Wasn't it the Tesla engineers themselves that calculated that it would have run out of power after 55 miles of top gear track driving? Charging from a normal household plug was incredibly slow. Found it... "Wilman responds to Tesla's claims that the show lied about the car's brakes being broken, that its range is only 55 miles and that an overheated motor immobilized the car. Top Gear says the 55-mile range claim came from Tesla engineers who studied data gathered from the car after the test day. Wilman stands by his show's claim that the brakes broke, saying a blown fuse in the vacuum pump made pedal effort abnormally high, and that Tesla wouldn't let them continue the test until the problem was solved." Friend had an early one and sold it within 6 months and bought an Exige to replace it. Still has the Exige.
Yeah, the claims about reliability, the 55 mile range and the 13hr charge time didn’t really seem like Clarkson was exaggerating or faking anything. It seemed that he was trying to be as objective as possible. I’d have completely expected that the car would have lasted just a quarter of its stated range after a hard day of track driving. Plus, any car from a brand new company is going to have reliability problems.
@@lilPOPjim he also should have known that the electric motor wouldn't loose power because it's 15 years old. The battery might not be able to supply as much current as when they were new, but the motor doesn't "age", especially the induction type used on this roadster which doesn't have permanent magnets that might demagnetise over the years.
Why are you crediting Elon so much for this car? He only brought in well into the development of this car by Martin Eberhard, yet you don't even mention him once.
Around 2010 (looking for photos to confirm the date), I participated in a local Lotus club track day on a go-kart track (apparently the last time cars were allowed on that track). I had my S1 Elise there. There was also a S2 Exige. And then there were four Tesla Roadsters. The Teslas were fast in a straight line but they didn’t turn. Despite my lack of driving skills, I was faster around the track in my 118 bhp S1. The Exige driver knew how to drive and was faster around than me. BTW, the Tesla Roadster is nearly twice as heavy as my S1.
Probably better for most people, but some might want a piece of car history in terms of a step forward toward market-ready electric cars. This was a pretty big deal when it came out. They'd been car-show darlings and nothing else for so very long. This was a promise of greatness to come. It's obviously changed since then as far as the future, but this was pretty exciting when it came out. It was a big deal.
Exactly. It was about the courts not the about the car review But was hoping it would be more about if the accusations from tesla were correct or not. He remaind disappointlently diplomatic through the video
@@harnisett i definitely agree. This is the problem with current automobile channels. They are all "politic" around literally anything. I wish at least Mike was himself in front of the camera as he has a connection with the top gear trio but with as seen in this video, he talks in a way Tesla would want him to.
@@nazmieminoglu6718 gottta keep the brands happy to get the long term review loans. badmouth them and you're blacklisted from getting any press car to review
Tbh I do struggle to understand why Tesla fanboys keep harping on about the range and charging time statements. They are realistic. If you watch the episode back (S12 E7) you'll find that Jeremy explicitly refers to track driving when stating that 55 mile figure. Quartering the car's real world range on a track is EASILY possible. As for the charge time, 13 h is actually an understatement when you do the maths. 56 kWh / (230 V * 16 A)=15.2 h. And that doesn't even include charging losses which would probably make it closer to 20 h. As far as I'm aware, the gripe Musk had with Jeremy actually referred to a part of the script that had some unfavourable line about the car in it that a Tesla staff had allegedly "found lying around". Make up your own mind about how likely that story is.
@@evostu7814 Early on Elon tried to force journalists to do their mileage test in a specific manner--BBC wasn't the only organization that was sued for allegedly misrepresenting the range of Teslas.
If u watch the car trek episode they did laps with a model 3 base car at a nascar track and it did like 4 laps of an oval at full speed before it was empty so i dont find jeremys claims that untruthful
Yeah I think Jeremy's review was fair, if they did find the script, they probably were already writing about what sorts of problems your likely to have with an EV.
I wish the host would quit crediting Elon Musk for the Roadster. That car had already been released when Musk became CEO and he had very little, if anything, to do with the design of it.
The one thing Musk has actually achieved is to be credited by all and sundry for the many, many things he has had no real involvement in. It's quite a feat in its way.
He was the investor that got Tesla off the ground because he himself wanted an EV sports car--pretty dang important for it ever making it to market in the first place.
@@UwU-pk6nv From Wikipedia: "In February 2004, the company raised US$7.5 million (equivalent to $12 million in 2022) in series A funding, including $6.5 million (equivalent to $10 million in 2022) from Elon Musk" I'm sure singlehandedly financing 87% of the company's initial funding round was totally inconsequential towards their ability to both create and ship their first vehicle. 🙄
The Elon love thing going on here is a bit silly considering he was largely not involved with the development of this car until the very end. He forced the original tesla founders out of the company and took credit for this.
Good man. More people need to know that he's merely a financial enabler. Space Karen is very good at taking the credit for f**k all and wearing a toupee.
Not really. The Pontiac Solstice GXP was based on the Opel/Lotus design that the VX220 also shared and the GXP had 260 hp. Saturn also had a version called the Sky Redline.
@@jamesengland7461 Yes, you are correct. The Solstice and Sky do use the same chassis design as an Opel but it's not the Speedster although they do all look similar.
cost 2-3 time less then, more affordable now, still gets the same range it did then, you can fill up at the pump, and nearly as quick as the Tesla Roadster.
@@teabagmcpick889 Wrong term? Off-brand? Only meaning the originality of the car isn't 100% design-build. Maybe car valuations have changed and it's a non-issue.
It’s sad that he is rewriting history by not mentioning the original founders of Tesla and engineers that were involved with this car. Every great idea about this car seems to be conceived by Elon Musk according to this presenter.
Tbf even the original engineers didn't do anything new they just did what anyone that was into rc cars was thinking for years why aren't brushless batteries and lipo/graphene batteries used in electric cars like rc instead of nicad. Just like I've been saying for the last 15 years why aren't they pushing for diesel electric hybrids like trains use for modern ev cars
The time between the original founding of the company and Musk getting involved was about 8 months (July 2003 - February 2004). In that time, the original founders were busy… looking for funding. No real product R&D or engineering happened (nor were there any employees to do that stuff) before the point at which Musk was involved. So yes, on paper with legal paperwork filed with the government, Tesla was founded before Musk. But in terms of what a company actually does - develop and produce products & services for sale and eventually market, sell, and provide maintenance/support for the products/services - no, the company started shortly after Musk was involved.
The problem was the roadster didn't get 200 miles to the charge which is why Tesla sued anyone who said differently. One road test in the states said the car ran out of juice just outside the New York city limits and nowhere even close to 200 miles. Tesla's excuse, well they didn't drive it the way we told them to do it and went through stop start traffic. Well hold on isn't that the everyday running of most cars? Not to mention the Elise is a poorly constructed piece of plastic that leaks like a nightmare in the rain. In short the criticisms of the cars were just. Most of the stats by tesla were in fact lies or just wrong.
Almost like the entire time since has been aimed at mass producing EVs to achieve the mission of transitioning the world to sustainable energy and sports cars are niche because many people can't afford a separate toy car from their daily driver.
@@Dex60 and especially the fact that Toyota helped building the Elise and even the Roadster, it's what they call a public secret that Toyota and Tesla were in cahoots before the official investment in 2010 In my opinion it's the only decent Tesla (in terms of quality) ever made up until this day
The BBC’s argument was that Top Gear wasn’t a documentary, it was an entertainment show and thus it wasn’t actually a review. They admitted it was staged.
That charger you went to at the pub had CHAdeMO working and available so why didn't you use it? Surely that would have got you charged up quicker than AC?
@@yota8325 You are comparing the Exige, the track version of the Elise, to the Roadster? Why stop there? Why not use the 340R as the comparison instead? Or the Hennessey Venom GT? These all are road legal sports cars with the same base chassis. (Of course, you would never make these comparisons if you understood the phrase “horses for courses”, or the concept of intended purpose.)
Wasn't expecting what felt like a Tesla/Elon fluff piece from Drivetribe. I'll admit I don't usually watch when it doesn't have any of the Top Gear team in it, but now I don't find myself feeling as bad about that.
