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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...
I think Tesla should drive over and deliver the lawsuit to Top Gear in person. Or perhaps they have tried already.....
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.
Evil will always win, because Good is DUMB
Topgear is entertainment mixed with factual information. The problem is that the two aren't clearly delineated. Are the challenges scripted as hell? Yes. But other segments can be far more ambiguous. Apparently, I'm crazy for thinking the power-laps and the car reviews weren't scripted in advance, and any problems that crop up legitimately crop up. What Tesla is alleging is no matter how wonderful the car was, Top Gear was going to say it broke. To me, as a viewer, it was definitely not clear the Tesla review was entertainment and not factual.
That said, I still like Top Gear. I'm just going to be way more skeptical about anything they say about a car, ever. Maybe the Morris Marinas is a great car, afterall.
Staged? Top Gear always stages things. How else could they compare a Ferrari to a bicycle or a jet plane to a car. It's entertainment, folks. If Tesla thinks that Top Gear unfairly cost them sales then they are just plain stupid.
I watched that episode. IMO they showed the strengths and weaknesses of the car. The idiot, Clarkson, claiming that 55 miles of pedal-to-the-metal driving is "real world" is no more ludicrous than Tesla claiming that their roadster is a competitive sports car.
That Tesla CEO douchebag should just take his lumps and go racing if he thinks he thinks he has the car for it.
This isn't the first group that has gotten upset at Top Gear. They have a pretty long list. The BBC goes to bat for them almost without fail, not surprising since the show has an estimated viewing audience of 350 million worldwide.
It also should be noted that in the episode in question, they also feature a test drive of the Honda FCX Clarity, Honda's hydrogen powered car. And they liked it a lot.
Tell that to all the people who decline to buy a Tesla because of what they saw on Top Gear...
Very few Top Gear viewers have that much disposable income, desire for an all-electric two-seater, and would accept without question what they saw on Top Gear. After all, the Tesla Roadster is a very unique car on today's market; if you wanted one and then changed your mind you would not be able to get a comparable vehicle from Toyota, Ford, Honda, etc ... Or even any of the premium brands for that matter because there is no other two-seater all-electric roadster for sale in the US today.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Both Tesla cars given for testing did NOT ever get below 20% charge.
And the onboard data loggers and battery charge indicators (plus a capacity check after the fact,) will show all of that.
No wonder you posted as AC.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Tesla simply wants Top Gear to stop rebroadcasting the particular episode and to correct the record ...The firm expects to recover not more than £100,000 in damages
Fixed that for you!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/30/tesla-sue-top-gear
Fixed that for you! The guardian doesn't say £100,000, it says "up to" In fact the claim lists exactly what the OP says it does and the "value" is not more than £100,000. But nice try.
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.
The idiot, Clarkson, claiming that 55 miles of pedal-to-the-metal driving is "real world" is no more ludicrous than Tesla claiming that their roadster is a competitive sports car.
Fairly sure clarkson never claimed that, he did claim (correctly) that a real world problem is that it would take days (given 16hour charge time and ~200 mile range) to cross the country.
Tesla is about to learn a very hard lesson about Top Gear. Just from a clout standpoint...they've got to *think* real hard about this move. Top Gear has more clout in the auto industry than anything short of gasoline. Bugatti/Audi/VW/etc let all three hosts drive the Veyron and even Captain Slow took the thing to 250+ mph on a $2millionUSD(to buy)/$5millionUSD(to build, they take a huge loss) car. You don't do that with people-with-no-influence, no matter how good their insurers are. Top Gear also regularly rakes much bigger auto manufacturers over the coals when they don't play by Clarkson's rules.
In a recent episode, Bentley (iirc) refused to lend a car for a road test segment Top Gear did in Albania. In it's place they bought a dirt old Yugo for probably on the low side of $500 and proceeded to call it a Bentley for the rest of the segment, piling on withering criticism the entire time. Chrysler refused to provide a test vehicle for a trip to Bonneville, so Top Gear just went and *bought one* (charger)....and proceeded to make fun of Dodge the rest of the show.
