Jaff
Active Member
Can't say for sure, but, if you live in a castle, wouldn't you probably have a few shares of BP in yer portfolio...:biggrin::wink::wink::wink:
TEG
Teslafanatic
- Aug 20, 2006
- 21,719
- 8,690
Which has gone up a lot since they "plugged the gulf leak", like I thought it would, but I just couldn't bring myself to buy any.
Sounds like he could get home and back without charging. If he was a good boy.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
He said in his Mirror column that he couldn't wait to try it - a few weeks before that Top Gear episode.
mpt
Electrics are back
I got a response to my complaint!
In short, they reference another article on the Prius (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12159469) and say see, we're not biased.
I guess they missed the point of my complaint.
In short, they reference another article on the Prius (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12159469) and say see, we're not biased.
I guess they missed the point of my complaint.
Part one of my London to Edinburgh write-up is now live on Tesla's blogs.
Obviously Tesla needed to edit it for brevity, but you guys get the Director's Cut:
Part 1: "Taking the High Road to Scotland (and getting there before ye)"
Last Sunday afternoon, the members at Tesla Motors Club heard that the BBC was planning a stunt to drive a Mini-E from London to Edinburgh. Great, I thought - until I clicked on the link to their story and saw a map proposing it would take four days to make the journey.
Now I happen to think the Mini-E is a super little car. I even applied to trial one twice, as it would be perfect for my daily commuting needs and I know that at least one Tesla owner runs one as his family’s second everyday car. Sure, it’s a prototype with some of the inconveniences one might associate with an early “beta” design, but by limiting themselves to 13A public charge points, the BBC was deliberately making the Mini (and by implication, all mass-market EVs) look far worse than it actually is.
The Tesla Roadster, on the other hand, is a mature design and well engineered car that can really take anything nature and the road throws at it. The 2.5 model is the best yet – Tesla’s policy of incremental improvement has made for a solid product. I drove a Roadster on a tour of Southern England last year, so I already had a good feel for the car’s capabilities on long distance trips and I’ve seen how the car has gotten better with every release.
I was away on business on Monday, but I was following developments with the BBC story online. I felt sure that the Roadster could comfortably do the trip in a day if the right charge locations were available. I’d heard on the grapevine that there was an owner near Nottingham with a High Power Charger (HPC), and I knew that I could get 32A charging at Tebay Services. Running the numbers, this was enough to do the trip in a day with a 6 AM start. I started making calls and sending emails.
By Monday night, I had agreement from both the HPC owner and Tebay, so we were in business. I then thought who better to drive the car and get people to take notice than Robert Llewellyn? I sent him a message but he was tied up all week. He did offer to come down before work and see the car off from London, though. Next I thought why not get other famous pro-EV faces such as Quentin Wilson or Ben Collins? But with Detroit in full flow and the short notice of the trip, they understandably couldn’t make it. Then Tesla suggested I do it.
After some frantic phone calls to work, I got the time off and quickly changed my plans. It is no exaggeration to say that at 6 PM the night before the trip I was in Norway, hurriedly rearranging flights with the help of my girlfriend Khadine to get back to stay in London that evening (yes, even EV fans have to fly places sometimes). Five hours later we’d met at a hotel close to the London Store, trying to get some sleep before the big day ahead. It really was that last minute – I didn’t even get time for a hair cut!
Early the next morning, we left the hotel in typical wet London weather and walked around the corner to the store. Robert then arrived and we all put the world to rights over a cup of coffee. Robert wanted to do a quick interview for Fully Charged and then we were off.
A quick chat with Bobbyllew before we went became 40 minutes
Even at that time, London is coming to life and so progress towards the M1 was a little slow. Once on the motorway, we made steady progress on the 138 miles north of the first leg, all three lanes being busy but free flowing for the entire route. Khadine tweeted that we’d past Milton Keynes and Leicester (the Mini-E’s first and second charging stops) and we eventually turned off the motorway at Nottingham towards our HPC. The HPC’s owner, Patrick Bird, was waiting for us near the motorway exit and led us for the last few miles to his house. We arrived at 9:30.
While the car recharged on its 63 Amp supply, we recharged with bacon and eggs. Our host couldn’t have been more welcoming or supportive of our challenge. We chatted about the Roadster, the motor industry in general and how other manufacturers are starting to get the message about EVs. Patrick bought his Tesla after a quick test drive at the car show in Monaco and isn’t really “plugged in” to the whole EV scene at all – not even the online Tesla fan club. He bought it because he loves sports cars, yet, by himself, he’d found the same things as the rest of us, for example that it takes him 10 seconds to charge it (5 to plug in at night and 5 to unplug in the morning). He said he could never go back to ICE now – this after being a lifelong Porsche fan.