It is me or is the original Tesla way better looking than recent ones? I actually like that car, whereas most electrics are as dull as ditch water. if you bought one like you test drove second hand now - how much would it cost and how much would battery replacement cost? I am wondering if this is a future classic. btw - I have 4 cars, 3 classics, one modern, all petrol lol
Model S was created by chief engineer Peter Rawlinson. Now he is CEO of Lucid Motors. Might be one of the reasons why latest Teslas are not looking all that great.
Teslas aren’t owned by car fanatics in general. It’s just a quirky brand, and attracts the image people who need the latest things (like Apple, Ring etc). If a real car fanatic had to have an EV, they’d get a proper car brand
Tesla IS the proper car brand when it comes to EVs; most other brands can't do the software or the charging network or build their own motors or control systems.
Jay Leno was right in asking can you drive it in the rain. Google the case of the couple from Edinburgh who were shocked after receiving a £17,374 bill to replace the battery on their Tesla Model Y, after the vehicle wouldn’t turn on after driving through heavy rain.
I hope it never comes here. Partially because its fugly and dangerous and mostly because Musk is a Putin supporting scumbag snake oil merchant. He is basically a real life Bond villain, and not in a fun camp way, but in a really screwing the world over way.
So Mike, What range did you get? What is the Miles/KWh? Why didn't you launch it and see the 0-60 time? How long does it take to charge on DC? What is its charging rate on DC? What did it cost you to charge it for an hour and 12 miles range? Did you do any tests on the battery to find out how much power it had lost? A drag race with a 2008 Elise or similar would have been great. A lot of missing information in this review, if that's what it was, but I enjoyed it anyway.
James May: "The car of tomorrow will be useless until they work like the car of today." (paraphrasing). What he was basically saying was that until the electric car can be recharged as fast as you can fill a gas tank it will be only useful around town.This holds true 10+ years on.
Exactly. If you've got an average hatchback with, say, 150bhp, it only takes around 40bhp to keep it rolling along at 60mph. The only time you'll use all 150bhp is if you give it some welly away from the lights for a few seconds. Same thing with an EV. Most of the time it's, basically, just "coasting" along, using a small(ish) amount of energy to keep it rolling. On a circuit, OTOH, you're probably going to have your foot on the floor ALL the time, unless you're braking. Hence, you use 5x the energy.
I never understood the controversy. Tesla claimed 200m and on track it did 55m. Given whatever power they had available, it took 16th to charge. The two cars both suffered critical component failures during track testing. What are you meant to say to an audience then? “We had two cars fail in a day that did 1/4 of the mileage promised and take 16hrs to charge, BUT ignore what you just saw, since the manufacture claims otherwise and we were probably just unlucky with the two models supplied to us.” That would have been irresponsible, no?
It's a grey market import though. The UK has something called IVA (Individual Vehicle Approval) which means as long as a car meets a minimum set of standards, they can be used on the road. It's how we have things like Caterham Sevens, Ariel Atoms and how Edd China has a road legal couch. Tesla will never be able to sell the Cybertruck through it's dealers here because it would never meet pedestrian safety, but you'd have no problem importing one and IVAing it.
I was in the middle of a response, but I got beaten to it for once. You are right about the imports and the fact that Tesla would want to sell the Cybertruck and the difference between them.
Couple of thoughts.....EU and Asia cars were fully built in Hethel, and left us as fully driving cars. The chassis is from Lotus Europa, not the Elise, as Europa had the turbocharged GM engine and was wider between chassis legs and this gave more room to fit a larger battery in. The Roadster battery didn't have the advanced battery heating of modern Teslas and therefore performance is more susceptible to temperature. Warm the battery by charging in Performance mode and performance vastly improves. You cant DC charge, so a Chademo charger is a waste of time 🙄
@@martinsolihull86 And then drove to another triple fastcharger to connect to the type 2 plug. Another youtuber that wants to review an EV but hasn't done their homework?
@@martinsolihull86 ahhh yes, sorry, I had missed that. I was aware there were some retrofit kits available but missed that quick shot of the connector in the video. Thanks for correcting me 👍🏻
I just cannot get my head around the weight. A VX220 (NA with lighter alloys) weighs under 780kg and is super sharp on turn-in at a tight apex, and therefore deliciously quick on exit and rewarding to drive . The thought of arriving at the same corner with approaching four times the weight is scary, and you must have to brake so far in advance. And you can buy an NA vx for £12k
Four times the weight? Pray tell, what vehicle are you comparing the lithe Vauxhall to? The floaty, definitely-NOT-a-sportscar Cybertruck? I thought this was supposed to be about the Roadster 1.0.
Another ex-Lotus engineer is still at Tesla - Malcolm Burgess whose Linkedin profile says he's 'Manager, Structural Concepts and Vehicle Dynamics at Tesla Motors Mountain View, California' (although that might have changed recently). His name can be found on the patents for the gigacasting chassis structures too.
There were a lot of us from Lotus that jumped the fence to work on the Roadster project. We were all based in the same place as when we used to work for Lotus, but now working for Tesla. Several went back to Lotus after the Roadster project finished.
Going by many of the comments, I think I’ll stick with my dream of giving a Peel P50 remake a powertrain swap (a 90° pushrod V-Twin, an automatic transmission, and a tiny supercharger).
@@axe2grind244 When it runs into people. The people tend to come off quite badly, so most countries have regulations making the front of cars softer so they do less damage to people. America doesn't do that for whatever reason.
Just did some googling. Says the first gen roadster has a range of 244 miles, which is garbage, and if clarkson was driving it around a track, it wouldn’t even be half that. Mike ferny does not know more than Jeremy clarkson.
I’d rather buy the GT3 all day any day than spending 150k for an old fridge which can barely do a lap on the track or buy the Lotus is based on and you still get lot of fun and save a lot of money 😊
Kind of a different car. The VX220 was based on the Opel Speedster, while the Solstice and Sky were versions of the Opel GT (and vice versa). The Pontiac and Saturn were successors to the VX220, not the same car.
Because when he purchased Tesla, it was nothing than a bunch of papers and some technological researches but not real products to sell, not real company to produce, etc… This is what happen all the time with technology companies, some people just create companies and do some researches but never come up with anything solid for the market until someone buy them, buy their name, eventually some patents and then build something with it… which is what happened with Elon Musk. If he wouldn’t be at Tesla pushing for EVs, the current car industry would still be way different. Like him or not, Elon Musk is heavily responsible for the whole industry to get serious about EVs and to make EVs performant… prior to Musk, EVs was a synonym for ugly looking cars and very low performance. Now we have PLAID models that beat most of ICE cars on the drag strip…
Musk is to Tesla what Gates was to Microsoft and Jobs was to Apple. Did he do it all from his personal genius - nope. Neither did the others but there's no point in getting salty that his name is going to be tied to when EVs got going.
i had one sold it as the batteries were dying kind of wish i would have kept it as prices on these roadsters have risen unlike the other EV prices which are tanking
Clarkson saw Musk as the snake oil salesman that he is a long time before many, including myself. These first roadsters were really something, but as many pointed out here as well Musk himself had little to no contribution in this and Tesla hasn't delivered on most of what they have promised on ever since.
The issues you had with charging is exactly why I won’t buy an electric car. The U.K. doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with everyone to have an electric car and never will
The amount of fanboism seeping through my monitor is terrifying with this one. I have expected better from drivetribe but I guess I am wrong. Maybe a different intro , or a simple title like revisiting the roadster at 15 years might rub me , and many others apparently in the comments , a better way.
when it comes to s2 elise based cars, one has to bring up the rinspeed squba! absolutely ridiculous thing and its no surprise it never made production, but the fact that a functioning prototype was even created at all is so cool
Love you man but lose that watch. It is a piece of trash. Plastic parts with an unserviceable movement. Maybe your taste in cars is the same as your taste in watches and that's why you are contradicting Clarkson.
