DaveD

Top Gear reviews the Tesla Roadster Dvorak Uncensored: General interest observations and true web-log.

Rachel Konrad said, on December 15th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

For the record: Thanks to The Stig’s impressive turn behind the wheel, the Tesla Roadster gets a higher ranking in Top Gear’s performance board than a Porsche 911 GT3. Jeremy Clarkson, a die-hard “petrol head” with a clear bias against green cars generally, said that it must be “snowing in hell” because he had such a great time driving the Roadster and now considers himself a “volt head” thanks to the Roadster’s amazing performance. This is amazingly high praise from Clarkson, whose entire schtick is to savage even his most beloved petrol-guzzling sports cars.

However, I would like to clarify a couple things. Never at any time did Clarkson or any of the Top Gear drivers run out of charge. In fact, they never got below 20 percent charge in either car; they never had to push a car off the track because of lack of charge or a fault. (It’s unclear why they were pushing one into a garage in the video; I’ll refrain from speculating about their motives.)

The “brake failure” Clarkson mentions was solely a blown fuse; a service technician replaced the Roadster’s pump and it was back up and running immediately. They were never without a car, and the Top Gear testing did not put the Roadster’s reliability or safety in question whatsoever. Again, I’m going to leave out comments as to why the good folks at Top Gear might have mischaracterized the blown fuse as a brake failure, which is was decidedly not.

I am also unclear as to why Clarkson said it took 16 hours to recharge the Roadster without qualifying that statement at all. The vast majority of people who have taken delivery of their Roadsters (and there are more than 100 of them now) have much faster systems that recharge from dead to full in as little as 3.5 hours.

However, I really enjoyed Clarkson’s suggestion that, if people want to race Roadsters 24-7, they should simply buy two.

Rachel Konrad
Senior Communications Manager
Tesla Motors Inc.

graham

Go Rachel!!! (Have I mentioned that she is on fire today?)

It is good to hear confirmation on some of this stuff. The pushing the Roadster around made no sense, as we all know it doesn't just run out of juice and turn off. Also I thought it was very odd that they had a brake failure... a blown fuse seems much more plausible.

dpeilow

That's why in the case of TG themselves, I'm suggesting going straight to Ofcom. Taking the mickey out of a few peoples' complaints is one thing, but if Rachel's assertions that they misrepresented the issues with the car to the detriment of Tesla's brand image are correct, this should be far more formal.

Apart from the pre-recorded Vietnam special, TG is off the air now for a while. Therefore an email campaign - if it does get attention on the show - will just remind the audience again in a few month's time. Let sleeping dogs lie, etc. However a successful complain to Ofcom might get more results - possibly even forcing the BBC to show what actually happened or getting it corrected for the repeat showings of the episode on BBC America, BBC World and Dave (yes that is a channel) in the UK.

However, on the blogs, this needs to be dealt with as it occurs. I'm heartened that there are many more people who 'get it' out there too.

Tdave

If you listen carefully to the wording on the show about the range, Clarkson said:
They "worked out"? So, Mr. Clarkson, you didn't actually run out after 55 miles? You just worked out that it would?

Hmm. Me thinks that they achieved better range than that with their driving, and they had to do a calculation in order to give us such a low number.

graham

Yes, that wording seemed fishy to me too...

vfx

I caught that wording too. I just figured they had not been paying attention to how far they got when the car went in to conserve mode so they had to "work out" what it would do.

I hope Rachel will visit these pages. She is awesome!

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Kevin Harney

GO RACHEL!!!!!! This is what we need. More people out there making a positive spin on things and making sure the truth gets out there. GREAT JOB !!! Stop the BS in its tracks. I think that TM has just not had the time and energy to waste on these things in the past but needs to fight back as much as possible. Most people out there just take these stories at face value and do not take the time to even think about them at all. They just declare it as fact. Sad state of society I guess.

vfx

Can you rewrite this so I can understand?


vfx
Surfing the tube in California, dude.

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vfx

Rachael is the ANTIKENT!

:)

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DisneylandIsHome

I loved the line, "It's just a shame that in the real world, it doesn't seem to work." What in god's name was real world about their drive?