The car filling up on Patrick's HPC during the first pit stop
I’d never used a Tesla HPC before, but it’s truly impressive to watch it load the car with electricity at the rate which it does. Its job done, we set off on the 150 miles of leg two of our journey at 1 o’clock. This involved crossing the Pennine hills to Manchester, before heading north to Tebay Services in the Lake District, Cumbria. Normally in the UK, if one is driving on the North-South axis then it’s either west of the Pennines on the M6 or east of them on the M1 or A1. We had to cross them to get to the charge spot. The scenery was beautiful, but there was no time to stop and appreciate it on this trip.
Skirting Manchester, we arrived at Tebay at 4:20 PM and plugged straight in. We had a welcoming committee – everyone from the Managing Director down – who were pouring over the car within a couple of minutes. I think some were quite smitten.
While the car refilled (this time at 32 Amps), we ate in the restaurant then relaxed in the hotel while catching up on developments online.
Tebay is fantastic – it is the only motorway service station in the UK that is family run and it therefore specialises in local produce, great hospitality and a level of service that is a cut above the large, soulless chains that operate all the other locations on the road network. I’ve been stopping there since when I was a kid on family trips and today I will drive on past other service stations to get dinner there. The on-site hotel has a restaurant with AA rosette rating (meaning a cut above the average) and a lounge with real log fire. It was somewhere where spending a few hours while the car recharged was a pleasure and a welcome opportunity to relax after the rush of the previous evening.
The view from Tebay Services south towards the Lune Valley. The M6 is just visible in the distance.
By this time, Robert had cut the video he shot that morning and put a special episode of Fully Charged online. He’d also tweeted about the challenge and recommended his followers watch my Twitter feed for updates. There’s nothing like that sort of recommendation to get your email inbox overflowing! I had messages of support from EV fans and even Tesla staff the world over. We’d also clearly rattled the BBC, who had not only requested my contact details but seen fit to post that our challenge was unfair, not representative of mass market EVs’ capabilities and akin to flying from London to Scotland in a Eurofighter (that’s a fast military jet for the non plane fans).
Of course the BBC neglected to explain to their public that the Mini-E is not really representative of mass market EVs either, given that it cannot be bought, has no back seats and is to finish being trialled in Britain within weeks. Why did the BBC not make their trip in a Nissan LEAF, I asked? It is genuinely on sale with deliveries starting in the spring here. It will fast charge. It has 5 seats. If our trip in the Roadster was somehow “disingenuous” (it wasn’t – I am quite open in saying the car costs £90k, but it is pioneering the leading technology that will appear in future cheaper models from Tesla and other brands), then surely claiming the Mini-E is state-of-the-art for a mass market EV without mentioning the LEAF, the Renault ZE cars, the Focus electric, the BYD e6, the Mercedes A-Class E-Cell, the Toyota Rav4 EV and of course the Tesla Model S is simply unforgivably bad journalism.
Unexpectedly, and to my delight, by the time we left the hotel at 10 PM, Nissan LEAF was the top trend on Twitter in the UK. Yes – we’d actually gotten people talking about mass market EVs to that extent. (It would have been great to have seen Tesla’s name there too, but I think the audience was split across various Tesla related tags on this occasion.)
Returning to the car, we discovered what could have been a disaster. I’d filled the car with exactly the range we needed to get to Edinburgh and our next overnight charge, and not a mile more – we were keen to get going. Six hours to refill and relax was welcome on this trip, but I must confess I was longing for another HPC charge. However, earlier, concerned that our charger was in full view of the car park, Tebay staff had wrapped a chain around the charger’s control box and padlocked it to the outlet. I was given the key to then return to the night staff when we left as the previous staff had gone home. We put our bags in the car and I went to disconnect the charger. It was the wrong key!
I tried to see if the charger could be manipulated free while Khadine went to find someone. Eventually we got a duty manager to produce bunches of keys and tried without success to find one that would open the lock. We’d lost 25 minutes by this stage and I was even contemplating leaving the charger behind. Concerned that the clock was ticking, I sent the manager back inside to look for more keys and then snapped the chain apart with all my “superfan” super-human strength! It’s always the small things that potentially get you.