It'd be great if Porsche could work out how to modularly package the battery cells such that an average person could remove and add them. You could have a light boxter with 100km of range most of the time and a heavier one with 500km of range when needed. On a track day you'd only need enough cells in the car to do a stint rather than having the weight required to complete the full days running onboard for every lap.
You dont want an average person handling them.They're fairly dangerous. Packaging them not to be is impractical at best. Also a quick electrodynamics lesson will tell you that you are going to significantly reduce a car's power by removing that much battery. It doesnt just work like a fuel tank, imagine it as if a larger fuel tank also brought with it more fuel throughput.
Doesn't mean that they are going away. Just a basic tech product depreciation curve that I predicted years ago. It will continue to get cheaper to buy EV's.
Government incentives have all but died off in the UK for private buyers. The collapse in pricing is mostly in the second hand market derived from Tesla aggressively dropping new prices due to relief in supply chain issues. No other company has dropped new prices aggressively, and second hand pricing for other brand still trends 5-10 grand higher than Teslas.
What would happen if there was a complete moratorium on the use of fossil fuels tomorrow? Well, we'd be out of food in a matter of weeks, and hundreds of millions, more likely over a billion, would be dead inside of 6 months. Making an EV sports car wouldn't even be on the list of concerns.
I have always liked the Tesla Roadster, but I always believed Elon Musk had far more reason to lie about its performance than Jeremy did. Plus he was not even harshly bashing it, he was just pointing out some glitches with the original cars.
Can we get this straight please: Musk is not an engineer, he was not involved in creating any technologies for any of the companies he's been part of and the engineering was always done by other people. He financed his way into the CEO ranks and did his marketing wonders, which, props to him, no one can do quite like him. Tesla got many parts and design help for their first cars (Roadster, Model S) from established car manufacturers like Lotus, Mercedes and Toyota. The battery technology came from the original founders of Tesla which brought in the Lithium Ion technology from their previous E-Reader business. Please stop saying "well done Elon" when it comes to engineering, this just creates this fake "he's a genius"-mantra around him that Musk-lovers repeat so often. He is just used to be very good business man. Give him credit for that.
Uhhhh, no, he's NOT the richest man in the world, and it really wouldn't have taken much effort to find out that in fact, Bernard Arnault is the richest man in the world. Though judging a man's integrity, stature, character, ethics, morals and overall positive benefit to the world based purely on the their net worth, is just a wee bit pathetically sycophantic. (But then again, isn't every Musk fan boy?)
I wish Tesla would offer a battery replacement with the latest technology. It would give this Roadster much much more enjoyable miles😎 Great review! Never seen one Roadster on the road
The 'Elon Musk Apologist' label is not one I had lined up for Mike. But at this point, if you're not discussing Elon the man while discussing Elon the product, it's debatable if you're doing anything close to journalism. I realize Drivetribe is primarily entertainment, but it also takes itself far too seriously to ONLY be entertainment.
4:42 regen braking was actually one of the standards for EVs from the start, as early as 1966 with the AMC Amitron, the Nissan LEAF, and even one of Tom Hanks EVs(a modified 2006 Scion xB) had regen braking
Your 'heated seats draining the battery' comment is actually very valid, albeit a little bit exaggerated. It was something that had not previously occurred to me, but driving your EV on a cold and rainy day can have a significant effect on milage, because the heater and wipers draw a fair bit of current. A friend told me that he was unable to do the 250 kilometre (155 miles) round trip from Blenheim to Nelson and back in a fully charged Nissan Leaf on a cold wet day. Granted, there are a few mountain passes to climb, but 155 miles? WTF! I followed a Tesla from Kaikoura to Blenheim recently, and the driver was taking it very steady. He ignored some easy overtake opportunities, and was cruising 20kph under the 100kph limit. We started to wonder if he was nursing his batteries, and when we later came to some bendy bits, and saw that the drivers window was down on a 30°C day, we decided that had to be the case. I totally put me off owning an EV, and that's without the limited lifespan of the battery packs, and huge cost of replacements.
My EV has a tiny 28kWh battery and heated seats and a heated steering wheel. Using them makes no measurable difference to the efficiency. After motion, the most energy is used by the cabin heater but that only takes 3 or 4 % off the range.
I'm usually a fan of the drivetribe content but this video is kind of embarrassing. It's like Mike is trying to make excuses for his embarrassing uncle to people cause it's fashionable these days to be positive about EVs and Elon when really there's nothing to be excused. Jeremy's statements were realistic when you actually do the maths. And btw it would have been nice if they had actually watched the Episode before putting out this content. Jeremy never called it a brown rice eco car. That's what he called the prius and g-wiz which he was CONTRASTING the Tesla with.
@@gumpyoldbugger6944 had some time, and poked around to make sure I wasn't talking bollocks. He mentions it in the drivetribe video titled, "James May has crashed his Tesla!..." At about seven minutes in.
The expensive degraded batteries will be a huge issue a decade down the road when EVs are in the used market. You can still get tons of life out of a 100k+ mileage gas car engine.
@@f36443 yeah and they cost money. might as well buy another car that's not an EV. or better, buy a lotus elise, that's cheaper, still runs just as great today and is half the weight of the tesla
Musk claims that TG already had a script already written where the car would breakdown, this at the time before they had driven it and during the handover for testing by a Tesla engineer.
We know Clarkson lied about the range and lifespan of the Roadster battery. We also know he was completely wrong when he said it was a pointless car because hydrogen would be the dominant energy source for cars. We also know he had to concede that the Roadster was faster around the Top Gear track than the much favoured Lotus Elise. We also know that over a decade later drive trains from original Roadsters were used to upgrade classic cars and they still had over 200 miles of range and their motors were making classic sports cars faster than they ever were as petrol guzzlers. So the question 'Was Clarkson right about the original Tesla Roadster?' is an easy NO. In fact every negative comment he has ever made about electric cars has been blown out of the water. Where he once lauded the Bugatti Veyron as the last great super car we'll ever see, he went on to sit in the dust of a Rimac One as Richard Hammond drove it into the sunset while Clarkson's ICE supercar of choice looked like it had broken down on the start line it was so far behind. And to be fair Clarkson himself said on Top Gear that he and the other two know nothing. Because cars they reviewed highly often totally flopped and cars they slagged off went stratospheric in popularity. This all links to the reason Elon Musk didn't win his case against Top Gear. Clarkson presented Top Gear as an entertainment show with a storyline and therefore it was not tied to factual accuracy over opinion. So the fact that the Roadster running out of power was in a script that was written before the car ever arrived on site was not seen by the judge as strictly being libelous. The show has many setups and fakeries when reviewing the cars it covers. It's more a fiction than a documentary. The first Stig didn't die when they catapulted him off of an aircraft carrier in a Jaguar. So no-one was charged with murder, manslaughter or death by means of wreckless abandonment. By the same logic Top Gear can't be sued for telling lies thinly disguised as poetic license. That is why Clarkson never goes into details of exactly why Elon lost the case because I suspect the judge didn't declare that Clarkson's portrayal of the Roadster was accurate and truthful but merely that it was not actionable.
Going even further back, the trio mocked the Veyron as something that would never happen. Their show is hilarious ENTERTAINMENT. They scoff at the premise of providing useful consumer advice.
If ic engines were banned tomorrow, I'd electrify a Miata or Super 7 before I'd overpay for a Tesla. Of course I don't have any overpriced iPoo devices either. Fanboys are gonna fanboy.
Imagine putting any of this car on Elon - He is just a manager. He employs people who actually know what theyre doing. He isnt a genius, he's a rich kid.
A wealthy acquaintance of mine had one of these from new complete with a Tesla S number plate. I got to go out in it a couple of times and it was a weird experience at a time when electric cars were in their infancy. I believe only about 50 or so were sold in the UK so a very rare sight although nobody really gave it a second glance due to it's similarity to the Elise. He used it as his only car following a divorce and regularly went backwards and forwards from Essex to Nottingham with no range issues. The only problem he had with it was his son smashing it up on a track day and the subsequent £50k repair bill!
