Tesla processa o programa Top Gear por ser anti VE

[ruimegas]

Tesla processa o programa Top Gear por ser anti VE


Video que serviu de base à critica ao Tesla (desculpem a qualidade da imagem mas penso que vale a pena ver)


"About two years ago BBC’s Top Gear aired a test drive of the then relatively new Tesla Roadster. While this was seen as a major boon for Tesla, the light shone on its all-electric sports car by the popular show was somewhat less than flattering. In fact, it was rather downbeat.

What makes the matter so hard to swallow for Tesla are facts, which the electric car company claims, are simply unfounded.

Tesla has since sent a lawsuit to Top Gear for libel and malicious falsehood against its Roadster.

The Californian startup claims that it had no other recourse, issuing a statement that it reluctantly took legal action after its repeated attempts to contact the makers of Top Gear and the BBC, over the course of months, were ignored.

According to Tesla, Top Gear’s on air review of its electric Roadster “contained lies and misinformation about the Roadster’s performance, behaviour and reliability”. In the particular episode, Tesla Roadsters are depicted as suffering several critical “breakdowns” during track driving. Host Jeremy Clarkson concludes the episode by saying that in the real world the Roadster "doesn’t seem to work"

Tesla claims that the breakdowns were staged, making most of Top Gear’s remarks about the Roadster untrue. Tesla also states that it can prove Top Gear’s tests were falsified due to the recordings of its cars’ onboard data-loggers.

In one instance, Clarkson states that Roadster would only be able to drive for around 55 miles on the Top Gear track, far short of the claimed 211 miles.

Tesla points out that its test cars on the day never ran out of battery power as simulated on the show, and that its Roadster has been certified under UN ECE R101, the EU regulation for measuring electric vehicle range, at 211 miles. All ECE R101 tests are witnessed and certified by a neutral third party approved by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, in Tesla's case, the Department of Road Transport--Netherlands. Though Tesla admits aggressive driving will reduce mileage, it claims that Top Gear’s assessment is not representative of real-world range.

Tesla now wants Top Gear to stop rebroadcasting the particular episode and to correct the record.

With a global audience of more than 350 million viewers, Tesla’s demands are completely understandable. In fact, even today, close to two years down the track, Tesla continues to field questions and explain what it claims are misconceptions created by the show.

Stay tuned for an update."

Em: http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog/105 ... lectric%29

[Seal]

São uns palhaços.

[mjr]

Espero que a Tesla ganhe pois é deplorável simular que o carro ficou sem bateria ou que o motor aqueceu demais. Não é nenhuma brincadeira, pois a Tesla pode ter perdido muitos clientes com este programa.

[Filipe]

ONCE MORE THE MAN IN BLACK

[ruicvt]

Este programa tem muitas qualidades. O humor, a realização competente e artística, etc. Mas a correcção técnica e a imparcialidade decididamente não entram no Top Gear. Muito ego e presunção do Clarkson, além de total parcialidade, pré-julgamentos e imprecisões.

Este caso é, de facto, deplorável. A Tesla DE CERTEZA perdeu muitos clientes e interessados com esta "brincadeira".

[mikexilva]

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/03/ ... k-At-Tesla

"Top Gear's producer Andy Wilman responds to Tesla's lawsuit: 'We never said that the Tesla's true range is only 55 miles, as opposed to their own claim of 211, or that it had actually ran out of charge. In the film our actual words were: "We calculated that on our track it would run out after 55 miles."' Interesting points, and as far as I can remember also correct. But I'm assuming Tesla is going the get the PR they want on this regardless of any court rulings."

[...]

[ruimegas]

Untouchable? Top Gear Exonerated For Racist Comments, What About Tesla?


"!The popular U.K. motoring entertainment show Top Gear just can’t stay out of the spotlight at the moment.
Just six days after Californian electric car automaker Tesla filed a legal case against the primetime Sunday night show for libel and malicious falsehood a broadcasting watchdog in the U.K. has exonerated Top Gear for making racist comments aimed at mexicans.
With U.K. national broadcasting watchdog Ofcom to rejecting the complaints and commenting that the jibes were “justified by the context” we have to wonder if the show’s hosts, messers Clarkson, May and Hammond are the equivalent of automotive untouchables.
If that is indeed the case, what does this mean for Tesla, especially since the show seems to be hiding behind a facade of a purely entertainment, not factual, show.
“Feckless, Flatulent”

Video: Jeremy Clarkson wins Special Recognition Award

Earlier this year and nearly 18 months after the show which caused Tesla so much anguish, Top Gear’s team of middle-aged, opinionated presenters caused an outcry among Mexican viewers when they criticized the nation, its foods and its customs.
“Why would you want a Mexican car?” jibed presenter Richard Hammond durning a studio segment involving all three presenters. “Mexican cars are just going to be a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a mustache, leaning against a fence, asleep, looking like a cactus, with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.”
Joking that the comment would go un-noticed, the show’s alpha-presenter Jeremy Clarkson continued, “That’s why we’re not going to get any complaints about this - cos the Mexican Embassy, the Ambassador’s going to be sitting there with a remote like this [slumps in seat and snores]. They won’t complain. It’s fine”
Complaints


