So Top Gear lied about Tesla?

[jasonof2000]

OK, he's made his point and he's suing. This would be the time to take a step back.

That's not how Musk seems to work. They are milking this for all the publicity it is worth.

 

[calvinhobbes]

That's not how Musk seems to work. They are milking this for all the publicity it is worth.

...and by doing so, IMHO, they are damaging nothing but their own cause. Shame.

 

[SirEdward]

Acknowledged, but try to see it from the view of the company. They must assume that any potential customer is going to read and watch the reviews he will be able to dig up. Unfortunately, not everyone knows Top Gear well enough to understand how it works. At the same time, their review is very easy to find. Thus, this piece can easily be damaging to Tesla Motors.

I think this thought is too mechanical. I take me as an example: When I watched the Tesla review I was curious about it. After I knew the price, I was sure I wouldn't buy it, but still I thought it could become the first step towards something similar that was affordable to me. I changed my mind now: While Tesla Roadster is a very interestin car, it's not the first step towards private electric mass transportation, and my opinion wouldn't change a bit if TG hadn't shown the car stopping on the track or being pushed. When Jeremy stopped there, what I got was not: "hey, that car doesn't warn you when the charge is low"; what I got was "hey, the charge doesn't last so long as it should". Similarly, when they say the brakes broke and the other car was overheated, I wasn't thinking: "mmmhhh, will the car still make it to 50 mph when it's overheated?", I was thinking: "hey, that car has a lot of reliability issues.

The points brought in by Telsa motors are not addressing the things i felt important, but minor details I hadn't even noticed the first time I saw the review. For this reason, I can not stop thinking that Tesla Motors are simply trying to make everybody lose time over insignificancies, and they should rather improve their car.

You say they act like this because they are a company and they must pay attention to everything, and you are not wrong, but I feel you are yorself focusing on minor details. What Tesla does now is marketing, and in my opinion marketing not backed by a good prduct is just a waste of everybody else's time.

Let's assume they noticed the broken fuel filler cap and the Italian manual on a petrol station and reenacted the happenings on the mountain road. That still is not the same as the Tesla case, because it is a reenactment of something that has actually happened.

I still think it's exactly the same. The fuel cap problem appeared at a fuel station, and two men without tools could probably solve it well enough to make the car run indefinitely, but they showed the problem appearing in the worst place of them all and leaving the driver stranded. They purposedly lied on what happened. But I don't think this is important because what is important is to show that even supercars that cost over 100k euro can face the same problems we all can face. The basic facts are there, the details are not important with TG; watching 5 minutes of the show is enough to understand that.

"Doesn't leave a good impression" doesn't make a court case. James may have overacted on the no-aircon-thing, but they still didn't show anything that hasn't happened as such.

If he has overacted, then he didn't show things as they really are. I would probably buy a car where I would get a bit sweaty, but I would never buy a car where I would need to shower me with water to withstand the hot temperature.

Actually, the spoken line didn't tell different. Jeremy said from the off "We worked out that on our track, it would run out after just 55 miles. And if it does run out, it's not a quick job to charge it up again.". At the same time, they showed Jeremy looking puzzled in the car which was getting slower and soon ultimately stopped on the track. In the next scene, they pushed it into the hangar.

I think "we worked out" means they calculated, not they actually gone all the way to stopping the car dead.

Yes, my opinion is just as irrelevant. And you are of course free to consider Tesla Motors everything you like. Unfortunately, that's not what we're discussing here.

I think I don't understand what we are discussing. You said it's not the car, and it's not what we think of Tesla Motors' behaviour. Then what is it? How can I make my own opinion on this issue if I can't discuss facts about the car and I can't back up my opinions when I say something?

You brought forward that Tesla's points are minor, even if they are major enough for a court case.

The case has not been solved yet, so Tesla may well lose, and (believe me), not everything that is brought in court is important or sacred, sometimes people sue other people for stupid reasons.

You brought forward other examples of which you say they are the same, but actually they aren't.

If you want to make a point, you should use something that we agree on; I still maintain they are, and I backed up my point.

That's not opinion or taste, those are facts either being believed or denied.

The facts are Tesla Roadster is not a good car to start with and I am the first here whose opinion on Tesla Motor didn't change a bit due to the points upon which Tesla is sueing TG. (in fact, I hadn't even noticed one of them!)

