Top Gear caught faking another electric car failure

[Ichingcarpenter]

Take, for example, Top Gear's line on electric cars. Casting aside any pretence of impartiality or rigour, it has set out to show that electric cars are useless. If the facts don't fit, it bends them until they do.

It's currently being sued by electric car maker Tesla after claiming, among other allegations, that the Roadster's true range is only 55 miles per charge (rather than 211), and that it unexpectedly ran out of charge. Tesla says "the breakdowns were staged and the statements are untrue". But the BBC keeps syndicating the episode to other networks. So much for "acknowledging mistakes when they are made".

Now it's been caught red-handed faking another trial, in this case of the Nissan LEAF.

Last Sunday, an episode of Top Gear showed Jeremy Clarkson and James May setting off for Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, 60 miles away. The car unexpectedly ran out of charge when they got to Lincoln, and had to be pushed. They concluded that "electric cars are not the future".

But it wasn't unexpected: Nissan has a monitoring device in the car which transmits information on the state of the battery. This shows that, while the company delivered the car to Top Gear fully charged, the programme-makers ran the battery down before Clarkson and May set off, until only 40% of the charge was left. Moreover, they must have known this, as the electronic display tells the driver how many miles' worth of electricity they have, and the sat-nav tells them if they don't have enough charge to reach their destination. In this case it told them – before they set out on their 60-mile journey – that they had 30 miles' worth of electricity. But, as Ben Webster of the Times reported earlier this week, "at no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip."

It gets worse. As Webster points out, in order to stage a breakdown in Lincoln, "it appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than 10 miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/aug/05/top-gear-bbc

[PoliticAverse]

1. "That's how TV works". See, this is why I don't have a TV... n/t

[nashville_brook]

2. the auto trade media is corrupt as fuck.

i love cars. i love engineering -- especially forward-thinking engineering. this is a form of racketeering -- they're protecting the status-quo and hindering advancement. it's reprehensible.

[Octafish]

15. Very true. Eamonn Fingleton documented it.

I'm in Detroit. The scribes long ago sold us out. F'r instance:

Detroit's Collapse: The Untold Story -- How the Press Helped Destroy the Auto Industry

Why? Why would so many -- including Americans -- want to dump on Motown? The short answer: We're the Arsenal of Democracy.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. My kids love that show. It's very disheartening to hear that they would

do something like this. :(

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. The presenters are witty but have been caught numerous

times making political incorrect statements about other nationalities and even race.
I watched it some years ago and it brought you along on the fantasy driving
some top of the line unaffordable and unattainable aston martin or Ferrari.

I got caught up in the show's hype for a while.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. Hmm. I'll have to watch it with them, and point out the wrongness of those comments when

they come up. I think it's the better choice over just taking the show away from them completely. Teachable moments, and all that. :)

[leveymg]

5. The 55 miles/charge was lapping a racetrack. But, yes, they hate electrics & have an agenda.

But, taken for what they are -- a fictional entertainment show made for petrolheads -- TopGear is still one of the best things on the tele - if you like the infernal combustion engine. And, I'll admit, I do.

The things can even be art. Look at that jumble of snakes exhaust header. Kinetic Art of the first-order:

[dipsydoodle]

6. That's bad

:(

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Clarkson is a foppish, painfully bigoted pretender and liar

The show has great elements, the prejudices of Clarkson really drag it down.

[leveymg]

8. I like its personal touches and eccentricities. Part of the appeal for me - it' so unAmerican

If it were US network TV or PBS it would be so pleasant, so nice to everyone, so balanced. So, not worth watching.

This is very much the product of deranged private imaginations. I hate it, but love it.

[Schema Thing]

16. meh. it's fake. it's very much american style.

[Xithras]

10. Clarkson makes no secret of his dislike toward electric cars.

In fact, he really doesn't like anything with less than eight cylinders.

That said, nobody I know watches Top Gear for car reviews, or to determine whether or not to buy a particular car (99% of their cars are beyond the budgets of mere mortals anyway). It's an entertainment show, not an automotive review show.

[flvegan]

20. Really? He loved the Honda Clarity.

You know, the hydrogen powered car we should be looking at.

[CJCRANE]

9. "Jeremy Clarkson is a pivotal figure among the Murdoch crowd"...

