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Top Gear caught faking another electric car "failure"

237 points by raganwald 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
Tesla got a bit of backlash when they sued Top Gear, but it seems they were right to do it all along.
- eli 15y ago
  I don't see what Nissan's complaint has to do with the Tesla episode.
nhebb 15y ago
For reference, here's the discussion of Top Gear's response to the Tesla lawsuit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400822 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400822
dublinclontarf 15y ago
Top Gear is a great show. Its funny,witty and soooo different from the usual PC shite on the beeb (extreme individualism or Libertarianism,extreme are they serious?),which is why its so popular. Long live Clarkson.
- itg 15y ago
  "Its funny,witty..." Those two descriptions are a matter of opinion, not everyone agrees with that. I'm a huge car guy, yet personally I think Clarkson is a clown. I understand the show is more geared towards entertainment but they use their massively popular show to blatantly lie and misguide people to push their own agendas.
fossuser 15y ago
I find this extremely frustrating. It must be hard enough attempting to push forward a big change with a new product that many consumers don't know about and when a program with such a large audience actively tries to sabotage the effort I just don't understand it. At least this time they're not trying to take down a new company, but the damage they try and cause to electric vehicles' reputation is unfair. The strange thing is that there are some reasons not to get an electric car (if you need to make extremely long trips often, the potential battery replacement issue after ten years) and rather than discuss these they make up reasons and fake failures. For many people electric vehicles are a great option and hopefully the direction manufacturers continue to go in. Why try to destroy them?
- tommoor 15y ago
  well said, frustrating.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  If you read into the Tesla incident a bit more you find there's a lot more to it and Tesla have also lied (claiming that the brakes didn't go when their own engineers confirmed it on the filming day). A hundred mile trip is not an extremely long trip, my Dad used to regularly commute that for example. You seem to be forgetting you need to drive back. Also this article's extremely biased too, quoting from Tesla's press releases and not even mentioning any of Top Gear's rebuttals. So an article complaining about editorializing to make a better story is, shock horror, editorializing to make a better story. I mean what's all the nonsense at the end about boy racers dying. But 'Of course I'm not blaming only Top Gear for this'. Only? He does actually blame Top Gear? Even though the Tesla's a sports car. The guy's a bit of a plonker. The Guardian's a very left wing paper in the UK, don't think that this is a balanced piece.
  - raganwald 15y ago
    I agree that it is not a balanced piece, and I also found the ending overwrought. That being said, if the facts are as Nissan suggests, I am happy somebody called Top Gear out. JM2C, of course, we have voting and discussions precisely so that everyone can express their views...
  - fossuser 15y ago
    I found the ending to this article annoying as well and off topic. I have read into the Tesla piece and the breaks 'going' didn't actually make the car undrivable the pedals were just harder to push. Since they actually had two vehicles there to test it also shouldn't have been an issue. The 55 mile range the claimed to get was also completely made up based on what 'they determined' to be accurate. The Tesla actually has a 250 mile range so a 100 mile commute would be fine. Few people drive as much as that anyway (http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-110715.html http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-11...) and for most people the range of a Leaf is good enough. Electric vehicle ranges will also only continue to improve. The Chevy Volt which uses gas to power a generator for the electric motor has an all electric range of 40 miles and then will just use gas to power the generator until the next recharge. Top Gear's rebuttals from the Tesla issue were weak, whiny and largely ignored Tesla's complaints, this situation with the leaf only serves to show they really are trying to make electric vehicles look bad.
vaksel 15y ago
they didn't fake anything, they just showed what would happen if your car ran out of juice. what is it with companies, who expect the media to suspend critical thinking when covering their products. Electrical cars are great...but the logistics of them still need to be highlighted for consumers to make an informed decision. to ignore that you are literally up shit's creek if your car runs out of juice...is just intellectually dishonest
- raganwald 15y ago
  I'm glad you used the words "intellectually dishonest." sure, you can show what would happen if you ran out of electricity. You could show leaving on your journey with only half the electricity needed to make the trip, you could show the car telling you how far it could go before requiring a charge, you could show the GPS telling you you can't make it to your destination, and you could show the car being driven around a loop to run out of charge. Would that be intellectually honest?
  - vaksel 15y ago
    doesn't change the point, that you are royally screwed if you run out of charge outside your driveway
    - jonknee 15y ago
      Then why don't they show gasoline powered cars stuck on the side of the highway? Maybe even a broken timing belt or one of the litany of other things that can leave you royally screwed if driving an internal combustion powered vehicle. What they have done with EV reviews is just plain dishonest.
      - bmelton 15y ago
        Perhaps because there's a gas station every 10 feet, but electric charging stations are much fewer and further between.
ck2 15y ago
I think people can take what they want from Top Gear, it's entertainment, not factual TV. That episode made me wish I could afford a Leaf, it seemed really well engineered and I knew they were being silly about electric cars on purpose because they are "neanderthal" car dinosaurs that refuse to adapt. They were trying really hard to find ways to insult the Leaf but fell far short - "range" was all they could come up with. Sad to learn they actually had to fake it though, it's pathetic on their part. I'd still buy it with their demonstrated range - if it was twice that, even better. But 60mpg+ gas/diesel cars are common in the UK anyway, so the Leaf is less dramatic there. I'd love this one too but they will never let Americans have it: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b40990604... http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/02/ford-will-give/ http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/02/ford-will-give/
- philk 15y ago
  I think people can take what they want from Top Gear, it's entertainment, not factual TV. Part of the entertainment is that it's presented as though it is factual TV. Sure if you look at a lot of their antics you can tell they're staged but a large portion of the viewing public doesn't realize this and their impressions of the car will be tainted by what is essentially a misrepresentation of the facts.
  - ck2 15y ago
