Tesla loses Top Gear libel case

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I really enjoy the British Top Gear, I take it with a grain of salt, but they do come up with some funny and interesting challenges!
The American one, not so much......

 

I've watched Top Gear's episode of Tesla Roadster a few times ...

Clarkson paints the Roadster in a very bad light in the last half of the episode. First it's the claim that Tesla says they could run the car full out on the track for 200 miles ... then Clarkson says ...
"we calculated it would run out after only 55 miles"

What the heck does 'calculated' mean anyway? Didn't they set a trip meter after charging the car? anyhooo.

Then comes all the comments about 20 hours to charge on a 110V (stupid) and 26 hrs to charge off a tiny windmill (stupid), then 3 days to drive to someplace (not so stupid, I read a model S blog of lady who had a terrible time charging from Chicago to Rochester MN. Took couple days travel time).

I don't think Tesla should sue Broder or NYT. Broder was either lazy, or crafty, but he dealt Tesla a good blow showing what happens if you leave it out overnight in the cold, something everyone is used to in an ICE car.

All the spat about Broder turning the heat up, hitting 80 mph for a minute, standard charging instead of range, charging for 47 min instead of 58, even taking off from Butch's with 30 on gage is just dumb moves and sloppy journalism. Not sue worthy.

 

Entertainment does not mean decieving...
If we watch a "test", even on Top Gear, do we want manipulated results or prefer the truth?

 

In the long run, I don't think either one really hurts Tesla any more than word of mouth will.
What Tesla has to do is create a car that will give a fair share of consumers the range they need or want, under at least moderately unfavorable conditions.
That means the car will sometimes get left out at night in the cold. That means, even when chargers are available, sometimes the user will be in a hurry and not charge for the full recommended time.
Twenty hours to charge at 110 volts is not stupid if you drive to some random friend's house who doesn't have 220 plugs. As you might.
Charging on the windmill is a joke. You can decide for yourself if it is funny, stupid or both or neither.
Yeah, based on what cycledrum says, you wonder why Top Gear "calculated" the car would run out after 55 miles full out. If they didn't do a full out run, they should have. But is there any reason to believe that if you drive the thing full out on the German autobahn (as a sports car person might) that you won't decrease energy efficiency greatly?

 

I don't think that is on the driver not tesla. If you decide you don't have time to stop at the gas station, you run out of gas, its your own damn fault. In a large battery EV that isn't likely to happen, as most days all you need to do is get it to home. What Broder and Consumer reports did is decide to under charge the car, then leave it out in the cold not plugged in, when plugs were available. Those that fight technology will always do what it takes to sabotage it. Edison even, that lover of tech, didn't like AC, so he decided to electrocute an elephant to prove how dangerous AC is. It didn't work. AC won. I don't think the broder's of the world will win this one in the long run either.

I'd say that is a limitation for road trips. The us government just came out with a new stat. Only 800,000 people comute more than 50 miles each way. If you aren't one of these 800,000 people out of the hundreds of millions of drivers, the odds are you will have plenty of juice in a 265 mile car when its at a friends house If that friend is over 100 miles away, you may need to drive to a faster charger before you head back home. Its just a limitation. Not a likely scenario, just like driving on the track at max speed. A purposeful distortion.

ITs top gear, its entertainment. Tesla should have paid off Clarkson for the positive review or not given him a car. That's the way these infotainment programs work. I don't think you are likely to try to drive the car full on for many hours, on the autobahn. The fuel indicator would slow you. Clarkson, if he had shown it going full speed on the track and actually running out of juice would have been one thing. Pretending it ran out of charge is something quite different.

 

I doubt that the vast majority of the people complaining about Top Gear ever watched it until they heard that Top Gear dissed Tesla. Anyone who watches Top Gear expecting to see accurate road tests doesn't understand what the program is about.

Tesla should have made a disclaimer stating that the roadster was not suitable for road course track days unless special charging provisions were available at the track with extra time between track sessions. Most modern sports cars are capable of doing a day on a road course. It's great car for what it is but it has limitations other cars don't.

The sports car club I'm in is primarily a social club with retirement age car owners but over 10% of the car owners have done a track day on a road course in the past few years. Track days are gaining in popularity.

 

I have seen it for the past TG UK 4 years, but not every episode.
Example for accuracy: The guests round up at the track and get measured for a ranking.

But now, you make me beginning to suspect those lap time are forged or false...

 

Look, I'm rooting for Tesla and electric cars in general. I would prefer not to be getting my transportation from oil, even if hybrids extend the life of each gallon.

