miles a day at times, trying to keep everything on their farm working properly.

I can show you the fuel receipts, if you like.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[rogerdugans]

I am all for hybrids and fuel cell vehicles.
I am all for electric cars that are appropriate for their stated uses.
I am all for diesel vehicles that do not suck to drive.

As for hurting from gas prices- nobody except the sellers of petroleum products LIKES high fuel costs, but hurting?
Nah, just takes a bigger chunk of the budget is all. Less filet mignon and more hamburg in the menu.

My point about a standard 120v outlet is that if a Tesla owner DOES get stuck with a low charge light in the middle of their travels they are not likely to find a place where it is possible to easily connect to a 240v outlet. 120v is likely all the y would have available and it is not good enough.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Firethorn]

As for hurting from gas prices- nobody except the sellers of petroleum products LIKES high fuel costs, but hurting?

Even the producers of petroleum products don't like high fuel costs, because that spurs conservation, IE they sell less.

My point about a standard 120v outlet is that if a Tesla owner DOES get stuck with a low charge light in the middle of their travels they are not likely to find a place where it is possible to easily connect to a 240v outlet. 120v is likely all the y would have available and it is not good enough.

It was the way you put it. 'TELL ME 120V IS ENOUGH SO I CAN CALL YOU A LIAR!!!' was how I took it.

I'll fully admit - 120V@15-20A isn't ever going to be enough for more than a cripple charge system to get you just far enough to hook up to a proper charger. Thing is, if EV usage spreads, you'll have more and more spots where you can get said proper charge, especially in an EV's natural home: the City.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[Anonymous Coward]

The cars stopped functioning normally. That means "broken." If you have an internal combustion engined car with 2 of 4 spark plugs fouled and not firing is your car still fine but just operating with reduced power? No. It is broken and needs to be fixed. Next question!

And the brakes were broken, end of story. How easy the fix was is irrelevant: the brakes broke. Done.

Telsa's response (from TFA):
Fact: During Top Gear’s drive on the test track, the fuse for the braking system’s electric vacuum pump failed. But the brakes were operational and safe. The result was like driving a car without the convFact: During Top Gear’s drive on the test track, the fuse for the braking system’s electric vacuum pump failed. But the brakes were operational and safe. The result was like driving a car without the convenient power brakes to which we’ve grown accustomed. Tesla’s brakes, both with and without the fuse, must pass all UN ECE safety tests, and they do.enient power brakes to which we’ve grown accustomed. Tesla’s brakes, both with and without the fuse, must pass all UN ECE safety tests, and they do.

Re:Hurrah for BBC!

[jfengel]

I for one would not have been able to use a Tesla as a daily driver once in the last 15 years: between driving to work and travel during the day, 250 miles is not enough range.

I'm sure that Tesla is very sorry to have lost your business. However, as you point out, you are just one person. The average daily commute is closer to 15 miles each way, and a 250 mile range would mean that people could plug in just once a week.

Mind you, this is the sports car version, and it's not really intended as a daily commuting vehicle. Since it's not a race-track vehicle either (due to limited range) I'm not sure what it's for, besides a demonstration piece and penis-extender. It seems to serve both of those jobs quite adequately, though it seems to be Top Gear's job to advise others who are not naturally gifted in the apparatus department on how to win the dick-swinging contest when up against a Tesla owner.

Still, as a way of funding Tesla's future research into a cars for those who are comfortable with the size of their genitalia, it seems to be doing rather well.

thanks you www.alammax.com

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks your for this info
www.alammax.com

that it had actually ran out of charge

[nurb432]

Wait, i remember them saying something along the lines it had to be pushed back into the garage due to a dead battery. Perhaps it was not 'real' but it still eluded to it being.

I know they do things for entertainment and there is a LOT of satire on the show, but i do hope they get their hands slapped for this as i have seen them do similar to others and some people actually take it seriously.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[MimeticLie]

Basically what happened was Clarkson (at the time) admitted that the car hadn't run out of power, the reason they pushed it in was because you aren't allowed to drive cars in their building. Except since they didn't mention that fact in the episode and since they were moving it into the building to recharge, the viewers (you and me included) thought that the battery was dead.