    When you watch Leno on the Tonight Show and he demonstrates a product, do you use that as your factual news source? Do you let his silliness bias you? Or do you realize the type of personality that Leno is and filter everything he says/does? Top Gear to me is like the Tonight Show of cars. It's entertainment. Top Gear shows like two practical cars per season among all their other silliness (which is what I actually watch it for, the silliness because it's entertaining). Ironically isn't the fastest car around their track an electric car? The electric version of the Ariel Atom?
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Interestingly, if Leno were to talk about cars I think I would take him seriously...
maeon3 15y ago
When electric cars become more reliable, easy-to-use, less expensive (overall) then gasoline powered cars, then nothing anyone says will stop the takeover. Short of destroying the company itself, the cars will sell themselves. You can't fool all the people all the time. The happy customers will tell their friends, and nothing the Pope, President and Top Gear can say to hinder that.
- ebaysucks 15y ago
  Which is perfectly fine by me, a right wing libertarian who fits right into the target demographic of Top Gear. As long as electric cars are not practical enough to sell themselves, I will enjoy Clarkson's rants about them and everything else PC.
tatsuke95 15y ago
I think it can safely be said now that if you're using Top Gear as a buyer's guide when shopping for a car (and considering an electric car), you're doing it wrong. I love the show. It's the most entertaining "car show" on television. But I've never had the inclination to take what these guys say to heart. By that I mean, 90% of the time the hosts are reviewing Bugattis, Ferraris and Lambos, which is a world completely disconnected from my own. Can one really expect practical reviews?
- vaksel 15y ago
  their Ford Fiesta review was pretty practical
  - hugh3 15y ago
    I dunno. I think Clarkson made using the Fiesta for storming a beach a platoon Royal Marines seem a lot easier than it actually is.
    - killerswan 15y ago
      All I know is that I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Hilux if I needed a truck.
- ugh 15y ago
  Can one at least expect them not to lie?
  - tatsuke95 15y ago
    That's a valid point, obviously. I haven't seen the Leaf review, and have long forgotten the Tesla episode, but from what I recall it wasn't a "lie" as much as a serious "implication". I could be wrong, but the lawsuit will straighten that out.
darksaga 15y ago
I'm wondering how many people actually take this as purely entertainment and not a show where they can glean useful information about new cars on the market. I've never watched the show, but it seems like they're trying to blur the two lines. When they get called on it, they use the excuse "it's just entertainment" as justification for misleading their viewers.
maeon3 15y ago
Here is the top gear video saying the tesla was a failure in the real world: http://www.streetfire.net/video/top-gear-reviews-tesla-roadster_206233.htm http://www.streetfire.net/video/top-gear-reviews-tesla-roads...
brudgers 15y ago
tl;dr Reality TV show fails to meet basic journalism standards.
MikeW 15y ago
How would they know the car was driven in loops for 10 miles in Lincoln unless the device was recording {the GPS coords, engine state, battery state}. This sounds like spyware. I'd love to know if that data was being periodically fed back to Nissan wirelessly or read at the time the car was returned. I'd love to know if this tracking is fitted in all their cars of this model, or just ones they hand out for review. Such fine-grained tracking doesn't sound like a good thing at all.
- brudgers 15y ago
  Nothing nefarious in telemetry when a car is being road tested by journalists...for reasons which this story illustrates. <snark>Maybe Nissan just left their iPhone inside it.</snark>
- raganwald 15y ago
  Good question. Many cars used in specialty markets are outfitted with incredibly detailed diagnostics. For example, when exotic cars are rented for TV and movie shoots, the fine print includes hefty surcharges if the cars are driven faster than the speed limit and so forth. The data is downloaded and checked when the car is returned. A test vehicle supplied to journalists might have similar diagnostic capabilities turned on. Then again, perhaps every Leaf has this, it's hard to imagine building a modern electric car without including sophisticated computing, and logging data is part of what computers do. I doubt it's malicious, but as cars get more sophisticated, the possibility of leaking privacy through your onboard diagnostics does become an issue. Thanks for raising the question.
- maushu 15y ago
  Trying to track every car they sell would be ludicrous. I'm guessing they put this on the review/test cars. Which makes sense.
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    Why would it be ludicrous? At the cost of $11 for an 8Gb flash drive, they could easily build in compressed coordinate logging for a whole lot of journeys for that money, and have them copied off with the diagnostic logs at every service, and fed back to HQ. All they have to do is say it's for to offer a better product, for roadside rescue and aggregated into a non-personal store after 30 days, and it would probably be fine.
mrcharles 15y ago
I recognize they are going about it the wrong way, but their point, as far as I can tell, is to show you that the infrastructure to support these isn't in place, and even if it was, the downsides to charge times are anathema to motorists who love to drive. I do think they could go about it differently, and if they had simply added "This is what happens were you to run it dry on a trip" would have smoothed all this out. I do wish they would have done so, as their point will now be lost in the screaming and shouting over their bias. I do think it's a point worth making. An electric car is only as useful as the distance you want to drive it. As soon as your round trip exceeds the limit, you have to charge it for hours. I don't think they are out of line by pointing out these problem. I do think they are out of line by staging it without explanation.
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  If the point is valid, why are they falsifying data? It sounds a lot like they couldn't find a trip where the range would be inadequate, so they pretended the range was inadequate.
  - mrcharles 15y ago
    That's just silly. They could have very easily done a trip which would have required an overnight stay, it's not like these things have ridiculously high mile limits at this point in time. They were doing it to simply prove a point. They just went about it the wrong way.
eli 15y ago
This is a pretty weak accusation. It was quite obvious watching the program that they were aware the battery was running low (they commented on the "miles left" meter several times). They more-or-less willfully ran out of juice in a small town. So what. The point wasn't that the car can only go 60km versus 100km on a charge, or whatever the numbers. The point was that the car has a range limit, that the limit is not terribly far, that the car takes a while to charge when it dies, and there aren't many charging stations. Perhaps Top Gear was a bit hyperbolic to make that point (Consumer Reports they are not), but these are all fair points. I'm sorry. I'm all about calling out bias where I see it, but this just smacks of a car maker trying to spin some largely legitimate complaints with their product. Not many people could get away with owning a plug-in electric as their only car. Even if it were half as much as a comparable gas car (rather than twice as much). As Clarkson said in the episode, the leaf is actually a really nice ca and electric is obviously the future, but today it is just not practical.