Tesla is about to find out what it's like to be the heckler in a club with a good comedian. Think Ru Paul v. Milton Berle. Are they gonna get high fives from their buddies or is Don Rickles about to tear this company a new asshole?
One of the cars didn't run out of charge, the brake system failed. Tesla claimed that it was something simple (blown fuse I think) and Top Gear was making it worse than it really was
You know, I don't think it really matters if the problem was a junebug on the windshield if it made the frigging brakes fail.
Or, as Big Mike, my old wrench-monkey buddy put it: when prioritizing motorcycle problems: "Go" is optional. "Stop" is mandatory.
I think that fits just dandy for cages, too.
So here's what clarkson had to say at the time. From the times online:
Phone calls were made. Editorial policy wallahs were consulted. Experts were called in. No “i” was left undotted. No “t” was left uncrossed. No stone remained unturned in our quest for truth and decency.
Tesla could not complain about what was shown because it was there. And here’s the strange thing. It didn’t. But someone did. Loudly and to every newspaper in the world.
..
This was weird. Tesla, when contacted by reporters, gave its account of what happened and it was exactly the same as ours. It explained that the brakes had stopped working because of a blown fuse and didn’t question at all our claim that the car would have run out of electricity after 55 miles.
You would figure that if these claims were so outrageous, tesla would have contradicted them at the time.
Very few Top Gear viewers have that much disposable income, desire for an all-electric two-seater, and would accept without question what they saw on Top Gear.
You have the statement reversed. It doesn't matter what the average Top Gear viewer is likely to do. What matters is how likely the average Tesla buyer is to watch Top Gear.
Not everyone that buys a Tesla is looking for only an all-electric two-seater. I've talked to a few people that are in the market for a two-seat sports car in that price range, but they're not sure the Tesla is ready for prime time since it is so new.
If they're on the fence and see that episode, they're likely to go ahead an buy the Porsche, Lotus, etc..
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
It is clear from the episode that they were highlighting the issue of charging. 16 hours from a wall socket and a 200 mile range. As noted, it would take days to go from one end of the country to another.
It is a fact therefore, that the car does not really work in any practical sense.
I would disagree. Such a car works, in a practical sense -- just not for crossing the country.
If you never drive more than 100 miles a day and go home every night and recharge ... it sounds like the car works in a very practical sense.
But you wouldn't use it to drive 3000 miles any more than you'd use it to haul eight kids to a soccer game. (It also sounds like you wouldn't use it on a race track for any race over 40 miles, but most sports cars never make it to a race track either so that's probably fine.)
That New Yorker article about Haggis and his changing views of CoS is a hell of a story. There's something about a person who has been buffaloed, flim-flammed, scammed and fleeced finally opening his eyes that makes for a very compelling read.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I wouldn't be so sure. Judging from the number of people who have been killed or maimed trying some of those stunts on their own, it appears that there is a certain segment of the population that indeed makes lifestyle decisions based on watching Jackass.
One must never underestimate people's capacity for missing the point.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Being politically incorrect and making fun of things they don't like regardless of established fact is part of what makes the show a success.
For those who have seen it: the "Cool Wall" : decisions are sometimes made as to where a car goes simply because Clarkson is taller than Hammond and Hammond can't take one down.
This is childish and often hilarious stuff here. And that is part of what makes it successful.
As for Tesla: you make yourselves look far worse pursuing this lawsuit than Top Gear did lampooning your car, first off.
If you lose you will look even worse!
And you may:
If a brake fuse blew and caused a brake issue- yup, that right there counts as broken brakes, does it not?
My car gets about 22mpg average. On a track day I can expect 8mpg or less.
14x22=308
14x8= 112
That sorta makes the fuel/electric consumption look realistic for a hard used track day, does it not?
So let's see here:
*Tesla is suing a company that is unlikely to settle or retract their statements for an amount of money likely to be less than the cost of legal action and even IF they win and force retractions will guarantee that they are made fun of at every opportunity by the entertainment show concerned. (Another show where Bentley was supposed to supply a car and did not- a Yugo was driven instead but referred to as a Bentley for the entire episode.)
*The show concerned is an entertainment show that expresses the hosts opinions of cars and many other aspects of life, and occasionally purports to be stating facts.