It's probably from the free RUclips music library or some music library they subscribe too. Explains why shazam can't identify, I doubt shazam samples any of the production music library's out there. Sorry can't be more helpful. Sometimes the publisher will put down the source in the description, but not here.. I've noticed Drive Tribe tends to use some good samples in their videos, someone's taking the time to find the right music cue.
Always thought they should’ve just re-released a better and cheaper version of the original Roadster, rather than that absurd monstrosity that they've been proposing since 2017... The original Roadster still looks great.
What disturbes me the most is the thing has Yokohama Advan Neova AD07 front tires (summer high performance, OE on the Elise) and Pirelli Sotto zero Winter tires in the rear.... Must behave quite.... Interesting.... And if the car even so handles well, how well does it handle with performance tires on all four corners? ;)
6:47 Amazed me to realize somewhat recently that the 0-60 for the original one was 4.2s, the same as my Model 3 Long Range. Had no idea when I watched Clarkson dunk on the OG roadster as I a wee college freshman that I'd ultimately be driving a Tesla and love it.
I'm still firmly in the "hybrid" camp, though not like most people would think. I believe all-electric still isn't ready for mass market and most consumer trends also indicate this. Electric works for a lot of people, but our grid in the U.S. is nowhere near capable of supporting the kind of loads needed to charge these things, let along the MASSIVE impact battery disposal/recycling will have in ~10 years. Cars with basic fender benders get totaled out due to potential battery damage, and the fires are no joke. A hybrid with a small diesel drive and a quarter range battery pack (~75mi) would be the perfect setup. Get speed/power with electric takeoff, cruise and generate on the diesel, and regen brake for ~90% of deceleration. Diesel is a very clean combustible if done correctly and typically provides more torque per displacement than gasoline. You reduce battery requirements, vehicle weight, and repair costs while having a vehicle that can realistically get 70+mpg, and maybe over that with some electric assist trickery.
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Wasn't it the Tesla engineers themselves that calculated that it would have run out of power after 55 miles of top gear track driving?
Charging from a normal household plug was incredibly slow.
Found it...
"Wilman responds to Tesla's claims that the show lied about the car's brakes being broken, that its range is only 55 miles and that an overheated motor immobilized the car. Top Gear says the 55-mile range claim came from Tesla engineers who studied data gathered from the car after the test day. Wilman stands by his show's claim that the brakes broke, saying a blown fuse in the vacuum pump made pedal effort abnormally high, and that Tesla wouldn't let them continue the test until the problem was solved."
Friend had an early one and sold it within 6 months and bought an Exige to replace it. Still has the Exige.
Yeah, the claims about reliability, the 55 mile range and the 13hr charge time didn’t really seem like Clarkson was exaggerating or faking anything. It seemed that he was trying to be as objective as possible. I’d have completely expected that the car would have lasted just a quarter of its stated range after a hard day of track driving. Plus, any car from a brand new company is going to have reliability problems.
Regenerative breaking was on the Prius for 8 years before the tesla roadster came out. Why wouldn’t it have regenerative breaking?
That's what I was thinking, too, lol. I thought the presenter was an engineer. Even basic research would've shown this.
Regen braking was invented in the 1880s! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking#History
@@lilPOPjim he also should have known that the electric motor wouldn't loose power because it's 15 years old.
The battery might not be able to supply as much current as when they were new, but the motor doesn't "age", especially the induction type used on this roadster which doesn't have permanent magnets that might demagnetise over the years.
@@keithrichardhallamYeah I was away to say. Fully Charged did an antique EV and it had regen braking!
Because that requires a more expensive system than the “pile of laptop batteries” system they stuck in the Lotus.
Why are you crediting Elon so much for this car? He only brought in well into the development of this car by Martin Eberhard, yet you don't even mention him once.
Trying not to get sued again lol
i mean, its not like Tesla was a very profitable company at that point. But i do agree people forget that
Utter nonsense. Tesla was nothing but a name on a piece of paper before Elon joined. Educate yourself.
elon was the third member off staff at tesla, joined in 2004, car launched 2008
Because not much from AC Propulsion worked and he tried to run the company to the ground. It’s fun to be a contrarian though
ran out of budget for the cgi cybertruck a minute in
Yeah what qS up with that?
LOL
Or did Elon sue again?
I think that's the joke because it looked like something from a 2003 video game truck.
@@Moray2023PS2 era 😂
Around 2010 (looking for photos to confirm the date), I participated in a local Lotus club track day on a go-kart track (apparently the last time cars were allowed on that track). I had my S1 Elise there. There was also a S2 Exige. And then there were four Tesla Roadsters.
The Teslas were fast in a straight line but they didn’t turn. Despite my lack of driving skills, I was faster around the track in my 118 bhp S1. The Exige driver knew how to drive and was faster around than me.
BTW, the Tesla Roadster is nearly twice as heavy as my S1.
You nailed reason why electric cars aren't fun to drive on backroads. Weight makes everything worse on sporty cars.
14:39 or just buy a similar age Lotus Elise for £18K
Which is a better driver's car
Probably better for most people, but some might want a piece of car history in terms of a step forward toward market-ready electric cars. This was a pretty big deal when it came out. They'd been car-show darlings and nothing else for so very long. This was a promise of greatness to come. It's obviously changed since then as far as the future, but this was pretty exciting when it came out. It was a big deal.
@@vipe650r Indeed, even if i'd prefer having a lotus elise i understand why someone would buy one of these if it impacted them when it came out.
@@roccovanhunsel2506 mate, I've got millions of streams. Pipe down.
Just looked and here in the US you're paying $40,000 for a decent car with less than 50k miles, about the same as a C6 ZO6....
"I disagreed with Clarkson's thoughts on this"
7 minutes into the video one of Clarkson's complaints about the vehicle happens.
The part he disagreed about was the courts' decision that people can reasonably be expected to understand when Clarkson is being cheeky vs serious.
Exactly. It was about the courts not the about the car review
But was hoping it would be more about if the accusations from tesla were correct or not.
He remaind disappointlently diplomatic through the video
@@harnisett i definitely agree. This is the problem with current automobile channels. They are all "politic" around literally anything. I wish at least Mike was himself in front of the camera as he has a connection with the top gear trio but with as seen in this video, he talks in a way Tesla would want him to.
Meanwhile 2008 Lotus Elise owners are enjoying the same range they had when new and filling up in a few minutes at the pump today. lol
@@nazmieminoglu6718 gottta keep the brands happy to get the long term review loans. badmouth them and you're blacklisted from getting any press car to review
Tbh I do struggle to understand why Tesla fanboys keep harping on about the range and charging time statements. They are realistic. If you watch the episode back (S12 E7) you'll find that Jeremy explicitly refers to track driving when stating that 55 mile figure. Quartering the car's real world range on a track is EASILY possible. As for the charge time, 13 h is actually an understatement when you do the maths. 56 kWh / (230 V * 16 A)=15.2 h. And that doesn't even include charging losses which would probably make it closer to 20 h.
As far as I'm aware, the gripe Musk had with Jeremy actually referred to a part of the script that had some unfavourable line about the car in it that a Tesla staff had allegedly "found lying around". Make up your own mind about how likely that story is.
Track driving is another thing entirely, I used to have a Mitsubishi evo 8 which would empty the tank in less than 50 miles around a track.
@@evostu7814 Early on Elon tried to force journalists to do their mileage test in a specific manner--BBC wasn't the only organization that was sued for allegedly misrepresenting the range of Teslas.
If u watch the car trek episode they did laps with a model 3 base car at a nascar track and it did like 4 laps of an oval at full speed before it was empty so i dont find jeremys claims that untruthful
@Zirion123 If I remember correctly, the basic Model 3 they used on Cartrek ran out of power in 18 miles.
Yeah I think Jeremy's review was fair, if they did find the script, they probably were already writing about what sorts of problems your likely to have with an EV.
I wish the host would quit crediting Elon Musk for the Roadster. That car had already been released when Musk became CEO and he had very little, if anything, to do with the design of it.
The one thing Musk has actually achieved is to be credited by all and sundry for the many, many things he has had no real involvement in. It's quite a feat in its way.
