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Old 01-19-2011, 04:10 PM   #12 (permalink)
Arragonis
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To bring the thread from the dead, this is the response from The Register.

Quote:
Llewellyn was particularly unhappy with the Beeb's description of the Mini E as "a mass market EV ... this is the sort of car us normal people can expect to drive".

Indeed, so cross was the thespian and electrocar enthusiast that he got up at an early hour of the morning last Wednesday to lend his presence to a PR counterstrike mounted by Tesla Motors against the Beeb's journey. The firm, describing Milligan's reporting as "BBC bias" and "myths perpetuated by a BBC correspondent" decided to lend one of its latest, arse-kickingest Roadster Sport models to electric-vehicles enthusiast David Peilow in order to show that a battery car could make the journey to Edinburgh in "a single day".

Peilow normally works as a satcomms engineer, and as such is not enormously rich and cannot afford to own an £88,000 car like the Roadster Sport (an enhanced version of the normal Roadster, itself very much in the supercar price bracket). However he has been lent Roadsters by Tesla in the past for use in publicity-stunt journeys. He drove one from London to Land's End and back in 3 days last year, going so far as to install high-powered 32A power sockets at various handy locations en route beforehand and personally building an armoury of special recharging cables and power bricks ("I think I could have connected to a lamp post if necessary").
Hmmm

Quote:
The quickest that its bigger battery can safely be charged is 3½ hours, using an extremely powerful 70-amp specialist charging station which Tesla will sell you for a four-figure sum and which must then be installed in your garage by a qualified electrician.
Quote:
Then we come to the great unmentioned spectre of e-cars - battery wear. The reason you can't buy a Mini-E is not a sinister motor-industry conspiracy: it is the fact that "frankly, at this stage, we're not really sure about the long-term endurance of the batteries of the Mini-E", as its makers say.
I have no opinion either way, the article seems to be anti Kryton though.
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