The next 133 mile leg should have been straightforward but then Mother Nature decided to play a part. We’d seen that snow was forecast over the England-Scotland border area but we did not expect thick fog. It was so bad that I could barely see road signs and could just pick out the “Welcome to Scotland” sign in the murk. The remaining 80 miles of motorway were nothing but a white blur and the Roadster’s sat-nav was our only reassurance that we were making good progress north. As we climbed up to Beattock on the M74 – as severe a gradient as you are likely to see on the motorway – we even started to see snow on the ground. Nonetheless, we pressed onwards.
The last 44 miles to Edinburgh are on a twisting, single carriageway road called the A702. This required concentration given the weather conditions and late hour, but was a welcome relief from the monotony of the last couple of hours of empty motorway driving. We’d arranged for my friend Andrew, who lives in Edinburgh and was hosting us that night, to meet us at the city limits and escort us from there. We met by the “Edinburgh” sign which we photographed and tweeted, before heading to our goal. The car went into “range uncertain” mode while we were there.
In all the excitement I’d neglected to confirm to Andrew that the goal was Edinburgh Castle and not his house! To my horror, Andrew turned onto the Edinburgh bypass. There was just enough juice in my phone to call him and shout “castle” before it died (keeping my phone topped up was harder than keeping my car topped up on this trip). Not wanting to waste any time or travel extraneous miles, we left at the next exit and headed towards the city centre. The detour cost us about two miles.
We sneaked onto the Castle Esplanade, backed up to the door, grabbed the shots and cleared off before any armed soldiers came out to ask what we were doing. A fast, quiet car is exactly the tool for the job. Within seconds, the shot of the car by the castle gate was online and those following on Twitter and via Tesla Motors Club knew we had scored a famous victory over biased journalism.
Mission accomplished - Edinburgh Castle Esplanade
We didn’t get much sleep that night, having carefully driven the car back to Andrew’s home (another 7 miles away in the suburbs) and started to plan our approach to the media. The BBC’s map stated that their last leg was going to take two hours, so we expected them to arrive in Edinburgh in time for their breakfast TV programme. So it seemed did the presenters, as they kept cutting to live shots near the castle - however by 8 o’clock it was clear that their event was not happening and they announced there was going to be a full report on Friday’s show. We stood down, but not before calling the hotel’s reception pretending to be Mini fans who wanted to see the car. The BBC had not even left. Did they have an overnight charging failure? We shall probably never know.
Despite asking for my contact details (and getting my phone number), the BBC never did try to call me back. Instead, we managed to obtain BBC reporter Brian Milligan’s phone number. Eventually Andrew managed to speak to him: They’d diverted via Berwick-upon-Tweed where there was an undiscovered charging post (luckily, “the UK’s newest”). He was clearly not happy about our own stunt, he didn’t want to meet, certainly didn’t want to debate the rights and wrongs of using a two year old test car to show the public what a “mass market” EV can and cannot do. We thought about gate-crashing his arrival, but realised that we were on a hiding to nothing if the footage was not live. Given how far the BBC had gone to trash the image of EVs already that week, they’d have thought nothing of editing any pre-recorded interview to make the point they wanted to make.
And while Brian told us that the Mini-E was going back to London on a trailer, there was no way my Tesla was doing the same. I had to be in Ireland in two days time for my Grandfather’s birthday party. I had expected to retrace my steps and then have to fly to Ireland, but my time in the Roadster gave me the confidence to contemplate something much more fun: arriving by road.
What is clear is that while we won this battle, the war still has a long way to go. The difference in opinions between those who saw the online coverage and those who just watch TV are highly marked: We may have enlightened a few hundred thousand people, but ten times that many only saw negative coverage on BBC TV. We tried hard to get rival TV stations to cover it, but to no avail (first ever London-Edinburgh one day EV trip “not on our agenda” – if ever you still thought the media is neutral). Whether the BBC was trying to make a point about charging infrastructure or not, the fact is they have made our job harder, again, by skewing the EV’s image in the minds of the public. At least their final online diary entry was more upbeat:
By the end of next year, the UK will have 4,000 charging posts across the country. Your car's sat nav will guide you straight to them, so there'll be no time wasted while you hunt for them. When you plug in, your car will get an 80% charge in just 20 minutes. Meanwhile fuel prices continue to rise.
Stay tuned for part two to see how we covered 5 countries in 5 days, became the first car to charge on Irish Ferries, tested the philosophy that “everywhere is a charging station if you ask nicely” and returned the Roadster to London under its own steam.
