Top Gear Intentionally Ran Battery Down

The whole incident was staged
http://cars.uk.msn.com/news/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=157498687&ocid=tweet

Of course it was staged. I think they actually demonstrated the strength and practicality of the electric vehicle. I mean if he had a gasoline vehicle out of fuel he may have had to push or walk several miles to buy a gas can and some gas. But with the easy to plug in Leaf they just rolled it up to a building and start charging

I think this is a google map showing the university and gasoline stations

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...3.233989,-0.547514&spn=0.036167,0.111151&z=14

Maybe they should have Declined the carwings screen!

I found it interesting that TG says the video of the LEAF being run flat, pushed, etc may not be shown on the episode. Me thinks TG might have realized that Nissan is not Tesla. What may have been fun playtime with a boutique maker like Tesla is deadly serious stuff for a huge multi-national like Nissan.

BTW- Abusing more EV's is NOT going to help TG with their defense from Tesla. In fact doing this may have been a profoundly stupid and expensive move by TG and the BBC.

The new story will be "Big-Brother Nissan watches your every move with Carwings"!

We need Jeremy Clarkson to come stage another scene: Drive his LEAF in turtle mode up to one of those dealers who won't allow public charging. Film the dealer turning him away. With his car dead in the dealer's parking lot driveway, call Nissan Roadside Assistance for a tow to the nearest dealer. Film the tow truck being dispatched from the dealer, but being unable to reach the street because the driveway is blocked by Clarkson's LEAF. Film the tow truck driver as he realizes the car he is supposed to tow IS in fact the car that's blocking him. Film the car being loaded on the tow truck, driven a few feet to the formerly forbidden L2 charging station, unloaded, and plugged in.

walterbays said:

We need Jeremy Clarkson to come stage another scene: Drive his LEAF in turtle mode up to one of those dealers who won't allow public charging. Film the dealer turning him away. With his car dead in the dealer's parking lot driveway, call Nissan Roadside Assistance for a tow to the nearest dealer. Film the tow truck being dispatched from the dealer, but being unable to reach the street because the driveway is blocked by Clarkson's LEAF. Film the tow truck driver as he realizes the car he is supposed to tow IS in fact the car that's blocking him. Film the car being loaded on the tow truck, driven a few feet to the formerly forbidden L2 charging station, unloaded, and plugged in.

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Great idea but under the scenario you outlined, the dealer makes money. It will be under "warranty" and the dealer will charge Nissan. Some dealers are fixated with the idea that they will be giving away electricity for "free." It's a myoptic view but some people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

jcesare said:

Some dealers are fixated with the idea that they will be giving away electricity for "free." It's a myoptic view but some people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

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I think some of these people just don't realize how cheap it is to charge. An hour's charging would be less than $1 even when the electricicty is expensive. Infact, if the owner hangs around for 1 hour, he is likely to spend some money at the dealer buying stuff from the vending machine ...

If a buyer bought a Nissan Leaf from a dealership, and charged EXCLUSIVELY at that dealership for the full duration of a 3yr/12,000mi lease, they would consume about $604 worth of electricity. ($0.07/kWh)

Now, go look at the Invoice cost of a Nissan LEAF with accessories. Compare to MSRP.

Aside from the logistics of busy chargers, every LEAF could come with "lifetime charging" and still make the dealer a profit.

This whole thing is blown way out of proportion.

The episode has finally aired in the UK this past Sunday (and if you're clever, you've likely seen it already in the US).

Honestly, I think they really liked the car (and what's not to like). The grandstanding over the charge situation was their obvious goal, since there are so few charging stations anywhere. But it's early in this generation of EV's and it's going to take time to built out the charging systems (and companies like Walgreens are helping to lead that _charge_).

But honestly, did anyone really expect the self-professed petrolheads to stand up and abandon their audience and switch to EVs? If they did, I'm sure the average testosterone level of their audience would drop a few points that very day.

PhatBoyG said:

The episode has finally aired in the UK this past Sunday (and if you're clever, you've likely seen it already in the US).

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yeah - finally located it on a torrent site and downloaded it. What can I say about it? Well, lets see. I don't have a problem with the fact that they ran the battery down, since they didn't really specify exactly how far it went before that happened. I think with the Tesla they had made up some really low number and said that was all of the range it had or something. Even though the average EV driver will probably never experience a dead battery, I still don't have so much of a problem since they were showing the cars taking an out of town trip and pretty much knew ahead of time this would happen.

They show did seem to concentrate entirely on the one disadvantage that the EV currently has, which is lack of charging infrastructure. It would have been nice had they mentioned the fact that this problem would eventually disappear once more stations are built.

I do have a problem with how they said the future is not with the EV, because. I think they are dead wrong there.

Overall, I suppose the episode could have been better and it could have been worse. At minimum at least they raised awareness of EVs some.

PhatBoyG said:

The episode has finally aired in the UK this past Sunday (and if you're clever, you've likely seen it already in the US).

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Yep, I'm clever too. Overall, my wife and I were shocked that they praised the Leaf by saying it was a nice, well built car. Sure they got the battery stuffs wrong, but even they indicated they weren't sure. I was even more surprised that they liked the Peugeot iOn (a.k.a. Mitsubishi i MiEV).

I wasn't too surprised to hear them stating that hydrogen-electric cars are the future (they just said "hydrogen", but we know what they meant), however until the patents of the 80s start expiring I doubt we'll see much development. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I have a book from 1979 called "Electric Vehicles" where GM touts the future of hydrogen-electric vehicles. It's now 2011 without any "public" forward progress.

Overall though, they really called-out Lincolnshire as the city has expressed their disinterest in electric vehicles. Other cities have embraced electric vehicles and have provided charging stations, while Lincolnshire has received a lot of criticism for not having stations available. Top Gear definitely took the opportunity to sock-it to em'!

adric22 said:

I think with the Tesla they had made up some really low number and said that was all of the range it had or something.

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With the Tesla they said the battery would have run out after just 50 something miles (somewhere in that range). That upset a lot of people, but the thing is, they probably weren't wrong. Being aggressively driven at race speeds around their track probably WOULD drain the battery that quickly. Top Gear may mislead and take things out of context (it is a comedy show after all), but I don't think they would out-and-out lie...

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that they set out to Lincoln with only 30 miles remaining on the guessometer, despite Nissan delivering the car fully charged. So with their sights firmly set on failure. Naturally.

mwalsh said:

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that they set out to Lincoln with only 30 miles remaining on the guessometer, despite Nissan delivering the car fully charged. So with their sights firmly set on failure. Naturally.

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Yeah, I'm not sure advertising the fact that Nissan knew they drove around in a loop for a long time to run down the battery before they left is the best result either.

Yes, you press Accept, but not realizing that the "black box" it captures is sent to Nissan to be analyzed is going to be pushed as an issue by somebody I'm sure.