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 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.
* 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.