http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/tesla-seeks-legal-retribution-for-alleged-top-gear-libel/?ref=automobiles

Quote :

"Tesla Motors, the electric vehicle manufacturer based in Silicon Valley, filed a lawsuit this week in Britain against the BBC’s popular “Top Gear” television program. Suing for libel and malicious falsehood, Tesla took issue with a December 2008 episode that depicted problems with the brakes, cooling system and limited range of its Roadster sports car. The company is seeking up to £100,000, or about $160,000, in damages and a ruling to stop the BBC from rebroadcasting or packaging the episode for sale. “Tesla simply wants ‘Top Gear’ to stop rebroadcasting this malicious episode and to correct the record, but they’ve repeatedly ignored Tesla’s requests,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Yet some experts say they believe the company has much to lose and little to gain by bringing the suit. If it wins the suit, Tesla earns a nominal financial reward and a promise from the BBC to stop distributing the offending episode. If it loses, then Jeremy Clarkson, the show’s principal host, “keeps making fun of them,” said Michael Omotoso, a spokesman for J.D. Power & Associates. .... “What we have here then is an astonishing technical achievement: the first electric car that you might actually want to buy. It’s just a shame that in the real world, it doesn’t seem to work,” Mr. Clarkson says at the end of the segment. Tesla claims the whole episode was created with “a dominant improper motive” to support this verdict, which the company says was “prejudged, predetermined and prescripted.” "

Clarkson did what he always does when it reviews a new model: take minor faults and compeltely sensationalize them for the sake of witty puns and "gotcha" journalism. I enjoy watching the crazy contests and experiments, but their test drive reviews are downright slanderous.

4/1/2011 3:03:55 PM

In this instance Tesla should fuck off.

4/1/2011 3:21:41 PM

:Old: but while its up here

way to be the electric car for enthusiasts

sue the enthusiasts.

4/1/2011 3:23:02 PM

Well, I saw this episode, and from what I could tell, they hit it spot on. The model they had was garbage. It kept overheating on the track and just stopped. If you are promoting your car as a super sports car, and it cant do much on a track, then you should just STFU.

Its the risk you take when you give any car to a tester. What they print is and will always be recorded, and you cant take it back. Which is why you better give them something really good or dont do it at all.

[Edited on April 1, 2011 at 3:53 PM. Reason : ,]

4/1/2011 3:52:53 PM

^ their not worried about the 0-60 times or the track times because it beat the regular lotus in all these parameters... its the pushing the car back because it "ran out of power" which anyone who's had anything battery operated knows you run low on power before your run out of it and the car could have easily limped anywhere they wanted to take it... probably more than a couple miles.


I do agree that over heating on a track day is pretty lame... but i can totally see it... i've had 2nd degree burns on my hand from grabbing an RC car battery on a low wind motor immediately after a race so i do know it can happen too.


[Edited on April 1, 2011 at 4:00 PM. Reason : .]

4/1/2011 3:58:35 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DfHyGD7_pM

4/1/2011 6:15:54 PM

well its kind of messed up that the script was already written about the car failing before they even had the car. that's what tesla just got a copy of and what prompted the lawsuit.

but i read more than the headline, so what do i know

4/1/2011 9:18:59 PM

I always thought the brakes working was kind of important in a car.

4/1/2011 10:59:09 PM

http://www.egmcartech.com/2011/04/02/top-gears-executive-producer-andy-wilman-speaks-on-tesla-roadster-case/

Quote :

