Undeterred by Tesla's publicity campaign-via-lawsuit over its last experience with electric vehicles, Top Gear has another EV segment in the works for this season, with footage of Jeremy Clarkson and James May pushing a discharged Nissan Leaf in the can.
The show's latest bit was discovered when Clarkson, driving the Leaf, and May in the Peugeot iON version of the Mitsubishi i-MIEV, turned up in Lincoln, in rural central England, and tried to find a charging spot, something that's not easy even in Manhattan. According to The Lincolnite newspaper, the duo ran out of charge while driving around the city's center, and had to recharge by running extension cords through windows at the nearby university while they went for pints.
Some of their filming was captured by students, and already the pro-EV crowd is suspicious that the Leaf and iON will be unfairly rubbished — although it would be far from the sole occasion that a Leaf has unexpectedly given up on a driver. Given that Tesla's charges that Top Gear faked the results of its Roadster test showing it being pushed to a garage, everyone should expect the Top Gear team to handle the situation with its usual diplomacy and aplomb.
Or so we can only hope.
Photo by Coll33n via Twitter