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Tesla Motors claims the test set up by Jeremy Clarkson on a 2008 edition of the show was rigged to make it look like the Tesla ran out of power when racing a petrol powered Lotus.

A Top Gear spokesman said the BBC would be "vigorously defending" the claim.

On the programme Jeremy Clarkson claimed: "Although Tesla say it'll do 200 miles, we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles."

Tesla said the Roadster's miles per charge had been certified at 211 miles by a third party European Union (EU) test.

It argued that because the car was "driven aggressively" on Top Gear the charge didn't last as long, but that if driven "mindfully" charges could last for 313 miles.

A Top Gear spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that we have received notification that Tesla have issued proceedings against the BBC.

"The BBC stands by the programme and will be vigorously defending this claim."

Remember that time Top Gear gave the Tesla Roadster such a thrashing it broke, except it really didn't break? Tesla does, and it's now filed suit against the BBC and Top Gear accusing the Beeb of defamation.

The test from the episode aired in December, 2008 involved a race between the Tesla Roadster and the gas-powered Lotus Elise it's based on. The show featured Jeremy Clarkson saying the Tesla ran out of charge at 55 miles, with footage of it being pushed around a garage, ending with Clarkson saying "It's just a shame that in the real world it doesn't seem to work."

Shortly after it aired, Tesla said the Roadster never lost its charge, never needed to be pushed and asked Top Gear for some kind of retraction. After some sparring, the BBC admitted the footage of the push-powered Roadster was meant to show what could happen, saying the show fairly represented how the Tesla performed during tests.

With that episode still playing in repeats, available on DVD and now on Netflix streaming in the United States, Tesla says it was forced to act: "The BBC's conduct has given us no choice but to sue them and clear up their lies."

A BBC spokesman said: ‘We can confirm that we have received notification that Tesla have issued proceedings against the BBC.’


Mail Online

For the latest episode of GigaOM TV’s Green Overdrive Show Katie Fehrenbacher takes a look behind the scenes of the Alpha program for Tesla’s next-generation all-electric car the Model S.

Tesla has built 20 Alpha (prototype) Model S’s that it’s using to test out various features like safety, durability, electronics and steering capability.

Katie a look at some of the Model S design features and interview Tesla Model S Program Director Jerome Guillen, who has been driving the Model S Alphas to and from work.

Kicking off March 16 at the Sofitel Hotel in Melbourne, Tesla Motors is embarking on a 3000-kilometer (1864 mile) promotional tour along Australia’s eastern coast. The “Oz Goes Electric” tour is being held in conjunction with local government agencies to increase electric vehicle awareness in the country.

Officials from the Victorian provincial government and Department of Transportation were present at the event, with the tour being part of the local government’s electric vehicle trial.

The tour will cover Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and feature test drive events and public displays of the Tesla Roadster along the route.

The Tesla Roadster also holds the record for distance driven on a single charge in a production electric vehicle, which was broken driving 501 kilometers (310.6 miles) in Australia. You can follow the tour here.

Source: Tesla

Tesla took the opportunity just before CES to reassure potential buyers that its Model S wouldn't follow the competition by creeping up in price ahead of release, and now we have what looks to be final confirmation: a full MSRP, complete with prices for all the different battery options.

A base Model S, with an estimated 160 miles of range, will retail for $57,400 and will of course be eligible for the $7,500 federal tax credit. The 230 mile range version will carry a $10,000 premium, and if you want a chance at making 300 miles on a charge it's another $10k on top of that.

You will need to fork over $77,400 if you want the top of the line Model S 300, which initially will be called the "Model S Signature Series" in the US, a limited edition run of 1,000 autos with an enormous 95 kWh battery pack. Deliveries are expected to begin sometime around the summer of 2012, with the 230 and 160 versions coming later in the year.

Tesla hopes to produce 5,000 of the cars in total in 2012, a whopping 20,000 in 2013. The right-hand drive model will not be launched until 2014.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced his company’s plans for two new electric vehicles to attendees at the Cleantech Investor Summit in Palm Springs this week. Palo Alto-based Tesla will unveil the Model X SUV, which will be “cooler” than any SUV or minivan on the market, later this year, said Musk, and in about four years will have developed a mass market sedan that be purchased for around $30,000.

Considering that Tesla has its hands full with getting production up and running of its premium Model S sedan at the former NUMMI plant in Fremont, just outside San Jose, and then add to it Tesla's history of not meeting its own launch schedules, one has to wonder how they will meet this timeline.