No hard feelings BMW, our beef wasn't with you: See, I do like the Mini-E
Obviously Tesla needed to edit it for brevity, but you guys get the Director's Cut:
Part 1: "Taking the High Road to Scotland (and getting there before ye)"
Last Sunday afternoon, the members at Tesla Motors Club heard that the BBC was planning a stunt to drive a Mini-E from London to Edinburgh. Great, I thought - until I clicked on the link to their story and saw a map proposing it would take four days to make the journey.
Now I happen to think the Mini-E is a super little car. I even applied to trial one twice, as it would be perfect for my daily commuting needs and I know that at least one Tesla owner runs one as his family’s second everyday car. Sure, it’s a prototype with some of the inconveniences one might associate with an early “beta” design, but by limiting themselves to 13A public charge points, the BBC was deliberately making the Mini (and by implication, all mass-market EVs) look far worse than it actually is.
The Tesla Roadster, on the other hand, is a mature design and well engineered car that can really take anything nature and the road throws at it. The 2.5 model is the best yet – Tesla’s policy of incremental improvement has made for a solid product. I drove a Roadster on a tour of Southern England last year, so I already had a good feel for the car’s capabilities on long distance trips and I’ve seen how the car has gotten better with every release.
I was away on business on Monday, but I was following developments with the BBC story online. I felt sure that the Roadster could comfortably do the trip in a day if the right charge locations were available. I’d heard on the grapevine that there was an owner near Nottingham with a High Power Charger (HPC), and I knew that I could get 32A charging at Tebay Services. Running the numbers, this was enough to do the trip in a day with a 6 AM start. I started making calls and sending emails.
By Monday night, I had agreement from both the HPC owner and Tebay, so we were in business. I then thought who better to drive the car and get people to take notice than Robert Llewellyn? I sent him a message but he was tied up all week. He did offer to come down before work and see the car off from London, though. Next I thought why not get other famous pro-EV faces such as Quentin Wilson or Ben Collins? But with Detroit in full flow and the short notice of the trip, they understandably couldn’t make it. Then Tesla suggested I do it.
After some frantic phone calls to work, I got the time off and quickly changed my plans. It is no exaggeration to say that at 6 PM the night before the trip I was in Norway, hurriedly rearranging flights with the help of my girlfriend Khadine to get back to stay in London that evening (yes, even EV fans have to fly places sometimes). Five hours later we’d met at a hotel close to the London Store, trying to get some sleep before the big day ahead. It really was that last minute – I didn’t even get time for a hair cut!
Early the next morning, we left the hotel in typical wet London weather and walked around the corner to the store. Robert then arrived and we all put the world to rights over a cup of coffee. Robert wanted to do a quick interview for Fully Charged and then we were off.
A quick chat with Bobbyllew before we went became 40 minutes
Even at that time, London is coming to life and so progress towards the M1 was a little slow. Once on the motorway, we made steady progress on the 138 miles north of the first leg, all three lanes being busy but free flowing for the entire route. Khadine tweeted that we’d past Milton Keynes and Leicester (the Mini-E’s first and second charging stops) and we eventually turned off the motorway at Nottingham towards our HPC. The HPC’s owner, Patrick Bird, was waiting for us near the motorway exit and led us for the last few miles to his house. We arrived at 9:30.
While the car recharged on its 63 Amp supply, we recharged with bacon and eggs. Our host couldn’t have been more welcoming or supportive of our challenge. We chatted about the Roadster, the motor industry in general and how other manufacturers are starting to get the message about EVs. Patrick bought his Tesla after a quick test drive at the car show in Monaco and isn’t really “plugged in” to the whole EV scene at all – not even the online Tesla fan club. He bought it because he loves sports cars, yet, by himself, he’d found the same things as the rest of us, for example that it takes him 10 seconds to charge it (5 to plug in at night and 5 to unplug in the morning). He said he could never go back to ICE now – this after being a lifelong Porsche fan.
The car filling up on Patrick's HPC during the first pit stop
I’d never used a Tesla HPC before, but it’s truly impressive to watch it load the car with electricity at the rate which it does. Its job done, we set off on the 150 miles of leg two of our journey at 1 o’clock. This involved crossing the Pennine hills to Manchester, before heading north to Tebay Services in the Lake District, Cumbria. Normally in the UK, if one is driving on the North-South axis then it’s either west of the Pennines on the M6 or east of them on the M1 or A1. We had to cross them to get to the charge spot. The scenery was beautiful, but there was no time to stop and appreciate it on this trip.