If you'd like the links, they're in my post up thread.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

They were told *by the manufacturer* that it would run out of fuel in 55 miles. Just because it didn't happen is mostly irrelevent, they were told that information by the party that knows (and has vested interest in saying the most optimistic figure they can) where it would run out of juice, which is what was reported. The fact that they staged the filming of the act is merely part of the language and practicalities of making a television programme.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Just watch it.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

I must violently disagree here.

It is not Top Gear that should be slapped. It is anyone who takes it too seriously.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[cOldhandle]

What the hell? You want their "hands slapped" for commiting the grievous sin of satire, in case dumb people mistake the show as some sort of factual consumer guide? Do you work for Tesla?

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Because.. of course.. actual owners of Teslas will never actually run out of charge. Just like actual conventional auto drivers never run out of petrol. Its ludicrous of Top Gear to suggest such an outcome, even if it didn't actually happen on the show.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

They should tell the truth.

Big, fat englishmen push electric car around track during lunch so that they can fit in the electric car after lunch.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is really what Tesla is asking for. It's not the trivial amount of money they care about, it's that they stop rebroadcasting the same scene regularly.

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

get their hands slapped for this ... some people actually take it seriously.

In gods name why do you hope they get their hands slapped? I'm sorry to respond somewhat agressively here but it's exactly this type of reasoning that is turning all of us into idiots. The only reason it didn't run out of juice is beceause they stopped before they would otherwise have. The number off 55 miles is a number given by the Tesla engineers. They justs didn't want to run the car for another hour to reach that point. Makes sense to me and the outcome would have been no different.

Basically this is a complaint about how a fact (being that it runs out after 55 Miles) was visualized. They are not disputing the outcome itself. This is litigation to silence factually correct criticism, no more, no less and worst of all you seem to be encouraging that. People can think for themselves, especially if the facts are presented factually correct. We should encourage that and not believing everything shown on TV beceause it's court approved

Re:that it had actually ran out of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Clarkson picked and chose his words very carefully. He only stated that the calculated range was 55 miles, and if the user ran out of juice, he would have to push it as shown. It's the same as saying "if my Camaro were to run out of gas, I'd have to push it like this" without actually running a Camaro out of gas.

Unless you are paying very close attention, the viewer sees the implication that the car did run out. Why Clarkson was trying so hard to make the Roadster look bad during a review is anybody's guess. Entertainment, I suppose.

Fast chargers, anyone ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla made a mistake of not including the only deployed Level 3 fast charger option in their car. Otherwise they could fill up in 15-30min.

http://www.chademo.com/ has over 600 fast chargers installed, most of them in Japan. Both Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi MiEV can charge from these. A couple of US companies are licensing the tech for demo/fleet uses.

The rest of the world has not yet managed to come up with a workable standard for international fast charging.

Once Level 3 standard gets worked out worldwide, and new EV models get equipped with the connector, taking EVs to the track becomes entirely viable.

A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Joao]

A little disclaimer: I'm an environmentalist, I work for an international environmental organization, bicycle commuter, haven't owned a car in over 15 years, and spend my vacations volunteering at animal rescue facilities.

I've been reading a lot of "the Top Gear guys are petrolheads who only care about big petrol engines" and such comments. One thing a lot of people seem to be forgetting about this case is that, on the same episode where they tested the Tesla, they also tested the Honda Civic Electric Fuel Cell. And guess what? They had nothing but high praise for the Honda.

One may argue that they didn't push the Honda nearly as hard as they pushed the Tesla, but that is because they were holding each car to the candle of what each manufacturer claims. Honda claims their car is just a Honda Civic. Reliable user-friendly everyday transportation. So that's how it was tested it. Just like every other reliable user-friendly everyday transportation vehicle they test on the show. The Tesla on the other hand describes their car as a supercar. So they did the tests the same way they do all other supercars. On the track at high speeds. The Honda succeeded as reliable user-friendly everyday transportation. Yet the Tesla failed miserably as a supercar. That is all there is to it.

