
Top Gear caught faking another electric car "failure" - raganwald
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/aug/05/top-gear-bbc
======
fossuser
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?

~~~
mattmanser
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.

~~~
fossuser
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-11...](http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-nissan-
leaf-110715.html)) 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
> 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
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
The whole show is mean and unnecessary. That's why we love it.

------
rickmb
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
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
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
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
> 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>

------
easyfrag
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
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
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.

------
eli
" _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
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.

------
mrcharles
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
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
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.

------
tatsuke95
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?

~~~
ugh
Can one at least expect them not to lie?

~~~
tatsuke95
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.

------
edkennedy
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?

~~~
raganwald
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.

------
Jamiecon
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!

------
eli
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
>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-11...](http://news.discovery.com/autos/range-anxiety-
nissan-leaf-110715.html)) 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.

~~~
MikeCapone
Off the top of my head, 80% of drivers drive less than 40 miles/day in the US,
and that number is probably much lower in Europe and Asia. Since cars spend
most of the day parked somehwere, you have lots of opportunities to plug an EV
in, and so most times when you drive off you have a full battery.

~~~
eli
That's not the only meaningful statistic in deciding whether or not to buy an
electric car.

What's the _farthest_ the average person needs to drive in a given month? I
bet it's more than the range of an electric car. That presents a problem.

~~~
wisty
I have to buy a new piece of furniture this month. There's no way it will fit
in a sedan. Does that mean I need to buy a light truck, or is there another
solution?

~~~
AppSec
If you knew you were buying one every other week for the life of the sedan,
then would you decide to buy a truck?

------
ck2
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/b40990604...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm)

<http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/02/ford-will-give/>

~~~
philk
_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
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?

~~~
ck2
@burgerbrain what's funny though is Leno is NOT anti-electric.

I think he also owns a 100 year old electric car, where the motor and battery
technology today is really not that far evolved from it, sadly.

(oh here it is [http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/jay-
leno/vintage/421594...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/jay-
leno/vintage/4215940) )

------
meow
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.

------
MikeW
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.

~~~
maushu
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
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.

------
goblgobl
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>).

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.

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

------
darksaga
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.

------
overgard
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.

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

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

------
barredo
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.

------
pacemkr
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
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.

------
ZipCordManiac
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.

------
aj700
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.

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

------
maeon3
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
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.

------
georgieporgie
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.

------
maeon3
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-
roads...](http://www.streetfire.net/video/top-gear-reviews-tesla-
roadster_206233.htm)

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

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

------
vaksel
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
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
doesn't change the point, that you are royally screwed if you run out of
charge outside your driveway

~~~
jonknee
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
Perhaps because there's a gas station every 10 feet, but electric charging
stations are much fewer and further between.

------
dublinclontarf
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
"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.