Skirting Manchester, we arrived at Tebay at 4:20 PM and plugged straight in. We had a welcoming committee – everyone from the Managing Director down – who were pouring over the car within a couple of minutes. I think some were quite smitten.
While the car refilled (this time at 32 Amps), we ate in the restaurant then relaxed in the hotel while catching up on developments online.
Tebay is fantastic – it is the only motorway service station in the UK that is family run and it therefore specialises in local produce, great hospitality and a level of service that is a cut above the large, soulless chains that operate all the other locations on the road network. I’ve been stopping there since when I was a kid on family trips and today I will drive on past other service stations to get dinner there. The on-site hotel has a restaurant with AA rosette rating (meaning a cut above the average) and a lounge with real log fire. It was somewhere where spending a few hours while the car recharged was a pleasure and a welcome opportunity to relax after the rush of the previous evening.
The view from Tebay Services south towards the Lune Valley. The M6 is just visible in the distance.
By this time, Robert had cut the video he shot that morning and put a special episode of Fully Charged online. He’d also tweeted about the challenge and recommended his followers watch my Twitter feed for updates. There’s nothing like that sort of recommendation to get your email inbox overflowing! I had messages of support from EV fans and even Tesla staff the world over. We’d also clearly rattled the BBC, who had not only requested my contact details but seen fit to post that our challenge was unfair, not representative of mass market EVs’ capabilities and akin to flying from London to Scotland in a Eurofighter (that’s a fast military jet for the non plane fans).
Of course the BBC neglected to explain to their public that the Mini-E is not really representative of mass market EVs either, given that it cannot be bought, has no back seats and is to finish being trialled in Britain within weeks. Why did the BBC not make their trip in a Nissan LEAF, I asked? It is genuinely on sale with deliveries starting in the spring here. It will fast charge. It has 5 seats. If our trip in the Roadster was somehow “disingenuous” (it wasn’t – I am quite open in saying the car costs £90k, but it is pioneering the leading technology that will appear in future cheaper models from Tesla and other brands), then surely claiming the Mini-E is state-of-the-art for a mass market EV without mentioning the LEAF, the Renault ZE cars, the Focus electric, the BYD e6, the Mercedes A-Class E-Cell, the Toyota Rav4 EV and of course the Tesla Model S is simply unforgivably bad journalism.
Unexpectedly, and to my delight, by the time we left the hotel at 10 PM, Nissan LEAF was the top trend on Twitter in the UK. Yes – we’d actually gotten people talking about mass market EVs to that extent. (It would have been great to have seen Tesla’s name there too, but I think the audience was split across various Tesla related tags on this occasion.)
Returning to the car, we discovered what could have been a disaster. I’d filled the car with exactly the range we needed to get to Edinburgh and our next overnight charge, and not a mile more – we were keen to get going. Six hours to refill and relax was welcome on this trip, but I must confess I was longing for another HPC charge. However, earlier, concerned that our charger was in full view of the car park, Tebay staff had wrapped a chain around the charger’s control box and padlocked it to the outlet. I was given the key to then return to the night staff when we left as the previous staff had gone home. We put our bags in the car and I went to disconnect the charger. It was the wrong key!
I tried to see if the charger could be manipulated free while Khadine went to find someone. Eventually we got a duty manager to produce bunches of keys and tried without success to find one that would open the lock. We’d lost 25 minutes by this stage and I was even contemplating leaving the charger behind. Concerned that the clock was ticking, I sent the manager back inside to look for more keys and then snapped the chain apart with all my “superfan” super-human strength! It’s always the small things that potentially get you.
The next 133 mile leg should have been straightforward but then Mother Nature decided to play a part. We’d seen that snow was forecast over the England-Scotland border area but we did not expect thick fog. It was so bad that I could barely see road signs and could just pick out the “Welcome to Scotland” sign in the murk. The remaining 80 miles of motorway were nothing but a white blur and the Roadster’s sat-nav was our only reassurance that we were making good progress north. As we climbed up to Beattock on the M74 – as severe a gradient as you are likely to see on the motorway – we even started to see snow on the ground. Nonetheless, we pressed onwards.