*At least some of the claims made by the show would appear to have some basis in reality although it is easy to believe many or all were magnified. It is possible that some false claims were made on this entertainment program and mis-represented as fact.
Seems to me that Tesla would be better off re-thinking the lawsuit....
Linux computers, watercooled, photography
So... Tesla waited 2 years before doing this when it could have set the record straight the moment it happened?
My recollection of the show is that the Tesla is OK-ish but not earth shattering or ground breaking. The lap time wasn't bad but certainly not impressive which is most likely affected by the weight of the batteries. In the same episode the Honda FCX Clarity is featured which has a fuel cell and behaves exactly like you'd expect from a Honda sedan. This impression is probably what most viewer remember.
Tesla were probably thinking that being featured on Top Gear would have resulted in a free commercial. Very naive. And suing after more than two years after the first broadcast won't do them any favours. The Streisand effect will be limited by their sort-of reasonable demands but they show themselves as a bunch of sorry sulking kids.
As said many times before, Top Gear is a show and not a car review programme.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Most of the highly rated comments are assuming that all Tesla's claims are true.
Having just watched the segment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DfHyGD7_pM
The review starts off really quite positive.
Tesla claims that Top Gear misrepresented the company along these following points:
1. The Roadster ran out of charge and had to be pushed into the Top Gear hangar by four men.
4:56 - Top gear doesn't actually state that they ever ran out of battery. They simulated it ("and if it does run out") as an illustration that driving the car as marketed (As a sports car) gives you a much smaller range than the quoted figure. They could have done it for real by driving it around the track for hour, but what does this gain exactly?
2. The Roadster’s true range is only 55 miles per charge (not 211).
This is a blatantly false claim by Tesla. Jeremy stated that they worked out that the range "around their track" is 55 miles, while also mentioning the 211 mile claimed range by Tesla. When he later calculated the time to drive to Scotland, with the 16 hour recharge rate from a normal electrical socket, it was obvious he was using the 211 mile figure. (It's a trip of @700 miles)
3. One Roadster’s motor overheated and was completely immobilized as a result.
The motor did overheat (6:48), but Jeremy stated that he had "reduced power", not "no power". There was video showing that the car was continuing at a reduced speed, followed by a shot of the car parked forlornly on the track, but I seriously doubt this is sufficient for a libel suit.
4. The other Roadster’s brakes were broken, rendering the car undriveable.
If I remember correctly there _was_ a problem with the brakes at the test track. Something to do with a fuse on the regenerative braking system. Top Gear never stated that car was undriveable, only that they couldn't use it (It either was suitable for track work/filming, or Tesla were attempting to fix the issue). This appears to be a strawman argument.
5. That neither of the two Roadsters provided to Top Gear was available for test driving due to these problems.
This is a nice case of weasel words. This doesn't say that neither car had troubles, only that both cars didn't have troubles _at the same time_.
Additionally I'll also note that this lawsuit is a change of tune from their previous comments, where a PR person spoke to the press immediately after the review:
"She said the company would not be pursuing the matter with the BBC. "We would love to have them drive it again whenever they want.""
"But she said she was generally happy with the overall tone of the review. "I thought it was a positive piece for Tesla by Top Gear standards. I personally like the show – it savages cars in a very entertaining way.
"My concern was with American viewers who were tuning in for the first time and might not understand the whole angle of the show. We wanted to make clear that range was not a concern over the entire time of the [Top Gear] test.""
More info:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/24/jeremy-clarkson-top-gear-tesla-electric-car
http://jalopnik.com/#!5118465/clarkson-ignores-bbcs-carefully-worded-response-responds-to-tesla-on-his-own
http://jalopnik.com/#!5112828/tesla-issues-response-to-top-gear-review
This smells like a marketing exercise.
You are a lot more offensive than any spam ever spammed in the history of spamming. God, why am I talking to a fukcing troll?
Top Gear is for cars, what Slashdot is for tech.
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
More than 70% of Americans have a roundtrip daily commute of 30 miles. If you're too dumb to buy an electric car and rent a gas car for those few times you're going out of town, then don't be pissed when folks like me speculate on the price of oil to make money off your irrational behavior and poor critical thinking skills.