Untrue
He was the investor that got Tesla off the ground because he himself wanted an EV sports car--pretty dang important for it ever making it to market in the first place.
@@UwU-pk6nv From Wikipedia:
"In February 2004, the company raised US$7.5 million (equivalent to $12 million in 2022) in series A funding, including $6.5 million (equivalent to $10 million in 2022) from Elon Musk"
I'm sure singlehandedly financing 87% of the company's initial funding round was totally inconsequential towards their ability to both create and ship their first vehicle. 🙄
@@UwU-pk6nv If you can, try reading one of the several biographies which show in detail how wrong you are
The Elon love thing going on here is a bit silly considering he was largely not involved with the development of this car until the very end. He forced the original tesla founders out of the company and took credit for this.
Typical B.S. from Musk-haters… but not accurate. But hey, haters are gonna hate…
Shocked he didn't rename the company x
Maybe they're just playing it safe and not want to be sued by mr. rockets... You know how sensible he is...
@@Spidouz Nothing written is wrong though...
@@Spidouzare you stupid on purpose
The company was incorporated as Tesla Motors, Inc. on July 1, 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
and they wanted to make the same mistake and create a dinky hatchback.
And ??
@@island97 That was the same mistake everyone was making until Elon came along.
@@stevenm7211 he was there from day one tho.
@@island97Elon hates that. Which means I love it...
IIRC, Tesla already had agreements with Lotus before Elon came along.
but how?he found the company right😆
Good man. More people need to know that he's merely a financial enabler. Space Karen is very good at taking the credit for f**k all and wearing a toupee.
Elon was the third person at Tesla I believe, even before he was CEO
@@gnoccialpestopeople also forget that he’s not an engineer
Yup! Elon was the money man.
NSF Hot Pursuit 2 back in the day showed me how quick the Vauxhall VX220 was. Americans missed out on that one.
Not really. The Pontiac Solstice GXP was based on the Opel/Lotus design that the VX220 also shared and the GXP had 260 hp. Saturn also had a version called the Sky Redline.
@bghoody5665 the Pontiac/Saturn has NOTHING in common with the Vauxhall or Lotus. It's an entirely different front- engine chassis.
Based.
150k, if your spending that you have to much money. Donate it to charity
@@jamesengland7461 Yes, you are correct. The Solstice and Sky do use the same chassis design as an Opel but it's not the Speedster although they do all look similar.
£150k for a collectable seems odd when it's a degraded adaptation of an off-make chassis.
The Lotus Elise was the better deal then and now.
cost 2-3 time less then, more affordable now, still gets the same range it did then, you can fill up at the pump, and nearly as quick as the Tesla Roadster.
An off-make chassis? What are you driving that makes an Elise look meh?
@@teabagmcpick889 Wrong term? Off-brand? Only meaning the originality of the car isn't 100% design-build. Maybe car valuations have changed and it's a non-issue.
more importantly the lotus Elise was pretty much half the weight of the tesla. which was the main point of the lotus, being extremely lightweight
It’s sad that he is rewriting history by not mentioning the original founders of Tesla and engineers that were involved with this car. Every great idea about this car seems to be conceived by Elon Musk according to this presenter.
Tbf even the original engineers didn't do anything new they just did what anyone that was into rc cars was thinking for years why aren't brushless batteries and lipo/graphene batteries used in electric cars like rc instead of nicad. Just like I've been saying for the last 15 years why aren't they pushing for diesel electric hybrids like trains use for modern ev cars
@@venumus1 As an RC Enthusiast, LiPo is great for power and life but the potential risks of fire are too great.
The time between the original founding of the company and Musk getting involved was about 8 months (July 2003 - February 2004). In that time, the original founders were busy… looking for funding. No real product R&D or engineering happened (nor were there any employees to do that stuff) before the point at which Musk was involved.
So yes, on paper with legal paperwork filed with the government, Tesla was founded before Musk. But in terms of what a company actually does - develop and produce products & services for sale and eventually market, sell, and provide maintenance/support for the products/services - no, the company started shortly after Musk was involved.
@@chrisgoblin4857 you realize the 18650 cells in modern evs are lipo batteries
That is a lie and a gross misrepresentation.
The problem was the roadster didn't get 200 miles to the charge which is why Tesla sued anyone who said differently. One road test in the states said the car ran out of juice just outside the New York city limits and nowhere even close to 200 miles. Tesla's excuse, well they didn't drive it the way we told them to do it and went through stop start traffic. Well hold on isn't that the everyday running of most cars? Not to mention the Elise is a poorly constructed piece of plastic that leaks like a nightmare in the rain. In short the criticisms of the cars were just. Most of the stats by tesla were in fact lies or just wrong.
Many of these 'poorly constructed pieces of plastic' are running well after 28 years 😀
The original Tesla roadster actually holds the all time speed record of any car, at 121,000 km/h. 😂
Don't know if it was faster, but I have a feeling GMs original moon rover on-board the Saturn 5 would be contender for that title.
@@ajithambalakat Not even close I'm afraid. The top speed of the Apollo rockets were 40.000 km/h.
It's bonkers this thing is just about the only electric convertible sports car yet made.
MG Cyberster? Too bad for me, not available to Americans. The first company to offer something like this will get my money.
@@lsh3rd it just shows how much 'electric car enthusiasts' actually care about cars.
The Chinese are selling the mg cyberster.
But it's china. So...
Certainly in Europe convertible cars are in decline, manufacturers have pretty much given up on them now.
@@warol_kojtyla2137 no… it’s because manufacturers are scrambling to make vehicles in the category with the highest sales.
This is the only tesla ever that doesn't look like a nerdfest built completely by software engineers and no actual designers or artists
Makes sense that Elon wasn't around for most of it
Almost like the entire time since has been aimed at mass producing EVs to achieve the mission of transitioning the world to sustainable energy and sports cars are niche because many people can't afford a separate toy car from their daily driver.
@@Dex60 and especially the fact that Toyota helped building the Elise and even the Roadster, it's what they call a public secret that Toyota and Tesla were in cahoots before the official investment in 2010
In my opinion it's the only decent Tesla (in terms of quality) ever made up until this day
@@JB-Voices I suspect the new refreshed Model 3 would be on that short list now too.
The BBC’s argument was that Top Gear wasn’t a documentary, it was an entertainment show and thus it wasn’t actually a review. They admitted it was staged.
That charger you went to at the pub had CHAdeMO working and available so why didn't you use it? Surely that would have got you charged up quicker than AC?
The 2008 Exige did a Top Gear lap of 1.25.1. Sooooo 2 seconds quicker than the Tesla
Despite the Tesla having much faster acceleration
Exige was a track-focused car.
@@TwoShoedDude thats besides the point it's still a roadlegal sports car with the same base chassis and a ice powertrain
@@TwoShoedDude have you driven one? I wager it's more comfortable than the Tesla owing to it's hugely lower weight and therefore softer springs.
@@yota8325 You are comparing the Exige, the track version of the Elise, to the Roadster? Why stop there? Why not use the 340R as the comparison instead? Or the Hennessey Venom GT? These all are road legal sports cars with the same base chassis.
(Of course, you would never make these comparisons if you understood the phrase “horses for courses”, or the concept of intended purpose.)
They had regen braking on golf carts since the mid 90’s
Are you thinking of braking via resistor packs?
@@skylined5534 no - it was a club car design on their 48 volt system it was regenerative braking through the ESC
1880s! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking
My 2013 Kia doesn’t have regenerative braking. What’s the point of this thread?
@@o0Donuts0o the point is they talk about it as if it’s new and it’s not
Stuff we take for granted today like can you drive it in the wet.
Cybertruck: *starts to sweat*
Cybertruck: *starts to rust from the sweat*
Wasn't expecting what felt like a Tesla/Elon fluff piece from Drivetribe. I'll admit I don't usually watch when it doesn't have any of the Top Gear team in it, but now I don't find myself feeling as bad about that.