The last 44 miles to Edinburgh are on a twisting, single carriageway road called the A702. This required concentration given the weather conditions and late hour, but was a welcome relief from the monotony of the last couple of hours of empty motorway driving. We’d arranged for my friend Andrew, who lives in Edinburgh and was hosting us that night, to meet us at the city limits and escort us from there. We met by the “Edinburgh” sign which we photographed and tweeted, before heading to our goal. The car went into “range uncertain” mode while we were there.
In all the excitement I’d neglected to confirm to Andrew that the goal was Edinburgh Castle and not his house! To my horror, Andrew turned onto the Edinburgh bypass. There was just enough juice in my phone to call him and shout “castle” before it died (keeping my phone topped up was harder than keeping my car topped up on this trip). Not wanting to waste any time or travel extraneous miles, we left at the next exit and headed towards the city centre. The detour cost us about two miles.
We sneaked onto the Castle Esplanade, backed up to the door, grabbed the shots and cleared off before any armed soldiers came out to ask what we were doing. A fast, quiet car is exactly the tool for the job. Within seconds, the shot of the car by the castle gate was online and those following on Twitter and via Tesla Motors Club knew we had scored a famous victory over biased journalism.
Mission accomplished - Edinburgh Castle Esplanade
We didn’t get much sleep that night, having carefully driven the car back to Andrew’s home (another 7 miles away in the suburbs) and started to plan our approach to the media. The BBC’s map stated that their last leg was going to take two hours, so we expected them to arrive in Edinburgh in time for their breakfast TV programme. So it seemed did the presenters, as they kept cutting to live shots near the castle - however by 8 o’clock it was clear that their event was not happening and they announced there was going to be a full report on Friday’s show. We stood down, but not before calling the hotel’s reception pretending to be Mini fans who wanted to see the car. The BBC had not even left. Did they have an overnight charging failure? We shall probably never know.
Despite asking for my contact details (and getting my phone number), the BBC never did try to call me back. Instead, we managed to obtain BBC reporter Brian Milligan’s phone number. Eventually Andrew managed to speak to him: They’d diverted via Berwick-upon-Tweed where there was an undiscovered charging post (luckily, “the UK’s newest”). He was clearly not happy about our own stunt, he didn’t want to meet, certainly didn’t want to debate the rights and wrongs of using a two year old test car to show the public what a “mass market” EV can and cannot do. We thought about gate-crashing his arrival, but realised that we were on a hiding to nothing if the footage was not live. Given how far the BBC had gone to trash the image of EVs already that week, they’d have thought nothing of editing any pre-recorded interview to make the point they wanted to make.
And while Brian told us that the Mini-E was going back to London on a trailer, there was no way my Tesla was doing the same. I had to be in Ireland in two days time for my Grandfather’s birthday party. I had expected to retrace my steps and then have to fly to Ireland, but my time in the Roadster gave me the confidence to contemplate something much more fun: arriving by road.
What is clear is that while we won this battle, the war still has a long way to go. The difference in opinions between those who saw the online coverage and those who just watch TV are highly marked: We may have enlightened a few hundred thousand people, but ten times that many only saw negative coverage on BBC TV. We tried hard to get rival TV stations to cover it, but to no avail (first ever London-Edinburgh one day EV trip “not on our agenda” – if ever you still thought the media is neutral). Whether the BBC was trying to make a point about charging infrastructure or not, the fact is they have made our job harder, again, by skewing the EV’s image in the minds of the public. At least their final online diary entry was more upbeat:
By the end of next year, the UK will have 4,000 charging posts across the country. Your car's sat nav will guide you straight to them, so there'll be no time wasted while you hunt for them. When you plug in, your car will get an 80% charge in just 20 minutes. Meanwhile fuel prices continue to rise.
Stay tuned for part two to see how we covered 5 countries in 5 days, became the first car to charge on Irish Ferries, tested the philosophy that “everywhere is a charging station if you ask nicely” and returned the Roadster to London under its own steam.
No hard feelings BMW, our beef wasn't with you: See, I do like the Mini-E
mpt
Electrics are back
Jaff
Active Member
Nice story David, but you're right...you do need a haircut. :biggrin::wink:
Cheers and thanks to you for your great personal effort in your "major" adventure!!!
:biggrin:
Cheers and thanks to you for your great personal effort in your "major" adventure!!!
:biggrin:
Great to see the whole story (both Tesla-cut and directors-cut - not to mention hair-cut!). Looking forward to Part 2.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Great writeup of a great effort. In a few years with the proliferation of charge points we can look back at all the fuss and be amused.
Response to my complaint;
Dear Mr Sharpe
Reference CAS-534244
Thanks for contacting us regarding our news output.
