3 ms·

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 undriva

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.

electromagnetic 15y ago
> 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. Tesla's rebuttals to the Top Gear complaints were largely the same. They said the brakes didn't fail despite being broken. Power assisted brakes in any vehicle ARE broken if the power assist fails. It doesn't make the car undriveable, it does however make it untestable. You can't have non-power brakes on a high-performance sports car. IIRC they did use the other vehicle. Because the Tesla needs time to recharge, whilst other vehicles just need a fuel change, one vehicle was for testing and one was for filming. This would provide them enough mileage for the one-day filming they do for a review. However with one vehicle down they used the 'test' vehicle they used to get a feel for the vehicle. This put the car into the recovery mode, which the Top Gear crew made fun of. Tesla wanted a review. Top Gear isn't a non-biased program, they don't advertise to be. Tesla's vehicle had failures, they got exploited for a show KNOWN for being satirical, humorous and exploitative in its reviews. Tesla gave Top Gear a match, and Top Gear used it to burn them. They supplied their own failure, simple as, because ultimately they provided vehicles that failed. You review the material you have and not some idealistic bullshit green-freaks want to see. Top Gear has a viewership higher than the population of the US. If you're reaching that many people, get your marketing and advertising execs to fork over some money to give additional vehicles when you're not able to fuel up the vehicle. Tesla was dumb. Tesla got burned. Sucks to be Tesla. Edit: Note that Tesla failed to recognize that they had almost a 5-minute spotlight on their vehicle, in front of an audience of approximately 350 million simply for the use of their vehicles (that is top gears only condition, is that the vehicles are provided for testing). If you think the review is harsh, go watch reviews Top Gear has done for Hummer and for the F150. They make fun of the impracticality of vehicles.
- fossuser 15y ago
  They showed them pushing a Tesla into a garage as if it couldn't be driven, that's misleading. The 55 mile range figure was never justified even at track levels of abuse. They make fun of other vehicles practicality, but with the Hummer and F150 it's different. Their impracticality and large size are part of their brand and well known by their target market. Exacerbating minor issues with the Tesla to make it look unusable was mean and unnecessary especially considering the company was new. This alone would have been one thing, but when adding fabricated facts along with it and then doing a similar thing for the other electric vehicle that came out it looks like a pattern of bashing on EVs. >some idealistic bullshit green-freaks want to see That isn't necessary, if they just stuck with the truth it would have been good on its own.
  - killerswan 15y ago
    The whole show is mean and unnecessary. That's why we love it.
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  > You can't have non-power brakes on a high-performance sports car. Sure you can. The McLaren F1, for instance -- only the world's fastest production car ever -- had unassisted brakes. Edited to add link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_F1#Brakes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_F1#Brakes
  - electromagnetic 15y ago
    In a decade run they produced little over 100 vehicles, that's barely past a concept vehicle. Most vehicle manufacturers provide more vehicles for safety testing than McLaren likely ever produced of the F1. Oh, and it's almost two-decades old on initial release.
batasrki 15y ago
The 55 mile range was calculated by Tesla's engineers, not Top Gear's. So, Tesla Motors should be pissed at its own engineers and no one else.
- fossuser 15y ago
  This is Tesla's statement on the issue: "On March 29 2011, Tesla filed a lawsuit to stop Top Gear’s continued rebroadcasts of an episode containing malicious falsehoods about the Tesla Roadster. Top Gear’s Executive Producer, Andy Wilman, has drafted a blog to present their side of the story. Like the episode itself, however, his proclamations do more to confound than enlighten. Mr. Wilman admits that Top Gear wrote the script before filming the testing of the Roadsters. The script in question, concluding with the line "in the real world, it absolutely doesn’t work" was lying around on set while Top Gear was allegedly "testing" the Roadsters. It seems actual test results don’t matter when the verdict has already been given -- even if it means staging tests to meet those predetermined conclusions. Now Mr. Wilman wants us to believe that when Top Gear concluded that the Roadster "doesn't work," it "had nothing to do with how the Tesla performed." Are we to take this seriously? According to Mr. Wilman, when Top Gear said the car "doesn't work," they "primarily" meant that it was too expensive. Surely they could have come to that conclusion without staging misleading scenes that made the car look like it didn’t work. Mr. Wilman's other contentions are just as disingenuous. He states that they never said the Roadster "ran out of charge." If not, why were four men shown pushing it into the hangar? Mr. Wilman states that "We never said that the Tesla was completely immobilized as a result of the motor overheating." If not, why is the Roadster depicted coming to a stop with the fabricated sound effect of a motor dying? Mr. Wilman also objects to Tesla explaining our case, and the virtues of the Roadster. Top Gear has been re-broadcasting lies about the Roadster for years, yet are uncomfortable with Tesla helping journalists set the record straight about the Roadster’s revolutionary technology. Mr. Wilman seems to want Top Gear to be judged neither by what it says, nor by what it does. Top Gear needs to provide its viewers, and Tesla, straightforward answers to these questions." I hadn't heard that Tesla calculated that range, the direct quote from the show used the pronoun 'we' and I thought part of the suit was because the 55 mile range statement from top gear defamed Tesla and made them look as if they were lying about the range.

