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Tesla Motors Loses Appeal Against BBC's Top Gear
TrueSatan writes "In a highly detailed decision, the UK Court of Appeal has rejected Tesla's appeal against an eartlier ruling by a lower court that, too, rejected Tesla's case. Reading through the decision it is clear that the judge saw Tesla's case as lacking sufficient detail and specific instances of proof to support each claim. The judge stated that that Tesla's chances of a successful appeal, should the case have gone to trial, were insufficiently high to justify holding a trial. He stated that Tesla's case had no real chance of success and in many notes picked appart Tesla's legal team's arguments. That said, he did not say that Top Gear were right or justified in portraying Tesla's vehicle in the way they did — merely that there wasn't a legal case for an appeal. One of the key flaws in Tesla's case, according to the judicial decision, was Tesla's inability to show that actual pecuniary harm, with detailed financial figures, had occurred."
With some of the costs paid by the UK taxpayer and the BBC license fee payers, Tesla really got lots of mileage (see what I did there?) out of this one.
I agree that the amount of pecuniary harm this did them is probably zero - they were already selling out their full production capacity of Roadster vehicles. Top Gear was not limiting their profits, their production capacity was.
But now their product and brand has had a great deal more exposure.
Because that's all it is really. And to a certain extent I sympathise with Tesla somewhat - Top gear did represent the car as a bit of a dud whereas in fact they weren't 100% truthful with what happened. But then I suppose if you let your car be tested on what is effectively a car based comedy show you shouldn't expect unbiased reviews.
The people at Tesla should have watched an episode of Top Gear before they let those guys drive their car. Clarkson trashes anything he disapproves of -- that means most American cars, Japanese cars, and anything 'eco-friendly.' It was obvious they were exaggerating when it came to the Tesla but they had a valid point. You can't drive that thing balls-to-the-wall around the track without running out of juice super quick, and it takes a long time to recharge. That makes it a no-go for track enthusiasts, precisely the crowd it could appeal to.
For most people, going to the track is an expensive and time-consuming activity. They don't have time to wait for their electric car to recharge, they want to get the most out of their weekend at the track as possible. A muscle car or Italian super car may go through fuel like mad, but filling it up takes mere minutes. That's the point Top Gear was making, they were just being real mean about it. Anyone who thinks that Clarkson and the boys don't bullshit for the sake of entertainment just haven't seen the show. It's pretty obvious when they are exaggerating or staging something. In the end, the opinions they give are genuine, however full of bias they may be.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Use "girls" as a pejorative? Really?
Well, this counts as free advertising, however, I totally agree, companies like Tesla should stop trying to legislate their profits, which just makes them look like dicks, and put in the work to make the product better.
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Fire all the lawyers.
No, it's not an exaggeration, it is the exact fact, the figure of 55 mile on the track came from Tesla themselves.
The claim from Tesla came from a willful misinterpretation of the *FACT* Clarkson stated. The claimed that Clarkson had implied that the car would only go 55 miles on the road.
The judge look at it and said no. 55 miles on the track is not 55 miles on the road and nobody would confuse the two.
They had no case, the lawsuit was simply to attempt to suppress bad reviews. Top Gear won and would never have lost.
To Gear response to Elon Musks attack on them:
http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1057825_top-gear-responds-to-tesla-lawsuit
" 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”."
Elon Musk had tried to raise a straw man to knock down.
"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."
Indeed it was true.
"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."
You know, many of you swallow the straw man arguments Elon Musk puts forward as if they are true. They're not, he *pretends* a critic has made claim X, because claim X is easier to knock down, than the unpleasant truth they actually said.
Have you seen Jeremy Clarkson in them?
According p. 67 of the auto issue, "Look for a full test [of the Tesla Model S] in a forthcoming issue." Their test track is in Connecticut, and hopefully they will have done some tests in chilly weather.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Never buy version 1.0 of anything is the old adage. However it's clear the NYT went out of its way to malign the car.
Have you seen Jeremy Clarkson in a scuba diving suit? You will prefer the jeans, trust me.
20 minutes into the future