The BBC is being sued by the makers of the electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, over claims a race on Top Gear was rigged.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/12907367

I can't see how Tesla can sue them for that

Should be grateful for giving the car so much publicity in the first place.

Can't wait, see Clarkson and co burning Tesla's for the rest of the year then LOL

lols yeah. heard about this

Its bollocks. they wont win.

You cant sue someone/something for voicing an opinion.

They also obv cant see the sarcasm.

if your money was in tesla, and they did stage it, you would be a bit peeved

"it argued that because the car was driven aggressively" ... It was a race? haha

to an extent, yeah. I wouldn't be trying to sue them though.

However, if you were interested in it already, watching that review on topgear wouldn't really put you off would it? Its top gear ffs

You already know its going to run out of battery.

Your already mad for wanting an electric car.

I love that nothings going to happen you can tell there americans!

if your money was in tesla, and they did stage it, you would be a bit peeved

if i was stupid enough to invest in a n American company, and even more so if i was to invest in an American company that build electric sports car's, i would of probably dived out of my office window by now to get away from the bailiffs banging on the door

thing is pretty much every race on top gear is staged but do you have Reliant suing them or any of the other cars that are ridiculed or just made to look silly in comical races. this was in 2008 as well, that was 3 years ago and they've only just decided it was detrimental to the cars image? sounds to me like they didn't give a shit to start with but now the American markets have crashed they are looking for any way to try and claw back some money or publicity, looks like i'll be buying the sun on Saturday just to see what jezza has to say about it

when u said buying the sun.. it took me a second to realise what you meant

However, that gave me a great idea

I'm going to sue the sun (not the paper, the 'star') for global warming

Tesla are perfectly within their rights to do this.

Unsurprisingly that BBC article is playing things down a little. This paints a different picture:

Tesla to sue Top Gear for defamation

March 30 2011 at 02:21pm

By Jason Woosey

Comment on this story

To our knowledge, no motoring journalist worth his or her salt has ever avoided coming to blows with a car company's PR machine at some stage or another, over a road test that criticised the latter's product.

Usually the confrontation is limited to a string of snotty e-mails or a heated phone call or two, while cancelled advertising contracts are not uncommon either. Yet we've never heard of a media company ever being sued over a car review.

Now one has and it’s none other than the BBC's Top Gear TV show. Tesla Motors, a high-end electric car specialist from the USA, is suing TG over an episode first aired in December 2008, in which the boys raced a Tesla Roadster against the petrol-powered Lotus Elise on which it's based.

However, the action ended after 88km with the Tesla being pushed and Jeremy Clarkson saying it had run out of charge. According to Tesla the car's batteries never died, and TG's subsequent excuse was that it was simply showing what could happen. Tesla also refutes the show's claim that the brakes broke.

Tesla's first response, quite fairly, was to ask for a retraction but since that never happened and that show is still bouncing around in repeats and on DVD, Tesla finally stripped its moer and filed a lawsuit.

You can argue that it's just Top Gear, and people don't take it too seriously but I totally disagree.

How many times do you hear the TG team get quoted on forums etc? Lots. TV has a big subconscious effect on people, look at what happened when Alan Partridge drove a Ford Probe, the negative image that brief appearance brought with it made Probe sales fall flat on their arse almost instantly.

Top Gear gets millions of viewers here in the UK, but that's half the story. It's watched all over the world, and it's repeated constantly on various different channels. So millions of people watched a Tesla roadster cane through its batteries quickly and break down due to a braking fault.

And people do listen to car reviews. Not everyone, but there will be people who take Top Gear's word as gospel. This review gives the impression that Tesla's products are unreliable and not suitable for performance driving, and it's not presented as "I think this car is crap" but actually shown to be faulty. That's catastrophic for a carmaker, even moreso for Tesla who are up against not only more established brands but also more familiar technology.

They're claiming that the accusations are untrue, and Top Gear didn't respond to a request for a retraction. That's defamation, so yes, they're perfectly within their rights to take legal action, and yes there's every chance they'll win if they've got the right people behind them and can prove it's incorrect.

maybe regal should sue them because the beetle that got beaten by the 911 in the latest series had a regal autosport sticker on the windscreen?

Depending on what comes from this... could be the ruin of topgear

We are going to have car manufacturers sueing left right and center. Top gear wont be able to give anything a bad review.

if anything comes of it it will be played down as per usual the show will go on and jezza will take the piss even more thats just who he is but telsa haven't yet proved to the world that its electric car can beat the lotus or indeed go further then 88km without running out of charge until this is proven by the manufacture with the same vehicle and not one with better batteries i and i should imagine a good majority of the population that watch top gear will be on the side of the bbc and not some failed attempt at a sports car company

unless they have repeated this test and proved it to the world then ignore the above

Depending on what comes from this... could be the ruin of topgear

We are going to have car manufacturers sueing left right and center. Top gear wont be able to give anything a bad review.

It won't ruin Top Gear, even if they lose the case it's not going to put the BBC off letting them carry on.

Manufacturers aren't going to sue for bad reviews, they'd be busy if they tried doing that and I hope for my sake it never happens. However, if you borrowed let's say the new VW Polo and write in your road test that it was hand built by starving orphans and the seats were trimmed in poached Panda hide then I think VW might have a problem with it.

If you drove it and said, again as an example, that it was slow and rolled around a lot then that's your opinion. Some people don't want fast cars with pin-sharp handling.