- fossuser 15y ago
  >Not many people could get away with owning a plug-in electric as their only car. This is actually the myth that Top Gear seems interested in forever perpetuating. Most people don't drive that far (http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-110715.html http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-11...) I think Chevy determined the average daily driver drives around 40 miles. The range of these new electric vehicles are actually fine for the majority of people's daily drivers and are only going to get better. For long drives they're not a good choice yet (since the infrastructure doesn't yet exist and without something like battery swap charging takes too long). >The point wasn't that the car can only go 60km versus 100km on a charge, or whatever the numbers. The point was that the range has a limit, that the limit is not that far... Was that really the point? You don't see them driving a gasoline powered car near empty and then acting confused when it can't reach it's destination while suggesting that gasoline powered cars are not the future. I think they went past hyperbolic into misleading.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
goblgobl 15y ago
Top Gear is an entertainment show with cars as the backdrop. Just like Daily show is a comedy show with political clips. If you want a car review show, take a look at Motor Week. I think these claims of "faking" are ridiculous when you have episodes where cast members "die" (top gear apocalypse), and characteristics are emphasized for comedic effect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8). This article claims because of Top Gear's antics, the public is being misinformed about the benefits of electric cars. It completely misses the point that 1. it is not a car review show, and 2. there is a major poetical component of the show that celebrates automotive history. They like exciting cars and bash boring uninspired ones (except if its remarkably boring). Their reviews emphasize a car's essence, not necessarily a list of facts. I think this view is coming from a place that has a vested interest in electric cars, and not anyone who really watches the show. Otherwise they'd be attacking all the claims ("Some Say") made about The Stig.
easyfrag 15y ago
I recall an episode where they ridiculed a Prius's fuel efficiency because it didn't out-perform a sports car on their test. Their test was to loop non-stop around a race track at the Prius' top speed, which is pretty much what the sports car was designed to do. They neglected to do a round in stop-and-go traffic, which is what the Prius was designed for.
- RomP 15y ago
  If one watches a few more episodes of the show, it would become obvious that the Prius fuel consumption test was a joke, like everything else in the show. Come on, we can do better than expecting a fair review of a hybrid car from a guy who comes up with increasingly witty descriptions of his erections caused by the power and speed of various sports cars. Edit: it probably didn't come across like it, but I think that the show is hilarious and it is one of the very few reasons to own a TV. But a car review show (as in, the source of information on the automotive industry) it is not, and is not meant to be.
  - watmough 15y ago
    Compared to a typical European car, such as the Diesel Passat station wagon, the Prius IS a joke. It has worse fuel consumption, carries less, and has a massively more complex drive-train. Sure, the Passat is a bit of a slug, but light-footed, I made an estimated 50 mpg in Italy, 4 up with luggage, AC on, during an Italy trip, something you couldn't do in a Prius.
- unwantedLetters 15y ago
  While I understand that this segment of theirs was a joke, it did have a point to it. They were trying to show that it is possible to drive a Prius in such a way that you don't actually save any fuel over a non-hybrid. I don't think anyone would dispute that a Prius is more fuel efficient than a sports car in stop-and-go traffic and having that segment on Top Gear just wouldn't be possible as it would make the show "fair" to the hybrid and actually about cars which it definitely isn't. And I think they make these silly claims at times since they know they are so over-the-top that it's hard for anyone to take them too seriously.
Jamiecon 15y ago
I've watched, and enjoyed, Top Gear for a long time now, since before they introduced the new magazine format. I saw this episode when it was broadcast and enjoyed the electric car segment. The programme is an entertainment show and part of that entertainment is that the presenters repeatedly experience various 'disasters' during their filming. I didn't take the various incidents involving range particularly seriously at the time. When they were discussing the cars slightly more seriously back in the studio, they actually acknowledged the inevitability of electric cars and went over the ways in which the technology was improving. They also correctly pointed out that current technology limits the utility of the models available now, and discussed mitigation ideas such as battery exchange. To be honest I was surprised at the maturity of their analysis! Overall, based on what I know about this area from other sources, I would not consider the piece to have been misleading. Someone has already pointed out that The Guardian is a fairly left leaning paper and this particular article is a comment piece. Personally I think it's a bit silly for people to get so indignant about something so insignificant. They're just having fun. They're not out to get anyone. I don't believe they have a vindictive agenda. The presenters play caricatures of themselves. Chill the hell out!
entrepreneurial 15y ago
How many combustible cars have you seen on the road over the past couple of years?
rickmb 15y ago
This is why I stopped watching Top Gear. None of the "tests" in Top Gear are serious, and most of it is just great entertainment... until it becomes malicious. When it comes to subjects like electric cars, or environmentally friendly technology in general, Top Gear has the same ethics as one of Rupert Murdochs tabloids or Fox News.
- vaksel 15y ago
  do you expect an iPhone blog to give glorious reviews to an Android phone? Taking the guys on Top Gear as legitimate motoring journalists is the same as taking Stephen Colbert as a legitimate Republican. Top Gear is about three idiots who love cars. Watching Top Gear for car buying advice is like watching Jersey Shore for dating advice.
  - fossuser 15y ago
    I'd liken it more to The Daily Show actually, a news show with a comedic twist. While there is comedy involved viewers expect what they're seeing not to be lies or fabricated stories. Hiding behind the "we're an entertainment show so we don't have to have facts" whenever someone questions a review is lame.
    - georgieporgie 15y ago
