Tesla superfan to confront BBC EV hachet job team, gets Fully Charged

When most people take issue with the quality of media coverage of a certain issue – for instance, the adequacy of electric cars to travel from London to Edinburgh, depending only on a nascent public charging infrastructure to juice up – they might take the time to shoot off a quick email of indignation to the offending outlet. Or in the case of Robert Llewellyn, write a wonderful refutation of the effort on their blogsite. Then there's David Peilow, a Tesla superfan who knows a thing or two about long distance trips in an EV. He has chosen confrontation.

Ok, let's back up for a second. The BBC's Brian Milligan decided to make the aforementioned 484 mile (779 km) trip in a Mini E to see if, despite recent advances in battery technology, electric cars are still only good for making trips to the supermarket. One doesn't actually need to make the trip to imagine the result. The Mini E has a sub-100 mile range and charging the batteries on a 13 amp outlet will take a serious amount of time. If that's not a dubious enough challenge, consider there are not even charging stations available to use along the last stretch of the proposed journey. This is, perhaps not by coincidence, slightly longer than the converted BMW's range in cold weather. Right, then. Enter our protagonist.

Outraged by this obvious injustice of the BBC's "test," Mr. Peilow decided to jump in an electric car himself and head the propaganda-party off at the pass. He dialed up the London Tesla dealership for assistance and soon enough David was driving in Roadster-style across the British winter landscape. The plan is to arrive in one day, the same distance as the BBC has taken three days to traverse and meet them upon their arrival later today. Sweet, but will he make it?

To ride along with the Roadster you can follow the hashtag #electriccars on Twitter and also read about the trip and the events leading up to it on Tesla Motors Club forum. Also, make sure to it the jump to watch an impromptu version of Fully Charged as host Robert Llewellyn sees David off at the Tesla dealership and discusses the plan.

[Source: Tesla Motors Club / David Peilow / BBC

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