Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Sues BBC's Top Gear For Libel
thecarchik writes "About two years ago BBC's Top Gear aired a test drive of the then relatively new Tesla Roadster. In the particular episode, Tesla Roadsters are depicted as suffering several critical 'breakdowns' during track driving. Host Jeremy Clarkson concludes the episode by saying that in the real world the Roadster 'doesn't seem to work.' Tesla claims that the breakdowns were staged, making most of Top Gear's remarks about the Roadster untrue. Tesla also states that it can prove Top Gear's tests were falsified due to the recordings of its cars' onboard data-loggers. What's Tesla asking for in the lawsuit? Tesla simply wants Top Gear to stop rebroadcasting the particular episode and to correct the record."
This may or may not be an uphill battle for them.
Under track conditions (with one of those jackasses pushing the pedal to the floor), yeah, the mileage on the Tesla is probably going to be atrocious.
As for the rest, not sure who exactly takes Top Gear seriously. It's a fun show, but I don't really look at it for good car facts. Nor should anyone else.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Between all the quadrillion-dollars-demanded-lawsuits and shut-down-everything C&Ds, it's nice to see a lawsuit that simply wants a little justice. No big demands, just a "stop lying about our product" and "say sorry". It even looks like they have a good amount of evidence, unlike many recent suits on /.
Even if they turn out to be wrong, Tesla just got a small point of favor with me for that. It's kind of sad that "not being evil" is noteworthy in a lawsuit nowadays...
Or it could be that Clarkson has such a big stick up his ass about "ecomentalists" that Top Gear will bash anything that doesn't burn fossil fuels, even if that thing is a sports car.
Entertainment or not, when you claim that a car broke down a lot and it turns out you were lying about it, there's a problem.
We see a lot of this "Oh, we don't have any responsibility because we're entertainment used to excuse a lot of really reprehensible stuff. Whenever some right-wing turd makes fun of a handicapped person or says something really racist or homophobic, it's always "oh we're entertainment" but then they turn around and tell their viewers how they're serious journalists (I've got a list if you really need examples).
You don't get to have a show that gives opinions about products and then say those products broke when they didn't break, no matter how much "fun" you're having.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It irritated me at the time.. they made the thing seem like a poorly-designed money sink that barely worked. It really makes me wonder, though, what would they get out of saying stuff like that if it weren't true? If Tesla has the records and they really did stage breakdowns and dead batteries, to what purpose? It's a show about ridiculously expensive cars that most of us ill never even see, much less drive. Tesla is definitely in that category, and considering the drooling they do over some pretty ridiculous (and ugly) cars.. why pick on them? They made plausible claims, mostly, but the one where they ran out of power after 55 miles I thought was weird. The others (overheating, brakes) could have happened, but there seemed to be a LOT of problems for what is basically a straight-from-the-factory Lotus with an electric drivetrain. (In the show they raced it against a Lotus, you can barely tell the cars apart without looking at the badges).
Anyway, just makes me wonder if they made it seem like crap (assuming Tesla is telling the truth) in order to appease the old-school dream car companies so they'd keep sending them toys to play with, or maybe Tesla was being a pain in the ass and they wanted to tweak them, or if they just thought it's be funnier.
My intuition tells me Top Gear will turn out to be right.
When an overhyped product gets a bad review and the maker threatens to sue, you know which way it usually turns out. I'm going with the odds, until the evidence says otherwise.
If they do in fact have evidence, they're welcome to present it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Who apparently doesn't mind making stuff up.
Companies provide cars to Top Gear. Forget for a moment about the stupidity of lying to make one of your benefactors look worse. If the only way you can make a story compelling, even comedy, is to be fraudulent, then there's a problem.
All they had to do is run a disclaimer saying "The car really didn't break down like we pretended" and it would be OK. Or run a disclaimer saying "The events portrayed are entirely fabricated and are in no way indicative of anything real about the cars' quality". But they would never do that. Why? Because they are trading on the notion that there's something useful buried in what they are doing. My guess is that they're afraid of making it clear that none of what is portrayed on the show is in any way real.
And if any part of what they're doing is supposed to be taken as real, then they've got a responsibility to make it clear when they're making stuff up.
You are welcome on my lawn.