      That's not very accurate. The Daily Show has a history of calling people out on misrepresentation. Jon Stewart went on Hardball (or whatever it was called) and chewed the hosts out for destroying journalism and dialog in America. If you want to liken it to The Daily Show, then all of Top Gear is much more like Stephen Colbert's and Steve Carrel's old bits.
      - redthrowaway 15y ago
        > Jon Stewart went on Hardball (or whatever it was called) Are you referring to his infamous Crossfire appearance? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
edkennedy 15y ago
A lot of the comments here are saying that Top Gear is an entertainment show, and should not be taken seriously. Yet that seems to avoid the main point of the article which is that it's on BBC, yet not adhering to BBC standards of reporting. The article claims they are not held to these standards because they make entertaining TV that brings in big bucks for BBC. Should Top Gear attempt to follow BBC standards, or should they get away with it because they have a great tv show?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- raganwald 15y ago
  That could be my fault: I editorialized the title to emphasize Top Gear faking an electric car failure, whereas the original title, Top Gear's electric car shows pour petrol over the BBC's standards, places more emphasis on the question of why BBC is or isn’t maintaining its standards. Mea Culpa, thanks for raising the point.
barredo 15y ago
I like Top Gear when they are funny, not when they're malicious, both episodes (Tesla then, and Leaf now) seems to have malicious intent against electric cars.
donnaware 15y ago
maybe they can move the program to Fox where it belongs.
meow 15y ago
This reminds me of the AC vs DC debate in late 1800s. There were public staged demonstrations showing how harmful AC was. Of course none of this stopped AC from becoming the default standard for long range power transmission. Same goes with electric cars too. Regardless of what these fossil brains try to prove, there is no stopping to new technologies. Once the battery technology catches up, EVs will become more popular.
georgieporgie 15y ago
Top Gear is entertainment. "at no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip." So? They're making television. They're showing a valid problem with electric cars. Their review of the cars was actually very positive, aside from the currently inescapable problem of long recharge times and uncommon charging stations. As it is television, you want to do so in a manner which is entertaining and not dangerous. Would the makers prefer that they run out of juice on a busy highway? The rest of the article degrades into an anti-testosterone rant which has little to do with Top Gear. I was a teenage, aggressive idiot, too, and Top Gear didn't even exist then. They're actually very careful on Top Gear to follow rules of the road, and anyone driving like a fool as a result of it has only himself to blame.
eli 15y ago
"The car unexpectedly ran out of charge when they got to Lincoln" That's not how I remember it playing out. They had plenty of warning and made numerous references to the battery meter and its "miles left" estimation. As they were looking for a charging station, James May said something to the effect, "He's running on whatever the electric equivalent of gas fumes is." If you just read this article, I encourage you to watch the episode before getting all wound up.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  There are two claims in the article that were not made clear in the episode: 1) The Leaf had a full charge when delivered, but it was drained to 40% 2) Clarkson drove around in circles until it died, in Lincoln. Now I can understand both of these things from a television perspective. Obviously everything in Lincoln was staged, including their arrangement with the university to charge there. Clearly they drained the battery so that it would die in Lincoln, as that's where they had prepared to shoot. It makes sense from a TV perspective but it's unethical, especially given the direct harm it can have on livelihoods and the effort to transition off fossil fuels. There's no substantive difference between doing what they did, and merely pretending that the car died when it had half a charge left. Top Gear is a comedy show, but it isn't satire. The audience has no reasonable expectation that when the hosts make claims about certain cars, they are being dishonest for the sake of comedy. Sure, we know the challenges are staged, but that's not what this is about. It's as if, in testing the new Ferrari, they replaced the rear tires with winter tires then complained about how the read end was uncontrollable. This crosses the line directly from creating an entertaining narrative to slander. Given JC's very public views on anything to do with the environment, as well as their previous run-in with Tesla, you'd think they would be careful not to give the impression that they will intentionally lie to disparage electric vehicles. With this latest incident, that is exactly the impression they give.
overgard 15y ago
After watching the episode, It seems like the point they were making in Top Gear was that: A) It's not particularly hard to get stranded in one of these things. B) When you do get stranded, it's non-trivial to get them recharged. I think those are both fair points. A lot of people seem to be pointing out that "well if you plan ahead this won't happen", but how many times have you had to use your car to get to something you didn't plan ahead for? Maybe there's an emergency, or maybe I'm late, or maybe I just forgot to charge the thing overnight. Electric cars are cool, but for most people I can only imagine them supplementing a gas car, not replacing it.
pacemkr 15y ago
I've seen their review of the Leaf. Clarkson was anticipating the car running out and talking about it while looking at the dial, which he pointed out. What made it "unexpected" in the program, as this article claims, must have been lost on me. There was a point to be made and they let the car run out to make it, again, to me that was obvious. The points made were valid: * The infrastructure to recharge this thing in the middle of a trip is not there. * You better be prepared to wait a good number of hours to charge it. * You better know how far you're going and note how much charge you have left before you head out. * You will have to replace the batteries after some number of years and it will cost a lot of money. * Electricity is the future, but these cars are not it. (Yes, they actually said that.) Which one of these points is all of a sudden not valid? I'm sorry, the review was spot on.
- markfenton 15y ago
  I also seem to remember that one of the last things Clarkson said was how much he liked the the Leaf. More generally, a 100 mile range would be fine for me 80% of the time, but the other 20% I need longer range without a 12 hour stopover. Electric cars are just not quite there yet for my needs, and I suspect a lot of other people too.
- daemin 15y ago
  Didn't they say at the end of that bit that they consider Hydrogen to be the green fuel source of the future?
aj700 15y ago
I don't even have to read this. It's the Guardian. It's just a personal vendetta against people who question the religion of warmingism.
ZipCordManiac 15y ago
As somebody who doesn't know much about cars, I always thought Top Gear was a serious review show with a few jokes thrown in. Not downright misleading setups and information.