I appreciate you contacting us regarding a news report on the electric car challenge and I understand your issues regarding the broadcast and that you feel it was biased against the car.
The BBC are conducting an experiment on the electric car, to use only public charge points, rather than personal or private charge points during the journey from London to Edinburgh to see if the car can make the distance.
An online blog has been posted with regards to this by one of our editors, Jeremy Hillman.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/01/electric_car_challenge.html
That said I appreciate that you feel strongly about this and so with this in mind I’d like to assure you that I’ve registered your comments on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for all programme makers and commissioning executives within the BBC, and also their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive are circulated and considered across the BBC.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.
Kind Regards
Robert Regan
BBC Complaints
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
NB This is sent from an outgoing account only which is not monitored. You cannot reply to this email address but if necessary please contact us via our webform quoting any case number we provided
Dear Mr Sharpe
Reference CAS-534244
Thanks for contacting us regarding our news output.
I appreciate you contacting us regarding a news report on the electric car challenge and I understand your issues regarding the broadcast and that you feel it was biased against the car.
The BBC are conducting an experiment on the electric car, to use only public charge points, rather than personal or private charge points during the journey from London to Edinburgh to see if the car can make the distance.
An online blog has been posted with regards to this by one of our editors, Jeremy Hillman.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/01/electric_car_challenge.html
That said I appreciate that you feel strongly about this and so with this in mind I’d like to assure you that I’ve registered your comments on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for all programme makers and commissioning executives within the BBC, and also their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive are circulated and considered across the BBC.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.
Kind Regards
Robert Regan
BBC Complaints
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
NB This is sent from an outgoing account only which is not monitored. You cannot reply to this email address but if necessary please contact us via our webform quoting any case number we provided
I think you need to reply and say that the programming did not make it clear enough to the audience that the experiment was into the infrastructure and not the technology of the cars themselves. (Did they explain that the Mini could be recharged at 50 Amps in 3 hours? I'm not sure because I didn't see all the TV but I haven't seen that online.)
Furthermore, it should be made clear that the coverage left those who only saw the reports on TV (including our relatives) with the impression that the cars themselves are not suitable or ready for sale or regular use. Ask why the BBC isn't shining the spotlight on the use of government funds for charging posts that, frankly, are not fit for purpose and not being used on fast charge infrastructure that has existed in one form or another in California since the late 90s.
Finally, we should say that the BBC's stance is undermining confidence within organisations to host such infrastructure.
Furthermore, it should be made clear that the coverage left those who only saw the reports on TV (including our relatives) with the impression that the cars themselves are not suitable or ready for sale or regular use. Ask why the BBC isn't shining the spotlight on the use of government funds for charging posts that, frankly, are not fit for purpose and not being used on fast charge infrastructure that has existed in one form or another in California since the late 90s.
Finally, we should say that the BBC's stance is undermining confidence within organisations to host such infrastructure.
My latest complaint to the BBC about the TopGear coverage on Sunday (Series 16, Episode 1);
Despite numerous complaints the BBC continues in it's campaign to undermine the electric vehicle.
During the most recent TopGear episode, Richard Hammond stated that it would take "2 days to get home" if he used an electric car. Given that the total distance from the TopGear Studio at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome to Richard Hammond's home at Bollitree Castle, Weston-under-Penyard, Herefordshire, is 123 miles (Google maps via the M4) this is clearly untrue.
I would be happy to demonstrate this to Mr Hammond by taking him to and from the studio in my Tesla electric car. I'm sure the journey would be very similar to his normal commute to/from the studio by a petrol/diesel car.
Can you also confirm that the BBC anti-electric vehicle stance is not the result of undue influence from the sponsorship of TopGear Live by SHELL U.K. Oil Products Limited ?
I have recently made two other complaints about BBC bias against electric vehicles. To date, I have received one response (CAS-534244) but await the second.
Despite numerous complaints the BBC continues in it's campaign to undermine the electric vehicle.
During the most recent TopGear episode, Richard Hammond stated that it would take "2 days to get home" if he used an electric car. Given that the total distance from the TopGear Studio at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome to Richard Hammond's home at Bollitree Castle, Weston-under-Penyard, Herefordshire, is 123 miles (Google maps via the M4) this is clearly untrue.
I would be happy to demonstrate this to Mr Hammond by taking him to and from the studio in my Tesla electric car. I'm sure the journey would be very similar to his normal commute to/from the studio by a petrol/diesel car.
