Sigh.

That's really too bad. That's a car that we all really want to love, but if it can't do better than that there will be other better options. (maybe just not as cool). Now I have to go plan B and pay for my kid's college education instead. crap.

Do you usually drive 120mph on your daily commute? Seriously, how it does on the track isn't really relevant to the real world. It makes for good TV but...

Remember that drag goes as the square of speed. There is a *HUGE* difference in range when you are going 65 mph, 85mph or 120mph.

Driven conservatively, you'll get around 200 miles on a full charge.

Drive aggressively fast (like a sports car should be), you'll see more like 140miles. I've never found this to be limiting.

Driven on a track like a madman, you might only get 60 miles.

FWIW, it also took him 16 hours to charge because he was charging off a standard outlet. With the Tesla charging station, a full charge takes ~3.5 hours...

"If your commute is less than 27.5 miles each way and you have over a hundred thousand dollars to drop on a two-seat sports car, it might be some big fun."

Yes, that's right. I'm sure you drive to work at 125mph.

The car will do 200 miles at 70mph. It is not and never has been intended for track use.

If you were really going to lay down $109k on one of these then I am sure you would have checked out the facts first - like the fact that it comes with a 3 hour charger.

Clarkson is an EV hater. What did you expect? He led you up the garden path and then put the boot in.

I agree with mittelhauser and dpeilow. There is a huge difference in range when you are driving at 120Mph, and when you are driving highway speeds. Worrying that your commute must be less than 27.5 miles is a ridiculous statement

My twin-turbo RX-7 got about 80 miles on a full tank of gas (21 gallons!) when I drove it on the race track. I could get close to 4 times that range on the highway.

The Tesla is no different than a gasoline powered car in this respect.

I love the fact that although he tries to make a good point when he says "for you green people - look where that electricity is coming from"... he's pointing at what appears to be a nuclear power plant... which is about as clean as it gets second to wind and whatnot (taking nuclear recycling into account)

From Dvorak:

Rachel Konrad said, on December 15th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

For the record: Thanks to The Stig’s impressive turn behind the wheel, the Tesla Roadster gets a higher ranking in Top Gear’s performance board than a Porsche 911 GT3. Jeremy Clarkson, a die-hard “petrol head” with a clear bias against green cars generally, said that it must be “snowing in hell” because he had such a great time driving the Roadster and now considers himself a “volt head” thanks to the Roadster’s amazing performance. This is amazingly high praise from Clarkson, whose entire schtick is to savage even his most beloved petrol-guzzling sports cars.

However, I would like to clarify a couple things. Never at any time did Clarkson or any of the Top Gear drivers run out of charge. In fact, they never got below 20 percent charge in either car; they never had to push a car off the track because of lack of charge or a fault. (It’s unclear why they were pushing one into a garage in the video; I’ll refrain from speculating about their motives.)

The “brake failure” Clarkson mentions was solely a blown fuse; a service technician replaced the Roadster’s pump and it was back up and running immediately. They were never without a car, and the Top Gear testing did not put the Roadster’s reliability or safety in question whatsoever. Again, I’m going to leave out comments as to why the good folks at Top Gear might have mischaracterized the blown fuse as a brake failure, which is was decidedly not.

I am also unclear as to why Clarkson said it took 16 hours to recharge the Roadster without qualifying that statement at all. The vast majority of people who have taken delivery of their Roadsters (and there are more than 100 of them now) have much faster systems that recharge from dead to full in as little as 3.5 hours.

However, I really enjoyed Clarkson’s suggestion that, if people want to race Roadsters 24-7, they should simply buy two.

Rachel Konrad
Senior Communications Manager
Tesla Motors Inc.

CO2 heavier than O2, yet floating above it!?!?!?!???????....that's a fuckin trip! global "warmin" must be true! It sounds AWESOME!

He acts like the first commercial failure dictates the future. I believe that electric is the future of autos. I'm in no way a green kinda guy, but i just love the tech of it. So much potential. Cant wait till it is optimized and prices come down!

I'd hate to break it to those of you who are poo pooing the lack luster performance of the Tesla on range because it wasn't meant to be on a race track, etc. It's a sports car. It's $100K sports car for pete's sake. I'll attribute the brake fuse as a fluke. However, I will also qualify it by saying that it is a rather curious fluke after its first day of use by Top Gear. This rough treatment was expected from them.

I'm happy that there are people in the world who are able to afford things like $100K electric sports cars. Good for them. The rest of us are not going to have one electric car for city driving and one for long distance traveling. It isn't cost efficient, nor is it time efficient. I expect electric cars to remain among mostly the rich for the above reasons. It's going to be gas cars for the win.

The Tesla has always had a problem with overheating and torque limiting when driven hard. The people at Tesla know this and that the range is affected considerably when pushed. Why should the Tesla be treated any differently to all of the other expensive cars they test on Top Gear?
It's just a rich man's plaything anyway and has little bearing on the real world.

Before he criticized the car the way he did in the second half of the movie, he should have read more on Tesla's website about the car. I've seen in many places that the "Tesla Roadster is an electric sports car that is designed to be driven on the road." Tesla doesn't recommend driving their car on the track. They are producing the Roadster sport for more intensive driving. Even if the brakes do fail on the Roadster, you still have regenerative braking and the handbrake. Under conservative driving, the standard brakes will hardly ever have to be used. But, enough on the brakes, the motor has to be run very hard to overheat. In the movie, he said that the motor was overheating and the car was in reduced power mode. So the car was still able to move. They didn't have to abandon it in the middle of the track. And just like a regular car, if you don't keep an eye on the fuel gauge, you probably will end up stranded in the middle of the track. The Roadster has two battery gauges, one on the touchscreen and one on the LCD screen below the tachometer. If you see the battery getting low, prepare to get back to the garage and slow down a little. The range curve of the Roadster shows the farthest range at 22 mph. The closer to that you are, the farther the car can go on one battery charge. If you do run out of gas in a regular car or out of charge in a Tesla, the same thing happens. They both stop unexpectedly. I hear about all the people that criticize the Tesla Roadster. Some of them say that the electric car is impractical and that they feel the car could be made better. Some of the first cars ever made were electric before the internal combustion engine was invented. The ICE was mainly dwelled on over the electric motor in cars because of the greater range. Yes, there are certain applications where electric is not as feasible as an ICE, such as helicopters, trains, 18 wheelers, etc. because gasoline/diesel has a higher energy density than Li-ion battery cells. But in cars, such as the Tesla and the new Model S, electric is very practical, unless you are driving them on a track, which they were not designed for. And like some of you said, the Roadster can be charged at your house in 3.5 hours, given that the battery is completely dead, which under normal everyday driving, is unlikely.