That's the problem here, this wasn't an opinion. The feature implied the car was unreliable and useless, and supposedly these are false accusations. Hence, different story.

How do you know they are false accusations tho Alex? Maybe they didn't do a retraction because it actually happened?

If they do win this then I can see whoever owns the rights to Tue reliant robin being in for a find fall in the not to distant future

Edited 31 March, 201115 yr by McLOVIN

That's my point, I don't.

Can Top Gear prove it happened? And can Tesla prove that the claims are inaccurate?

General consensus from journo-land is that it's quite likely Top Gear twisted the truth to make good telly.

However, I notice that Ford didn't get this mardy at the suggestion that the GT ran out of fuel on test. Didn't it get 5mpg or something?

And they ribbed the Caparo for its unreliability too. Not to mention the digs at British Leyland. But both of them were based around actual events.

If Tesla can prove that the car didn't suffer any reliability problems and that Top Gear's claims were inaccurate, then the BBC have a problem on their hands!

lets be honest, top gear doesnt test cars anymore, it just stages a load of silly sketches to entertain the lowest common denominator.

If Tesla think that their car was shown in an unfair light then they have every right to sue. It the statement:

and TG's subsequent excuse was that it was simply showing what could happen.

seems to be pretty much an admission that they knowingly faked it.

Just because anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that everything on top gear is made up and staged doesn't mean it's right for them to make a car look like a useless pile of crap when it (possibly) isn't.

but Tesla's response of:

It argued that because the car was "driven aggressively" on Top Gear the charge didn't last as long, but that if driven "mindfully" charges could last for 313 miles.

is pretty funny because if they really said that and they seem to be pushing this car as a sports/track car then surely it's not fit for purpose if you can't drive it aggressively?

It argued that because the car was "driven aggressively" on Top Gear the charge didn't last as long, but that if driven "mindfully" charges could last for 313 miles.

is pretty funny because if they really said that and they seem to be pushing this car as a sports/track car then surely it's not fit for purpose if you can't drive it aggressively?

but surely this is also an admission tho hayesey, to me that reads that it did run out of charge quicker than they claim it should last because it was driven aggressively?

what top gear showed no doubt was exaggerated (like every thing else they do) but what they showed seems to be a fair review of the car, albeit dramatised. after all the makers themselves are admitting that if driven hard (like it was on the show) it will run out of charge quickly (like it did on the show) and if your half way around a track you will have to return it to the pits by other means than driving it (like they did on the show). so how is it showing it in an unfair light?

if i designed and built a chocolate fire guard and during a review it was melted on purpose to show what could happen, would that be showing it in an unfair light? after all it's just showing what could happen if it was used for the purpose it was built for. if fact it's showing what would happen if used for the purpose it was built for, just like Tesler are admitting is the case with this car.

before any one gets any idea's i've already patented the chocolate fire guard design, not because i think it would be a success, but because i want to get rich suing any one that tries to tell me it's shit

That episode was a while ago now. Frivolous law suit.

/Tesla's argument.

Edited 31 March, 201115 yr by MattLoaf

Don't like Top gear, because i can't stand Clarkson. He's the archetypical self-opinionated pr*ck!

The pity is that an awful lot of people don't share my view.

Don't like Top gear, because i can't stand Clarkson. He's the archetypical self-opinionated pr*ck!

The pity is that an awful lot of people don't share my view.

An awful lot of people don't share your view because he is entertaining, that is what Top Gear and TV in general is about.

but surely this is also an admission tho hayesey, to me that reads that it did run out of charge quicker than they claim it should last because it was driven aggressively?

If you take any car around a track you'll run out fuel faster than normal though.

what top gear showed no doubt was exaggerated (like every thing else they do) but what they showed seems to be a fair review of the car, albeit dramatised. after all the makers themselves are admitting that if driven hard (like it was on the show) it will run out of charge quickly (like it did on the show) and if your half way around a track you will have to return it to the pits by other means than driving it (like they did on the show). so how is it showing it in an unfair light?

Making things up that cause a company to lose sales is a pretty good grounds for a lawsuit.

If I stare at a fit girl at a bar, and one of my fiancee's mates goes back and tells her I've just shagged someone else do I not have the right to be a bit pissed off that they've exaggerated the story.

That episode was a while ago now. Frivolous law suit.

/Tesla's argument.

That episode gets shown all over the world repeatedly by the BBC and other channels. It's probably been on Dave in the last week.

/your argument.

The crux of this is simple.

Top Gear stretched the truth, as per usual.

This time, the truth they've stretched implies that something is not fit for purpose. That is damaging to Tesla's reputation.

Tesla asked for a retraction, Top Gear have (in not so many words) admitted they made it up. Yet the programme was watched by millions and is repeated all over the world.

All Tesla need to do is prove that what Top Gear said about the car is untruthful and they've got a case.

You can't make things up about people. You can't go around making accusations about people or products on national television and expect to get away with it.

That episode gets shown all over the world repeatedly by the BBC and other channels. It's probably been on Dave in the last week.

/your argument.

So your suggesting that Tesla gave them a review car and never bothered to find out what they thought? No way had anyone in the UK bought one at that point. I am 100% sure they are suing to get some money, probably because not enough people bought their cars.

but surely this is also an admission tho hayesey, to me that reads that it did run out of charge quicker than they claim it should last because it was driven aggressively?

If you take any car around a track you'll run out fuel faster than normal though.

which is what they showed?