Nissan responds to Top Gear pushing intentionally discharged Leaf

Last week, Top Gear hosts James May and Jeremy Clarkson were respectively spotted piloting a Peugeot iOn and a Nissan Leaf through England. The duo stopped by Lincolnshire County to juice up their battery-powered vehicles, only to discover that there are no chargers in the entire municipality.

However, a statement released by Nissan Motor (GB) Ltd reveals that the Top Gear engineered the fiasco (surprise!) by intentionally draining the vehicle's battery. Nissan's UK director of communications, Tom Barnard, told AllCarsElectric that:

Pictures rarely tell the whole story, as is the case here. Top Gear has confirmed to us that the crew intentionally drained the battery to inject suspense into the mission of finding a public charge spot.

Lincoln is an area ... renowned for not having any public charging infrastructure. Top Gear does not intend to use the scenes of the car out of charge as an illustration that the claimed range is false.

[If] the car was fully charged overnight, we are confident that the presenters will have enjoyed driving it today.

It's being reported that Top Gear's episode will attempt to highlight the difficulties of charging an electric vehicle in a municipality that's known to have no public charging stations. But, as anyone with an ounce of automotive sense would know, even Lincolnshire County has thousands (millions?) of plug-in points. Can you say wall outlet?

[Source: All Cars Electric]