... which is still completely irrelevant. That said, one can come to the conclusion that we are having this discussion because you don't like the car and are deliberately trying to find arguments to make their manufacturer seem butthurt.

Sorry, but that is your own biased point of view. I explained every point I made, multiple times. If I was like you said, I should be insulting now, and I can not avoid noticing that between us -you- are the one that got closer to some form of insult. specifically here:

This is a very crucial difference I can only kindly ask you to try to wrap your head around

here:

But your opinion on this matter is, with all due respect, irrelevant

and here:

we are having this discussion because you don't like the car and are deliberately trying to find arguments to make their manufacturer seem butthurt.

So, I could well say, with proofs, that you are the one desperately trying to stick to your own prejudice, because -you- are the one getting angry, but that wouldn't really bring on a peaceful discussion, would it? So I say, let's try to stick to facts! After all, we are just chatting.

 

[TC]

The facts are Tesla Roadster is not a good car to start with and I am the first here whose opinion on Tesla Motor didn't change a bit due to the points upon which Tesla is sueing TG. (in fact, I hadn't even noticed one of them!)

You must not pay attention very well then. I noticed all of them and took them to heart at the time. Finding out later that they were fabricated didn't make me feel too good.

Cutting through all the BS and nonsense, the Tesla is actually a very good car. Well, other than the huge price tag anyway. The only real flaw is the recharge time, but that's just the nature of recharging any battery operated device. I mean, a cell phone takes an hour or two and you can't hop on and ride it to work... yet, anyway. Nothing else TopGear showed is exclusive to Tesla's or even EV's in general. Find me a car that hasn't blown a fuse, gets poor MPG, or runs alittle hot when thrashed on a track and I might be impressed. Until then I have to conclude that TopGear fabricated/massively exaggerated the cars flaws to fit in line with their preconceived notions.

Trying to say it's a fact that the Tesla is not a good car is laughable. It's at least as reliable as all the Volkswagens we get over here.

 

[SirEdward]

You must not pay attention very well then. I noticed all of them and took them to heart at the time. Finding out later that they were fabricated didn't make me feel too good.

Cutting through all the BS and nonsense, the Tesla is actually a very good car. Well, other than the huge price tag anyway. The only real flaw is the recharge time, but that's just the nature of recharging any battery operated device. I mean, a cell phone takes an hour or two and you can't hop on and ride it to work... yet, anyway. Nothing else TopGear showed is exclusive to Tesla's or even EV's in general. Find me a car that hasn't blown a fuse, gets poor MPG, or runs alittle hot when thrashed on a track and I might be impressed. Until then I have to conclude that TopGear fabricated/massively exaggerated the cars flaws to fit in line with their preconceived notions.

Trying to say it's a fact that the Tesla is not a good car is laughable. It's at least as reliable as all the Volkswagens we get over here.

Well, I think it isn't... If it costed 20-30k euro instead of 100k, like my VW, then maybe it would be. It's not one single thing that makes a car a good car. The Tesla Roadster suffers from all the massive drawbacks of electric vehicles (weight, charging times, cost, how mucht the batteries will last and how much it will cost to swap them), from some of the drawbacks of small-company cars (reliability, distribution and assistance, ...cost...), and is not great sports car either. It also has several good points (maintenance should be limited, apart from reliability) and has a great, great, great acceleration and, presumably, great power delivery.

So, all in all, it is a great -electric- car, because there are no electric cars like it, but not a great car, because there are many ICE cars (or even hybrids) which are better than that. I think what I say is actually a great thing to say about the Tesla Roadster, because I'm not comparing it to other electric cars or strange things coming from hippyvalley, I'm comparing it to real cars, so I ma actually considering it a real car, and there are few fully-electric cars that can be taken seriously as real cars.

Tesla Roadster is a huge leap forward, it is a proper car. Just not a very good one.

As for the batteries, as I already said: yes, my phone needs more than an hour to get charged too, but lasts five days without needing another one, and doesn't stop working as a phone while it's under charge. Also, I might be able to find another phone while mine is under charge, or I could swap batteries, or I could buy another one, but it's much harder to find another car while yours is charging up. Battery charge is much more important for a car than it is for a phone.

 

[MattD1zzl3]

SirEdward please just stop posting.

 

[SirEdward]

SirEdward please just stop posting.

This is a quite funny request indeed.

I'm not insulting anyone, I'm discussing politely and explaining what I'm saying, I'm on topic and this is a forum where people can discuss.

