So Top Gear lied about Tesla?

They're not commuter cars. Supposedly EV's are just that - commuter cars - but with the silly range they fail at their purpose.
 
Pretty simple one for me, as a similar discussion had formed at the time when the Tesla episode was aired: Top Gear deliberately misrepresented the capabilities of the Tesla and, just in the next review, praised the fuel cell vehicle without mentioning the downsides of the technology.

I don't really mind if they talk about the bad sides here (EV) and shove them under the carpet there (fuel cell). But when they start to flat out lie and frabricate situations which never happened as such, the show has nothing to do with journalism anymore. The EV has way enough shortcomings to be demonstrated, so they could easily have discredited the technology while staying factually.

I say Tesla Motors has every right to sue them, and I hope the BBC get the heads set straight on this one. Every journalist bends the truth at times. But there are lines which should not be crossed, not for any reason.
 
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Gotta chime in here:

Wether I agree with the review or not, that fact is that "Top Gear" really doesn't like the electric car as a whole. I mean...the presenters on the show reeeealy don't like them.

Hammond has stated on several occasions on paper that he would buy an electric car NOW if there was one that would get from him his home in the Welsh borders to London. As he says all the present cars like the Leaf would run out of juice at Oxford. When he tested the Leaf for his Mirror column he devised a 70 mile test drive around his home which was going fine until he had to turn on the wipers & lights and the range dropped dramatically making him wonder if he was going to get home. He did but it was a bit buttock clenching toward the end!.

I'm not defending them though, if they have cooked the facts. I am just having really difficulty believing that Clarkson would do this. Perhaps, as it seems apparant that no EV ever gets the range that the manufacturers say it will (very like MPG figures for ICE ones) they were just assuming that the Tesla wouldn't either, and built the review aorund that. That Tesla have waited over 2 years to file a suit is very suspicious - makes me wonder whether they have seen the reported increase in orders for the Mexican Mastretta since Mexicogate. The 'no publicity is bad publicity' kind of thinking.
 
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I still fail to see where Top Gear "lied and fabricate situations". Top Gear exaggerated the truth to prove there point.
 
Top gear is doing us all a favor. Electric cars are a joke and always will be and are not even close to the solution we need right now for ditching oil.:rolleyes:
 
Do you think Bentley will sue them for their review of the Mulsanne?
 
Thet fact that people are talking about the g-whiz and the tesla in the same breath means that they have zero idea about what the cars are actually built for. Just as a Range Rover and a Atom are different in the purposes, as are the many flavors of electric car.

The tesla is not going to be someone's only car. :rolleyes: Who is going to buy a RWD 2-seater $100,000 roadster as their only car? The people that buy these already have other cars for road trips, commuting long distances, etc. It's designed to be a fun "sunday drive" car.
 
They're not commuter cars. Supposedly EV's are just that - commuter cars - but with the silly range they fail at their purpose.
The Tesla Roadster is a commuter car.

Right. :lol:
 
https://pic.armedcats.net/s/sp/spudmunkey/2011/03/30/Capture.JPG

Both Top Gear and Tesla would have to provide evidence for number 1.

Pretty sure Clarkson denies number 2.

Tesla admits in other articles that the brakes malfunctioned. They also admit that a technician had to replace the blown fuse and some kind of vacuum pump. So technically, it was for a period of time not available for use.

Both Top Gear and Tesla would have to provide evidence for number 4.

Number 5 ties into everything above.

I want proof Top Gear lied and fabricate situations. Not accusations with nothing to back them up.
 
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The evidence is all out there, go and look it up for yourself.

A Tesla Roadster doesn't just stop when the battery runs low, it goes into a speed-limited range extender mode when reaching 20% battery level. Showing how the car had to be pushed into the hangar was clearly misleading. Clarkson himself confirmed in his blog that the car reached just that level and thus didn't stop completely. A BBC spokesperson confirmed that the car being pushed was shown "to demonstrate what could happen".