237 points by raganwald 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago

Tesla got a bit of backlash when they sued Top Gear, but it seems they were right to do it all along.

eli 15y ago
I don't see what Nissan's complaint has to do with the Tesla episode.

nhebb 15y ago

For reference, here's the discussion of Top Gear's response to the Tesla lawsuit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400822 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400822

dublinclontarf 15y ago

Top Gear is a great show. Its funny,witty and soooo different from the usual PC shite on the beeb (extreme individualism or Libertarianism,extreme are they serious?),which is why its so popular. Long live Clarkson.

itg 15y ago
"Its funny,witty..." Those two descriptions are a matter of opinion, not everyone agrees with that. I'm a huge car guy, yet personally I think Clarkson is a clown. I understand the show is more geared towards entertainment but they use their massively popular show to blatantly lie and misguide people to push their own agendas.

fossuser 15y ago

I find this extremely frustrating. It must be hard enough attempting to push forward a big change with a new product that many consumers don't know about and when a program with such a large audience actively tries to sabotage the effort I just don't understand it. At least this time they're not trying to take down a new company, but the damage they try and cause to electric vehicles' reputation is unfair. The strange thing is that there are some reasons not to get an electric car (if you need to make extremely long trips often, the potential battery replacement issue after ten years) and rather than discuss these they make up reasons and fake failures. For many people electric vehicles are a great option and hopefully the direction manufacturers continue to go in. Why try to destroy them?

tommoor 15y ago
well said, frustrating.
mattmanser 15y ago
If you read into the Tesla incident a bit more you find there's a lot more to it and Tesla have also lied (claiming that the brakes didn't go when their own engineers confirmed it on the filming day). A hundred mile trip is not an extremely long trip, my Dad used to regularly commute that for example. You seem to be forgetting you need to drive back. Also this article's extremely biased too, quoting from Tesla's press releases and not even mentioning any of Top Gear's rebuttals. So an article complaining about editorializing to make a better story is, shock horror, editorializing to make a better story. I mean what's all the nonsense at the end about boy racers dying. But 'Of course I'm not blaming only Top Gear for this'. Only? He does actually blame Top Gear? Even though the Tesla's a sports car. The guy's a bit of a plonker. The Guardian's a very left wing paper in the UK, don't think that this is a balanced piece.
- raganwald 15y ago
  I agree that it is not a balanced piece, and I also found the ending overwrought. That being said, if the facts are as Nissan suggests, I am happy somebody called Top Gear out. JM2C, of course, we have voting and discussions precisely so that everyone can express their views...
- fossuser 15y ago
  I found the ending to this article annoying as well and off topic. I have read into the Tesla piece and the breaks 'going' didn't actually make the car undrivable the pedals were just harder to push. Since they actually had two vehicles there to test it also shouldn't have been an issue. The 55 mile range the claimed to get was also completely made up based on what 'they determined' to be accurate. The Tesla actually has a 250 mile range so a 100 mile commute would be fine. Few people drive as much as that anyway (http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-110715.html http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-11...) and for most people the range of a Leaf is good enough. Electric vehicle ranges will also only continue to improve. The Chevy Volt which uses gas to power a generator for the electric motor has an all electric range of 40 miles and then will just use gas to power the generator until the next recharge. Top Gear's rebuttals from the Tesla issue were weak, whiny and largely ignored Tesla's complaints, this situation with the leaf only serves to show they really are trying to make electric vehicles look bad.

vaksel 15y ago

they didn't fake anything, they just showed what would happen if your car ran out of juice. what is it with companies, who expect the media to suspend critical thinking when covering their products. Electrical cars are great...but the logistics of them still need to be highlighted for consumers to make an informed decision. to ignore that you are literally up shit's creek if your car runs out of juice...is just intellectually dishonest

raganwald 15y ago
I'm glad you used the words "intellectually dishonest." sure, you can show what would happen if you ran out of electricity. You could show leaving on your journey with only half the electricity needed to make the trip, you could show the car telling you how far it could go before requiring a charge, you could show the GPS telling you you can't make it to your destination, and you could show the car being driven around a loop to run out of charge. Would that be intellectually honest?
- vaksel 15y ago
  doesn't change the point, that you are royally screwed if you run out of charge outside your driveway
  - jonknee 15y ago
    Then why don't they show gasoline powered cars stuck on the side of the highway? Maybe even a broken timing belt or one of the litany of other things that can leave you royally screwed if driving an internal combustion powered vehicle. What they have done with EV reviews is just plain dishonest.
    - bmelton 15y ago
      Perhaps because there's a gas station every 10 feet, but electric charging stations are much fewer and further between.

ck2 15y ago

I think people can take what they want from Top Gear, it's entertainment, not factual TV. That episode made me wish I could afford a Leaf, it seemed really well engineered and I knew they were being silly about electric cars on purpose because they are "neanderthal" car dinosaurs that refuse to adapt. They were trying really hard to find ways to insult the Leaf but fell far short - "range" was all they could come up with. Sad to learn they actually had to fake it though, it's pathetic on their part. I'd still buy it with their demonstrated range - if it was twice that, even better. But 60mpg+ gas/diesel cars are common in the UK anyway, so the Leaf is less dramatic there. I'd love this one too but they will never let Americans have it: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b40990604... http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/02/ford-will-give/ http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/02/ford-will-give/

philk 15y ago
I think people can take what they want from Top Gear, it's entertainment, not factual TV. Part of the entertainment is that it's presented as though it is factual TV. Sure if you look at a lot of their antics you can tell they're staged but a large portion of the viewing public doesn't realize this and their impressions of the car will be tainted by what is essentially a misrepresentation of the facts.
- ck2 15y ago
  When you watch Leno on the Tonight Show and he demonstrates a product, do you use that as your factual news source? Do you let his silliness bias you? Or do you realize the type of personality that Leno is and filter everything he says/does? Top Gear to me is like the Tonight Show of cars. It's entertainment. Top Gear shows like two practical cars per season among all their other silliness (which is what I actually watch it for, the silliness because it's entertaining). Ironically isn't the fastest car around their track an electric car? The electric version of the Ariel Atom?
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Interestingly, if Leno were to talk about cars I think I would take him seriously...

