Tesla Vs Top Gear

In December 2008 the BBC's Top Gear show aired a feature on Tesla's Roadster, which has developed into a law suit against the BBC show. Tesla believe that their Roadster that was tested by Top Gear over 2 years ago was maliciously judged and that a script was already prewritten before the car was even driven. They say that this in itself is a testament to the show's guilt of giving misconceptions about the cars performance and image and more or less condemning the car in advance.

BBC's Top Gear said in the show that the Tesla Roadster could only drive a range of 55 miles around their track and showed the car actually coming to a halt, apparently running out of power. Tesla argue that the reason for the car slowing was due to a fault on the car prior to shooting - something to do with the fuse to the vacuum pump failing, so a harder pump of the brakes would have helped with this.

BBC's Top Gear has been very quiet about it all, until a few days ago. Apparently an email accidently sent to the Top Gear studio has resulted in the producer of the show, Andy Wilman, to bite back via the show's official blog. He explains that the reason for his defending of the show, which he would normally keep quiet about with it being a legal matter, is because Tesla are clearly using every opportunity to make this matter as public as possible, apparently even using shows like The One Show to get the Tesla Roadster it's credibility back, whilst scorning Top Gear's name in the process.



Andy Wilman, Producer of BBC's Top Gear.
 Photograph credit. - Taken from Top Gear Blog.



Wilman explains a few points. For example, the script that was pre-written before the show is a very normal way that their show manages to get filming done in one day. Even though the Tesla Roadster was tested by Top Gear staff at the BBC prior to Jeremy Clarkson driving the car, Tesla believe that this was an unfair judgement of the car. Wilman says that he provides the directors and crew with a 'treatment' which includes stats, figures, general appearence and general performance (hence the script) and then Clarkson tends to change the script to his own feelings and opinion of the car on the actual shoot. 

The '55 mile' data came from the 'boffins' themselves that work for Tesla from California. Apparently the details and data of the Top Gear track were given to these 'boffins' and they calculated themselves that the car could comfortably do 55 miles if driven hard based on the data given from the BBC show, they were simply reiterating the information given to them.

Wilman also argues that the Top Gear track has been there since the show has started and that it has always tested Sports cars and Supercars on this track. Tesla call the car themselves "The Supercar Redefined". Considering this car costs primarily more than most petrol sports cars from which it was based and it takes a substantial amount of time to recharge, the justification of comparing this car to an actual petrol sports car does seem long winded, and these judgements can be made before even driving the car, which is what Wilman argues.

In his blog he writes about the 'broken 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 a garage to get fixed". He also says that Top Gear actually had full praise of the performance and handling when the car was on the track.

You can read the full blog here.