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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."
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.
Huh?
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.
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!
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXfV2hw_2Xo
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.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.