It is me or is the original Tesla way better looking than recent ones? I actually like that car, whereas most electrics are as dull as ditch water. if you bought one like you test drove second hand now - how much would it cost and how much would battery replacement cost? I am wondering if this is a future classic. btw - I have 4 cars, 3 classics, one modern, all petrol lol
Model S was created by chief engineer Peter Rawlinson. Now he is CEO of Lucid Motors. Might be one of the reasons why latest Teslas are not looking all that great.
Teslas aren’t owned by car fanatics in general. It’s just a quirky brand, and attracts the image people who need the latest things (like Apple, Ring etc).
If a real car fanatic had to have an EV, they’d get a proper car brand
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
A real car fanatic would never want an EV.
A real car fanatic doesn't need to tell people that they are a real car fanatic.
@@haydenw8691No this is the internet. You've got to gatekeep everything to make yourself feel special.
Tesla IS the proper car brand when it comes to EVs; most other brands can't do the software or the charging network or build their own motors or control systems.
Jay Leno was right in asking can you drive it in the rain. Google the case of the couple from Edinburgh who were shocked after receiving a £17,374 bill to replace the battery on their Tesla Model Y, after the vehicle wouldn’t turn on after driving through heavy rain.
It wasn’t covered by warranty?
@@Courtesyflush52 nope
@@LocksLondon that’s crazy. In the US there’s a federally mandated 8 year warranty on batteries
Maybe the UK,but is the Cybertruck legal in Europe? It looks like a pedestrian splitter.
It shouldn't be but wouldn't be surprised since ram trucks are here too...
Only legal in the US and in it's current iteration only ever will be seems to be the general consensus.
Cybertruck illegal in uk and Europe
maybe as a personal import, it would never pass pedestrian regs
I hope it never comes here. Partially because its fugly and dangerous and mostly because Musk is a Putin supporting scumbag snake oil merchant. He is basically a real life Bond villain, and not in a fun camp way, but in a really screwing the world over way.
Why the digital Cybertruck at the start??
So Mike,
What range did you get?
What is the Miles/KWh?
Why didn't you launch it and see the 0-60 time?
How long does it take to charge on DC?
What is its charging rate on DC?
What did it cost you to charge it for an hour and 12 miles range?
Did you do any tests on the battery to find out how much power it had lost?
A drag race with a 2008 Elise or similar would have been great.
A lot of missing information in this review, if that's what it was, but I enjoyed it anyway.
James May: "The car of tomorrow will be useless until they work like the car of today." (paraphrasing). What he was basically saying was that until the electric car can be recharged as fast as you can fill a gas tank it will be only useful around town.This holds true 10+ years on.
I could believe the 55 minutes cause on the test track he isnt driving it like an on the road car, he was driving it like on a race track.
Exactly.
If you've got an average hatchback with, say, 150bhp, it only takes around 40bhp to keep it rolling along at 60mph.
The only time you'll use all 150bhp is if you give it some welly away from the lights for a few seconds.
Same thing with an EV.
Most of the time it's, basically, just "coasting" along, using a small(ish) amount of energy to keep it rolling.
On a circuit, OTOH, you're probably going to have your foot on the floor ALL the time, unless you're braking.
Hence, you use 5x the energy.
Yea, but that's true of any car. That's why it's a critique that makes no sense.
I never understood the controversy. Tesla claimed 200m and on track it did 55m. Given whatever power they had available, it took 16th to charge. The two cars both suffered critical component failures during track testing.
What are you meant to say to an audience then? “We had two cars fail in a day that did 1/4 of the mileage promised and take 16hrs to charge, BUT ignore what you just saw, since the manufacture claims otherwise and we were probably just unlucky with the two models supplied to us.” That would have been irresponsible, no?
I don't think the Cybertruck is coming to the UK, I don't think it complies with safety regulations that we have over here.
We wonder how it passed safety here in the USA
Dude they drove a RAM TRX to this shoot. Your theory is wrong.
It's a grey market import though. The UK has something called IVA (Individual Vehicle Approval) which means as long as a car meets a minimum set of standards, they can be used on the road. It's how we have things like Caterham Sevens, Ariel Atoms and how Edd China has a road legal couch. Tesla will never be able to sell the Cybertruck through it's dealers here because it would never meet pedestrian safety, but you'd have no problem importing one and IVAing it.
I was in the middle of a response, but I got beaten to it for once. You are right about the imports and the fact that Tesla would want to sell the Cybertruck and the difference between them.
@@gumpyoldbugger6944 okay calm down now. I see youre getting angry…why? Do you not like change?
Can I ask, when you got to the second charge point where you use the AC socket. Why didn't you use the Chademo plugs on them???
Couple of thoughts.....EU and Asia cars were fully built in Hethel, and left us as fully driving cars. The chassis is from Lotus Europa, not the Elise, as Europa had the turbocharged GM engine and was wider between chassis legs and this gave more room to fit a larger battery in. The Roadster battery didn't have the advanced battery heating of modern Teslas and therefore performance is more susceptible to temperature. Warm the battery by charging in Performance mode and performance vastly improves. You cant DC charge, so a Chademo charger is a waste of time 🙄
It looks like some retro fit for chadamo has been put in 7:41
@@martinsolihull86 And then drove to another triple fastcharger to connect to the type 2 plug. Another youtuber that wants to review an EV but hasn't done their homework?
@@nlSpiller the fact you have to do "homework" to properly charge an EV says it all. And how often is a gas pump out of order?
@@martinsolihull86 ahhh yes, sorry, I had missed that. I was aware there were some retrofit kits available but missed that quick shot of the connector in the video. Thanks for correcting me 👍🏻
I just cannot get my head around the weight. A VX220 (NA with lighter alloys) weighs under 780kg and is super sharp on turn-in at a tight apex, and therefore deliciously quick on exit and rewarding to drive .
The thought of arriving at the same corner with approaching four times the weight is scary, and you must have to brake so far in advance.
And you can buy an NA vx for £12k
Four times the weight? Pray tell, what vehicle are you comparing the lithe Vauxhall to? The floaty, definitely-NOT-a-sportscar Cybertruck? I thought this was supposed to be about the Roadster 1.0.
An engineer at the time from Norfolk went on to work on this. That engineer is now the MD of Lotus Cars, Mr Windle.
Another ex-Lotus engineer is still at Tesla - Malcolm Burgess whose Linkedin profile says he's 'Manager, Structural Concepts and Vehicle Dynamics at Tesla Motors Mountain View, California' (although that might have changed recently). His name can be found on the patents for the gigacasting chassis structures too.
There were a lot of us from Lotus that jumped the fence to work on the Roadster project. We were all based in the same place as when we used to work for Lotus, but now working for Tesla. Several went back to Lotus after the Roadster project finished.
Going by many of the comments, I think I’ll stick with my dream of giving a Peel P50 remake a powertrain swap (a 90° pushrod V-Twin, an automatic transmission, and a tiny supercharger).
tesla's pick-up will never be sold outside US because of pedestrian safety rules
Cuz of what? What do people walking have to do with a truck?
@@axe2grind244People sometimes have to cross roads. Although that happens less in America where people don't walk.
@@drunkenhobo8020 When has a vehicle, regardless of anything, prevented anyone from walking.
@@axe2grind244 copy and paste this title in the above youtube searchbar:
Euro NCAP | Pedestrian safety
enjoy 🤕
@@axe2grind244 When it runs into people. The people tend to come off quite badly, so most countries have regulations making the front of cars softer so they do less damage to people. America doesn't do that for whatever reason.
He was right
Just did some googling. Says the first gen roadster has a range of 244 miles, which is garbage, and if clarkson was driving it around a track, it wouldn’t even be half that. Mike ferny does not know more than Jeremy clarkson.
I’d rather buy the GT3 all day any day than spending 150k for an old fridge which can barely do a lap on the track or buy the Lotus is based on and you still get lot of fun and save a lot of money 😊
The VX220 was also branded in Pontiac and Saturn.
Kind of a different car. The VX220 was based on the Opel Speedster, while the Solstice and Sky were versions of the Opel GT (and vice versa). The Pontiac and Saturn were successors to the VX220, not the same car.
Why do they still talk about Elon like he’s this revolutionary in the company? He must bought into Tesla
Because he is. The whole ev surge was because of him. Investing in supercharging networks, which they could have used.