But the market, as I suspect it is going to be, probably won't agree with you or me, if the car can't deal with sometimes being left in the cold without a charge, sometimes deal with having only a 110 volt charge available, sometimes deal with being "driven hard and put up wet" (to paraphrase my wife on horses), etc.
As for the business of running out of gas being your own fault--sure. But gassing up takes only a few minutes. What will the market decide when "gassing up" takes about an hour? I suspect the answer is that a lot of the consumers will either say "TOO LONG" or will in practice only charge for however long it takes to eat fast food or do whatever.
I'm not sure about Texas, but here in Arkansas you can't even buy a Plug-in Prius.
I could probably charge it on 220 at home--IF I put in a new circuit.
I've seen very few charging stations within a hundred miles of where I live and work.
You are right that I wouldn't drive a Tesla full out on the autobahn for hours, but I bet a bunch of people who want a sporty electric car would.
And I have driven at 80 steadily on European highways, not too fast by their standards, but. . .
In your part of the world, I'd like to see how far a Tesla goes on a full charge West on 80 mph I-10, into a 10 mph (i.e. moderate) wind.
Not everybody is going to do all of these all of the time, but enough of us are going to do some of them enough of the time that Teslas have to be able to deal with these things if people are going to buy them.

All this is why I don't have a problem with Consumer Reports and Broder, and don't even have much of a problem with what I hear was done by Top Gear.

 

I am perfectly happy that a lot of people will decline to go EV out of fear, as long as they don't harass those that put aside the fear and go forward.

Programs like Top Gear and Broder propagate the fear for their own gains, fair enough, but they also indirectly harass those that are going forward.

 

This is also what I see

 

Top Gear and Broder did not propagate the fear, they just proved it is real.
Human is human, human makes mistakes and do crazy things.

 

neither proved anything except that you can lie in print or video and get away with it by calling it entertainment.

 

And where in Great Britain did they attempt to charge the car with 110V?

 

There is a difference between reporting information, and faking the news. Just ask NBC as it got caught rigging a truck with explosives.

NBC go BOOM!

Did Clarkson just report that the tesla was not a track car. No he got the pictures of them pushing a perfectly drivable car to an outlet, it could easily drive to. The difference, it is a British entertainment show, not an American news show. The faking of the picture.

Broder has less of an excuse and is almost exactly like the NBC fake story, except..... Tesla could not find proof that he did it on purpose like GM found on NBC in the junk yard. There was the plausible denaiablitly that he did not have the sense of a 10 year old, and would rather wait in the cold out of juice than wait for a charge.

Neither are very different than the NBC fake. Clarkson, tabloid, tesla was stupid to not have them promise to not fake things. Broder, NYT, that is a black eye for the NYT.

Absolutely, these are initial adopter cars for people that have more than $50K to buy an extraordinary vehicle and piece of technology. It is not for everyone. My problem is with people justifying the fake stories. Why not just say how long it takes to charge. Wait, I know that would not sell as much advertising.

Yep Toyota doesn't want to sell them here, even though the state is the #4 state for plug-ins. I've seen one brought in from out of state. There are many volts, leafs, teslas, and even a new fisker karma in town from companies that want to sell people these plug ins. Austin is one of these high tech initial adopter cities though - and we don't go bellow freezing every year.

Yes I don't think its an Arkansas car unless you stay in its range. In Austin there are L2 chargers everywhere and you get 6 months unlimited charging for $25. The one tesla S I rode in gets charged with solar, the roadser I've been in is charged by wind. All the public chargers here are 100% renewable.

Probably want an ampere for that. The range indicator is going to go down fast. I don't think you need to pretend a car is out of juice to push it, just say it. 80 mph is going to only go half as far as 50 mph, ofcourse at 85 mph I was down to 30mpg in my prius

I don't think its one of those cars to go to west texas, but it will probably do fine in the Austin/Dallas/Houston are with fast chargers getting built in the near future.

Do you think faking shots is the right way to report the news?

I don't think tesla ever expected that someone would try to run a 500 mile race with an EV and no quick chargers. I grew up with racing. Every race track has very fast fueling options on it. duh. I think we may eventually have a bev race at the new f1 track in Austin.

I don't think a prius is very suitable for the track either. Clarkson had it burn more fuel than a bmw m3. British TV is full of sensationalistic crap maquarding as facts, there courts allow more

 

Well I was born in England 53 years ago and I clearly have far less knowledge of English TV than you do it would seem.

Which sensationalistic crap pedalling programmes are you think of?

 

Heck, Top Gear like "news/entertainment/whatever" has been pretty much standard practice since the first chisel was put to rock. What's really neat is how fast you can find out a huge amount of missing details using the internet. I no longer have to wait long to find out the other side of hardly any story.

The more worrisome problem is using the "justice" system as a for-hire assult system for those that can afford it and for those who cannot afford to fight back. (That was the second use for the rock and chisel).

 

well we were talking about top gear and Jeremy Clarkson. The defense against libel in British court was that being sensationalist was normal for England. Are you claiming the top gear piece was factual? That you normally need to push a charged battery to a charger for the tv cameras?