What BrutherSuperior said, basically. Having seen the specific allegations filed by Tesla, and having watched the video again, I'm not sure that Tesla has much of a case even ignoring the TTAC article (though the Top Gear review parrots Tesla's own statements about the heat problem so closely that it might as well be word for word).
Also the lawsuit isn't really about damages it's Tesla seeking vindication.
They are seeking vindication, but they are seeking vindication for specific things that Top Gear
didn't actually say. I'll get to this in a second.
Had you bothered to search for some of the facts of the lawsuit you'd see how many inaccuracies TG made about the car.
You mean how many inaccuracies Tesla
says Top Gear made about the car. Because what Tesla is saying Top Gear said and what Top Gear actually said in the review are two different things.
Because I just watched the review in question, and:
They didn't say they broke down. They said one car overheated and the other car developed brake problems. For the former they even explicitly said it was still running, and they merely left it on the track to cool down.
Neither car ran out of charge despite the track work
They didn't say they ran out of charge. They said they "worked out" the battery life to be 55 miles. And specifically mentioned that they were basing that on track driving.
This is actually the closest point that Tesla has to actually build a case about, because of the scene of the car being pushed into the garage. But considering this is the same show that had an episode where one of the hosts tied a dead cow to the roof of a Camaro with the explicit implication of eating it later, it would be trivial to argue that the bit where they pushed the car into the garage was meant for comedic value.
True, I phrased that badly. Neither car's brakes failed.
Which is irrelevant, because they didn't say that the brakes had failed in the first place. They said specifically "its brakes had broken" on
one car (which they did) and never said that the broken brakes made the car undriveable as a result. They just didn't take it back out on the track afterwards.
The reason Tesla are objecting to the mileage claims is because TG implied that it will only get 55 miles from a charge, regardless of what you do with it.
They did not. They mentioned that it should only get 55 miles from a charge specifically in relation to when you drive it on a track.
So:
They've got more than fair cause for a lawsuit.
They really don't. Tesla have taken statements made in the Top Gear review, and
changed them around to better fit the lawsuit they are initiating, to the extent that some of the changed statements have completely different meaning than they did when originally said. Defamation cases become
extremely hard to win if you base your case on implications and personal interpretations of statements rather than actual statements, and that is exactly what Tesla is doing.
A bit late for that.