So no, this has nothing to do with Clarkson being a petrolhead. Yes, he is a petrohead and an ass. Vey funny, but an ass nevertheless. I highly disagree with most of his opinions about just about anything. But I think both tests were spot on.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[MimeticLie]

The car has a fuel tank, needs fill ups, and runs on combustion. If the Top Gear folks (or just Clarkson, really) are biased, the Clarity is much closer to what they already know.

And in terms of helping the environment, fuel cell cars are essentially useless. If you're in the very small portion of the population that lives near a fueling station, great, more power to you. Most of us don't. However, we do all have electricity in our homes. We've spent too long sitting on our hands wrt. climate change and adopting greener technologies. We need to stop pining for the next big development (the one that's always 10/15 years away) and start adopting the technology we have now.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Kreigaffe]

I think you think electric cars are far greener than reality would suggest.

never mind that you're dismissing a large portion of the population that may need to drive more than a few dozen miles in a day, or who need the car to operate at an odd schedule that would not allow for full charging (let's say someone works 8pm-4am, and then car is used to take kids to school, grocery shopping every several days -- pattern of use that simply doesn't work with an electric).

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Anonymous Coward]

A little disclaimer: I'm an environmentalist, I work for an international environmental organization, bicycle commuter, haven't owned a car in over 15 years, and spend my vacations volunteering at animal rescue facilities.

I was going to reply, but the orphans need me...

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[linuxpyro]

Well, I'm not sure that the roadster really fits into that niche anyway. I mean, it's essentially a toy for rich people. It's a great way to start developing the technology, as some of those people will want to adopt it. I'm not sure that that person would fit your description.

And with hydrogen, it really depends on where the hydrogen comes from. If it's from electrolysis, it's still derived from electricity, which could be useful or might not be. (Though there are other sources too, of course.)

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Anonymous Coward]

Fag - Jeremy Clarkson

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[WelshRarebit]

The Honda succeeded as reliable user-friendly everyday transportation. Yet the Tesla failed miserably as a supercar. That is all there is to it.

I can test drive and buy a Tesla today in something like 30 different cities around the world. Where can I buy a Honda FCX? Oh that's right, individual consumers cant really buy them at all. What was that about the FCX's "reliable every day transportation"? As far as I can see, the FCX fails at being an actual car, period.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Anonymous Coward]

Clarkson hates American cars, not electric ones. He thinks they are poorly build, ugly and handle poorly.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Anonymous Coward]

A little disclaimer: I'm an environmentalist, I work for an international environmental organization, bicycle commuter, haven't owned a car in over 15 years, and spend my vacations volunteering at animal rescue facilities.

And this is relevant to the rest of your post, how?

Ahh, yes, it isn't, *but*, it does let your stroke your massive, self-righteous ego.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[vac65]

And the electricity is produced how? Especially in US? Burning what? Oil, gas, coal? Or is only wind and solar. Don't remember. Please en-light me...

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[virtualXTC]

Disclaimer: I'm not an environmentalist, I just disdain sensational journalism.

I sincerely disagree with our supposed tree-hugging friend. There was definitely an anti-carbon free energy theme to the show, try starting right after they slam the Tesla for having a long charge time at 5m30s:

"Before people green people say that's a price worth paying, lets not forget where that electric comes form"
- cue ominous music -
-- cut to a picture of a nuclear power plant--
- switch to car parked in-front of an extremely low powered PERSPONAL wind powered electric generator -
"... [condescending remarks]... to charge a Tezla (sic) from something like that would take 600 hours. That's twenty-five days, and that's assuming it's windy, which... it isn't"

Why the ominous music around Nuclear power? Despite Fukushima, it's still safer / cleaner than coal / petrol.
Who in there right mind would hook the Tesla up to a personal wind based generator?! The wind is suppose to augment regular electricity use. The personal generator is just a way to off set one's emissions by trickling power to the grid while the wind is blowing. Given the music and the number crunching, the show clearly is trying to claim that the Tesla isn.'t a green alternative. Whether or not they spent the time to do this for the Honda is irrelevant. The whole excerpt was entirely irrelevant and unnecessary, yet some how this anti-EV pro-oil propaganda message managed to find it's way into a TV program that's funded by British Taxpayers. Simply outrageous!

