We recently reported about Tesla (the electric car company) and the lawsuit they filed against the BBC television show Top Gear. In that complaint, Tesla stated that Top Gear was libelous and malicious when they presented the Tesla Roadster with host Jeremy Clarkson.
Read about the lawsuit (HERE)
Essentially, Top Gear indicated that the Teslas (they had two) had terrible range, had bad brakes (one was defective with a bad fuse – but still functioned) and indicated that they were unreliable. Images of many men pushing one back to the garage was particularly irritating for Tesla.
The Tesla automaker also maintains that the Top Gear script (yes, they use scripts) was written many moons before they received a Tesla. It is thereby concluded by Tesla that the issues associated with their vehicle portrayed by Top Gear were preordained to be unflattering.
Tesla wants the BBC to stop airing that part of their two year old episode.
Andy Wilman, Top Gear’s executive producer said in a blog-post that: Tesla is wrong in many of their allegations. According to Mr. Wilman, it was Tesla that wrongfully projected their low range based on a calculation.
Regarding the brakes, “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,” Wilman said in his post. He went on to say, “Our primary reasoning behind the verdict had nothing to do with how the Tesla performed; our conclusion was based mainly on the fact that it costs three times more than the petrol sports car upon which it’s based. It takes a long time to recharge, so you can’t use it as easily for the carefree motoring journeys that are a prerequisite of sports car driving. You can actually reach that conclusion without driving the car.” – – Andy Wilman via his blog post
He did admit to the show being conceived in advance.
The bottom line is: will the BBC pull down the episode or edit the scenes? Will Tesla back off and accept that Top Gear is a parody show with – ahem – unique conclusions? We see both sides of the argument and hope that they kiss and make up soon.
We at TFLCar.com would like to petition the BBC to give Top Gear a larger budget so their executive producer can use a proper PR person – rather than resorting to a blog post.
We’ll keep you posted as this story continues to evolve.
USA Today provided the information for this story
Now, let’s enjoy more TFLCar.com fun with the Tesla Roadster with this video!
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