How are they gonna make fun of a Tesla Roadster?

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Top Gear shows no mercy to cars that are anything less than impressive.

Now, there's a good chance a Tesla Roadster is going be on that show someday. I think they're gonna be kinda torn about it:

- The Tesla has supercar-class acceleration.
- But no muscular roars at the starting line.
- Top Gear likes Lotus, and Tesla inherits a lot of Lotus technology.
- But the Tesla weighs a lot more than a Lotus, adds frivolous things like a cupholder, and costs twice as much.
- The Tesla's worst case range is better than than the best-case range of every electric car ever built.
- But it's still limited, and takes 3.5 hours to recharge.

So, I imagine that when Top Gear gets their hands on it, they'll have a lot of nice things to say, but no shortage of "buts"...

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No, the Tesla's worst case isn't longer than other electric cars' best cases.

If you track this thing, you'll flatten the battery in well under 60 miles. This is because acceleration takes a lot of power, even at 100% efficiency. In addition, regnerative braking is near useless, since every time you brake harder than you can accelerate, the extra braking is being done by the brakes and cannot be recovered.

On the track, you accelerate at WOT out of every corner and you brake as max braking into nearly every one.

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why not the LS2/LS7?: Track is not the same as real life :) But if you take my wording literally, you're correct :|

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You know that clip is from 2002 or 2003 right?

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Hmm, the Teslas "worst case" is about 165 miles, with aggressive "slow and go" driving, high speeds, and A/C blasting. On the track, it would be much closer to 160 than 60, so I think LS2/LS7 is missing a digit.

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Chris M, you're wrong.

Let's say your track can be lapped in 120 seconds. Of this, we'll assume you are accelerating half the time (which is DEFINITELY too low), so you're accelerating at full power for 60 seconds per lap. You get a little power back under braking (less than 1/3rd), we'll let the low estimate of acceleration time counter the recovery of energy.

What do you think the HP is on the Tesla? It does 0-60 in 4 seconds, but it's pretty light. So let's say 180HP. A HP is 0.73kW, so that's 131kW expended for 60 seconds per lap, or 7860kWS (kilojoules) per lap (which is 2 mins).

The Tesla's battery is 53kWh, or 226,800 kilojoules. If you divide 226,800 by 7860, you see the Tesla can do 28.85 laps before killing its battery.

So, how long do you think the lap is? If it takes 2 mins to do, it's perhaps 2.5 miles (average of 75mph).

28.85 laps at 2.5 miles per lap is 72 miles.

And that's assuming the car is 100% efficient at turning battery power into engine power, and I can tell you it isn't.

I have a whole spreadsheet I worked up on this a while back, when considering if electric cars could be entered in road races. At this time, BTW, the answer is that it wouldn't be effective to do so.

BTW, I looked, the max power of the Tesla is actually 248HP (185kW), and the efficiency at peak power is 80%. So the figures would be a lot worse than I calculated here.

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One has to enjoy the laughs behind it. At the end of the day PEOPLE will decide for green cars as Gas gets more expensive and then clips like these will go away...

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Do Electric Car companies ADVERTIZE on this show? I thought not.
The WACKO HP Prostitutes Strike Again.
God Forbid you kill the internal combustion engine.

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"If you track this thing, you'll flatten the battery in well under 60 miles."

Same goes for a gasoline car. I track my M3 and I only get about 60 miles to a tank. That's about 4 MPG on the track, but I get 25 MPG on the freeway.

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