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Comment by kisstheblade | Hacker News Reader

One thing I wonder is why Top Gear (the old one) / Grand Tour never has the tesla in it's episodes or drag races?

Especially the latest episode of Grand Tour did some kind of road test with a hybrid car and made a laughing stock of it. And they laughed about the "future of cars" if it would be like that (they used some ridiculous bmw hybrid). Driving very slow to preserve electricity and long charge times every 40 miles or something like that. Why didn't they test with a Tesla to give a realistic picture of "the future"?

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They did. It didn't go well: https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-vs-top-gear

Of course there's more to the story - Top Gear isn't exactly "objective journalism" and the team will create a story out of thin air when it suits the show. See also "M3 vs Prius" segment: http://www.bmwblog.com/2009/06/12/bmw-m3-vs-toyota-prius-its...

If anything the Grand Tour was trying to show if affordable electric cars were here yet. They tested a reasonably affordable BMW alongside a traditional engined VW.

The very first episode of The Grand Tour (The Holy Trinity) was about how awesome hybrids are (the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 and Ferrari LaFerrari). Granted, those cars are worth over a million dollars.

What's interesting about those 3 cars is that while they are hybrids, they don't leverage that technology to increase economy; they use it to increase power. There are real, physical limitations involved in gasoline engines and the electric motors are used purely to compensate for those limitations (time it takes for a throttle to open, fuel and air to mix, and ignite--the time it takes for a transmission to change a gear. These things can be made ultra-fast; but, they cannot be eliminated).

BMW did a very similar thing with their 330e model; the electric motor is primarily used to increase the power from the relatively small engine that is normally only on the lower-end 320.

I thought they, or some of them, also only use electric power at low speeds? Doesnt that count as increasing economy?

I'm not sure about low speeds; but, I believe all 3 cars technically offer an all-electric mode that will let you drive with substantially reduced performance and with a range of 10-15 miles.

That said, my original statement was mean to describe the objective of these hybrid cars; any additional "fuel economy" is probably best described as a side effect.

From the episodes (I myself not being in the market for million dollar hybrid supercars), there's a significant amount of button pressing to have it go all-electric.

And I think only 2/3 even had that option.

They actually ran two of the cars in electric-only mode for one of the races and crapped on the third one for not having the option available.

Combustion technology has also been favoring power over efficiency for at least the last 20 years. It turns out that once you get the car up to about 35 MPG, above that nobody really cares, statistically speaking. Specific power meanwhile has skyrocketed. You can now buy a 1000cc normally-aspirated engine that makes 200 horsepower.

They did a road trip in a BMW i3 which is basically a commute car. And their point does stand - if you like cars and road trips enough to watch GT or Top Gear you probably care a lot about being able to make road trips.

As a former Tesla owner and current i3 owner, I really don't understand why the concept of the road trip is constantly held up as the standard by which electric cars should be judged. I really don't understand why people are optimizing for their once a year use case rather than their daily use case. Unless it's your lifestyle, road trips are the exception, not the rule.

For my family, it means owning my i3 for commuting and my wife's Toyota Sienna for family trips. For others, it could mean renting a car for a week or two when you take a long road trip.

As a fun note: As a BMW i3 owner, BWM offers me up to 2 weeks per year of complimentary gasoline car rental for road trips.

In the case of GT, roadtripping is the lifestyle that they are showing nearly every single episode. I road trip 5-6 times a year myself over 1000 miles, and for that reason I wouldn't personally want to go a full electric car. Nice about the rental car though!

The GT people have standards which don't really apply to most people. Most of their shows involve cars that most people will never afford.

As a huge fan of both Top Gear and Grand Tour, I absolutely understand. My comment was less about their assessment and more about how the concept of the road trip comes up every time electric cars are discussed. Maybe I'm wrong in this assumption as it's based on purely anecdotal observation from my own interactions with people, your 5-6 times a year is an outlier.

True! I don't often think about it but growing up in a very rural area a car has meant freedom to go anywhere. Everyone I know with an electric car loves them!

If you own two cars, isn't it actually you who have arranged your lifestyle in order to accommodate the electric one? And I feel kinda sad for anyone who feels that going more than 60 miles from home happens only once a year.

My comment was only meant to discuss people optimizing for the edge case (road trips) vs the common case (daily driving). There will always be people for whom long-distance driving is not the edge case.

There's a pretty big assumption that travel beyond 60 miles (or 110 in the case of my i3) requires a car. There are a lot of ways to travel that don't involve driving. I travel frequently; it's almost always by air.

I have a Tesla Model S 60 (lowest battery capacity). I just completed a 800 mile road trip over the weekend. Bay Area to San Diego and back. Zero issues.

I have a VW eGolf and a Toyota Sienna for exactly the same reasons (plus the wife really, really wanted a minivan).

> if you like cars and road trips enough to watch GT or Top Gear you probably care a lot about being able to make road trips.

I don't know about that. They do it just to shit on EV's. (Disclaimer: I own an EV, but also like and watch Grand Tour). It's an entertainment show. They're not about objective analysis. It's the crank-call-radio-morning-show model applied to cars.

Their complaints about the i3 was low range (needing multiple recharges) and weak power (when range extended).

They could have used something like a Vauxhall Ampera, which is actually designed for the road-trip route they ran (all electric in London, powerful gas range extender for freeway driving at 80+mph).

They could have used a pure-EV car that actually had decent range like a Renault Zoe, which would have only needed a single recharge stop to make their entire trip, even driving at 70mph the whole time.

But they didn't. They didn't use a fair car to test, because then it would have been less funny.

They have an anti-electric car agenda ? Feels like it

Because if you drive a Tesla hard, battery overheats and it shuts down. Plus once you run out of battery (even if it doesn't overheat) you need several hours to recharge it. Plus Tesla is only "high performance" in a straight line. I believe they had an episode with a Tesla. It ended up on a tow truck.

Not sure why you are being downvoted. The Tesla S handles like a pig and you can't track the car because the battery can't handle it. These are valid criticisms. Though, the towing part of that episode I think was played up for the show.

That said, for 90+% of people, the Tesla S, and almost assuredly the Model 3, will be more than sufficient vehicles for people. The focus on acceleration is an amazing selling point and most people will never track their car. The ranges on these cars are pretty excellent and charging stations are becoming more and more common.

These cars aren't for me though, I'll gladly keep driving my BMW. The Tesla feels soulless while driving it and the skinny tires and the extreme weight shifts prevent you from hammering through corners which is were I believe driving is the most exhilarating.

I'll add a link to prove your statement is true: http://www.caranddriver.com/features/tesla-model-s-p85d-at-l...

Anyone who doesn't believe it, watch the video. Car and Driver took a Model S onto a track and in less than a minute it was limping in low-power mode as the batteries were overheating. They also ran into an issue where the brakes stopped working. This was just during one lap of a small race track.

The Model S is a luxury performance sedan, not a race car. It can't handle being pushed to its limits for any period of time. It just wasn't designed for that.

You only need basic knowledge of physics to see why a high performance car without large radiators would overheat when expending a ton of energy per unit of time. Sadly a lot of people here lack it.

> high performance car without large radiators would overheat when expending a ton of energy per unit of time

... I feel like there's a valid counterpoint here that asks "Then what did you engineer?"

It's a fair question if you're bragging about performance but unable to endure even moderate track conditions.

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