Has anyone tested bits with regular remote control?
 

The battery discussion put me on to this. My old 1/10 scale electric buggy (guess which ;)) used a 27 MHz remote with 8 AA batteries (12V) and had a huge range (100 m at least). This was a proportional controller however, and so quite different from the Bit way of steering.

Has anybody tried to see the if the bits will respond to a remote like that? The remote had interchangeable chrystals, so presumably you could take one out of a spare bit controller and plug it in. Maybe you will get similar range.