One option is to utilize an outside source for the basic vehicle, much as to company did with the Tesla Roadster. In this case, the Roadster is based upon the Lotus Elise sport cars, which is shipped from the UK to California for the fitting of the electrical infrastructure as well as final assembly. This has been an excellent arrangement for both parties, with Tesla gaining a nimble partner with decades of small-scale automotive production experience, and Lotus gaining an additional outlet for its cars and components.

Fittingly enough, one contender to partner with Tesla on the Model X SUV is again Lotus. Lotus displayed its APX concept SUV at the Geneva Motor Show as proof-of-concept for its Versatile Vehicle Architecture (VVA) which allows for changes to be made to the configuration of the vehicle platform quickly and at a much lower cost, thus meeting Tesla's engineering and manufacturing needs.

Further, Santa Rosa-based EV manufacturer and distributor showed a AWD EV Lotus APX Concept at the 2007 NADA Show in San Francisco. The company claimed 4.8 second 0 - 60 times for the electric APX, but nothing further came of the project and the APX is no longer on Zap's website.

It will be interesting what comes from Tesla HQ over the next few weeks or month, but if you read of confirmation that the Tesla Model X will be based upon the Lotus VVA system, you heard it here first.

Model S Alpha Hits the Road from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

As a follow up to their 'Tesla Vehicle Engineering' series of videos and as part of the on going Model S marketing campaign (the car is not expected to be launched until early 2013), Tesla Motors have just released a short video of the Model S Alpha on the road.

The video contains no commentary and provides no new details but it does illustrate that Tesla have a Model S mule at the road dynamics testing stage.

Before Model S enters production it will have been thoroughly tested using both computer simulations and test vehicles. Tesla will complete two vehicle testing phases, Alpha and Beta. The Alpha phase began in 2010.

Tesla have made many detailed changes between the original Model S unveiled to the public in March 2009 and the Alpha model shown in the video. Changes noticed @ first glance include:

- Longer front door
- Shorter rear door
- 1/4 window in rear door
- Totally different front bumper
- Re-shaped headlights
- Different shape vent in side of front guard
- Totally different lines between hood & A pillar

Feel free to post any changes you have noticed in the comments section below.

Youtuber Goodwinb99 recently uploaded some video from inside his Tesla Roadster while driving in the snow.

The Roadster is fitted with 'winter' tires but it is still a great demonstration of the Tesla's traction control in action.

The effectiveness of the T/C is put into perspective when at 3:40 it is tuned off for a brief moment. The electric super car simply spins it's wheels up to highway speeds while at a virtual stand still.

With T/C on the driver can literally floor the throttle while the electronics figure out how much traction is available.

You really have to wonder who's in charge at the BBC these days? The technology news department dedicates 4 days of coverage to a negative publicity stunt that involved driving a field testing battery powered electric vehicle, designed for urban driving, from London to Edinburgh? That could only be described as an anti-technology story surely?

Reporter Brian Milligan set out to make the 484-mile journey using only publicly available charging infrastructure, making eight stops and spending about 46 hours of his total trip sleeping and waiting for the Mini E to refill its battery. It took him four-days.

On day 3 of the BBC trip, David Peilow talked Tesla Motors into loaning him a Roadster to complete the same distance in 1 day. The Roadster stopped twice enroute and handsomely beat the BBC crew but could have potentially completed the trip in one day AND on a single charge.

Single Charge

According to Google Maps, the distance between the city centers of London and Edinburgh is 625 km. Less than 2 weeks ago we reported on a Tesla owner from Texas who recorded a distance of 555.5 km in a bog standard Tesla Roadster on a single charge. That's only 70 km short of the full distance between London and Edinburgh. In fact, over the last 12 months we have reported on several battery powered EVs having set single charge distance records close to or exceeding the week long BBC trip.

Back in 1996 the unofficial World Record was set by the Solectria Sunrise with 604 km on a single charge using older technology Nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries. Last October a German team also covered 600km on a single charge driving an Audi A2. The furthest distance on a single charge to date falls to the Japan Electric Vehicle Club who covered 1000 km in a Sanyo sponsored Daihatsu Mira.

Hatchet Job

The BBC stunt seems to be a fairly heavy handed hatchet job on a technology that has yet to deliver it's first mass market car in the UK. Despite Mr Milligan's repeated claims that the Mini E he drove is 'mass market', it certainly is nothing of the sort! The Mini E is a field testing vehicle run as part of BMW's "Project i". There are only 40 such vehicles on the roads in the UK and they are all owned by BMW with short term leases to nominated testers, hardly a "mass market" vehicle! These cars are quite obviously designed for and intended to be primarily used for urban driving not intercity travel. With 89% of the UK population living in Urban areas a typical 160 km range EV should be a practical alternative to ICE powered vehciles for the majority of UK households.