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Joao]

Fuel cell cars do not run on combustion. I suggest you read on what a fuel-cell it. It generates electricity via a chemical process, not via a generator.

And yes, the infrastructure to support it isn't there yet. But neither was the infrastructure for cell phones just a couple of decades ago. Doesn't mean the idea should be abandoned.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Joao]

The infrastructure for fuel-cell vehicles isn't ready. But the concept makes far more sense than battery-powered electric cars that need several hours of recharging.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[captainpanic]

[...]The Tesla on the other hand describes their car as a supercar. So they did the tests the same way they do all other supercars. On the track at high speeds. The Honda succeeded as reliable user-friendly everyday transportation. Yet the Tesla failed miserably as a supercar.

I remember that it had a really good acceleration, which made up for the poor cornering. The result was that it was pretty fast actually.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Anonymous Coward]

A Tesla driven responsibly and carefully will do 210miles on a single charge. If you want a car that has to be driven responsibly, why the hell are you buying a Tesla?

It's probably not an insurmountable problem. A recharge time of 80% charge in 30 mins (I had a laptop that used to do 80% in 45 mins so it's not implausible) would fix it. Then I could jump in my tesla, drive for 2-3 hours stopping in a quick charge service station, drink a coffee and recharge the car. Then I'm good to carry on. Until then the Tesla is a short range fun car, a long trip takes planning. It's like being in the year 2000 and trying to make sure your hotel has internet access. Then it was a pain, now it's assumed.

The current car exists to tell you that a future with only electric cars can still have fun cars. It's also to start scoping out the practical problems of running electric cars day to day.

Re:A lop of people seem to be forgetting something

[Anonymous Coward]

45% coal, 23% LNG, 20% nuclear, 1% oil and rest renewable, with the non-renewables getting a benefit from the economy of scale (in efficiency and cost) of the huge burners used, is much better than all non-renewable burned in small "plants" (engines) at low efficiency. Fuel cells might deal with the inefficiency issue, but you'd need the infrastructure change to properly use them.

Watch it for yourself and see what is said...

[Captain Nectarine]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXfV2hw_2Xo

Re:Watch it for yourself and see what is said...

[KnownIssues]

His reaction while driving the Tesla during minutes 1 and 2--Tesla could not have paid for better advertising. Genuine shocked thrill. It's good I didn't see this video when the news about Tesla vs. Top Gear first came out because Tesla got a few moments sympathy out of me. Now they just look like sore-winner assholes.

Oh please...

[billybob_jcv]

The Tesla is a "statement car" - it is intended to show that electric power is not just for smug twits who enjoy the smell of their own farts.

Apparently, the people at Tesla have spent too much time with their noses firmly planted between their own butt cheeks.

Re:Oh please...

[rogerdugans]

Seconded.

Look- Tesla motors has done a great job, folks but they have to realize that the car is a niche vehicle and the niche it fits in doesn't exist for a LOT of people.
And if they continue to try to "prove" the car is suitable for mainstream transportation (as it appears they are attempting) then they will be made fun of.
Get over it and get over yourselves.

Top Gear Some important information

[vorlich]

especially for Tesla.
Top Gear is a comedy show. It contains British Satire. They rip the pish out of stuff. This is a national sport in which the British have no equal (re: Gervais Golden Globes http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=1Ryr5EqURkQ).
And why not? It's funny!
Oh for the benefits of a classical education.

The broken brakes would make it fail MOT

[dutchwhizzman]

In the UK you have a annual safety test for motor vehicles, called the MOT. No vacuum powered brakes when the car is supposed to have them, is a failure. No vacuum powered brakes and no way to fix them is a tow-away for the AA. If you get in an accident with a car that has broken vacuum powered brakes and you subsequently crash into something, you are liable. How much more clear would you like the term "broken" defined? It doesn't matter that in an emergency case you could still stop the car, by using excessive force on the pedal, it's technically, legally and for insurance purposes considered broken.

