BBC Top Gear tests the Tesla Roadster

Dec 18, 2008 Auto Tech

The enormously popular TV show, Top Gear tested the Tesla Roadster recently.The Tesla Roadster, as most of you will know, is an all electric sportscar, built in California by a company founded by Elon Musk, who made his fortune through PayPal. It is based on the Lotus Elise chassis and uses an array of laptop like cells to provide juice.

The Top Gear crew had a few reservations, but were impressed by the pace and the Roadster actually matched the timings of a Porsche GT3 on the track. Video is here.

Tesla has clarified that the cars never actually ran out of juice, the brake failure was actually a blown fuse which was easily replaced and they gloated about the fact that Clarkson, the popular but hardly diplomatic host was impressed by the acceleration to call himself a “Volt head”.

Tesla has been in controversy for a range of problems: from gearbox problems, to overheating to financial troubles which entailed layoffs and slowing of future product development plans. Read more here.

Share This Post

Tags: , , ,

  •   
  •  
E-mail Comment Del.icio.us Digg Reddit Technorati Furl
Related Posts:
  • Tesla Motors’ latest plans
  • Tesla Model S coming in March
  • Tesla CEO sends email and invites for a meeting
  • Top Gear clarifies: Tesla did not run out of juice on the show
  • BBC Top Gear drives the Honda FCX Clarity as well

    • Leave a Reply

    XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

    This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Auto Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through this RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.