It is such early days in the roll out of true 'mass market' EVs, like the Nissan Leaf, that this stage can be compared to the early days of cellphones. Early cellphones were analogue and had a nickel-cadmium (NiCad) battery that suffered charge 'memory' problems. The battery was so inadequate they were unable to see out an 8 hour day on stand-by. Quite a few development generations later, digital cellphones with lithium ion batteries can last over 350 hours on stand-by no problem. That's a 60-fold improvment!

Nissan already have the next generation of battery technology in their pipeline with plans to introduce it in as little as 4 years from now. The new batteries will use a lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathode developed in-house by NEC. Nissan estimates that the battery will cost the same as conventional lithium ion batteries and will be able to power a Leaf for 300 kilometers on a single charge, approx twice the current distance.

Level 3 charging

As the Leaf comes with a Level 3 480v charging socket fitted as standard, a Nissan with their next generation battery could cover the BBC trip in 1 day with just one 20 min quick charge at a half distance rest halt.

Compared to most of the world, the UK has a huge lead in the introduction of EVs. Even with fewer than 2000 registered EVs on the road, the UK is approaching 4,000 public charging posts across the country. Instead of getting behind this effort, the BBC, seemingly like a spoilt child, is trying as aggressively as possible to vanalize this lead, performing a genuine public disservice.

In this weeks episode of Green Overdrive Katie Fehrenbacher has a chat to the chief engineer behind the electric RAV 4.

After working on the RAV 4 EV for over six months, Toyota’s Greg Bernas says the coolest technology in the RAV 4 EV is the battery technology, which will give the car 100-miles of range.

For the next-generation RAV 4 EV, Bernas says the car will have a new unique design with the traditional RAV 4 styling cues.

The Tesla Roadster, the world’s only electric supercar, is officially hitting the streets in Australia. Tesla Motors, its California-based maker, announced that the Roadster is now approved for Australian roads and available for purchase.

The hand-built, carbon fiber Roadster is the only car that delivers supercar performance with zero tailpipe emissions. Powered by a liquid-cooled battery pack, the Roadster delivers 215 kW (288 hp) and 400 Nm of instant torque. It accelerates from 0-100 km in less than four seconds and consumes no fuel. The Roadster plugs into any conventional electrical socket and can travel over 360 kms on a single charge. It is the only sports car in the world that can be charged with solar, hydro and wind energy.

The Roadster 2.5 is Tesla’s fourth iteration of the Roadster in just two years, reflecting Tesla's commitment to innovation and its tight feedback loop with its engineers and customers. The 2.5 includes improvements to interior comfort, power control hardware that enables spirited driving in hot climates, and an optional 18-cm touch-screen display with navigation and back-up camera.

Pricing for the Roadster 2.5 starts at AUD 206,188 (plus on road costs). One will be on display for the public from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 15 in First Fleet Park at Circular Quay.

Tesla is revolutionizing the ownership experience with its house call approach to service. Tesla’s mobile service technicians, the Tesla Rangers, travel to customers’ homes or offices to perform annual inspections, firmware upgrades and other services. This unique program offers Roadster owners unparalleled convenience whether they live in Sydney or Perth.

Tesla’s objective to make zero-emission vehicles widely available complements Australia’s long-term commitment to clean energy and transportation, exemplified by the government’s $1.3 billion Green Car Innovation Fund for electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors has sold more than 1,500 Roadsters to customers in over 30 countries. The company sells cars directly to customers, both online and through its growing network of global showrooms, which will soon include Sydney.

Toyota's top engineer said the batteries that would power the electric RAV4 crossover being developed with Tesla Motors could cost as little as one-third of the electric car batteries being developed by conventional automakers.

Silicon Valley startup Tesla links together thousands of lithium-ion batteries used in laptops to power its zero-emission Roadster sports car, while automakers with electric models such as Mitsubishi Motors Corp and Nissan Motor Co use expensive batteries developed specifically for EV use.

"If (Tesla's battery structure) works, we won't have to wait for a breakthrough in battery technology to develop a relatively cheap electric vehicle," Executive Vice President Takeshi Uchiyamada, who heads Toyota's research and development, told Reuters in an interview at the Detroit auto show on Tuesday.

"It could be as low as one-third of the cost of batteries being developed by car makers, because (laptop) batteries are produced in massive volumes."