So, on what basis should I be -forced- to stop writing, when you could just -freely- stop reading instead?

 

[the Interceptor]

I won't stop reading, but I will stop responding to your posts, because it just doesn't make any sense to me anymore.

 

[SirEdward]

I'm sorry, The Interceptor, particuarly that you got angry in the last posts. There is nothing to be angry if we don't share the same points of view. I have a verobse behaviour in discussions, I can go on talking and talking and talking, just because that's what I am, I don't expect you to agree with me necessarily and I won't be insulting neither (if that happened, show me where, even in private, and I can apologize), so don't take it personally.

After all, I agree with you on most things, I think from the beginning that TG did show something not stricty factual, I just think that this is not a lie in the despicable (and suable) sense of the term because I don't think that this changed people's mind about the car. So Tesla can sue TG how much they want, it's their right; I disagree with their behaviour and I sincerely hope they won't win. And if they win, I hope it will be on a serious issue I haven't considered yet. We'lls ee what happens.

After all, this is just a small chat in an Internet forum.

 

[awdrifter]

While I kinda see Tesla's point, I still hope they don't win this. Otherwise companies will start suing reviewers when they don't give them a good review.

 

[TC]

While I kinda see Tesla's point, I still hope they don't win this. Otherwise companies will start suing reviewers when they don't give them a good review lie.

FTFY

The power of the press is great and all, but that doesn't give them permission to fake events for sensationalism when it can severely damage the reputation of others.

 

[GerFix]

^^ I hope the opposite. It isn't about the review being "bad" .. it is about the review being inaccurate and based on stuff that was just guessed or made-up and then presented as fact. I'd rather live in a world where journalists tell me the truth rather than what their (biased) opinion is. In medical literature, we are forced now to disclose "potential conflicts of interest" with everything that is published; and opinion is never presented as evidence. Even the humorous articles published in the British Medical Journal's Christmas edition adhere to these rules and I don't see why journalists (if they want to be considered as professionals) can't (or shouldn't) do the same.

 

[MattD1zzl3]

Thats what we're so upset about. Top gears credibility has been strained for years with "streaching the truth", fair enough, entertainment show (like the "jersey shore" of car shows, i suppose they are saying), But outright fabrication is another story.

Im ok with people not losing their head over this, but doing mental contortions to make tesla motors look like the bad guys here is something i cant just let happen. Call top gear an entertainment show and stick to it, dont turn around and pretend their opinion should be trusted on some other review. Its one way or the other.

 

[the Interceptor]

After all, this is just a small chat in an Internet forum.

This is the problem, basically. It has nothing to do you with personally, and I apologize for getting a little rude and offensive. It's just that I noticed that responding took more and more time and effort, and the topic was getting to me more than I wanted to. I would love to invite you over for a beer and have a nice chat with you about this, as I'm sure we basically are on the same page and would be able to clear up this issue in no time. But since that ain't an option, I'm pulling out of the discussion.

 

[SirEdward]

This is the problem, basically. It has nothing to do you with personally, and I apologize for getting a little rude and offensive. It's just that I noticed that responding took more and more time and effort, and the topic was getting to me more than I wanted to.

It happens, I know. One day you post something, two days later you are multiquoting peope on a 1000 words comment. I think it's just the way the Internet is.

I would love to invite you over for a beer and have a nice chat with you about this, as I'm sure we basically are on the same page and would be able to clear up this issue in no time. But since that ain't an option, I'm pulling out of the discussion.

Ok, we already discussed the issue thoroughfully, so I understand perfectly. And if we get to meet someday, I keep the beer chat valid.

 

[Amie8]

I'd rather live in a world where journalists tell me the truth

....where the air is clear, the grass is green and little children skip hand in hand through verdant meadows, where lambs and fluffy bunnies gambol in the warm spring air and chocolate doesn't make you fat ....

Never gonna happen.

 

[GerFix]

^ If we don't shoot for the stars, we might as well go back to the caves

 

[Bunji]

^"Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, YOU'LL DIE TERRIBLY IN SPACE."

 

[GerFix]

^ I have difficulty reconciling your comment with your signature

 

[Raitzi]

To clarify the Finnish magazine track test about Tesla. They said that they did not manage to do a single full lap without power limiter reducing power.(not sportcar material in this respect) Also they said that if power limiter would not have kicked in, Tesla could have managed a similar time with new Z4(the heavy car with foldable metal roof).