Is Jeremy Clarkeson out to Kill the Electric Car?

BBC-owned Top Gear, a show for automotive diehards that's become something of a phenomenon.
Seen by over 350 million viewers across 170 countries, the hit series follows the adventures of its hosts—

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May—and their various driving exploits, track testing everything from blue collar workhorses like the Volkswagen Golf to engineering pinnacles like the pavement incinerating Bugatti Veyron.

the show is an enjoyable cross of gamesmanship and schoolboy jockeying. The hosts' natural chemistry translates handily into something magnetic for its audience, and only gets reinforced as they get behind the wheels of roaring V12 engines.

During the show, hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May set course on a 60-mile journey in an electric vehicle, the Nissan LEAF. Before they could conclude their journey, however, the vehicle apparently runs out of juice, prompting its drivers to declare that "electric cars are not the future."

But here's where the controversy comes in. The Guardian reports:

But it wasn't unexpected: Nissan has a monitoring device in the car which transmits information on the state of the battery. This shows that, while the company delivered the car to Top Gear fully charged, the programme-makers ran the battery down before Clarkson and May set off, until only 40% of the charge was left. Moreover, they must have known this, as the electronic display tells the driver how many miles' worth of electricity they have, and the sat-nav tells them if they don't have enough charge to reach their destination. In this case it told them – before they set out on their 60-mile journey – that they had 30 miles' worth of electricity. But, as Ben Webster of the Times reported earlier this week, "at no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip."

The report continues:
It gets worse. As Webster points out, in order to stage a breakdown in Lincoln, "it appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than 10 miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat."

Top Gear has since responded to the allegations, claiming, "We never, at any point in the film, said that we were testing the range claims of the vehicles, nor did we say that the vehicles wouldn't achieve their claimed range." However, this wouldn't be the first time the show's been criticized for undermining the potency of electric vehicles, as a recent suit from Tesla (who claim their battery life was misrepresented) would seem to demonstrate.

come on Jezza, be fair....