Naturally the BBC did receive complaints against the segment - 157 in total - for derogatory, racial stereotypes which were cruel, xenophobic, discriminatory and racist.
One of the complainants was Eduardo Medina-Morca Icaza, the Mexican ambassador to the U.K. Icaza placed a formal complaint and threatened legal action under the U.K.‘s Equality Act, but was later appeased with an official apology from the BBC.
“Made for Comic Effect”
In its ruling, Ofcom concluded that the show’s irreverent style would have led the majority of viewers to realise that the comments were “being made for comic effect”.
Pardoning the show of any misdoings in this instance is hardly comfort to Tesla, which has complained that the similarly supposed “comic effects” of the show against its $109,000 sports car has met with anything but humor.
Tesla Motor’s Director of Communications for Europe, Middle East and Africa Myra Pasek has told us that since the show aired in Europe and subsequently worldwide, the company has struggled to throw off the prejudiced and inaccurate claim made by the BBC that its two-seater sports car could only drive 55 miles between charges.
“It’s fine to entertain but you can’t entertain on the basis of lies” she added.
Entertainment or not, Top Gear seems to be inhabiting a very grey area of classification, especially since it won an award for best factual program at the U.K’s National Television Awards earlier this year.
Either it is entertainment, or it isn’t. Either way, we hope Tesla’s claim isn’t complaint isn’t dismissed as quickly as the Mexican ambassador’s."

Em: http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog/105 ... bout-tesla

[Seal]

E a história continua e continua...


Even if it never gets to court in Britain, Tesla Motors’ (TSLA) lawsuit against the BBC’s Top Gear program for trashing the company’s Roadster will have been tried in the media. Both Tesla vice president Ricardo Reyes and Top Gear producer Andy Wilman have now taken to the blogosphere to give their side of the story. Frankly, I sympathize with Tesla on this one.

A mixed review

The Top Gear review isn’t a one-sided attack. It actually starts out positive with host Jeremy Clarkson lauding the car’s off-the-line performance (”Biblically quick”), range and cost-per-fill-up. But then the disputed part — Clarkson claims that the car will run out of charge on the test track after 55 miles, followed by a shot of the car being pushed. He complains that the motor overheated, leaving him with reduced power, and that “broken” brakes shut down the second car. The result: Clarkson with no car to drive, and a damning verdict on Tesla performance in the real world.

Tesla disputes nearly all of the bad stuff. As spokesman Ricardo Reyes detailed in a blog post:

* The company has the Roadster certified at 211 miles of charge, and while it does lose some of that on the track, a claim of 55 miles represents “incomplete analysis.”
* Neither car went below 25 percent of charge, so they didn’t need to be pushed.
* The power brakes on the second car simply popped a fuse, but the brakes remained “operational and safe.”

Three years old… but always fresh online

Although the show originally ran in December of 2008, seemingly making this an argument about ancient history, Reyes pointed out to me two important facts about the Top Gear segment:

* It’s endlessly repeated in syndication of a very popular show (DVDs, too);
* It’s available online, on YouTube, and comes up early in Google searches.

That means, he said — paraphrasing CEO Elon Musk — that it’s like a guy who keeps punching you every time you get up.

Maybe Tesla got over its personal reaction to the show when Clarkson said that the Roadster “doesn’t seem to work” in the real world. But for the company, it’s more than personal — it’s business. Reyes said that the Top Gear segment comes up repeatedly during investor meetings on both sides of the Atlantic. According to Reyes, “They all want to know, ‘Did you fix those Top Gear problems yet?’”

A bad buy?

The Roadster costs $109,000, money you’re not going to want to spend on an electric car that blows more fuses than a string of old Christmas lights. But Roadsters have in fact covered more than 10 million miles, and they haven’t been all that trouble prone. Owners I’ve talked to say their cars are reliable, and routinely deliver something close to the 211 miles of range Tesla claims.

Milman says he issued his rebuttal on Wednesday because Tesla has “been very busy promoting its side of the argument through the media.” He then proceeds to make a case for the program’s editorial integrity, but he also admits that the Roadster wasn’t really immobilized, just running on “reduced power.” If so, it’s unclear why it had to be pushed back to home base.

Reyes also says that Top Gear pre-judged the Roadster, because it found a script with the “doesn’t really seem to work” line in one of the test cars. Milman has a defense of that, saying that the car had been put through some test miles before the show, and anyway, its opinion was based on the car being a bad value. But it seems to me that all the evidence should be in before the verdict is delivered. And any casual viewer seeing a car being pushed will conclude that it, well, really doesn’t work.

In an unsigned follow-up blog post after Wilman had his say, Tesla posted a similar thought, “Surely they could have come to that conclusion without staging misleading scenes that made the car look like it didn’t work.”

Tesla has made its point by publicizing the suit, which isn’t really about money — Tesla is asking for a maximum of £100,000 (around $160,000). A settlement is possible, though Tesla probably filed in the British courts because it’s much easier to get a libel judgment there.

I’m no big fan of lawsuits, and Tesla should be able to take a joke. Top Gear is a damned funny show, and it has a right to take a lot of artistic license. But maybe BBC’s top-rated wags shouldn’t have pushed that Roadster into the garage.

em: http://www.bnet.com/blog/electric-cars/ ... -face/3834