Tesla Sues BBC Over 2008 Review
By John O'Dell March 30, 2011
Tesla Motors was outraged back in 2008 when the BBC program "Top Gear" reviewed the all-electric Tesla Roadster and highlighted the show's hosts pushing an out-of-juice model into a garage and claiming it had run out of power after just 55 miles. Now it has sued the British Broadcasting Corp. in a London court, alleging the program contained libel and "malicious falsehood."
The company announced the suit late Tuesday evening, saying it had waited more than two years after the program was broadcast to file the civil action because it had been trying during that period to get the BBC to respond to numerous requests to discuss the matter and "reluctantly" went to court after "repeated attempts to contact the BBC, over the course of months, were ignored." Because of the time difference, BBC representatives could not be reached for comment, but "Top Gear" host Jeremy Clarkson defended the program in a column in London's Sunday Times that was published about a week after the show initially was broadcast.
Edmunds' Green Car Advisor took "Top Gear" to task back then for the apparent inaccuracies in the program. The suit, filed Tuesday in Britain's High Court of Justice, which is somewhat analogous to a federal district court in the U.S., alleges that the December 14, 2008, "Top Gear" program contained numerous false statements and falsified images impugning the Tesla Roadster's reliability and performance. The program, which is infamous in EV circles, featured a lengthy on-track sequence in which Clarkson marveled at the Roadster's speed and acceleration.
But that was followed by sequences in which the car appeared to run out of power and coast to a stop and was pushed into a garage by members of the program's on-screen crew (left), while Clarkson proclaimed that "although Tesla say it will do 200 miles, we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles..." Later in the program, Clarkson claimed that the electric motor in a second Roadster the program had secured had overheated, resulting in reduced power and that the first Roadster couldn't be driven because "while it was being charged its brakes had broken."
In its suit, Tesla claims that the first Roadster shown in the program did not run out of power and did not have to be pushed into the garage, that its brakes were never broken -- although a fuse for an electrical circuit that provided extra braking power did blow -- and that the second Roadster's motor did not overheat but rather that the car's electronic controls reduced the available torque so that the motor would not overheat (which sounds to us as though the Roadster's brain thought it was going to get too hot -- but we'll let the highly paid barristers sort that out).
"There was no time [during the program] at which neither Roadster was available for driving," the suit says. Tesla also claims that Clarkson's comments about the car's range being were "intentionally and/or recklessly" misleading and caused Tesla's reputation to be "severely damaged." Clarkson and others affiliated with the program deliberately lied about the Tesla's performance, the suit alleges, "to bolster a pre-judged, pre-determined and pre-scripted adverse verdict on the Roadster, that [quoting from the program transcript] 'in the real world, it absolutely doesn't work.' "
In his 2008 Sunday Times piece, Clarkson wrote that Tesla claimed the Roadster "could run, even if driven briskly, for 200 miles, but after just a morning the battery power was down to 20% and we realised that it would not have enough juice for all the shots we needed. Happily, the company had brought a second car along, so we switched to that. But after a while its motor began to overheat. And so, even though the first was not fully charged, we unplugged it - only to find that its brakes weren't working properly. So then we had no cars..."
But Tesla, he wrote, "could not complain about what was shown because it was there. And here's the strange thing. It didn't...Tesla, when contacted by reporters, gave its account of what happened and it was exactly the same as ours. It explained that the brakes had stopped working because of a blown fuse and didn't question at all our claim that the car would have run out of electricity after 55 miles."
That's what he thought then, but now Tesla is seeking unspecified damages for libel and a court order barring the BBC from airing or distributing the Dec. 14 program or repeating the comments made about the Tesla Roadster in that program.
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