Those who NEED to drive really long distances regularly, they are very few and to be pitied, really if you have to commute +300miles even once per week, you are doing something wrong with your life.
Or you are a sales representative, a service engineer or, like me, a software engineer who actually visits it's customers. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons to travel more then 300 miles (and the Top Gear story was about the 200 mile roadster) regularly. And even when only doing this occasionally for holidays and family visits it is something to consider. (Yeah, you can rent a car, but it's still inconvenient).
It is only in the minds of Top Gear and the likes that people look forward to driving all the way from London to Paris to attend a business meeting. It might even be faster but a SMART person knows the train/plane passenger will arrive more rested then the driver.
Both planes and trains are often inconvenient because they never arrive where you need to be. On top of that, if you can't drive from London to Paris comfortably in a car that price it's not worth its money. It recently did an 800 miles trip (twice) in a car half the price without being broken when I arrived, a 280 miles drive should be a walk in the park in any decent modern car, and certainly in a car in that price bracket.
That said, if range isn't an issue for you the Model S seems to be a really nice car.
"In my judgment, the words complained of are wholly incapable of conveying any meaning at all to the effect that the claimant [Tesla] misled anyone.
...
"This is because there is a contrast between the style of driving and the nature of the track as compared with the conditions on a public road [] are so great that no reasonable person could understand that the performance on the [Top Gear] track is capable of a direct comparison with a public road."
They said it would run out after 55 miles on their track. Nobody ever proved that claim to be wrong. It makes all sorts of sense to expect a dramatically lower range when pushing a car to it's limits on a track. It makes all sort of sense to not draw conclusions about the range during everyday usage. And (certainly in the context of Top Gear) it makes a lots of sense to mention the range of a sports car when it's actually being driven like a sports car. It is something to take into account when buying an electric sports car, especially since the acceleration provided by the car probably is rather addictive. I definitely would be tempted to drive it in ways which would affect the range pretty badly.
...and kept pushing the wrong pedal...
There weren't any pedals, the driver was disabled and the car was modified to be driven using hands instead of feet. The cause of the problem might well be in those modifications.
Mr. Musk promised on Monday to write a blog post critiquing my drive and to publish the logs he says he has of how I drove and why the battery pack drained. We will link to those when they appear.
And he actually did link to TFA when it became available, while Musk never even mentions the follow-up.
They showed what would almost certainly happen in reality, under a given set of circumstances.
Except that it didn't, and they lied.
That's what Tesla said, but the judges ruled otherwise.
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