chris - thanks for comments... however...

Top Gear is a entertainment show. The host is very funny and he happens to dislike electric vehicles, and if he wants to keep his job and sponsors, he has little choice in the matter. He did however have to write a formal and public apology for pretending the Tesla ran out of power. It in fact had 80 miles charge left at the end of the test and he faked the whole thing for dramatic affect. Please see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/24/jeremy-clarkson-top-gear-tesla-electric-car
The Tesla has been in production for over 2 years, has nearly 1500 vehicles on the road and has over 6,000,000 customer miles logged. The world's largest car company Toyota has given Tesla $50,000,000 to show it how to make vehicles again as did the world's oldest car company, Mercedes Benz. Both companies are now purchasing motors and batteries from Tesla to power its future vehicles, available in US showrooms next year. Toyota and Mercedes, powered by Tesla.

Fisker by contrast, was "showered with money" receiving $754,000,000 from the Gov't of tax payer's money, compared to the $430,000,000 Tesla got. The big difference here is that Fisker has 0 production cars, 0 working protypes, no finished schematics, the company they are using for their electrics have never been associated with nor produced a vehicle nor a working model and the hundreds of millions were ONLY to go to companies making ELECTRIC cars and the only car Fisker has on the board right now is a hybrid! Better yet, since the quarter billion dollar "loan" Fisker has boat a new yacht, mansion and can be seen advertising in every luxury magazine the world over, taking $50K deposits on a car it is likely to never produce. That my friend is real scam.

Tesla is made in CA, which some parts being outsourced, but the next vehicle will be made completely in CA, metal stamping on down. The Range Rover/Prius comparison is silly. Range Rovers are part Ford, part Mazda, part Jaguar. That car is a far bigger mut than the Prius.

Manual transmissions, and transmissions in general are obsolete. They are old technology designed for vehicles that have power and torque curves. They require servicing, fluid changes, seal replacements and need to be replaced or rebuilt. Electric motors have 100% torque at all RPMs, that is why the Tesla has no transmission.

Most Tesla owners power their cars with 100% solar power. Think about it. 250 miles on a charge, 0-60 in 3.7 seconds. It takes 3 hours to fully recharge it if you have gone 250 miles, otherwise you can just top it off nightly like a cell phone. No oil changes, no oil spills. one $600 annual service for a firmware update. Pretty simple.

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