Tesla Sues Top Gear

iamtheoneneo said:
whilst the show is scripted , clearly there words do have an affect on the gen public.
Tesla have a right to be annoyed - they lied about a feature of the car and im sure they have lost sales over it.

would you by a tesla knowing what clarkson said even if you knew it was a lie? you would still have your doubts.....
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Given the price and target market of a Tesla I doubt it has any difference at all.
 
The scripting is not the problem; it is Top Gear trying to build an illusion of spontaneity when events are quite clearly scripted that seems to annoy people.

I couldn't care less, but I don't have expectations of Top gear either.
 
I can see where they're coming from - making an issue of running out of charge was a bit misleading. Any car will run out of fuel if the driver is a big enough moron (Top Gear presenters, for example?). So why bother showing that for the Tesla? The implication was that it can suddenly and unexpectedly run out of charge, which in reality it wont any more than a petrol car with a broken fuel guage. I expect that's what Tesla are peed off about.

Having said that I thought they were overall quite fair to the car, pointing out its pros and cons in a less petrol-head-biassed way than they tend to treat anything else electric/hybrid.
 
Tesla are complaining because people come to them asking whether the Top Gear stuff is accurate. Surely once they're at the shop, you just tell them "No, it's not accurate" and then you sell them the car.

If people are going to be put off buying the car to the extent that they don't even make it to the car dealership, then more fool them, but if that's your problem then you may as well sue anyone who says anything bad about any car ever.
 
I can't see what case Tesla have. Top Gear is the WWF of the motoring world and most people know it. Are Top Gear really under a legal obligation to be 100% factual in everything they report? JC states so many untruths about many different marques, such as complaining that the Golf MkV TSi is horribly jerky and slow when he had it in winter mode the whole time.

Where does it end? It's the floodgates argument and my belief is that the case is destined to fail for that reason.
 
A lot of people take what they see on screen a true. FFS people from the soaps get stopped on the street and harassed for being a right **** on TV because some idiot thinks thats how they are. So producers must realise that there is a large portion of people out there who will believe ANYTHING thats put on TV
 
G|mp said:
Indeed, most people that moan about it don't remember the 'old' Top Gear!

It needed to be scripted and bought more up to date with what audiences want from a show nowadays, when Clarkson especially used to do road tests it was cripplingly unfunny and dreary.

**** I remember Quintin Wilson ffs!
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I remember that fat cockney bloke that only lasted a few series, hes on some men and motors buying 2nd hand cars.

I only really got into the new format top gear around 2004
 
sigma said:
So how did it win factual program of the year?

People clearly take it more seriously.
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Where did I dispute its status as a factual program? I simply said it was scripted - many, if not all, factual programs are scripted.

Infact its quite difficult to be factual without a script or prior research.
 
gdrules said:
Everyone's sueing everyone for everything and anything these days, money grabbing little...
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Tesla don't want money, they want the media attention so that the BBC retracts it's comments.

vonhelmet said:
but if that's your problem then you may as well sue anyone who says anything bad about any car ever.
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There's a difference between saying something bad, and completely making "facts" up.


Robbie G said:
I can't see what case Tesla have. Top Gear is the WWF of the motoring world and most people know it.
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The review seemed pretty legitimate to me. I didn't for a second question JC's comments on the car lasting 55miles.
 
I can see Tesla's point, the main thing that puts people off about electric cars is the range compared to standard fuelled cars, and in Tesla's case a quoted 200 mile range is one of its major selling points. Coupled with the fact that Top Gear has a huge audience, most of whom will pretty much blindly go by what they say, they should not have invented a scenario just because it "might" happen, as its sure to damage Tesla's reputation.
 
If true I can understand them suing over this...pathetic to make something like that up in what is supposedly a review. Agree with the Pantomime comment...a good description of TG.

Ironically though, this could give the Telsa a lot of relatively cheap publicity and more sales.
 
Briton said:
If true I can understand them suing over this...pathetic to make something like that up in what is supposedly a review. Agree with the Pantomime comment...a good description of TG.

Ironically though, this could give the Telsa a lot of relatively cheap publicity and more sales.
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Indeed it could be part of a marketing idea which includes URLs like this...

http://www.teslavstopgear.com/
 
Longbow said:
The review seemed pretty legitimate to me. I didn't for a second question JC's comments on the car lasting 55miles.
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Fair enough, I know little-nothing about the wider legal issues involved. I personally take almost everything JC says with a pinch of salt but I can understand how some might take it as gospel. However if we make it a tort to speak BS on the TV, then the floodgates argument comes into play, since many many other entities and people are doing likewise.
 
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