Tesla Motors Need more gears
December 15, 2008
You just gotta love the Top Gear guys. Its a pretty straight forward real world im gonna drive my car like an American sort of a show.
Clarkson of Top Gear breaks the Tesla Roadster
The video link above demonstrates Clarkson breaking the Tesla Roadster.
But just sorta makes me think that this is a prime example of Tesla needing more gears on a proper transmission.
Furthermore, the design idea that regeneration/recapturing of energy via the engine just simply doesnt work well.
One Comment
leave one →
Ummmm… not quite.
For the record: Thanks to The Stig’s impressive turn behind the wheel, the Tesla Roadster gets ranked in Top Gear’s performance board just above a Porsche 911 GT3. And if those results don’t speak for themselves: Jeremy Clarkson, a die-hard “petrol head” with a clear bias against green cars generally (not to mention his famed anti-American car bias), said that it must be “snowing in hell” because he had such a great time driving the Roadster.
In fact, he called himself a “volt head” thanks to the Roadster’s amazing performance. This is amazingly high praise indeed from Clarkson, whose tremendous entertainment value comes in part from his ability to savage even his most beloved petrol-guzzling race cars. It might not be immediately apparent to first-time Top Gear viewers just tuning into this one episode about Tesla, but Clarkson’s treatment of the Roadster arguably constitutes a positive review, and I’m sure most faithful viewers of the show would agree. We are quite pleased with the instrumented results.
However, simply to clarify just a few 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 filmed pushing one into a garage in the video, and I can’t speculate as to why they did this, as neither car needed a push and both were working the entire time. It’s untrue, as this blog post says, that Clarkson “broke” the car.
Thanks, and I’m glad so many folks enjoyed the show and it has sparked such robust debate in the blogosphere.
Rachel Konrad
Senior Communications Manager
Tesla Motors Inc.