Slashdot Mirror
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.
It's no wonder no one buys their cars.
Son, you did not just go there. I'm so going to sue you. I'm logging this exchange.
E. Musk
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?
Where, precisely is this "legislate their profits" coming from?
Someone makes shit up (faked, lies, whatever you want to call it) to pretend a car is less useful than it is.
And you think stopping lies is "legislating their profits2??? Sorry, unless Tesla are making you BUY their cars by having it mandated by law, they aren't doing that. They're trying to get redress for lies against them.
Is the problem that they don't burn petrol?
RIAA has never to my knowledge filed a libel suit. Their suits are about copyright infringement, which is neither the same thing nor relevant to the conversation.
Tesla enabled logging in the car and it more than confirms their version of events. Given how some journalist's have it in for Tesla this seems like a sensible move by them. The journo was lying through his teeth and was caught in his lie.
Tesla is getting the shaft. They're doing some interesting things, and there was a point I could actually afford and want one of their cars... but I live in an area without lots of charging options.
On one hand, that newspaper review was borderline libel. They have the records backing them up and proved the newspaper reporter was a liar... though somehow the writer is trying to defend himself.
But Top Gear... I only watch it every now and then and it's pretty clear that a lot of their "reviews" are a bit sensationalized / comedic / petty. My "favorite" was when they found out the Cadillac CTS-V was actually a decent sports car... so they had to harp that the bell constantly chimed when the door was open. He showed the bit like 5+ times throughout the review and whined that "yes we know the door is open." Yet they failed to mention they left their KEYS in the ignition so the bell/chime was really saying "dude you left your keys in a car with an open door" At least the guy had to say "I can't believe I am going to say this, but this car is actually decent"
There have been others. The guys often have their minds made up about how much they dislike a car/company early on and decide to do comedy bits about this-or-that.
So really, you can't really be surprised that Top Gear decided to mock the Tesla for no reason. It's like if you decided to appear on on one of those old day talk shows like "Jerry Springer" and are surprised they decided to hit you with a "gotcha" or surprise pregnancy... what did you THINK was going to happen?
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?
Use "girls" as a pejorative? Really?
Really. Get over it.
She can't. Women do not just "Get over" things.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Yet the range of Tesla's cars are within what most people use for running errands and driving to work... If you need something for edge case scenarios (driving a 1000 miles in one sitting or towing a boat), you can rent an appropriate vehicle. It doesn't discount the fact that (as of now) electric miles are 1/5th the cost of a gasoline equivalent and are practical for most urban and suburban uses.
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!
but one car stubbornly refused to top off at a Delaware Supercharger....After about an hour of troubleshooting, Tesla pushed a firmware update to the vehicle, found and diagnosed another bug and got the car back on the road."
Thank you early adopters ... for not being me.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The funny mod of parent is sadly indicative of how little experience mods here have with women.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
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.
Anyone who has watched more than half an episode of Top Gear knows exactly what Top Gear is. It's something, and it's interesting, and it's highly entertaining, but you certainly wouldn't use it as a major contribution to your vehicle purchase decision unless you're into supercars (in which case you probably could).
The review of the Ford Fiesta was a perfect case in point. The car was tested in a shopping mall on marble floors, and in an amphibious landing with the Royal Navy.
Speak for yourself. I, for one, would like to know how my car will perform in an amphibious landing before I buy.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
And they tested cornering of sports cars by having them be shot at.
The car with the fewest hits obviously was the best. Obviously.
Currently they are putzing around in Africa, trying to find the True Source Of The Nile(which can't be Lake Vicoria since it has already been discovered). Since they have no clue where to look they decided to move away from Gibraltar(since that is where the Nile ends up in the ocean, the Mediterranean just being another lake), find some bit of water and declare it the source of the Nile.
What they truly do is dick around, get stuck and show how great the locals are.
20 minutes into the future
Have you seen Jeremy Clarkson in a scuba diving suit? You will prefer the jeans, trust me.
20 minutes into the future
As the AC's pointed out, the gripe was more about recharge time than range alone. Going 50 miles on a charge/tank isn't crippling if there are recharging stations (aka gas pumps) every few miles.
They addressed the point in more detail during a different episode, where they took a road trip in a Leaf and some other car with a funny name. A quick google search tells me it was Series 17 ep 6, and the funny named car was Peugeot iOn (AKA Mitsubishi i-MiEV, AKA Citroën C-Zero.) They were actually fairly gentle with the two cars, and again, the only gripe was finding a publicly available wall-socket for recharging, and then waiting the several hours for the recharge to occur.
They even had a minor epiphany after the test, while playing around in carnival bumper cars, which are electric. We just need a ton of electrically charged chicken wire mesh running atop the freeway to provide constant charging :)
This signature is false.
She was a breeze next to the short man.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I actually did buy a Fiesta after watching their Fiesta review. Of course, I was already looking for a small four door hatchback, and I really liked the green color, and I was already looking at the Fiesta, so I probably would have bought one anyway, but I'm sure their show influenced my decision to some extent.