"Well, Top Gear has been quite about the case… until now. Executive Producer Andy Wilman has posted about the matter on Transmission: The Top Gear TV Blog to give us some insight as to what his crew is thinking. “The normal procedure for the BBC in a legal case is to acknowledge receipt of the other party’s claim, and then say no more and get on with preparing its defence for court,” Wilman said. However, he went onto point out just a thing or two (or more) to Top Gear fans: 1. We never said that the Tesla’s true range is only 55 miles, as opposed to their own claim of 211, or that it had actually ran out of charge. In the film our actual words were: “We calculated that on our track it would run out after 55 miles”. The first point here is that the track is where we do our tests of sports cars and supercars, as has happened ever since Top Gear existed. This is where cars are driven fast and hard, and since Tesla calls its roadster “The Supercar. Redefined.” it seemed pretty logical to us that the right test was a track test. The second point is that the figure of 55 miles came not from our heads, but from Tesla’s boffins in California. They looked at the data from that car and calculated that, driven hard on our track, it would have a range of 55 miles. 2. We never said that the Tesla was completely immobilized as a result of the motor overheating. We said the car had “reduced power”. This was true. 3. Tesla claims we were lying when we said the brakes were “broken”. They now say that all that had happened was that the fuse to the vacuum pump had failed, which meant that the brake just had to be pushed down much harder than usual. Well – to my mind, if the brakes are broken, then they’re broken, and if this happened to your car, you’d take it to the garage to get it fixed. Odd it seems so trivial to Tesla now, because on the day of filming they insisted on repairing the fuse before we could carry on driving the car. The above points will be argued over in the near future by brainy people wearing wigs, but in a layman’s nutshell, this is where we stand on the matter. Before I finish though, I must clear up one important issue: scripting. It’s alleged by Tesla that on the day of filming one of their employees caught sight of a script that had been written, before the car had even been driven, already containing the verdict that in the “real world” the Tesla doesn’t work. This, they say, proves our guilt, because we’d condemned the car in advance. May I just say in reply: a) The truth is, Top Gear had already driven the car prior to filming, to enable us to form a view on it in advance b) Our primary reasoning behind the verdict had nothing to do with how the Tesla performed; our conclusion was based primarily on the fact that it costs three times more than the petrol sports car upon which it’s based, and it takes a long time to recharge; you can’t use it as easily as a petrol sports car for the carefree motoring journeys that are a prerequisite of sports car driving. You can actually reach conclusions based on them without driving the car. As it happens, when it did come to the subjective area of how the car drove on the track, we were full of praise for its performance and handling c) Just so you understand there’s nothing devious going on, you need to know how this filming business works. When you film a car review, the reviewer is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind the lens is a film crew, and only a day’s worth of light to shoot the eight minute film. This means we have to prepare in advance a treatment – a rough draft of a script so that the director and film crew can get to work right away, knowing what shots they will need to capture. It will contain the facts about a car, and what we think of its looks and so on, but how well the car actually drives is added on the day. If we’ve driven it ahead of filming, as we do with most cars, we will also have an idea how it feels to drive. But, and this is crucial, as we uncover fresh information about a car whilst filming it, it is entirely normal for the treatment to be modified as the day unfolds. Jeremy is always tweaking the scripts to reflect what his driving experience has actually been on the day. There you go. I’ve said my bit, and now we’ll hopefully shut up and prepare for our day in court. - By: Omar Rana"

4/2/2011 5:49:05 PM

Wow, that's some fine lip-service. Luckily for Top Gear, all their dishonest implications were just that: implications. Clarkson never technically said the lies that were being presented.

4/3/2011 2:48:46 AM

This was topgear where they call carguys petrol heads what did they think wad going to come of the review... Really ????

4/3/2011 9:36:04 AM

haha, their reply was pretty much spot on. And 55 miles on track is a good amount for an all electric car.

4/3/2011 1:44:10 PM

When's Chrysler going to sue over the review of the Crossfire? haha

4/3/2011 1:46:07 PM

more like the show and producers get a lot of kickbacks from the car's competitors

4/3/2011 2:54:08 PM

Who? G-Wiz? lol

4/3/2011 3:06:39 PM

Sounds to me like Tesla is mad!

If you don't want a bad review about your car, then either design the perfect car or don't have it reviewed. Since nothing is ever perfect, the latter option is the only feasible one.

I know some of you don't like Top Gear's reviews. But really, who views it as a serious car show? It's a comedy show that happens to be about cars. Whether it is making fun of the cars, destroying them, or having fun in them, it's about laughs.

The only "serious" part about the show is when the stig takes it around for a fast lap, and even then, it's comedic.

But anyway, concerning the charge mileage. At the beginning of the review, he praised the car for getting 210 miles between charges.

Then, while driving it, they ran out of juice. Here is the EXACT quote: "Although Tesla say it'll go 200 miles, we worked out that on our track it would run out at just 55 miles."

There's nothing slanderous about that, is there?

And they listed weight as being con, price as being a con (3 times the price of the Elise that it is built off of), the fact that the source of electric generation from the plug outlet isn't necessarily clean and that the electric motor overheats.

Is ANY of this new? Hybrids are heavy as well. Why? Because of batteries. We all knew electric cars are expensive. And we are all well aware that coal is commonly used for electric generation.

Quote :

"I do agree that over heating on a track day is pretty lame... but i can totally see it... "

And that's a shortcoming of the car, which makes it totally acceptable to list.

And about the brakes. I would say limited functionality of a safety feature is enough to classify it as "broken." Broken generally means, "doesn't work as designed/intended to." Well, a fuse blowing for the brakes should classify the brakes as being broken.