"...In the various flowcharts in newspapers charting the links between David Cameron, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs, the Top Gear presenter is a pivotal figure.

The motormouth's presence at the heart of these great events is partly explained by geography (a large house in the now notorious Chipping Norton area) and by his newspaper career: columns for both the Sun and Sunday Times. There may also be a suggestion of jester; that Jeremy Clarkson plays at the News Corp court the role filled by Fool for the Lear whom Murdoch Sr increasingly resembles..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jul/20/tv-matters-jeremy-clarkson

[taterguy]

11. Top Gear fakes stuff? Does that mean Stig I might still be alive?

I cried my eyes out when he went off the deck of that aircraft carrier in the Jaguar.

:cry: :cry: :cry:

[azul]

13. I have no use for top gear.

My ev conversion only needs 2nd and 3rd gears to drive, as well as reverse.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Ichingcarpenter.

[and-justice-for-all]

17. Lie lie lie....fuckers. nt

[joshcryer]

18. Top Gear US is starting to be more entertaining for me.

I know they both stage their stunts but Top Gear US at least rings more fair on issues.

[flvegan]

19. Such BULLSHIT.

Yeah, Top Gear hates the hypocrisy of the battery brigade. Buy a Prius or another coal-fired shitbox. Have at it. The Tesla being the Ferrari of the group.

The Honda Clarity, the Hydrogen powered car we SHOULD be moving toward? Oh no, no no no. James May loved it. Jay Leno loved it. Clarkson loved it.

Did they fake a failure? Who cares. When you're too stupid to focus on where you need to be, it's just crap.

[jeff47]

21. Yes, clearly we should move to vehicles powered by oil-derived hydrogen

And when we pump out CO2 to make the hydrogen, we can pretend to be green!

Alternatively, we could ignore the storage problems with hydrogen itself, and electrolyze water...by burning coal.

Yes, clearly hydrogen vehicles are the way of the future.

[bahrbearian]

23. But Jay Leno loves it.

[truebrit71]

22. I love Top Gear, both the UK and the US version...

..I watch them for the entertainment value and pretty much bugger all else. Clarkson is an enormous over-grown right-wing schoolboy, and his constant railing against global warming and environmental issues is hysterical to me in a King Canute sort of way...Global climate change doesn't require anyone's belief to actually exist, and Jeremy is too thick to know that...

[uponit7771]

24. Wow, that was stupid of them...If this is true I pray Tesla wins their suite

[nomb]

25. Top Gear responds - it makes a good point.

1) We never, at any point in the film, said that we were testing the range claims of the vehicles, nor did we say that the vehicles wouldn’t achieve their claimed range. We also never said at any time that we were hoping to get to our destination on one charge.

2) We never said what the length of the journey was, where we had started from, nor how long we had been driving at the start of the film. So again, no inference about the range can be gleaned from our film.

3) We were fully aware that Nissan could monitor the state of the battery charge and distance travelled via onboard software. The reporter from The Times seems to suggest this device caught us out, but we knew about it all the time, as Nissan will confirm. We weren’t bothered about it, because we had nothing to hide.

4) The content of our film was driven by the points we were trying to explore. As James stated in the introduction, you can now go to a dealer and buy a ‘proper’ electric car, as in one that claims to be more practical and useful than a tiny, short-range city runabout. That’s what the car company marketing says, and that’s what we focused on in our test: the pros and cons of living with one as an alternative to a petrol car.

So yes, when we set off, we knew we would have to recharge at some point, because that was an experience we wanted to devote part of the film to. Now granted, James and Jeremy’s stopover – which included brass rubbings, adult scrabble and tattoos – was more knockabout than an average motorist would experience, but the consumer points coming out of the film were quite clear:

1) Electric cars are still very expensive.

2) The recharging infrastructure is patchy.

3) The range readout varies enormously, unlike the information given by a petrol gauge.

4) The Leaf is a very good car per se, and there’s nothing wrong with electric motors, but the battery, in our view, remains the Achilles’ heel of the whole package.

[w4rma]

28. Not really. They knew what they were doing. (nt)

[Javaman]

26. This is why "reality TV" is very rarely if ever real or truthful. nt

[Johonny]

27. someone should pass this to mythbusters

I loved to see one reality show pick on another. Woot entertainment!