Tesla Motors sues BBC for defamation Tesla Motors has filed libel a suit against the BBC, accusing Top Gear of defamation. Back in 2008, we reported how in comparison tests between the electric Tesla Roadster and a Lotus Elise, Jeremy Clarkson and co. falsely declared the Tesla ran out of juice and had to be pushed home. The programme later said it was only …
Having lived here for 10 years or more, I'm still struck by how humorless Americans can be and how they utterly miss subtle humor and satire unless you whack them over the head with it and hand them a sign saying "this is satire". Hell, they think Benny Hill is the height of British humor after all....
You can see the episode on you tube and Engaget. I just watched it and didn't find it a bad reflection on Tesla. In fact Clarkson loved it. It's true that currently all battery powered vehicles suffer from re-fueling problems. It takes an age to charge it (16 hours from a 13amp socket). Plus if you cane it round the track, I bet it would run out of juice sooner rather than later. Tesla just want some free publicity. Sadly it will be of the bad kind.
Clarkson et al are continually making false or misleading statements/comments and obviously trying to follow an agenda of their own.
I hope Tesla succeeds and that Clarkson et al pay the damages out of their own over enlarged pockets (these presenters get paid a fortune to spread these lies and when they knowingly do spread lies they should pay for it themselves).
This Tesla action was a pathetic and stupid thing to do, it was defended by the BBC as if it was reasonable - they didn't have the Lotus stop half way round pretending the petrol tank had emptied did they? The presenters and producers should pay out of their own pocket several million in damages. It was stupid, ill advised, contemptable, lies from a team whose program is far from the honest program it is portrayed as. (and yes despite that I still like it most of the time).
You really don't like the TG presenters do you? Do you dislike any other overpaid members of society, like footballers, bankers etc? Or just these three. Have you ever been rejected for a job at the BBC? Do you live on the Isle of Man?
I don't think Tesla will succeed - I think they will have trouble proving any of their claims as so many above have stated. 55 miles is about right when hooning. You cannot just top up with petrol from a can - you WILL need a push (or a lowloader), And the car did break down. AFAICT, TG haven't actually lied at all.
If the BBC were to lose, the money will come out of the license payers (i.e. you and me), not Clarkson etc. After all, the BBC showed the program, and they could easily have edited it differently. The buck stops with them.
Consider
TG unimpressed by Toyota Pious.
Cameron Diaz appears and says she drives one.
Clarkson smitten.
No more Prius gags.
Given Clarkie's drool glands can salivate at anyone from Cameron Diaz to Kristin Scott Thomas I'm sure there's at least one famous, attractive Tesla owner Clarkson would love to spend some quality drool time with.
Did Tesla actually watch Top Gear before submitting their product for review? They would have seen the Ford GT caned for its 75-mile range in Top Gear test track mode, and would have known TG wouldn't get 211 sedate-mode miles out of the Tesla. The Ford GT ran out of fuel on the test track - sound familiar?
Ford is litigious enough to attack Ferrari for accidentally creating a branding link between beautiful Italian supercars and Ford's F-series on-road tractors - but didn't sue Top Gear over the GT's 75 miles. So why is Tesla suing? Do they need the publicity? Or did Darl McBride join Tesla and I didn't notice?
The Beeb say they will vigorously defend, so Tesla is in for a massive overdose of Streisand Effect. Chumps.
Bollocks, and big fucking dangly ones at that.
Just how big a carbon footprint was made by those 3000 odd Lithium ion batteries??
It might not produce shite out of the "exhaust" but i'll wager the amount of carbon or whatever produced in making the car FAR exceeds any saving...Lets also not forget those batteries wont stand a lot of charge/discharge cycles and will have to be rendered useless and the process of reclaiming lithium takes a phenomenal amount of power..
Electric cars are 10 years off being a viable alternative to rotten dinosaur juice and are simply a means to fool people into thinking they are being eco-friendly.....Or to provide some status symbol to those with more money than brain cells.
If Tesla do get an embargo on that episode being shown again what will Dave do, they probably show that episode a few times a week.
Although it does go to show that electric cars still aren't ready for mass market usage yet. Who wants a car that once you do 200 miles you have to park up and wait a few hours until you can go again, when current petrol and deisel cars you can simply stop at a filling station, spend 2 mins filling up and off you go again.
Until there is some sort of battery swap out that you can do at filling stations so you drop your dead battery pack and they put in a ready charged one the uptake of electric cars will be slow.
Batteries don't last half as long if you rinse them like a crazy. Who'd have thunk it?
If you put lines like "0-60 in 3.7 seconds" in your marketing then people are going to want to rinse them like crazy, and stuff the "normal driving" estimates.
I mean honestly; does *anyone* believe the battery life claims on a product sheet?
So shock horror #2, Top Gear takes the piss. Car manufacturers ought to know better...and given Top Gear's popularity stateside, they can't say "we didn't expect that!".
Tits.
So Clarkson and the team get huge salaries for acting like twats? It's hardly a crime and given the amount of cash TG rakes in for the BBC fair play to them. With it's export sales TG is a net earner and would be if they were paid much more.