electromagnetic 15y ago

> 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. Tesla's rebuttals to the Top Gear complaints were largely the same. They said the brakes didn't fail despite being broken. Power assisted brakes in any vehicle ARE broken if the power assist fails. It doesn't make the car undriveable, it does however make it untestable. You can't have non-power brakes on a high-performance sports car. IIRC they did use the other vehicle. Because the Tesla needs time to recharge, whilst other vehicles just need a fuel change, one vehicle was for testing and one was for filming. This would provide them enough mileage for the one-day filming they do for a review. However with one vehicle down they used the 'test' vehicle they used to get a feel for the vehicle. This put the car into the recovery mode, which the Top Gear crew made fun of. Tesla wanted a review. Top Gear isn't a non-biased program, they don't advertise to be. Tesla's vehicle had failures, they got exploited for a show KNOWN for being satirical, humorous and exploitative in its reviews. Tesla gave Top Gear a match, and Top Gear used it to burn them. They supplied their own failure, simple as, because ultimately they provided vehicles that failed. You review the material you have and not some idealistic bullshit green-freaks want to see. Top Gear has a viewership higher than the population of the US. If you're reaching that many people, get your marketing and advertising execs to fork over some money to give additional vehicles when you're not able to fuel up the vehicle. Tesla was dumb. Tesla got burned. Sucks to be Tesla. Edit: Note that Tesla failed to recognize that they had almost a 5-minute spotlight on their vehicle, in front of an audience of approximately 350 million simply for the use of their vehicles (that is top gears only condition, is that the vehicles are provided for testing). If you think the review is harsh, go watch reviews Top Gear has done for Hummer and for the F150. They make fun of the impracticality of vehicles.

fossuser 15y ago
They showed them pushing a Tesla into a garage as if it couldn't be driven, that's misleading. The 55 mile range figure was never justified even at track levels of abuse. They make fun of other vehicles practicality, but with the Hummer and F150 it's different. Their impracticality and large size are part of their brand and well known by their target market. Exacerbating minor issues with the Tesla to make it look unusable was mean and unnecessary especially considering the company was new. This alone would have been one thing, but when adding fabricated facts along with it and then doing a similar thing for the other electric vehicle that came out it looks like a pattern of bashing on EVs. >some idealistic bullshit green-freaks want to see That isn't necessary, if they just stuck with the truth it would have been good on its own.
- killerswan 15y ago
  The whole show is mean and unnecessary. That's why we love it.
ScottBurson 15y ago
> You can't have non-power brakes on a high-performance sports car. Sure you can. The McLaren F1, for instance -- only the world's fastest production car ever -- had unassisted brakes. Edited to add link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_F1#Brakes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_F1#Brakes
- electromagnetic 15y ago
  In a decade run they produced little over 100 vehicles, that's barely past a concept vehicle. Most vehicle manufacturers provide more vehicles for safety testing than McLaren likely ever produced of the F1. Oh, and it's almost two-decades old on initial release.

batasrki 15y ago

The 55 mile range was calculated by Tesla's engineers, not Top Gear's. So, Tesla Motors should be pissed at its own engineers and no one else.

fossuser 15y ago
This is Tesla's statement on the issue: "On March 29 2011, Tesla filed a lawsuit to stop Top Gear’s continued rebroadcasts of an episode containing malicious falsehoods about the Tesla Roadster. Top Gear’s Executive Producer, Andy Wilman, has drafted a blog to present their side of the story. Like the episode itself, however, his proclamations do more to confound than enlighten. Mr. Wilman admits that Top Gear wrote the script before filming the testing of the Roadsters. The script in question, concluding with the line "in the real world, it absolutely doesn’t work" was lying around on set while Top Gear was allegedly "testing" the Roadsters. It seems actual test results don’t matter when the verdict has already been given -- even if it means staging tests to meet those predetermined conclusions. Now Mr. Wilman wants us to believe that when Top Gear concluded that the Roadster "doesn't work," it "had nothing to do with how the Tesla performed." Are we to take this seriously? According to Mr. Wilman, when Top Gear said the car "doesn't work," they "primarily" meant that it was too expensive. Surely they could have come to that conclusion without staging misleading scenes that made the car look like it didn’t work. Mr. Wilman's other contentions are just as disingenuous. He states that they never said the Roadster "ran out of charge." If not, why were four men shown pushing it into the hangar? Mr. Wilman states that "We never said that the Tesla was completely immobilized as a result of the motor overheating." If not, why is the Roadster depicted coming to a stop with the fabricated sound effect of a motor dying? Mr. Wilman also objects to Tesla explaining our case, and the virtues of the Roadster. Top Gear has been re-broadcasting lies about the Roadster for years, yet are uncomfortable with Tesla helping journalists set the record straight about the Roadster’s revolutionary technology. Mr. Wilman seems to want Top Gear to be judged neither by what it says, nor by what it does. Top Gear needs to provide its viewers, and Tesla, straightforward answers to these questions." I hadn't heard that Tesla calculated that range, the direct quote from the show used the pronoun 'we' and I thought part of the suit was because the 55 mile range statement from top gear defamed Tesla and made them look as if they were lying about the range.