But more to the point, the issue with the brakes, which is probably the most contentious one, can't be said that it was scripted. Their main argument seems to be that Top Gear never intended to give a fair review, and then they list the brake issue as support to their claim. However, how can the brake issue be support of their claim, when the issue happened the day of the test?

But Top Gear said many good things about the Tesla Roadster. It beat the snot out of the Elise off the line. They praised the cost to recharge the car, they praised its acceleration (0-60 in 3.9s) They said at the end of the review "What we have here is an astonishing technological achievement," "It's the first electric car you might want to actually buy." Yes, their conclusion is, "Yet in the real world, it doesn't seem to work." Whether this was pre-scripted or not is moot. It's an opinion, and ultimately, that is what a review is.

There wasn't anything in the review that they seemed to distort. If Tesla didn't like that Top Gear said the brakes didn't work, then they should have designed the car so the brakes didn't break.

[Edited on April 3, 2011 at 4:20 PM. Reason : .]

4/3/2011 4:19:53 PM

There was a show about this car on SPEED this weekend (maybe Speedmakers?) where the used a LOT of the footage that Top Gear UK had shot of the car on their track.

4/4/2011 8:56:00 AM

Quote :

"There's nothing slanderous about that, is there?"

Technically, no. Just like there's nothing slanderous about a car reviewer saying "Although Ford claims the new Mustang V6 will get 30 miles per gallon, we only managed to get 18 on our track". Without the underlying implication "Ford is lying about the Mustang's mileage", there's not point in even making that kind of statement.

Some people would realize this is an obvious distortion, because most people know that cars will get different mpg in different situations. However, the range of an electric car, and how it varies, is NOT common knowledge. Thus, most viewers were likely fooled into thinking Top Gear had scooped Tesla by revealing their supposedly overstated range claim.

There's also nothing slanderous about saying "the brakes broke" because they technically did. However, the implication is "the brakes stopped working". Viewers didn't hear "the brakes broke" and think "oh the pedal got a little stiffer". Small malfuctions of this kind happen all the time in first-drives, but they're rarely mentioned in the review. Another distortion.

Add in the vague, yet sensational gotcha conclusion, "Yet in the real world, it doesn't seem to work", and you get a completely legal, completely misleading review.

Quote :

"But really, who views it as a serious car show?"

Top Gear impressions can have a huge effect on sales performance (see Ford Ka), so I'd say a lot of people.

4/4/2011 11:26:49 AM

Quote :

"more like the show and producers get a lot of kickbacks from the car's competitors"

Don't be a dipshit... its on BBC which is like PBS meaning they don't get advertising money or kickbacks or anything of the sort... that is precisely why the original is awesome and ours sucks

Tanner foust... sponsored by ford in rallyX and toyota in drifting (unless ford dis-allowed that contract)
so you won't hear anything bad about them on our top gear.

4/4/2011 12:11:28 PM

Quote :

"Thus, most viewers were likely fooled into thinking Top Gear had scooped Tesla by revealing their supposedly overstated range claim."

I would imagine most Top Gear viewers know that any car put on the track will get lower mileage because they drive the hell out of it, not just go around in slow circles.

4/4/2011 7:01:52 PM

^ although, they did that toyota Prius vs another car that had 400hp and found out that the sports car got better milage than the Prius going as fast as possible around the track.

4/4/2011 11:12:31 PM

Quote :

"I would imagine most Top Gear viewers know that any car put on the track will get lower mileage because they drive the hell out of it, not just go around in slow circles."

There's no point in mentioning it without the implication that something is wrong.

4/8/2011 9:37:19 AM

they mention it all the time... just last night bbc America showed the eposode where they put a gallon of gas into an R8, A lambo, a 599, a SLR mclaren and saw which one got the best mileage around their track the R8 won with 5.2 mpg or something... then they put a prius on track and got 17.X mpg will an m3 got 19.X mpg at the same pace as the prius.

4/8/2011 9:46:44 AM

^^^ prius vs. m3

4/8/2011 10:24:59 AM

^ wow... good job... didn't even read my post did ya...

4/8/2011 10:29:47 AM

what season and which episode was that? want to see it again.

4/8/2011 6:30:25 PM

Quote :

"There's also nothing slanderous about saying "the brakes broke" because they technically did. However, the implication is "the brakes stopped working". Viewers didn't hear "the brakes broke" and think "oh the pedal got a little stiffer". Small malfuctions of this kind happen all the time in first-drives, but they're rarely mentioned in the review. Another distortion. Add in the vague, yet sensational gotcha conclusion, "Yet in the real world, it doesn't seem to work", and you get a completely legal, completely misleading review."