You should actually watch the review instead of just making stuff up (I can't believe you can get modded informative when you say "It's been a while since I've seen the episode" while the review in question is actually linked to the article. Why not just watch the review, it takes 10 minutes! and you will actually know what you are talking about). They were given two cars, and the point they were making was about the amount of time it takes to charge the cars, and how that made then essentially unusable for long road trips (they suggest that for normal driving you should buy two so you can use one while the other is charging). This is a real concern, and it is not misrepresented. While a normal car takes a couple minutes to fill, the Tesla takes hours. And they did say "We've worked out that it would only get 55 miles in our track driving" they never claimed it actually ran out of charge during testing (which is what tesla is disputing). They showed a simulation of it running out of charge, but they could have easily just run it down! Who would say that they couldn't? That's not the point they were making. The visuals are for dramatic effect. Complaining that it didn't actually run out during testing is just nit-picking. Everyone knows that if you drive a car far enough, it will run out of energy.
As for whether or not the breaks actually broke, or the engine actually overheated, Tesla doesn't seem to be disputing that as far as I can tell.
Maybe the Morris Marinas is a great car, afterall.
Perhaps, but they still seem to attract falling pianos way too often for my taste...
They say the cars didn't break down. Take note: cars. Top Gear claimed on-air that not only did both require recharging (Tesla also says neither ran out of charge), but that they both broke down. Tesla says that's a fabrication.
One car's motor overheated and basically shut down, "reduced power" was what Clarkson said when it happened. The other car's brakes failed.
Those are failures, regardless if they were temporary or not.
The problem is, Top Gear tests cars as though they are going to be driven on "track days" which are basically amateur racing where the cars are pushed hard for a long time - totally unlike the real-world road driving most people do. Most mass-market cars would suffer brake failures or other problems when used this way.
Frankly, given that Top Gear tests cars on their track the way they do, the review was pretty balanced. They showed that although the Tesla didn't handle quite as well as the Lotus that it's based on, it could out-accelerate the Lotus on the straights.
On almost every episode of Top Gear there is a multi-hundred-thousand dollar (up to millions of dollars) car sliding around the test track, being pushed to its limits in ways that no street driven car would be. The Tesla, like many cars, isn't built to take it. Would you be upset if your $2,000,000 Bugatti suffered the same problems? Yes. Would you even be surprised if a $20,000 Honda's engine overheated or brakes failed when driven that way for an extended time? No. The issue is that the "real world" Clarkson was talking about was on their track, not on public roads.
The Tesla is built to be a sporty car, but not a race car. There are some cars that can take abuse all day long and do just fine, and some that can't. There's nothing wrong with that. When I owned a Porsche I was able to drive the car very hard all day long and then drive it home as though nothing had happened. My V8 Camaro could beat the Porsche in a drag race (wouldn't come close on a corner though) but it would have ended up ruined given a day of the same treatment the Porsche took.
Top Gear has also driven a Prius around their track as fast as possible, with a V8 BMW M3 following it to prove that hybrids aren't the end-all of fuel economy (the BMW got far better gas mileage because the Prius was never designed to be driven on a track). The same type of driving is a recipe for using up 100% of an electric car's charge pretty quickly, and given that type of usage, the comments about recharge time are valid. But, if you just want to drive sedately to work and back, the Prius is going to get much better gas mileage than the M3.
Sending a "performance" car to Top Gear that isn't designed for the rigors of track use is guaranteed to result in a bad review. It's not like they're doing bland consumer reviews of family cars like PBS' Motor Week.
Sometime the Tesla guys should watch the review of the Bentley where one of the rear tires explodes, and think themselves lucky. Heck, the seats in one Mercedes-Benz (an AMG Black model) were compared unfavorably to a pile of rocks. You don't see M-B complaining.
Putting moderation advice in your
You are wrong on several critical points. Tesla is not claiming that the actual breakdowns were scripted. The only thing they are claiming was scripted was the scene where the Tesla runs out of charge. To be clear, the car did actually overheat, and the other car's breaks did stop working. Those were not scripted or false.