maeon3 15y ago

When electric cars become more reliable, easy-to-use, less expensive (overall) then gasoline powered cars, then nothing anyone says will stop the takeover. Short of destroying the company itself, the cars will sell themselves. You can't fool all the people all the time. The happy customers will tell their friends, and nothing the Pope, President and Top Gear can say to hinder that.

ebaysucks 15y ago
Which is perfectly fine by me, a right wing libertarian who fits right into the target demographic of Top Gear. As long as electric cars are not practical enough to sell themselves, I will enjoy Clarkson's rants about them and everything else PC.

tatsuke95 15y ago

I think it can safely be said now that if you're using Top Gear as a buyer's guide when shopping for a car (and considering an electric car), you're doing it wrong. I love the show. It's the most entertaining "car show" on television. But I've never had the inclination to take what these guys say to heart. By that I mean, 90% of the time the hosts are reviewing Bugattis, Ferraris and Lambos, which is a world completely disconnected from my own. Can one really expect practical reviews?

vaksel 15y ago
their Ford Fiesta review was pretty practical
- hugh3 15y ago
  I dunno. I think Clarkson made using the Fiesta for storming a beach a platoon Royal Marines seem a lot easier than it actually is.
  - killerswan 15y ago
    All I know is that I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Hilux if I needed a truck.
ugh 15y ago
Can one at least expect them not to lie?
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  That's a valid point, obviously. I haven't seen the Leaf review, and have long forgotten the Tesla episode, but from what I recall it wasn't a "lie" as much as a serious "implication". I could be wrong, but the lawsuit will straighten that out.

darksaga 15y ago

I'm wondering how many people actually take this as purely entertainment and not a show where they can glean useful information about new cars on the market. I've never watched the show, but it seems like they're trying to blur the two lines. When they get called on it, they use the excuse "it's just entertainment" as justification for misleading their viewers.

maeon3 15y ago

Here is the top gear video saying the tesla was a failure in the real world: http://www.streetfire.net/video/top-gear-reviews-tesla-roadster_206233.htm http://www.streetfire.net/video/top-gear-reviews-tesla-roads...

brudgers 15y ago

tl;dr Reality TV show fails to meet basic journalism standards.

MikeW 15y ago

How would they know the car was driven in loops for 10 miles in Lincoln unless the device was recording {the GPS coords, engine state, battery state}. This sounds like spyware. I'd love to know if that data was being periodically fed back to Nissan wirelessly or read at the time the car was returned. I'd love to know if this tracking is fitted in all their cars of this model, or just ones they hand out for review. Such fine-grained tracking doesn't sound like a good thing at all.

brudgers 15y ago
Nothing nefarious in telemetry when a car is being road tested by journalists...for reasons which this story illustrates. <snark>Maybe Nissan just left their iPhone inside it.</snark>
raganwald 15y ago
Good question. Many cars used in specialty markets are outfitted with incredibly detailed diagnostics. For example, when exotic cars are rented for TV and movie shoots, the fine print includes hefty surcharges if the cars are driven faster than the speed limit and so forth. The data is downloaded and checked when the car is returned. A test vehicle supplied to journalists might have similar diagnostic capabilities turned on. Then again, perhaps every Leaf has this, it's hard to imagine building a modern electric car without including sophisticated computing, and logging data is part of what computers do. I doubt it's malicious, but as cars get more sophisticated, the possibility of leaking privacy through your onboard diagnostics does become an issue. Thanks for raising the question.
maushu 15y ago
Trying to track every car they sell would be ludicrous. I'm guessing they put this on the review/test cars. Which makes sense.
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  Why would it be ludicrous? At the cost of $11 for an 8Gb flash drive, they could easily build in compressed coordinate logging for a whole lot of journeys for that money, and have them copied off with the diagnostic logs at every service, and fed back to HQ. All they have to do is say it's for to offer a better product, for roadside rescue and aggregated into a non-personal store after 30 days, and it would probably be fine.

mrcharles 15y ago

I recognize they are going about it the wrong way, but their point, as far as I can tell, is to show you that the infrastructure to support these isn't in place, and even if it was, the downsides to charge times are anathema to motorists who love to drive. I do think they could go about it differently, and if they had simply added "This is what happens were you to run it dry on a trip" would have smoothed all this out. I do wish they would have done so, as their point will now be lost in the screaming and shouting over their bias. I do think it's a point worth making. An electric car is only as useful as the distance you want to drive it. As soon as your round trip exceeds the limit, you have to charge it for hours. I don't think they are out of line by pointing out these problem. I do think they are out of line by staging it without explanation.

lukeschlather 15y ago
If the point is valid, why are they falsifying data? It sounds a lot like they couldn't find a trip where the range would be inadequate, so they pretended the range was inadequate.
- mrcharles 15y ago
  That's just silly. They could have very easily done a trip which would have required an overnight stay, it's not like these things have ridiculously high mile limits at this point in time. They were doing it to simply prove a point. They just went about it the wrong way.

eli 15y ago

This is a pretty weak accusation. It was quite obvious watching the program that they were aware the battery was running low (they commented on the "miles left" meter several times). They more-or-less willfully ran out of juice in a small town. So what. The point wasn't that the car can only go 60km versus 100km on a charge, or whatever the numbers. The point was that the car has a range limit, that the limit is not terribly far, that the car takes a while to charge when it dies, and there aren't many charging stations. Perhaps Top Gear was a bit hyperbolic to make that point (Consumer Reports they are not), but these are all fair points. I'm sorry. I'm all about calling out bias where I see it, but this just smacks of a car maker trying to spin some largely legitimate complaints with their product. Not many people could get away with owning a plug-in electric as their only car. Even if it were half as much as a comparable gas car (rather than twice as much). As Clarkson said in the episode, the leaf is actually a really nice ca and electric is obviously the future, but today it is just not practical.