Because he was the leader of Tesla for every other product after the Roadster? the Model 3 was more impactful than this lol
Because when he purchased Tesla, it was nothing than a bunch of papers and some technological researches but not real products to sell, not real company to produce, etc… This is what happen all the time with technology companies, some people just create companies and do some researches but never come up with anything solid for the market until someone buy them, buy their name, eventually some patents and then build something with it… which is what happened with Elon Musk. If he wouldn’t be at Tesla pushing for EVs, the current car industry would still be way different. Like him or not, Elon Musk is heavily responsible for the whole industry to get serious about EVs and to make EVs performant… prior to Musk, EVs was a synonym for ugly looking cars and very low performance. Now we have PLAID models that beat most of ICE cars on the drag strip…
Musk is to Tesla what Gates was to Microsoft and Jobs was to Apple. Did he do it all from his personal genius - nope. Neither did the others but there's no point in getting salty that his name is going to be tied to when EVs got going.
Spoiler: yes, Clarkson was right
Ofc he was, he's the smartest man in the WORLD
😂
You forgot the dramatic pause
The smartest man ............
......... in the world........
i had one sold it as the batteries were dying kind of wish i would have kept it as prices on these roadsters have risen unlike the other EV prices which are tanking
2020 Audi Etron £19k, Citroen C4 EV New £22k, both on Autotrader. I was looking after watching Harry Metcalf's video about going back to a diesel car.
Clarkson saw Musk as the snake oil salesman that he is a long time before many, including myself. These first roadsters were really something, but as many pointed out here as well Musk himself had little to no contribution in this and Tesla hasn't delivered on most of what they have promised on ever since.
The issues you had with charging is exactly why I won’t buy an electric car. The U.K. doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with everyone to have an electric car and never will
Another car based on the Elise is the Melkus RS2000. The successor of the east german Melkus RS1000 from the early 70s.
The amount of fanboism seeping through my monitor is terrifying with this one. I have expected better from drivetribe but I guess I am wrong. Maybe a different intro , or a simple title like revisiting the roadster at 15 years might rub me , and many others apparently in the comments , a better way.
Its Space Karen who is crying about free speech and him bringing people to court if its something he doesnt want to hear!
when it comes to s2 elise based cars, one has to bring up the rinspeed squba! absolutely ridiculous thing and its no surprise it never made production, but the fact that a functioning prototype was even created at all is so cool
Shout out to the dad hat and the Mighty Ducks! Not a Ducks fan, but I like the NHL recognition.
"I believe Clarkson was wrong".... then at 07:00....proves Clarkson right....brilliant.
Love you man but lose that watch. It is a piece of trash. Plastic parts with an unserviceable movement. Maybe your taste in cars is the same as your taste in watches and that's why you are contradicting Clarkson.
no one cares about watches anymore, if it tells the time it’s fine.
It'd be great if Porsche could work out how to modularly package the battery cells such that an average person could remove and add them. You could have a light boxter with 100km of range most of the time and a heavier one with 500km of range when needed. On a track day you'd only need enough cells in the car to do a stint rather than having the weight required to complete the full days running onboard for every lap.
You dont want an average person handling them.They're fairly dangerous. Packaging them not to be is impractical at best. Also a quick electrodynamics lesson will tell you that you are going to significantly reduce a car's power by removing that much battery. It doesnt just work like a fuel tank, imagine it as if a larger fuel tank also brought with it more fuel throughput.
Clarkson was right. EV's are collapsing in value, even with massive gov incentives.
Doesn't mean that they are going away. Just a basic tech product depreciation curve that I predicted years ago. It will continue to get cheaper to buy EV's.
this is also because the tech is moving SO fast that like a PC, it becomes outdated much faster
@@ericheick7044Harry's garage did a video on it
Government incentives have all but died off in the UK for private buyers. The collapse in pricing is mostly in the second hand market derived from Tesla aggressively dropping new prices due to relief in supply chain issues. No other company has dropped new prices aggressively, and second hand pricing for other brand still trends 5-10 grand higher than Teslas.
Better for consumer no? Being more affordable it makes Tesla's goal of accelerating transition to EVs happen faster.
What would happen if there was a complete moratorium on the use of fossil fuels tomorrow? Well, we'd be out of food in a matter of weeks, and hundreds of millions, more likely over a billion, would be dead inside of 6 months. Making an EV sports car wouldn't even be on the list of concerns.
heated seats are actually much less energy hungry than the heated air from the A/C system
I have always liked the Tesla Roadster, but I always believed Elon Musk had far more reason to lie about its performance than Jeremy did. Plus he was not even harshly bashing it, he was just pointing out some glitches with the original cars.
Can we get this straight please: Musk is not an engineer, he was not involved in creating any technologies for any of the companies he's been part of and the engineering was always done by other people. He financed his way into the CEO ranks and did his marketing wonders, which, props to him, no one can do quite like him.
Tesla got many parts and design help for their first cars (Roadster, Model S) from established car manufacturers like Lotus, Mercedes and Toyota. The battery technology came from the original founders of Tesla which brought in the Lithium Ion technology from their previous E-Reader business. Please stop saying "well done Elon" when it comes to engineering, this just creates this fake "he's a genius"-mantra around him that Musk-lovers repeat so often. He is just used to be very good business man. Give him credit for that.
He is literally an engineer.
Of course Clarkson was right. The one person in a room everybody disagrees with is always right in the end. 😂
i'm still wayting for a cheap, small and sporty EV. My only hope at this point ist that Mazda or Toyota going to make one
You’ll be waiting for a long time. EV tech is not yet compatible with truly “sporty” vehicles. And when it is, it certainly won’t be cheap.
@@martinlaver007 according to some people we might see something like that in the next 5 years. So I have my hopes high
How much did it cost to fully charge and how much did it cost per mile. The government need to remove their blinkers
The deal with Lotus wasn't Elon's idea and he didn't make the deal.
Uhhhh, no, he's NOT the richest man in the world, and it really wouldn't have taken much effort to find out that in fact, Bernard Arnault is the richest man in the world. Though judging a man's integrity, stature, character, ethics, morals and overall positive benefit to the world based purely on the their net worth, is just a wee bit pathetically sycophantic. (But then again, isn't every Musk fan boy?)
That's "Bernard Arnault & family", not Bernard Arnault on his own.
Really enjoying the content lately
...My 03 Civic Hybrid had regenerative breaking. Not really worthy of the fuss you're making.
It regenerated when it broke?
Nah fam, only when I forgot how to spell. Cheers.
the only model of car to ever leave the planet technically has reached the highest top speed of over 25,000mph
Yes. He was.
I wish Tesla would offer a battery replacement with the latest technology. It would give this Roadster much much more enjoyable miles😎 Great review! Never seen one Roadster on the road
The 'Elon Musk Apologist' label is not one I had lined up for Mike. But at this point, if you're not discussing Elon the man while discussing Elon the product, it's debatable if you're doing anything close to journalism. I realize Drivetribe is primarily entertainment, but it also takes itself far too seriously to ONLY be entertainment.
Got to love that classsic analog dash with the power consumption/regen gauge
I'm guessing it's just an ammeter in disguise.
Lol, priuses had always regenerative braking
But only tossers drive a Prius.
Why does a prius need brakes ?😁
4:42 regen braking was actually one of the standards for EVs from the start, as early as 1966 with the AMC Amitron, the Nissan LEAF, and even one of Tom Hanks EVs(a modified 2006 Scion xB) had regen braking
Your 'heated seats draining the battery' comment is actually very valid, albeit a little bit exaggerated. It was something that had not previously occurred to me, but driving your EV on a cold and rainy day can have a significant effect on milage, because the heater and wipers draw a fair bit of current. A friend told me that he was unable to do the 250 kilometre (155 miles) round trip from Blenheim to Nelson and back in a fully charged Nissan Leaf on a cold wet day. Granted, there are a few mountain passes to climb, but 155 miles? WTF! I followed a Tesla from Kaikoura to Blenheim recently, and the driver was taking it very steady. He ignored some easy overtake opportunities, and was cruising 20kph under the 100kph limit. We started to wonder if he was nursing his batteries, and when we later came to some bendy bits, and saw that the drivers window was down on a 30°C day, we decided that had to be the case. I totally put me off owning an EV, and that's without the limited lifespan of the battery packs, and huge cost of replacements.