The scene of the car running out of charge is a dramatic lead-in to their discussion of the car's major real-world flaw, which is charging times. Watch the clip and you will see that they way they make their claim implies that the car running out of charge was simulated
Realistically, they did not need to simulate this, because they could have actually driven it until it ran out of charge. Of course, it's not surprising that they wouldn't do that, since it's a huge waste of time and the end result is a foregone conclusion. It seems to me that Tesla is really just whining over a technicality, since it's true the car will run out of charge, and that's what they showed.
And add to that the fact that unless they are total morons, they had to have watched Top Gear and thus be aware they are goof balls. I mean these are the people that did a beach assault with the Royal Marines using a sedan.They do silly things with cars, they rip on shit that doesn't matter at all to normal people. Also any sort of performance car tends to get reviewed by Clarkson who (at least on camera) is a complete speed freak and doesn't like any car that can't go 200mph+.
If they didn't expect a review like this, they either didn't do due diligence in checking out the show, or were idiots. If they didn't want a review like this, they shouldn't have submitted it to Top Gear.
The whole reason I (and plenty of others) watch Top Gear is how silly it is. I don't want to see a factual review on a super car I will never own. I want to see Clarkson tear ass around their track, spin out, and complain about trivialities. It is fun to watch.
Anyway, since most of that loan was already granted less then a month after Obamas inauguration... http://www.redherring.com/home/25831
Fandroids hate facts.
I still don't understand why something like the Tesla gets government funding, but not something like the Aptera.
The Tesla is not exactly new thinking, it's just a sportcar with massive amount of power and batteries to boot, plus it costs, what, 100K? Does it even get that much better equivalent mileage compare to other electrics?
OTOH, Aptera is a new way of thinking, would have been perfectly fines as a hybrid with tiny motor charging a battery that drives the wheels, and would have had a smaller footprint all around, and could have come in the 19-29K range which is in reach of most people.
Tesla was just sexier in all the wrong ways. Might as well take a Lamborghini, make it a hybrid, and pretend that's environmentally sustainable.
Then why don't they show other cars "pretending" to run out of gas and having to be pushed, since it's true that other cars will do that?
They have done, for particularly thirsty vehicles. In particular, I remember Clarkson getting ribbed thoroughly for owning a model that was so thirsty under normal driving conditions it couldn't even make it from his house to the TV studio without a fill-up. (I forget which model of car it was; I wasn't thinking about buying a supercar then, and I'm not now.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
55 miles ROUND A TRACK /= 311 miles driven to get as much range as possible.
idiot.
I'm kind of confused, why is everybody talking as if Tesla had been proved right in any way? They've made a claim in a lawsuit. They haven't proved it, or even given any real information about it.
Top Gear's claim about range specifically states that they calculated the range on the track to be 55. They didn't state the method of calculation. Did they drive it until the gauge read half full and double it? Then if their calculation is incorrect, then Tesla's gauge is incorrect, not their calculation. Unless there's proof that you can flog a Tesla on a track and get significantly more mileage out of it, then Top Gear's claim is valid and correct. Note that Tesla does not give a fuel economy estimate for driving their sports car agressively on a track, just that driving carefully can increase the range by 50%. I know I've driven my car carefully on the highway and gotten 28MPG, but on a track I get a little less than 4MPG.
This doesn't require a lawsuit. It requires an independent race car driver, one Tesla, a track, and a video camera. They've had two years. If they haven't done this, then their claim is BS.
There doesn't seem to be any dispute that the brakes stopped working on one and the engine overheated in the other. Claiming the engine overheating is not a breakdown is ludicrous, if the car stops running on it's own (or slows down enough that it's obviously having a problem), it's a breakdown, even if the solution is just to let it cool down. It would definitely count on a gasoline car, why anyone would think it doesn't on an electric is beyond me.
As far as the car being shown to coast to a stop on the track, unless they specifically pointed out each one as a breakdown, there's nothing libelous about it.
They are entirely accurate in their claim that it doesn't work in the real world. If it did, why did Tesla feel the need to give them two so one could charge while the other was running? Is there any other real world car that you'd need two of for a day's driving?
This sentence no verb.
I don't understand the summary at all!
Could someone please provide a simple car analogy?