Roadster on Top Gear

[stopcrazypp]

So shaving off 400 - 460 Lbs of weight will not improve handling performance in the corners, as well as acceleration time?

It would, but GSP does have a point about the reduced energy density of the batteries. But I'm too lazy too look up what a 120 mile EPA range pack (what Tesla plans for the "track" version) using a123 cells would weigh given the saved weight from not needing the liquid cooled batteries and the other safe measures vs a standard commodity cell pack with just half the cells.

Interesting considerations, but really something that'll have to happen in the future.

 

[AntronX]

If you reduce the pack to half size, then you have only about 1/4 the range of a stock roadster, only about 14 miles of road racing!

There are few factors that can make the range higher than it may seem. First is reduction in weight means less energy is needed to push the car around track. Second, A123 cells have much lower internal resistance than laptop cobalt chemistry, so they should not heat as much. But I would not try to make any serious assumptions about range with this system, because i do not have all the necessary technical details about the car to come up with accurate calculations.

 

[TEG]

Elon has said they do plan a performance version of the Roadster. It's on Von's plate but I think they are just a bit busy to build it now.

Is "Von" an actual nickname for Franz, or did you just make that up yourself?

 

[TEG]

How about if TM made a track version of the roadster? Make the battery pack using A123 LiFePO4 cells. Make it half the weight of original pack, obviously with less range...

Yeah, quite a few people (me included) have had that idea and proposed it. It sounds like Tesla has been pondering it, but I gather they have their hands full just delivering on the "street worthy" car commitments, so I hope they don't get too distracted with track specials just yet.

 

[AntronX]

I think the same. Concentrating on getting more Teslas on the road is more important than impressing some granpa on TV overseas. People that are enviro-concious and have already driven one, should not be swayed by this somewhat negative review.

 

[Joseph]

I know I'm breaking the flow of the thread, but I'm dying to say this.

You (or at least I) hear very little about the reliability of FCVs, but actually they're terribly unreliable. I talked to an engineer who designs fuel cells for isolated police stations or something like that.

Anyway, what he told me is that fuel cells have a nasty little problem of spontaneously failing. If the membrane is put under too much pressure or fractures for whatever reason, it's dead. As I recall, he said the typical life of a fuel cell is about three years. One day, it just gets too old and breaks.

All that platinum is pricey!

 

[vfx]

First of a hearty thank you to dpeilow for the play by play but I do wish he was familiar with the term. "Spoilers alert I hope he does not give the scores in sport to his friends who have PVR'd the match at home.

Now for a belated rant on Top Gear's Season 12 Episode 7

Jeremy said he tried to be fair (to the Roadster) and given the show, I think he was -in his own mind. Remember that the show easily mocks any of a car’s imperfections. I especially liked the episode where Jeremy’s new Ford GT fresh from the states kept breaking down much to everyone else’s delights.

Liked:
Seeing JC experience the awesome acceleration of the Tesla. “God Almighty!”
Not making an issues of 125 top speed
Comparing petrol fill-up cost to electric cheap rate fill-up.
Volthead!
“An astonishing technical achievement”
Postulating the future of the car negating some of the Film’s negatives during the studio wrap-up by saying price will come down and reliability will get better.
That it got the same time as the 911 GT3 and that he put the time card above the Porsche’s time Card (a mindful subtle positive)

Would have liked.
To point out the 40 to 60 time of the “all torque all the time”
To talk about fast chargers that come with the car.
To talk about how batteries will get better distance as time goes on.
A decent Supercar price comparison for comparable 0-60 times
The “positive” noise comparison. He said the car was not that quiet but that same noise from the roof air and tires would be total obscured in a gasoline exploding car.
Pointing out more how often they have to fill those supercars around the track at those speeds. The way they burn up the track with that kind of driving even gasoline-powered cars also make something like 25 percent of their EPA estimates too.


Grateful for:
Not much harping on engine noise. Just a quick V8 CD jibe. In this they get my wholehearted thanks.

Wondering about:
I would like to know how a car’s brakes get broken when it’s sitting still.

Did not like:
The piddly windmill segment and no Solar panels. And not mentioning a Hydrogen car uses the came “tailpipe”.
Madness on the cost being 3 times more than the Elise.

They have had many breakdowns of cars after a day of thrashing (testing) cars but I don’t believe the Roadster needed to be pushed (by 10 guys) to the charger since it would probably be in limp mode for the ½ mile trip back to the hanger.

The stupid line, “Honda has saved the world” I bet James and crew were well cared for here in LA.



Would like to have seen a better review but it is in line with what I expected. Can someone make a first half version where just the good stuff is said? I would lke to send it to all my friends.

The Honda stuff was deplorable. I thought May was the “smart one”. Sucker.

The battery consortium needs to be touting rapid recharging today. This improvement will easily come as quickly as a viable Hydrogen car so why not tell the same timelie story?

 

[Tim]

What about using just higher capacity 18650s to cut weight? I know battery power would drop, but like GSP said, battery power isn't the issue so much as inverter and motor heat dissipation. I'm pretty sure they are just using 2.2 ah cells right now, but panasonic has been making 2.9 ah cells for a while, and there are quite a few 2.6 ah manufacturers. Doing that should cut weight significantly while maintaining range unless they had to resize the cooling system for the new cells. They'd be more expensive, but this would be an upgrade to the base model.

