5 ms·

They did a road trip in a BMW i3 which is basically a commute car. And their point does stand - if you like cars and road trips enough to watch GT or Top Gear y

by taurath 10y ago

They did a road trip in a BMW i3 which is basically a commute car. And their point does stand - if you like cars and road trips enough to watch GT or Top Gear you probably care a lot about being able to make road trips.

bcrescimanno 10y ago
As a former Tesla owner and current i3 owner, I really don't understand why the concept of the road trip is constantly held up as the standard by which electric cars should be judged. I really don't understand why people are optimizing for their once a year use case rather than their daily use case. Unless it's your lifestyle, road trips are the exception, not the rule. For my family, it means owning my i3 for commuting and my wife's Toyota Sienna for family trips. For others, it could mean renting a car for a week or two when you take a long road trip. As a fun note: As a BMW i3 owner, BWM offers me up to 2 weeks per year of complimentary gasoline car rental for road trips.
- taurath 10y ago
  In the case of GT, roadtripping is the lifestyle that they are showing nearly every single episode. I road trip 5-6 times a year myself over 1000 miles, and for that reason I wouldn't personally want to go a full electric car. Nice about the rental car though! The GT people have standards which don't really apply to most people. Most of their shows involve cars that most people will never afford.
  - bcrescimanno 10y ago
    As a huge fan of both Top Gear and Grand Tour, I absolutely understand. My comment was less about their assessment and more about how the concept of the road trip comes up every time electric cars are discussed. Maybe I'm wrong in this assumption as it's based on purely anecdotal observation from my own interactions with people, your 5-6 times a year is an outlier.
    - taurath 10y ago
      True! I don't often think about it but growing up in a very rural area a car has meant freedom to go anywhere. Everyone I know with an electric car loves them!
- stuckagain 10y ago
  If you own two cars, isn't it actually you who have arranged your lifestyle in order to accommodate the electric one? And I feel kinda sad for anyone who feels that going more than 60 miles from home happens only once a year.
  - bcrescimanno 10y ago
    My comment was only meant to discuss people optimizing for the edge case (road trips) vs the common case (daily driving). There will always be people for whom long-distance driving is not the edge case. There's a pretty big assumption that travel beyond 60 miles (or 110 in the case of my i3) requires a car. There are a lot of ways to travel that don't involve driving. I travel frequently; it's almost always by air.
- dmode 10y ago
  I have a Tesla Model S 60 (lowest battery capacity). I just completed a 800 mile road trip over the weekend. Bay Area to San Diego and back. Zero issues.
- ajtaylor 10y ago
  I have a VW eGolf and a Toyota Sienna for exactly the same reasons (plus the wife really, really wanted a minivan).
maxsilver 10y ago
> if you like cars and road trips enough to watch GT or Top Gear you probably care a lot about being able to make road trips. I don't know about that. They do it just to shit on EV's. (Disclaimer: I own an EV, but also like and watch Grand Tour). It's an entertainment show. They're not about objective analysis. It's the crank-call-radio-morning-show model applied to cars. Their complaints about the i3 was low range (needing multiple recharges) and weak power (when range extended). They could have used something like a Vauxhall Ampera, which is actually designed for the road-trip route they ran (all electric in London, powerful gas range extender for freeway driving at 80+mph). They could have used a pure-EV car that actually had decent range like a Renault Zoe, which would have only needed a single recharge stop to make their entire trip, even driving at 70mph the whole time. But they didn't. They didn't use a fair car to test, because then it would have been less funny.

by taurath 10y ago

bcrescimanno 10y ago

As a former Tesla owner and current i3 owner, I really don't understand why the concept of the road trip is constantly held up as the standard by which electric cars should be judged. I really don't understand why people are optimizing for their once a year use case rather than their daily use case. Unless it's your lifestyle, road trips are the exception, not the rule. For my family, it means owning my i3 for commuting and my wife's Toyota Sienna for family trips. For others, it could mean renting a car for a week or two when you take a long road trip. As a fun note: As a BMW i3 owner, BWM offers me up to 2 weeks per year of complimentary gasoline car rental for road trips.

taurath 10y ago
In the case of GT, roadtripping is the lifestyle that they are showing nearly every single episode. I road trip 5-6 times a year myself over 1000 miles, and for that reason I wouldn't personally want to go a full electric car. Nice about the rental car though! The GT people have standards which don't really apply to most people. Most of their shows involve cars that most people will never afford.
- bcrescimanno 10y ago
  As a huge fan of both Top Gear and Grand Tour, I absolutely understand. My comment was less about their assessment and more about how the concept of the road trip comes up every time electric cars are discussed. Maybe I'm wrong in this assumption as it's based on purely anecdotal observation from my own interactions with people, your 5-6 times a year is an outlier.
  - taurath 10y ago
    True! I don't often think about it but growing up in a very rural area a car has meant freedom to go anywhere. Everyone I know with an electric car loves them!
stuckagain 10y ago
If you own two cars, isn't it actually you who have arranged your lifestyle in order to accommodate the electric one? And I feel kinda sad for anyone who feels that going more than 60 miles from home happens only once a year.
- bcrescimanno 10y ago
  My comment was only meant to discuss people optimizing for the edge case (road trips) vs the common case (daily driving). There will always be people for whom long-distance driving is not the edge case. There's a pretty big assumption that travel beyond 60 miles (or 110 in the case of my i3) requires a car. There are a lot of ways to travel that don't involve driving. I travel frequently; it's almost always by air.
dmode 10y ago
I have a Tesla Model S 60 (lowest battery capacity). I just completed a 800 mile road trip over the weekend. Bay Area to San Diego and back. Zero issues.
ajtaylor 10y ago
I have a VW eGolf and a Toyota Sienna for exactly the same reasons (plus the wife really, really wanted a minivan).

maxsilver 10y ago

> if you like cars and road trips enough to watch GT or Top Gear you probably care a lot about being able to make road trips. I don't know about that. They do it just to shit on EV's. (Disclaimer: I own an EV, but also like and watch Grand Tour). It's an entertainment show. They're not about objective analysis. It's the crank-call-radio-morning-show model applied to cars. Their complaints about the i3 was low range (needing multiple recharges) and weak power (when range extended). They could have used something like a Vauxhall Ampera, which is actually designed for the road-trip route they ran (all electric in London, powerful gas range extender for freeway driving at 80+mph). They could have used a pure-EV car that actually had decent range like a Renault Zoe, which would have only needed a single recharge stop to make their entire trip, even driving at 70mph the whole time. But they didn't. They didn't use a fair car to test, because then it would have been less funny.