Toyota, the world's biggest automaker, tied up with Tesla last year and the two companies are racing to prepare a RAV4 EV by next year, when Toyota will also launch a tiny electric commuter car developed in-house. Toyota has said the RAV4 EV would target drivers traveling longer distances, while its own EV would be suitable for short distances.

Calling the cooperation with Tesla "an experiment" to challenge Toyota's own engineers to work with the mindset of a startup, Uchiyamada said the Japanese automaker had not decided whether future joint models would follow.

Even if the RAV4 EV passes Toyota's rigorous durability tests and can be offered at relatively low prices, Uchiyamada said Toyota still believed hybrids and plug-in hybrid vehicles had the best chance of mass proliferation.

Toyota is set to offer a plug-in version of its popular Prius next year that is positioned to be the most inexpensive green car of its kind. It expects to sell about 20,000 Prius PHVs in the first year and to offer them at a $3,000 to $5,000 premium to the standard hybrid Prius, putting the car's price below $28,000.

By contrast, General Motors Chevy Volt, also a plug-in hybrid that uses a different technology, sells for $41,000. The plug-in Prius can run on battery power for the first 13 miles, while the Volt can go 40 miles.

Nissan's all-electric Leaf carries a retail price of $32,780 in the United States.

On Monday, Toyota unveiled a family of Prius cars at the Detroit auto show as it works toward a goal of selling 1 million hybrid cars annually worldwide by the middle of the decade.



Source: Reuters

Tesla Motors has delivered more than 1,500 Roadsters worldwide, a significant milestone as the automaker's momentum builds in North America, Europe and Asia.

The fleet of Roadsters spans more than 30 countries. They have accumulated more than 8.5 million miles (14 million kms) in real-world driving, saving 415,000 gallons (1.6 million liters) of gasoline and more than 22,000 barrels of oil.

"The Roadster has earned global appeal. Our latest delivery milestone proves the Tesla is raising the bar for EVs," said Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk. "The Roadster's advanced electric powertrain is the foundation of Tesla's success."

The milestone comes after a banner year for Tesla, whic acquired an assembly plant in Fremont, Calif., and forged strategic partnerships wit Toyota and Panasonic. Tesla also became a public company in 2010.

Tesla also launched the next-generation Roadster 2.5, demonstrating Tesla's continuous innovation and close feedback loop with its engineers and customers. Tesla opened its first Asian store in October; the showroom in Tokyo's Aoyama district has the highest foot traffic of any Tesla store worldwide.

In 2010, Tesla delivered cars in more than 30 countries – from Singapore to Switzerland. The most northerly Roadsters are in Narvik, Norway, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle.

The future is definitely going to be wireless, and not just when it comes to data. eCoupled has been figuring out ways to power and charge all of your stuff without wires, from cell phones to laptops to Tesla Roadsters.

eCoupled uses what are called induction coils to transfer power between two surfaces without wires. The coils are thin enough that they can be built directly into cases and batteries, and if you've seen wireless chargers from Energizer, they've got eCoupled tech inside.

At CES, Fulton Innovation is displaying a bunch of different ways that their eCoupled inductive technology will make our lives tangle-free in the near future. Laptops and cell phones that power and charge wirelessly using built-in coils are just one aspect of what's possible. eCoupled also has tables and counter tops that provide power directly to things like blenders, and the coils are cheap enough that you can build them into cereal boxes and soup cans to get them to light up and heat themselves.

They've also managed to build an inductive receiver into a Tesla Roadster, which was happily charging in the middle of their booth. Their wireless system is about 90% as efficient as charging with a plug, and is luckily smart enough to shut itself off if your cat crawls under the car, although eCoupled promises that the magnetic fields aren't dangerous. The whole thing is controlled with an iPhone app.

Since the costs of installing a wireless power transmitter are comparable to a standard charging station, eCoupled is hoping that cities and businesses will start installing chargers in parking spots to entice all those electric cars out there to stop in for a quick charge.

Tesla Vehicle Engineering - Part 3 from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, Peter Rawlinson, talks about some of the features of Model S engineering at Tesla headquarters. He discusses the advantages of designing a car from the ground using Tesla’s proven electric powertrain, and how the result will be a drive experience to surpass any that have come before it.

Tesla Vehicle Engineering - Part 2 from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, Peter Rawlinson, talks about some of the features of Model S engineering at Tesla headquarters. He discusses the advantages of designing a car from the ground using Tesla’s proven electric powertrain, and how the result will be a drive experience to surpass any that have come before it.