Re:The broken brakes would make it fail MOT

[jo_ham]

If by "no way to fix them" you mean "change the fuse", then yes.

They certainly are broken if the fuse fails, but they were certainly not irreparably broken - it was fixed on the day, as mentioned in the article, with a change of fuse.

Re:The broken brakes would make it fail MOT

[rogerdugans]

Yes it was.
And how many people have wives, mothers, sisters or even brothers-in-law that would be completely unable to find the fuse never mind change one?

The brakes broke, end of story.

Re:The broken brakes would make it fail MOT

[jo_ham]

Right, so when these "wive, mothers, sisters and brothers-in-law" call out the AA, they show up and say.... "oh, the fuse is blown, I'll have to tow you home because I cannot fix that at the roadside".

OP's quote:

No vacuum powered brakes and no way to fix them is a tow-away for the AA.

I said that changing the fuse was what was needed (from the article). The instructions for changing fuses are in the car's manual (certainly every car I've ever owned), and would also be a trivial fix for the AA (at least, I'd hope so).

So, they stopped working, but not to the point that the AA would need to tow the car, as the OP was insinuating. There are different levels of "broken" - some easier to fix than others. This level of "broken" was an easily fixed one, either by the end user or in about 5 minutes by the AA at the roadside (including the time it takes to rummage around in his box of bits for the right size of fuse).

Re:The broken brakes would make it fail MOT

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking idiot. I wouldn't send it back on the road with just a repalced fuse. I'd have to check it and see what caused the fuse to blow.

Re:The broken brakes would make it fail MOT

[ferongr]

Fuses are meant as failsafes so faulty equipment doesn't catch on fire (or to protect the powersupply/battery from that faulty equipment). The fact that a fuse was blown under normal conditions indicates a deeper problem in the devices it powers.

I would definitely NOT trust equipment after it blew a fuse out of the ordinary. Especially safety equipment on a car.

Here's the video

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/electric-shocker

RE: Top Gear Fights Back At Tesla

[Anonymous Coward]

On a totally unrelated subject, is it cheaper for a company these days to sue someone, and create a self-sustaining marketing campaign that keeps on giving or have a decent marketing & sales department

PR that tesla want

[sqldr]

I shagged Tesla's mum in the butt.

It's a sports car, not a family car

[Roger W Moore]

Top Gear's tests cover the real-world driving conditions of very few people. Sure, there are people who flog exotic and sportscars on the street...

Hang on, isn't the Tesla model they tested supposed to be an exotic sports car? I agree that this is not how most people would drive a car but most people don't own a seriously expensive sports car, let alone a car capable of being on the fun side of 185 mph (they might get it there but I doubt it wil be much fun!). It does not seem unreasonable to presume that someone who spends a serious amount of money on a car like this might want to take it to a track and put it through its paces. This is not a normal car so why assume normal driving conditions?

Re:It's a sports car, not a family car

[cloudmaster]

Because everyone is exactly the same everywhere under all circumstances. Now pardon me while I go drive my 534 flywheel horsepower truck to the grocery store - we're out of cranberry juice.

55 miles on a tank is not unheard of...

[Anonymous Coward]

My mini cooper track car gets 4.2 mpg on the track with high octane fuel. It has a 13.1 gallon tank. Doing the math it's 55.02 miles on a full tank. So not really a big deal that the tesla gets EXACTLY the same on a track.

Of course when not tracking, I get 27mpg on 91 octane just driving normally on the street.

Re:55 miles on a tank is not unheard of...

[abhi_beckert]

Now lets put that in perspective.

Mini Cooper: race for an hour or so, then you fill up again and race for another hour or so, then fill up again and drive home.

Tesla: race for an hour or so, then you leave your car in the racetrack's garage to charge overnight. Take a taxi home, and then take a taxi back to the racetrack in the morning so you can pick up your car.

Ouch.

Electric "fuel" far more expensive

[Roger W Moore]

Now, I'm going to flip this on you a bit: You've been hurting from the gasoline prices lately, yes? Pretty much everybody is.