Can you also confirm that the BBC anti-electric vehicle stance is not the result of undue influence from the sponsorship of TopGear Live by SHELL U.K. Oil Products Limited ?
I have recently made two other complaints about BBC bias against electric vehicles. To date, I have received one response (CAS-534244) but await the second.
Talkredius
Member
after looking at http://www.lemnet.org there might be a point concerning the charging stations. Compared to Germany, Austria or Switzerland, GB looks really like a desert.
Perhaps Kevin could suggest the BBC to repeat the tour after the BBC had made a massive public call for support by "public" private charging stations.
Perhaps there might be a special motivation for the BBC, if you point them to the German map of lemnet.org ?
BTW : This reminds me to translate the description of my lemnet charging station into English. I'll do it, when I get my power charging station (3 * (3x [email protected]) + 4 * [email protected] ) in February.
Perhaps Kevin could suggest the BBC to repeat the tour after the BBC had made a massive public call for support by "public" private charging stations.
Perhaps there might be a special motivation for the BBC, if you point them to the German map of lemnet.org ?
BTW : This reminds me to translate the description of my lemnet charging station into English. I'll do it, when I get my power charging station (3 * (3x [email protected]) + 4 * [email protected] ) in February.
Chelsea Sexton Slams Bias On Both Sides Over Electric-Car Range;
http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog...both-sides-over-electric-car-range-guest-post
http://www.transportevolved.com/tra...sport-evolved-episode-35-1-million-plugs.html
http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog...both-sides-over-electric-car-range-guest-post
http://www.transportevolved.com/tra...sport-evolved-episode-35-1-million-plugs.html
Norbert
TSLA will win
With the Roadster and the Leaf (and others), pure EVs are already on the market, and more or less everyone interested will ask the question: what about long-distance trips? One cannot expect everyone who even asks the question, to either just buy a Volt, or to have a second car, and not bother. A public discussion of this question is necessary as well as unavoidable, and the existence of the Volt won't change this.
I think the path outlined by Tesla (Roadster, then Model S, then affordable Bluestar) and Nissan, is at least as valid at each step as the path GM is taking. The Leaf is more affordable than the Volt, yet has an electric range that is 2.5 times that of the Volt (and if not interested in the electric range, why buy a plug-in at all?). Personally, I think going for a 200+ mile range, as Tesla does, is the best direction to take. (A bit off-topic, I can't imagine that if Tesla had built a Volt-equivalent, that the world would have been as inspired as it was by the Roadster.)
The Volt doesn't ask for a fast-charging infrastructure as much as pure EVs do. But with the addition of this infrastructure, which is already technically possible, and in principle already politically supported, it seems to me that the occasional longer-distance trip is a valid option, even if not necessarily in all cases in which one would use a gas car vs the airplane, for example. The extent to which this will actually be the case, is, I think, an important question that needs to be asked and answered, and hopefully answering it will never be left to the BBC alone.
In this context, my appreciation of David's trip, and the discussion which came along (in so far as I'm aware of it) hasn't changed after reading Chelsea's article. I'm hopeful that it will, directly and indirectly, encourage infrastructure improvements, and the understanding that with it, the EV's usability does extend further than a single charge.
I think the path outlined by Tesla (Roadster, then Model S, then affordable Bluestar) and Nissan, is at least as valid at each step as the path GM is taking. The Leaf is more affordable than the Volt, yet has an electric range that is 2.5 times that of the Volt (and if not interested in the electric range, why buy a plug-in at all?). Personally, I think going for a 200+ mile range, as Tesla does, is the best direction to take. (A bit off-topic, I can't imagine that if Tesla had built a Volt-equivalent, that the world would have been as inspired as it was by the Roadster.)
The Volt doesn't ask for a fast-charging infrastructure as much as pure EVs do. But with the addition of this infrastructure, which is already technically possible, and in principle already politically supported, it seems to me that the occasional longer-distance trip is a valid option, even if not necessarily in all cases in which one would use a gas car vs the airplane, for example. The extent to which this will actually be the case, is, I think, an important question that needs to be asked and answered, and hopefully answering it will never be left to the BBC alone.
In this context, my appreciation of David's trip, and the discussion which came along (in so far as I'm aware of it) hasn't changed after reading Chelsea's article. I'm hopeful that it will, directly and indirectly, encourage infrastructure improvements, and the understanding that with it, the EV's usability does extend further than a single charge.