My EV has a tiny 28kWh battery and heated seats and a heated steering wheel. Using them makes no measurable difference to the efficiency. After motion, the most energy is used by the cabin heater but that only takes 3 or 4 % off the range.
I guess the question is: “is it better than just doing an EV conversion on a Lotus?”
There's an interesting EV conversion of a VX220. seems to work well enough
sorry but the apprentice is not overtaking the master 🙄
I'm usually a fan of the drivetribe content but this video is kind of embarrassing.
It's like Mike is trying to make excuses for his embarrassing uncle to people cause it's fashionable these days to be positive about EVs and Elon when really there's nothing to be excused.
Jeremy's statements were realistic when you actually do the maths.
And btw it would have been nice if they had actually watched the Episode before putting out this content. Jeremy never called it a brown rice eco car. That's what he called the prius and g-wiz which he was CONTRASTING the Tesla with.
i agree and the name dropping [Jeremy}doesnt help. he is not and never will be a match for Clarkson so should build on his own strengths@@MrSlowly63
The missus works for Tesla
@@gumpyoldbugger6944 not my missus, Mike's -- the person in the video.
@@gumpyoldbugger6944 had some time, and poked around to make sure I wasn't talking bollocks. He mentions it in the drivetribe video titled, "James May has crashed his Tesla!..." At about seven minutes in.
Elon didn’t pick anything on this car. It was done before he joined as an investor in Tesla. This was all up to the original founders.
The expensive degraded batteries will be a huge issue a decade down the road when EVs are in the used market.
You can still get tons of life out of a 100k+ mileage gas car engine.
There's already 3rd party packs for the Roadster available, it's not a problem
@@f36443 yeah and they cost money.
might as well buy another car that's not an EV. or better, buy a lotus elise, that's cheaper, still runs just as great today and is half the weight of the tesla
@@Ted_KenzokuRoadster is worth way more than any Elise, pocket change
Musk claims that TG already had a script already written where the car would breakdown, this at the time before they had driven it and during the handover for testing by a Tesla engineer.
Why do people praise Elon Musk? Like 90% of his wealth came from subsidiaries
No... his wealth comes from the value of Tesla stock.
We know Clarkson lied about the range and lifespan of the Roadster battery. We also know he was completely wrong when he said it was a pointless car because hydrogen would be the dominant energy source for cars. We also know he had to concede that the Roadster was faster around the Top Gear track than the much favoured Lotus Elise. We also know that over a decade later drive trains from original Roadsters were used to upgrade classic cars and they still had over 200 miles of range and their motors were making classic sports cars faster than they ever were as petrol guzzlers. So the question 'Was Clarkson right about the original Tesla Roadster?' is an easy NO.
In fact every negative comment he has ever made about electric cars has been blown out of the water. Where he once lauded the Bugatti Veyron as the last great super car we'll ever see, he went on to sit in the dust of a Rimac One as Richard Hammond drove it into the sunset while Clarkson's ICE supercar of choice looked like it had broken down on the start line it was so far behind. And to be fair Clarkson himself said on Top Gear that he and the other two know nothing. Because cars they reviewed highly often totally flopped and cars they slagged off went stratospheric in popularity.
This all links to the reason Elon Musk didn't win his case against Top Gear. Clarkson presented Top Gear as an entertainment show with a storyline and therefore it was not tied to factual accuracy over opinion. So the fact that the Roadster running out of power was in a script that was written before the car ever arrived on site was not seen by the judge as strictly being libelous. The show has many setups and fakeries when reviewing the cars it covers. It's more a fiction than a documentary. The first Stig didn't die when they catapulted him off of an aircraft carrier in a Jaguar. So no-one was charged with murder, manslaughter or death by means of wreckless abandonment. By the same logic Top Gear can't be sued for telling lies thinly disguised as poetic license. That is why Clarkson never goes into details of exactly why Elon lost the case because I suspect the judge didn't declare that Clarkson's portrayal of the Roadster was accurate and truthful but merely that it was not actionable.
Going even further back, the trio mocked the Veyron as something that would never happen. Their show is hilarious ENTERTAINMENT. They scoff at the premise of providing useful consumer advice.
If ic engines were banned tomorrow, I'd electrify a Miata or Super 7 before I'd overpay for a Tesla. Of course I don't have any overpriced iPoo devices either. Fanboys are gonna fanboy.
Imagine putting any of this car on Elon - He is just a manager. He employs people who actually know what theyre doing. He isnt a genius, he's a rich kid.
Jason Camissa has effectively dedicated his career to undoing Clarkson's automotive myth spreading lol
Clarkson was more of a troll rather than deliberately creating false narratives.
@@jamescameron6819Unfortunately he started to believe his own nonsense.
That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time
I noticed you didn't mention how much 1 hour charge for 12 miles cost you
A wealthy acquaintance of mine had one of these from new complete with a Tesla S number plate. I got to go out in it a couple of times and it was a weird experience at a time when electric cars were in their infancy. I believe only about 50 or so were sold in the UK so a very rare sight although nobody really gave it a second glance due to it's similarity to the Elise. He used it as his only car following a divorce and regularly went backwards and forwards from Essex to Nottingham with no range issues. The only problem he had with it was his son smashing it up on a track day and the subsequent £50k repair bill!
Can someone tell me what the music is playing at 10.56? Tried to shazam is, but can't seem to find it
It's probably from the free RUclips music library or some music library they subscribe too. Explains why shazam can't identify, I doubt shazam samples any of the production music library's out there. Sorry can't be more helpful. Sometimes the publisher will put down the source in the description, but not here.. I've noticed Drive Tribe tends to use some good samples in their videos, someone's taking the time to find the right music cue.
The team use a mixture of Epidemic Sounds, Music Bed and Artlist 👍🏻
Are you forgetting the caterham project v?
Always thought they should’ve just re-released a better and cheaper version of the original Roadster, rather than that absurd monstrosity that they've been proposing since 2017...
The original Roadster still looks great.
Shoutout to Susan Boyle for lending you her Tesla roadster for this video
😂😂
She remembers Mike from analbumparty
Why did you use that slow charger when the chdemo was right there not being used ??
A light short range EV based on an Elise with fast charging would tick lots of boxes for many people.
What disturbes me the most is the thing has Yokohama Advan Neova AD07 front tires (summer high performance, OE on the Elise) and Pirelli Sotto zero Winter tires in the rear.... Must behave quite.... Interesting.... And if the car even so handles well, how well does it handle with performance tires on all four corners? ;)
I'd like to see a track battle between this and a lotus Elise
Its had such battles, and it lost. It was even two seconds slower around the Top Gear Test Track.
6:47 Amazed me to realize somewhat recently that the 0-60 for the original one was 4.2s, the same as my Model 3 Long Range. Had no idea when I watched Clarkson dunk on the OG roadster as I a wee college freshman that I'd ultimately be driving a Tesla and love it.
I'm still firmly in the "hybrid" camp, though not like most people would think. I believe all-electric still isn't ready for mass market and most consumer trends also indicate this. Electric works for a lot of people, but our grid in the U.S. is nowhere near capable of supporting the kind of loads needed to charge these things, let along the MASSIVE impact battery disposal/recycling will have in ~10 years. Cars with basic fender benders get totaled out due to potential battery damage, and the fires are no joke.
A hybrid with a small diesel drive and a quarter range battery pack (~75mi) would be the perfect setup. Get speed/power with electric takeoff, cruise and generate on the diesel, and regen brake for ~90% of deceleration. Diesel is a very clean combustible if done correctly and typically provides more torque per displacement than gasoline. You reduce battery requirements, vehicle weight, and repair costs while having a vehicle that can realistically get 70+mpg, and maybe over that with some electric assist trickery.