Sorry to burst your bubble but, according to wikipedia the battery pack for the Tesla model in question costs $36k and has a lifetime of 100k miles which is 36 cents/mile travelled to which you can add about 3 cents/mile in electricity costs (86kWh per full charge at 200 miles/charge and assume 7 cents/kWh). Current US petrol prices seem to be about $3.55 per US gallon so for a petrol car to have the same fuel costs as the Tesla it would need to have a fuel consumption worse than 9.1 miles per gallon...which is about comparable to a hummer.

So, unless the cost of petrol gets very significantly higher (by x3-4) or the cost of batteries drops considerably the fuel cost of an electric vehicle is significantly higher than a petrol driven one. I wish that were not the case but sadly, for now, it is.

Re:Electric "fuel" far more expensive

[vac65]

Yup. And everybody forgets the impact on electric distribution networks, if in 2 to 4 years no more than 25% of cars becomes EV. The Mother of all Blackouts... :D LOL

Re:Electric "fuel" far more expensive

[Firethorn]

So, unless the cost of petrol gets very significantly higher (by x3-4) or the cost of batteries drops considerably the fuel cost of an electric vehicle is significantly higher than a petrol driven one. I wish that were not the case but sadly, for now, it is.

You make a very good point, and it's part of the reason I haven't bought one yet. Heck, it's part of the spreadsheet I built for determining the costs and break even points for various alternate and multi-fuel vehicles.

Of course, part of the cost of the Tesla's battery is because it's a premium LiIon pack. It's actually only 53-56 kwh, but the roadster is light for a EV. At 200 miles a charge, 100k miles is 500 charges. Cell phone batteries typically last for more charges, and they're the same technology. The 100k is 'worst case' - it's what they guarantee, not how long it can last in reality. Then there's that they're offering to sell you a replacement battery in the future for $12k now. That would indeed make an EV's per mile cost including battery depreciation about that as a gasoline vehicle, assuming that gas goes up a tad more. They're hoping to produce LFP(lithium iron phosphate) cells that have lifespans in the decades and half the cost compared to LiIon cells- they just start out with ~10% less capacity, but after year 3-4 they end up having more due to the slower degradation.

I'll note that there are separate reasons for buying an EV in an inner city type environment - local emissions, for example. Heck, my understanding today is that many low-emission vehicles are still fairly dirty until they warm up - and in many cases they're getting warmed up about the time the drivers are shutting them off, for inner city trips, at least.

Vac65 - most charging for EVs is anticipated to be 'off-peak' - which puts less strain on the electrical grid than you'd think. The grid has to be built to handle the peak, after all.

Oh, and very rough figuring - on average, a family that replaces it's gasoline vehicles with electric ones will see a 50% increase in their electricity usage. Probably more than 50% for people like me without AC and non-electric water heating, less than 50% for those with electric water heating and heavy usage of AC.

Re:Electric "fuel" far more expensive

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

<quote><p>Now, I'm going to flip this on you a bit: You've been hurting from the gasoline prices lately, yes? Pretty much everybody is.</p></quote>

<p>
Sorry to burst your bubble but, according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster">wikipedia</a> the battery pack for the Tesla model in question costs $36k and has a lifetime of 100k miles which is 36 cents/mile travelled to which you can add about 3 cents/mile in electricity costs (86kWh per full charge at 200 miles/charge and assume 7 cents/kWh). Current US petrol prices seem to be <a href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html">about $3.55 per US gallon</a> so for a petrol car to have the same fuel costs as the Tesla it would need to have a fuel consumption worse than 9.1 miles per gallon...which is about comparable to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummer_H2#Fuel_economy">a hummer</a>.

So, unless the cost of petrol gets very significantly higher (by x3-4) or the cost of batteries drops considerably the fuel cost of an electric vehicle is significantly higher than a petrol driven one. I wish that were not the case but sadly, for now, it is.</p></quote>

Roger is right on the mark. Class post Mr!

how far does it go?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question "How far does it go?" should have a two word answer in the following format: "a number" followed by a "distance unit, e.g. miles". And no asterisks or superscripts. Here is an acceptable example.