As for the overheating, it's the same principle. The electric motor is aircooled, so when the car is driven on a track, the motor can overheat under certain conditions. The car again automatically limits the performance until the engine has cooled down again, it doesn't just stop like demonstrated on Top Gear.

The so called "brake failure" was a blown fuse on the auto-assist braking feature and didn't affect the mechanical brakes as such. Despite being fixed within minutes, Top Gear claimed that they had no car to review anymore.

There were a couple of minor other things in the review, but basically that's the bottom line. They went far beyond the "natural disadvantages" of an EV such as the Tesla Roadster by fabricating footage and clearly taking things out of context.
 
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The evidence is all out there, go and look it up for yourself.

A Tesla Roadster doesn't just stop when the battery runs low, it goes into a speed-limited range extender mode when reaching 20% battery level. Showing how the car had to be pushed into the hangar was clearly misleading. Clarkson himself confirmed in his blog that the car reached just that level and thus didn't stop completely. A BBC spokesperson confirmed that the car being pushed was shown "to demonstrate what could happen".

As for the overheating, it's the same principle. The electric motor is aircooled, so when the car is driven on a track, the motor can overheat under certain conditions. The car again automatically limits the performance until the engine has cooled down again, it doesn't just stop like demonstrated on Top Gear.

The so called "brake failure" was a blown fuse on the auto-assist braking feature and didn't affect the mechanical brakes as such. Despite being fixed within minutes, Top Gear claimed that they had no car to review anymore.

There were a couple of minor other things in the review, but basically that's the bottom line. They went far beyond the "natural disadvantages" of an EV such as the Tesla Roadster by fabricating footage and clearly taking things out of context.

Evidence my ass. It's all he said, she said. If you read 10 different articles you get 10 different variations of what happened.

I want PROOF right from Tesla and Top Gear on what exactly happened. Not some guy peaking this mysterious pre-show script and Tesla claiming nothing mechanical happened to either car. Saying and proving Top Gear is full of shit are two completely different things.
 
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Er...honestly? I'd rather have the Tesla. *shrugs*
 
Ok, if you want to talk sports cars:

In the UK a Tesla is roughly ?85k+. Now, would you have that or a 911 GT3, Nissan GT-R or BMW M3?
If I were to buy a plaything for that amount of money, I would have enough to spare to afford more than one. Additionally, I'd do what anyone would do: test drive and choose what I like best.

It's interesting how you were previously saying that all electric vehicles are commuter cars, but are now comparing the Tesla to some of the finest performance cars available. That's a pretty damn high jump up the ladder for the pokey little ecobox from California! :mrgreen:
 
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It's difficult to compare it to anything else because of that ridiculous price. It would've been a completely different case had it been 35k.
 
Evidence my ass. It's all he said, she said. If you read 10 different articles you get 10 different variations of what happened.

I want PROOF right from Tesla and Top Gear on what exactly happened. Not some guy peaking this mysterious pre-show script and Tesla claiming nothing mechanical happened to either car. Saying and proving Top Gear is full of shit are two completely different things.
Only way to go then is to visit the trial, given there will be one and it will be public. Everything else you can find right now is just "something said by someone".

As claimed by Tesla Motors and confirmed by several reviews however, the Roadster doesn't simply stop as shown on Top Gear. For this to happen, Clarkson must have kept the car going all through the normal mode down to 20% charge and then all through the slow get-you-home-mode down to whenever the electronics finally cut you off. Then, you'd have to push.

Same thing with the overheating. You can not stop the Roadster by driving it so hard that the motor overheats. It will, also confrmed by reviews, simply limit its top speed until the motor has cooled down and start to drive normally afterwards.

Both of these things can't have happened during the filming unless there was a catastrophic failure of some kind in both cases. So if there was, why didn't Top Gear report so? It would have been exactly what they wanted.
 
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The company I am working for have a lots of EV cars, and I hate them because they need to be recharge many times a day given the heavy duty natural of the works, and every time it run out of juice it take 30 min to 1 hour to recharge and there simply not enought charging bay for all the cars and mark lifts, no matter how many they add recently while 1/3 of them have problem of sort.
 
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