fossuser 15y ago
>Not many people could get away with owning a plug-in electric as their only car. This is actually the myth that Top Gear seems interested in forever perpetuating. Most people don't drive that far (http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-110715.html http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-leaf-11...) I think Chevy determined the average daily driver drives around 40 miles. The range of these new electric vehicles are actually fine for the majority of people's daily drivers and are only going to get better. For long drives they're not a good choice yet (since the infrastructure doesn't yet exist and without something like battery swap charging takes too long). >The point wasn't that the car can only go 60km versus 100km on a charge, or whatever the numbers. The point was that the range has a limit, that the limit is not that far... Was that really the point? You don't see them driving a gasoline powered car near empty and then acting confused when it can't reach it's destination while suggesting that gasoline powered cars are not the future. I think they went past hyperbolic into misleading.
- deleted 15y ago
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goblgobl 15y ago

Top Gear is an entertainment show with cars as the backdrop. Just like Daily show is a comedy show with political clips. If you want a car review show, take a look at Motor Week. I think these claims of "faking" are ridiculous when you have episodes where cast members "die" (top gear apocalypse), and characteristics are emphasized for comedic effect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8). This article claims because of Top Gear's antics, the public is being misinformed about the benefits of electric cars. It completely misses the point that 1. it is not a car review show, and 2. there is a major poetical component of the show that celebrates automotive history. They like exciting cars and bash boring uninspired ones (except if its remarkably boring). Their reviews emphasize a car's essence, not necessarily a list of facts. I think this view is coming from a place that has a vested interest in electric cars, and not anyone who really watches the show. Otherwise they'd be attacking all the claims ("Some Say") made about The Stig.

easyfrag 15y ago

I recall an episode where they ridiculed a Prius's fuel efficiency because it didn't out-perform a sports car on their test. Their test was to loop non-stop around a race track at the Prius' top speed, which is pretty much what the sports car was designed to do. They neglected to do a round in stop-and-go traffic, which is what the Prius was designed for.

RomP 15y ago
If one watches a few more episodes of the show, it would become obvious that the Prius fuel consumption test was a joke, like everything else in the show. Come on, we can do better than expecting a fair review of a hybrid car from a guy who comes up with increasingly witty descriptions of his erections caused by the power and speed of various sports cars. Edit: it probably didn't come across like it, but I think that the show is hilarious and it is one of the very few reasons to own a TV. But a car review show (as in, the source of information on the automotive industry) it is not, and is not meant to be.
- watmough 15y ago
  Compared to a typical European car, such as the Diesel Passat station wagon, the Prius IS a joke. It has worse fuel consumption, carries less, and has a massively more complex drive-train. Sure, the Passat is a bit of a slug, but light-footed, I made an estimated 50 mpg in Italy, 4 up with luggage, AC on, during an Italy trip, something you couldn't do in a Prius.
unwantedLetters 15y ago
While I understand that this segment of theirs was a joke, it did have a point to it. They were trying to show that it is possible to drive a Prius in such a way that you don't actually save any fuel over a non-hybrid. I don't think anyone would dispute that a Prius is more fuel efficient than a sports car in stop-and-go traffic and having that segment on Top Gear just wouldn't be possible as it would make the show "fair" to the hybrid and actually about cars which it definitely isn't. And I think they make these silly claims at times since they know they are so over-the-top that it's hard for anyone to take them too seriously.

Jamiecon 15y ago

I've watched, and enjoyed, Top Gear for a long time now, since before they introduced the new magazine format. I saw this episode when it was broadcast and enjoyed the electric car segment. The programme is an entertainment show and part of that entertainment is that the presenters repeatedly experience various 'disasters' during their filming. I didn't take the various incidents involving range particularly seriously at the time. When they were discussing the cars slightly more seriously back in the studio, they actually acknowledged the inevitability of electric cars and went over the ways in which the technology was improving. They also correctly pointed out that current technology limits the utility of the models available now, and discussed mitigation ideas such as battery exchange. To be honest I was surprised at the maturity of their analysis! Overall, based on what I know about this area from other sources, I would not consider the piece to have been misleading. Someone has already pointed out that The Guardian is a fairly left leaning paper and this particular article is a comment piece. Personally I think it's a bit silly for people to get so indignant about something so insignificant. They're just having fun. They're not out to get anyone. I don't believe they have a vindictive agenda. The presenters play caricatures of themselves. Chill the hell out!

entrepreneurial 15y ago

How many combustible cars have you seen on the road over the past couple of years?

rickmb 15y ago

This is why I stopped watching Top Gear. None of the "tests" in Top Gear are serious, and most of it is just great entertainment... until it becomes malicious. When it comes to subjects like electric cars, or environmentally friendly technology in general, Top Gear has the same ethics as one of Rupert Murdochs tabloids or Fox News.