That, and the one thing that doesn't get mentioned a whole lot, which is a big deal imo is the pretty woeful regen that the Tesla has. I don't see why they don't use more aggressive breaking regen which would significantly help their range during track situations. Maybe they are worried about RWD complications, but I'd bet its more that they had their hands full with other things and couldn't develop the braking control algorithms necessary in time for the tesla's scheduled release. I don't think this would be a huge upgrade to develop and would increase real world range and track range significantly.

edit:

After some more thought regarding this last night, I think the biggest improvement Tesla can make in V2.0 of the drive train would be to integrate a cap bank in the PEM. From the pictures I've seen I don't think they have one at all and it severely limits their regen(probably to 0.5C which is why they chose their current scheme) and thrashes the battery at nearly a 5C discharge. A 50 pound supercap bank would probably be sufficient to limit the max discharge to roughly 2C on the battery given the max steady state power output is at terminal speed. This coupled with higher capacity cells would solve nearly all the problems with drivetrain performance and make the car lighter through fewer cells and less cooling demands. Trunk space would be improved too. I'd bet that this would double track range with no increase in battery capacity. Do any of you know if they use caps at all to buffer the DC bus?

Anyways, most of this improvement is evolutionary despite Clarkson's comments about BEVs being a dead end.

 

[graham]

Wired and Gizmodo weigh in:

Top Gear Flogs A Tesla -- And Breaks It | Autopia from Wired.com

The car's ample acceleration - 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds - was enough to make him forgive the car's somewhat clumsy handling, something Clarkson attributed to the huge battery pack.

Things were going swimmingly until the cars ran out of juice after 55 miles, needed 16 hours to recharge and broke down. That was it for Clarkson.

"The Tesla is an astonishing technical achievement - the first electric car you might actually want to own," he declared. "It's just a shame that in the real world, it doesn't seem to work."

Top Gear Crew Puts the Tesla Roadster Through Its Paces - Gizmodo Australia

The gang finds that, while the Tesla is amazingly fast out of the gate and cheap to operate (once you drop the cash on buying one), it's not without its faults. For one, that battery is crazy heavy, and charging it up takes a whopping 16 hours. Also, it has a way of breaking down. But don't take my word for it, as I'm far less charismatic than Jeremy Clarkson.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Wow!

Going through the comments on this one the author got reamed! It was like a proffesional email campaign stepped in. The copy has been reworded now.

Now we need to do the same to all the Top Gear coverage.

Only thing is with Top Gear an email campaign might backfire (like it did with the morris marina in the same episode).

Rachel is on fire today! I have seen her in the comments of many many blog posts, and here is a letter to the editor on one of the Detroit News' unfair posts about Tesla needing a bailout.

Tesla wants loans for affordable electric cars | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Wow quite amazing how she got those misleading titles to be changed so quickly.

 

[DaveD]

Rachel Konrad response

Top Gear reviews the Tesla Roadster Dvorak Uncensored: General interest observations and true web-log.

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.

 

[graham]

Go Rachel!!! (Have I mentioned that she is on fire today?)

It is good to hear confirmation on some of this stuff. The pushing the Roadster around made no sense, as we all know it doesn't just run out of juice and turn off. Also I thought it was very odd that they had a brake failure... a blown fuse seems much more plausible.

 

[dpeilow]

Only thing is with Top Gear an email campaign might backfire (like it did with the morris marina in the same episode).

That's why in the case of TG themselves, I'm suggesting going straight to Ofcom. Taking the mickey out of a few peoples' complaints is one thing, but if Rachel's assertions that they misrepresented the issues with the car to the detriment of Tesla's brand image are correct, this should be far more formal.

Apart from the pre-recorded Vietnam special, TG is off the air now for a while. Therefore an email campaign - if it does get attention on the show - will just remind the audience again in a few month's time. Let sleeping dogs lie, etc. However a successful complain to Ofcom might get more results - possibly even forcing the BBC to show what actually happened or getting it corrected for the repeat showings of the episode on BBC America, BBC World and Dave (yes that is a channel) in the UK.

However, on the blogs, this needs to be dealt with as it occurs. I'm heartened that there are many more people who 'get it' out there too.

 

[Tdave]

If you listen carefully to the wording on the show about the range, Clarkson said:

Although Tesla say it'll do 200 miles, we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles.

They "worked out"? So, Mr. Clarkson, you didn't actually run out after 55 miles? You just worked out that it would?

Hmm. Me thinks that they achieved better range than that with their driving, and they had to do a calculation in order to give us such a low number.

 

[graham]

IThey "worked out"? So, Mr. Clarkson, you didn't actually run out after 55 miles? You just worked out that it would?

Yes, that wording seemed fishy to me too...

 

[vfx]

I caught that wording too. I just figured they had not been paying attention to how far they got when the car went in to conserve mode so they had to "work out" what it would do.

I hope Rachel will visit these pages. She is awesome!

 

[Kevin Harney]

GO RACHEL!!!!!! This is what we need. More people out there making a positive spin on things and making sure the truth gets out there. GREAT JOB !!! Stop the BS in its tracks. I think that TM has just not had the time and energy to waste on these things in the past but needs to fight back as much as possible. Most people out there just take these stories at face value and do not take the time to even think about them at all. They just declare it as fact. Sad state of society I guess.

 

[vfx]

That's why in the case of TG themselves, I'm suggesting going straight to Ofcom. Taking the mickey out of a few peoples' complaints is one thing, but if Rachel's assertions that they misrepresented the issues with the car to the detriment of Tesla's brand image are correct, this should be far more formal.

Can you rewrite this so I can understand?


vfx
Surfing the tube in California, dude.

 

[vfx]

Rachael is the ANTIKENT!

 

[DisneylandIsHome]

"It's just a shame that in the real world, it doesn't seem to work."

I loved the line, "It's just a shame that in the real world, it doesn't seem to work." What in god's name was real world about their drive?