Miss_X2b says:

Tesla Motors recently asked the government for bail out money. They’re on the road to bankruptcy.

madtruckman says:

ok, top gear had 2 of these cars, and had problems with brakes in one of them. Brakes?? so, by that math, 1% of their cars, at least, have bad brakes? i thought the mantra was ‘well all we need is a silicon valley startup to make cars and the car industry will be saaaaavvveeeedddd!!’. i wanna see dvorak roll up on calacanis with his tesla dead on the side of the road sometime. and to think, some of you smarty’s on here wanted to kill the last great hope for a great electric hybrid in the chevy volt. wanna see a car that will work, check that one out. and there will be at lease 10,000 of them when they start rolling next year. not 100, or a 1000..10,000.

Miguel says:

Not all good news, but these are the first steps towards the future.

I wonder if the weight problem and the lengthy charge times won’t be solved once fuel cells can be used.

Laxdude says:

The Tesla Roadster, while not exactly ready for a mass audience, you might notice on the shitty eco tires it ships with went around the TG test track in the same time Porsche 911 GT3 and out performed the Lotus Elise it is based on in both a sprint and a race lap.

This is not a car that has had thousands of iterations to perfect the tech. Problem 1, the motor overheated. Again, this is not a race car and it can be fixed. Problem 2, on the replacement car they had a break failure…I assume the regenerative breaking system. Again, an early adopter issue. The third major issue was range. Oooh, they ran the battery out in only 50 miles and it charges slowly on the wall mounted socket. SHOCKING!!!

The one real problem with the Tesla in the UK would be having a place to plug it in to. Street parking does not come with a plug and that rules out damn near everyone that lives in Greater London. But, if they could make the batteries removable (at least some of them) then you could either carry them in to charge, or swap them out at a gas station.

And listen to the latest TWIT, they are not asking for bailout money, they were asking for access to some sort of government backed loans for electric car makers. It was other people that were saying “Why bail out the big 3 when that money might be better spent creating big companies out of little ones like Tesla.”

Mister Mustard says:

The news isn’t all good? What’s the bad news? That an electric-powered car doesn’t run forever? That Top Gear has ham-handed mechanics who break the brakes?

The only bad news I see is that the guy said “al-you-MINNIE-um”, and if Mr. Curry hears that, we’ll have to listen to him say “al-you-MINNIE-um” on No Agenda.

Lerch says:

Miss_X2b: incorrect. They asked the feds for money authorized earlier in the year that’s available to pursue energy-efficient cars. It was conceived pre-financial crisis, not as bankruptcy aversion (though certainly Tesla could use it as such if that’s on their horizon)

ChrisW says:

I call this review BS. This smacks of something done by a Oil Company or GM…they left a lot of information out(like several other charging options which require much less time) and didn’t test the vehicle in real conditions.

Bah Humbug

Mister Mustard says:

#16 – ChrisW

I call bullshit on it too. If it took them 16 hours to recharge, they must have been plugging it into that limp-dicked windmill. According to groovy green dot com:

“All Tesla owners will have two options. They can plug the roadster into a standard wall socket and wait six or seven hours to juice up. Or they can use a recharging station designed by Tesla, one that an electrician must install in the garage. Those are the stations that Hyatt will use at its three hotels, and they take three to four hours to recharge the roadster.”

Or maybe it took them so long to charge because they wanted to give their ham-handed mechanics plenty of time to bung up the breaks.

Brian says:

What news isn’t good? I hate half-assed comments like that with nothing whatsoever to back it up. I’m guessing John got a snippet of the video and didn’t watch the whole thing, and thought he’d put up a snarky lil comment with it.

The Tesla is a first generation electric supercar, and goes 55 miles under harsher conditions than any of us will ever drive.

Give me a break.

bobbo says:

Obama was actually asked directly what he thought of putting a Federal Tax on gasoline to keep the price higher than market in order to encourage fuel efficient cars, development of energy independence, revenue for infrastructure etc.

Obama said he was not for it as Americans were under enough pressure already.

Sad to hear “no change” in our energy policy or words instead of deeds.

I think a phased in tax for the reasons stated would be very wise policy. We are only digging our hole deeper now with oil predicted to go to $40 a barrel before going back up.

Mister Mustard says:

#22 – JCincy

>>I can’t wait for the brown outs in
>>California when everyone plugs in their car
>>at night to recharge.

Shouldn’t be any worse than the brownouts every morning when they plug in their coffee makers. Or their hair dryer. They draw more current than the Tesla recharger.

Andy says:

Just finished listening to TWiT, and had the same thought about John posting this to piss off Calcanis (you could hear the two of them on the brink of coming to blows for a minute). Calcanis said, “Can you just cut them some slack?” No, Jason, for a car that costs north of $100k, I’m not cutting them any slack. Speaking from the normal gadget loving middle class who cannot fathom buying a $100k car ( much less buying a second one to give away), that damn thing had better drive for me and never have a single issue over the lifetime of the car.

Think about it – you can’t use this for much other than a simple commute. If you want to drive somewhere more than 100 miles away, you’re pushing it (200 miles there and back driving responsibly to maximize range). Going somewhere further away? Like Vegas from San Fran? No frakkin’ way, that’s about 575 miles. Even driving sensibly, that’s going to be three recharges before you even get there. And anywhere but your house where you’ve paid another $2k for the special wiring needed for the quick charger (3 hours time), you’re going to have to stop for an extended charge. The infrastructure simply isn’t there, and won’t be there until you start getting more of these on the road. And you’re not going to get more of these on the road unless you have a longer range and lower price. Still, there’s not much getting around the recharging issue until they get to a new battery technology (like the zinc-air batteries maybe?). Meanwhile, I’ll take my Prius that cost 1/4 the amount and get there on a single tank of gas (or close to it, might be hard to maintain the mileage through the mountains).

Shane says:

@Mr Mustard.

I’m sorry – are you trying to say that someone that speaks actual English instead of bastardised American English is wrong for saying the word Aluminum correctly?

Wow.

Shane.

Mister Mustard says:

#27 – ‘dro

Si no tienes nada que añadir, STFU, m’hijito.