Actually they mention malfunctions ALL the time in their reviews, both on-air and on their website. I thought the editor's response to the brake issue specifically was very well put. Brakes that don't operate 100% properly, as THE primary safety apparatus of the car, should never be considered a "small malfunction". Even more so in a high-power, high-speed, high-dollar supercar.

It's not at all a sensational conclusion. I don't know anyone that buys a 100k sports car to NOT drive it FAST, and take it to the track at least on occasion. And it falls very, very flat in that scenario.

4/8/2011 7:42:09 PM

You're right - they do mention them all the time, and the malfunctions are no more severe than what you would get with other super-cars. However, with conventional gas cars, they don't come to the conclusion that a car "doesn't work in the real world". It's a judgement against the entire concept of an electric sports car, and that's exponentially more damaging than a bad review for any other vehicle.

4/10/2011 12:58:05 PM

Quote :

"Don't be a dipshit... its on BBC which is like PBS meaning they don't get advertising money or kickbacks or anything of the sort... that is precisely why the original is awesome and ours sucks"

just because the NETWORK appears to be non-profit doesn't mean the producers don't get kickbacks. you think the network is going to question what the top gear studio produces? whatever they shit onto a dat is gold so of course they'd turn a blind eye to any kickbacks. i wouldn't be surprised if bbc brass got gifts from time to time either.

4/10/2011 9:30:41 PM

Quote :

"I don't know anyone that buys a 100k sports car to NOT drive it FAST, and take it to the track at least on occasion."

Is this a joke?

4/10/2011 10:11:35 PM

haha, yeah, seriously.


also, Teslas are lame. I guess I'm glad someone is trying, and it's a step in the right direction, but I respect it really only as a test mule or prototype, and can't imagine why in the hell anyone would buy one.

4/11/2011 12:02:13 AM

Quote :

"It's a judgement against the entire concept of an electric sports car, and that's exponentially more damaging than a bad review for any other vehicle."

I don't care. It's the truth, or at least their honest opinion. It's not a judgement against all electric cars, and I could give a shit about it damaging the image of electric vehicles.

I'm not going to support propping up a company that makes vehicles that people don't want and aren't production ready, especially when my tax money is funding their operations.

^They aren't lame. Drive one and you'll understand that it's a pretty damn cool vehicle. I like the Tesla, and it's sold decently all things considered. But there's a difference between a vehicle being good and a vehicle being the holy grail of electric perfection.

4/11/2011 1:50:13 AM

It's cool, but not 100k cool...especially when a new Elise goes for what, half that?

4/11/2011 10:48:23 AM

^exactly. And it's pretty much just a track toy that you have to tow to and from the track b/c of its battery's limitations. So that means you need more money for a trailer and tow vehicle...instead of just buying an Elise.

4/11/2011 12:51:00 PM

see you guys are looking at it as an electric sports car


the people that would actually look at buying this are buying it as an electric sports car



(ps, I agree with yall on this one- just playing devils advocate)

4/11/2011 1:13:31 PM

^and that's the target market...mostly for people with money falling out of their assholes and a big green streak.

4/11/2011 2:44:03 PM

That doesnt change the fact that it's a fucking stupid car. It just reaffirms that there's a sucker born every minute.

4/11/2011 4:11:05 PM

How We See It (From Tesla after the Top Gear producer's statements):

http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/how-we-see-it-top-gear-lawsuit?loc=interstitialskip

4/11/2011 5:10:12 PM

^^Just because it's not YOUR favorite car, doesn't make it a stupid fucking car.

For the folks who want a "sporty" car with zero emissions, and have the money to pay for it, there's nothing else like it. I know of a few dozen Tesla's in and around Microsoft and their owners LOVE them. I wouldn't say any of them were suckered into buying one, they are all pretty level headed folks (at least the ones I've met).

4/11/2011 7:45:59 PM

Quote :

"^exactly. And it's pretty much just a track toy that you have to tow to and from the track b/c of its battery's limitations. So that means you need more money for a trailer and tow vehicle...instead of just buying an Elise."

who do you think is buying this to use as a track toy? you guys need to use some sense.

4/11/2011 7:59:16 PM

^gee I dunno. The first and ONLY Tesla Roadster I've seen so far was at a race track for a 2 day weekend long TRACK EVENT.

4/12/2011 12:10:00 AM

I've only seen one; it was parked on 401 going through Fuquay.

It's a fine pre-production test mule. Paying $100k for one is beyond absurd.

[Edited on April 12, 2011 at 12:16 AM. Reason : ]

4/12/2011 12:16:11 AM