Dis them for staging the Tesla incidents but leave the pay moans out of it - it reeks of jealousy. Lets face it - if someone offered us millions to act like twats we would take it. God knows we come across enough people who act that way in the day job :)
I remember when the original set of viewer complaints came in, Carkson admitted the car hadnt run out of charge, they just pretend it had to show what would happen if it did. (doh!!)
It was extremely stupid not to edit the episode before further showings or DVD release.
I think the show is very funny, but they stopped be a "Car" program many years ago, when Clarkson got "creative" control of the franchise.
The Hamster opened a local Nursery school recently, he was heard inside muttering and moaning about all the chav 'ey people he had to talk to outside, getting a bit up himself??
I also heard one of the blokes who lives across from the nursery was very impressed, he said he had never seen most of the chav girls combing their hair and trying to look clean before; pity Hamster wasnt going for any of them :-p
True, you have to push a discharged electric car to a charging station. However...
A few years ago, I ran out of gas in my car, so I called the AAA (American Automobile Ass'n) to help me out. However, instead of bringing me gas (as they used to do), they towed me to a gas station. Turns out they aren't allowed to carry a can of gas, as they'd have to have hazardous materials permits.
The hazmat flame seems appropriate.
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So Tesla's trying the "gag unfavourable comments about their product, via the libel court gambit..." are they...?
With the proposed reforms of the U.K libel laws to prevent this from happening, along with the end of "Libel Tourism," it could be argued that Tesla has something to hide concerning said product, given their current action...
BTW, it's rumoured that Tesla has produced lass than 1500 vehicles in total so far...
Given the proposed rivals to Tesla's products, such as BMW's i series ( the i3 a/k/a the former Megacity EV due to go on sale in 2013, & i8 a/k/a the former Dynamic Vision concept hybrid, due to enter production in 2015), Renault's Twizy, & Zoe sports Electric Vehicle's due out next year, & Lotus's proposed hybrid replacement for the Evora (reportedly out in 2013-2014) , Tesla in Europe at least, is about to enter a world of pain...
Tesla are idiots. All Clarkson will do is then take another tesla on the track and thrash it for real as they would do. If it does less than 60 miles Tesla are screwed.
They've gotten the wrong end of a stick re. a episode that most of us cant remember and most didnt take seriously anyway.
Tesla....out of business.
Hi Tesla, are you a new company?
What's that, you were famous back in 2008?
And then everyone stopped bothering to look at your products?
Awww thats a shame, did you do something really, really, mindbogglingly, pathetically, childishly dumb and suicidally stupid by any chance?
There's a TV program on at the moment called 'See you in court' were celebrities (of all levels) explain why they've sued people. Lembit Opik (or whatever his name is) showed some real common sense when he explained why he would appear on Have I Got News For You and yet had a problem with a load of the reporting in the papers etc. Just after loosing his seat, he was on the show and took a huge amount of stick in what I thought was very good humour, and he went up in my opinion. He accepted this was absolutely fine as it was an entertainment show and its nature was obvious and well known. Therefore, by appearing he asked for it and nobody really took it seriously.
However, he explained that the articles in papers which were quite vicious were done from an entirely different angle and therefore were not acceptable. Of course, in his case, the courts largely agreed.
So, with Tesla, they have effectively appeared on the motoring equivalent of Have I Got News For You and are not complaining!! Seems like an open and shut case of stupidity to me. The Top Gear comments whilst contrived on camera are basically true. Electric cars are hopeless on range (especially for a supercar when driven as a supercar) and take a ridiculous amount of time to charge. Petrol (or even diesel) cars can simply have some fuel added in seconds and you're on your way again and generally go a lot further on a tank, although a supercar driven as such will also have significantly compromised range. However, you simply add more fuel and drive on.
So, the comments were fair, the program is obviosuly entertainment and the nature of the show is well known. So, as far as I can tell, they haven't got a hope in hell. Tesla seem to think the stupidities of the American legal system have all made it over here. Well, they haven't and the British can actually work out the difference between vitriol and light hearted taking the piss.
As Clarkson would say, epic fail from Tesla.
My race car (and many road cars) when driven round a track does about 10mpg, and I get about, 50 miles per tank out of it. The Tesla will be going well to get 55 at track speeds. Why complain?
In other news, John Carmack, of Doom and Armadillo aerospace fame, owns a Tesla, and his latest rocket (launch this weekend) is called the Stig. Conspiracy?
Electric car, petrol car, diesel car. Pfft!
Let's switch to nuclear power and be done with it. No more petrol stations, no more Trust House Fortes, and best of all no survivors clogging up the hospitals after a spot of Fog-Bound Motorway Madness ends the usual way.
The end of the seven-mile pile-up and the beginning of the era of the seven-mile self-vapourizing population-problem ender!
*And* it'd boil off the fog for a bit. Bonus!
Just viewed the TG Tesla Roadster review again on YouTube. My memory of the original airing was of a very fair review with Clarkson actually "mostly" very enthused about the car.
Any regular TG viewer will be aware that all cars have their negative aspects mentioned too ( even in cars JC really likes he will find something to criticize.
It is a particular advantage the BBC has ( no advertising ) that allows this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSFehyN8X7w
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