Q: How far does it go?
A: 30 miles

Not a single manufacturer gives a short answer. Instead, one gets three pages of legally framed narratives.
I think that manufacturers and their models should be dismissed if the answer to the above question is longer than two words.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

It was NOT a typo. It is a BLATANT MISSPELLING. Fool.

Battery swapping

[flurdy]

A claim whose figure was from Tesla's staff. Should be interesting court.

Top Gear was spot on about the real world implications - refueling time is one area electrics need to improve to be viable replacements, as opposed to short trip around town, vehicles.

Which is why ideas like Better place have come about. They suggest you have battery swap stations instead.

Unfortunately that requires a lot of new stations and standardised batteries. Tesla would no doubt always require high performance batteries, which may never be available at all these stations...

Top gear is not a car show.

[leuk_he]

It is a show about 3 man that make witty comments about cars. They like big "bad" cars. Fuel economy is mentioned shortly and then they go on racing again. Since they happen to get all super cars (Economically a ridicul concept) they can make make or break a super car with a single line. Super cars have to give out a feeling, being a economical car is not one of them.

Having them test a economical car is like giving them caravans. They love them. .... to chrash them just for one whitty line in the interview that follows.

Worst thing that could happen now: let them test the 2011 model Tesla. I am sure they will find a way to burn them without even driving.

Hairyfeet's "GREATEST HITS" (lmao - NOT!)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject-line above, & these "prime examples" below via links to the originals of WHY hairyfeet shouldn't have gone to "ITT Tech" (because he clearly doesn't even understand how HOSTS files benefit you for added security, speed, and even to a degree extra 'anonymity' online):

---

Static vs. Dynamic (lol, "according to hairyfeet"):

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35681060

---

Only thing constantly changing's your "math", 3x ++ or more no less:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35686444

and

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35686566

as well as this:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35686630

---

Hairyfeet's single solutions FAILURES? See inside:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690260

---

Your sources vs. mine (AND myself, a source on it):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690328

---

Lastly, as to your LIBEL of myself (w/ arstech):

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35668740

---

The defeat of hairyfeet by APK videos:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690536

---

They say it all, & usually vs. hairyfeet's own words quoted! I wouldn't pay him too much heed, especially after you read the above b.s., lies, changing figures, & even LIBEL of others that hairyfeet likes to do. After all - he's from "ITT Tech" (student).

APK

P.S.=> Personally though - because hairyfeet is only a "techie"? I suspect he doesn't want people to know about HOSTS files' added LAYERED SECURITY benefits to the end-user: Why? Because if users stop getting so much "malware-in-general" which layered security (and HOSTS) give you added layered protection against, he's out money...apk

Hairyfeet's "GREATEST HITS" (lol - NOT!)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject-line above, & these "prime examples" below via links to the originals of WHY hairyfeet shouldn't have gone to "ITT Tech" (because he clearly doesn't even understand how HOSTS files benefit you for added security, speed, and even to a degree extra 'anonymity' online):

---

Static vs. Dynamic (lol, "according to hairyfeet"):

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35681060

---

Hairyfeet's single solutions SECURITY FAILURES? See inside:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690260

---

Your sources on "security" vs. mine (actual security people) (AND myself, a source on it):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690328

---

Only thing constantly changing's your "math", 3x ++ or more no less:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35686444

and

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35686566

as well as this:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35686630

---

Lastly, as to your LIBEL of myself (w/ arstech):

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35668740

---

The defeat of hairyfeet by APK (video analogy - hilarious, BUT, apt):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690536

---

They say it all, & usually vs. hairyfeet's own words quoted! I wouldn't pay him too much heed, especially after you read the above b.s., lies, changing figures, & even LIBEL of others that hairyfeet likes to do. After all - he's from "ITT Tech" (student).

APK

P.S.=> Personally though - because hairyfeet is only a "techie"? I suspect he doesn't want people to know about HOSTS files' added LAYERED SECURITY benefits to the end-user: Why? Because if users stop getting so much "malware-in-general" which layered security (and HOSTS) give you added layered protection against, he's out money...apk