vaksel 15y ago
do you expect an iPhone blog to give glorious reviews to an Android phone? Taking the guys on Top Gear as legitimate motoring journalists is the same as taking Stephen Colbert as a legitimate Republican. Top Gear is about three idiots who love cars. Watching Top Gear for car buying advice is like watching Jersey Shore for dating advice.
- fossuser 15y ago
  I'd liken it more to The Daily Show actually, a news show with a comedic twist. While there is comedy involved viewers expect what they're seeing not to be lies or fabricated stories. Hiding behind the "we're an entertainment show so we don't have to have facts" whenever someone questions a review is lame.
  - georgieporgie 15y ago
    That's not very accurate. The Daily Show has a history of calling people out on misrepresentation. Jon Stewart went on Hardball (or whatever it was called) and chewed the hosts out for destroying journalism and dialog in America. If you want to liken it to The Daily Show, then all of Top Gear is much more like Stephen Colbert's and Steve Carrel's old bits.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      > Jon Stewart went on Hardball (or whatever it was called) Are you referring to his infamous Crossfire appearance? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

edkennedy 15y ago

A lot of the comments here are saying that Top Gear is an entertainment show, and should not be taken seriously. Yet that seems to avoid the main point of the article which is that it's on BBC, yet not adhering to BBC standards of reporting. The article claims they are not held to these standards because they make entertaining TV that brings in big bucks for BBC. Should Top Gear attempt to follow BBC standards, or should they get away with it because they have a great tv show?

deleted 15y ago
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raganwald 15y ago
That could be my fault: I editorialized the title to emphasize Top Gear faking an electric car failure, whereas the original title, Top Gear's electric car shows pour petrol over the BBC's standards, places more emphasis on the question of why BBC is or isn’t maintaining its standards. Mea Culpa, thanks for raising the point.

barredo 15y ago

I like Top Gear when they are funny, not when they're malicious, both episodes (Tesla then, and Leaf now) seems to have malicious intent against electric cars.

donnaware 15y ago

maybe they can move the program to Fox where it belongs.

meow 15y ago

This reminds me of the AC vs DC debate in late 1800s. There were public staged demonstrations showing how harmful AC was. Of course none of this stopped AC from becoming the default standard for long range power transmission. Same goes with electric cars too. Regardless of what these fossil brains try to prove, there is no stopping to new technologies. Once the battery technology catches up, EVs will become more popular.

georgieporgie 15y ago

Top Gear is entertainment. "at no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip." So? They're making television. They're showing a valid problem with electric cars. Their review of the cars was actually very positive, aside from the currently inescapable problem of long recharge times and uncommon charging stations. As it is television, you want to do so in a manner which is entertaining and not dangerous. Would the makers prefer that they run out of juice on a busy highway? The rest of the article degrades into an anti-testosterone rant which has little to do with Top Gear. I was a teenage, aggressive idiot, too, and Top Gear didn't even exist then. They're actually very careful on Top Gear to follow rules of the road, and anyone driving like a fool as a result of it has only himself to blame.

eli 15y ago

"The car unexpectedly ran out of charge when they got to Lincoln" That's not how I remember it playing out. They had plenty of warning and made numerous references to the battery meter and its "miles left" estimation. As they were looking for a charging station, James May said something to the effect, "He's running on whatever the electric equivalent of gas fumes is." If you just read this article, I encourage you to watch the episode before getting all wound up.

redthrowaway 15y ago
There are two claims in the article that were not made clear in the episode: 1) The Leaf had a full charge when delivered, but it was drained to 40% 2) Clarkson drove around in circles until it died, in Lincoln. Now I can understand both of these things from a television perspective. Obviously everything in Lincoln was staged, including their arrangement with the university to charge there. Clearly they drained the battery so that it would die in Lincoln, as that's where they had prepared to shoot. It makes sense from a TV perspective but it's unethical, especially given the direct harm it can have on livelihoods and the effort to transition off fossil fuels. There's no substantive difference between doing what they did, and merely pretending that the car died when it had half a charge left. Top Gear is a comedy show, but it isn't satire. The audience has no reasonable expectation that when the hosts make claims about certain cars, they are being dishonest for the sake of comedy. Sure, we know the challenges are staged, but that's not what this is about. It's as if, in testing the new Ferrari, they replaced the rear tires with winter tires then complained about how the read end was uncontrollable. This crosses the line directly from creating an entertaining narrative to slander. Given JC's very public views on anything to do with the environment, as well as their previous run-in with Tesla, you'd think they would be careful not to give the impression that they will intentionally lie to disparage electric vehicles. With this latest incident, that is exactly the impression they give.

overgard 15y ago

After watching the episode, It seems like the point they were making in Top Gear was that: A) It's not particularly hard to get stranded in one of these things. B) When you do get stranded, it's non-trivial to get them recharged. I think those are both fair points. A lot of people seem to be pointing out that "well if you plan ahead this won't happen", but how many times have you had to use your car to get to something you didn't plan ahead for? Maybe there's an emergency, or maybe I'm late, or maybe I just forgot to charge the thing overnight. Electric cars are cool, but for most people I can only imagine them supplementing a gas car, not replacing it.

pacemkr 15y ago

I've seen their review of the Leaf. Clarkson was anticipating the car running out and talking about it while looking at the dial, which he pointed out. What made it "unexpected" in the program, as this article claims, must have been lost on me. There was a point to be made and they let the car run out to make it, again, to me that was obvious. The points made were valid: * The infrastructure to recharge this thing in the middle of a trip is not there. * You better be prepared to wait a good number of hours to charge it. * You better know how far you're going and note how much charge you have left before you head out. * You will have to replace the batteries after some number of years and it will cost a lot of money. * Electricity is the future, but these cars are not it. (Yes, they actually said that.) Which one of these points is all of a sudden not valid? I'm sorry, the review was spot on.

markfenton 15y ago
I also seem to remember that one of the last things Clarkson said was how much he liked the the Leaf. More generally, a 100 mile range would be fine for me 80% of the time, but the other 20% I need longer range without a 12 hour stopover. Electric cars are just not quite there yet for my needs, and I suspect a lot of other people too.
daemin 15y ago
Didn't they say at the end of that bit that they consider Hydrogen to be the green fuel source of the future?

aj700 15y ago

I don't even have to read this. It's the Guardian. It's just a personal vendetta against people who question the religion of warmingism.

ZipCordManiac 15y ago

As somebody who doesn't know much about cars, I always thought Top Gear was a serious review show with a few jokes thrown in. Not downright misleading setups and information.