Tesla Vehicle Engineering - Part 1 from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, Peter Rawlinson, talks about some of the features of Model S engineering at Tesla headquarters. He discusses the advantages of designing a car from the ground using Tesla’s proven electric powertrain, and how the result will be a drive experience to surpass any that have come before it.

The owner of an all-electric Tesla Roadster from Texas has set a new record for distance traveled on a single battery charge: 347.2 miles or 555.5 kms.

The GPS log of the trip, completed on a closed circuit in California last week, has been posted as proof, but Tesla Motors hasn’t officially verified the new record.

The record is for a production vehicle — no extra batteries or special modifications allowed. The roadster is special in one way; it was the 1000th car to roll off the Tesla assembly line. (Hence its license plate: VIN1K.)

The car, which can reach 120 mph, didn’t set any speed records on this journey. The two-person driving team maintained a nearly constant speed of 25 mph.

The previous record distance traveled on one charge in a standard production Tesla Roadster was 501 kms or 313 miles set during the 2009 World Solar Challenge in Australia. Tesla Motors puts the official range for the roadster at 244 miles on a single charge.

Source: TylerVault

Tesla Motors Inc., the electric carmaker backed by Toyota Motor Corp., said cheaper batteries will make its Model S sedan profitable with much lower sales than Nissan Motor Co. is seeking for its Leaf car.

The $57,000 electric Model S, which uses cells similar to those in laptops, is designed to make money for Palo Alto, California-based Tesla at 20,000 annual deliveries, Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said in an interview. Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn has said combined battery- car sales for Nissan and affiliate Renault SA may need to reach 500,000 vehicles a year to be profitable without government aid.

Nissan’s choice of a larger type of lithium-ion battery means “they will have a cost challenge that will be more difficult to solve,” Straubel said yesterday in an interview. “It will require a lot higher volume before they really get to a cost point that is internally sustainable.”

Tesla, which has yet to post an annual profit, has delivered $109,000 rechargeable Roadsters since 2008, powered by thousands of small lithium-ion cells similar to those used in portable computers. The Silicon Valley startup says such cells, supplied by Panasonic Corp. and other manufacturers, will remain more cost-effective for the foreseeable future than the larger lithium batteries in the Leaf and General Motors Co.’s $41,000 plug-in Volt, which both went on sale this month.

Not Comparable

Tesla’s battery packs may cost as little as $200 per kilowatt hour, compared with about $700 to $800 per kilowatt hour for so-called large-form cell lithium-ion packs, Martin Eberhard, a Tesla founder and former chief executive, said in an interview last month. Straubel declined to confirm Eberhard’s estimate or discuss the cost of Tesla’s battery packs.

Nissan’s electric vehicle strategy can’t really be compared with that of Tesla, said David Reuter, a spokesman for the Yokohama, Japan-based company’s North American unit. He didn’t elaborate.

“The Nissan Leaf product program will be profitable over its lifecycle,” Reuter said. He declined to say how long the product cycle would be for the $32,780 Leaf.

The company has been developing its lithium-ion battery technology over the past two decades, “so a lot of the investment has already been amortized through many years,” Reuter said.

Nissan fell 1 percent to 777 yen as of the 11 a.m. trading break in Tokyo. The stock has declined 4.1 percent in 2010. Tesla rose $1.32, or 5 percent, yesterday to $27.73 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading in New York. The shares have surged 63 percent since they began trading on June 28.

Higher Prices

Tesla’s Straubel conceded the Model S’s higher price will make it easier to turn a profit with fewer deliveries after it goes on sale in 2012. Still, cheaper batteries are the main reason, he said.

Tesla’s challenge is to ensure a high level of quality control in its battery pack and assembly processes as it tries to expand from supplying about 1,000 Roadsters a year to making 20,000 or more of the Model S, said Brett Smith, who specializes in alternative propulsion vehicles at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“There’s a method to their madness,” Smith said. “Tesla is using cells that, while not exactly the same as those in laptops, can be made on existing lines that already mass-produce them.”

As a result, Tesla didn’t have to spend as much for battery research and development and lithium-ion cell production, Smith said. “Especially for a small manufacturer, there’s a logic to what they’re doing,” Smith said.

Source: Bloomberg

The price may seem surprisingly low for what was, until its closure last month, the West Coast's last big car plant. In comparison, the first phase of construction at Solyndra's new solar panel factory, less than a mile away, is expected to cost $733 million.You may be shopping for a new car right now, enjoying the 2010 models and whichever 2011 cars have already hit the market. Among the newest