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Comment by dman | Hacker News Reader

I think any victory in courts is going to be a pyrrhic one. Ive said it before on earlier threads and I will say it again here - Tesla is alienating a large section of auto enthusiasts by going after Top Gear. It might be that some marketing guru has figured out that suing Top Gear is a cheaper way to get headlines than running a campaign. But they have picked the wrong target - Top Gear is at the heart and centre of Auto culture worldwide. Also not a good sign when a tech company starts using the courts instead of the market and their product to win points.

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I don't know, I think if you're an enthusiast who cares about the environment, Clarkson isn't your favorite guy ever. I felt like the piece on the Tesla was pretty offensive in how biased it was, and I normally like the guys on Top Gear.

I genuinely didn't feel as though the piece on Tesla was particularly biased though? Sure, they pointed out the flaws inherit to the car (recharge time) and filmed the car being pushed in for entertainment, but overall the piece still came across as pretty positive about the car: at times he was gushing about its performance and how enjoyable it could be to drive.

I'm sure if I were invested in Tesla it's easy to feel that they're "biased" against me, but the review didn't come across as any more negative than 90% of car reviews on Top Gear.

They took a worst case mileage and recharge time and said a specific trip would take you 3 days. Without saying if you actually drove that distance and used a larger power source than a normal wall outlet it would take a few hours. They also pretended one of the cars ran out of power which did not actually happen.

Now, I don't mind making fun of actual issues. And they had some things that actually broke, but making shit up crosses a line IMO.

Have you seen Top Gear?

The Reliant Robin, while obviously a horrible design, does not roll over every time you drive one a half mile (and it is not the primary reason for the decline in population in the Sheffield region in the decades since its release). The Stig is not really "half man, half machine with petrol running through his veins". And a race against a jet or helicopter is not a realistic test of auto performance.

The Tesla episode was cheeky, but no more cheeky than many episodes. It's not a "straight" review show. It is a comedy that happens to have a lot of cars in it. If it is occasionally true, that's just a bonus.

> The Reliant Robin, while obviously a horrible design, does not roll over every time you drive one a half mile

But it is absolutely hilarious when it does.

Reliant Robin show was epic. Only in England.

Agreed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8

To explain for Americans and non-Brits, A Reliant Robin was a 3-wheeled car that was designed so that it could be taxed as a motorcycle with side car (ie 3 wheels).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Robin

There is a big difference between the outright comedy sections and the supercar reviews though. Much like the parent, I enjoy the show generally but the Tesla piece left a bad taste in the mouth. They intentionally misrepresented what happened - as well as the actual facts about the car - to leverage the stereotype of electric cars being crap/short-ranged. The biggest selling point after not requiring fuel is precisely that it is not like other electric cars. Here, their use of comedy crossed into outright dishonesty - an audience who don't know the facts will definitely be left with the impression of 3 day trips and 50 minute lifespan.

They will probably win the court case, as they were careful not to say anything literally untrue. Yes, if you ram it as hard as possible around a race track for an hour, you will probably need a charge. Yes, if you choose to make a very long journey and only recharge via the slowest means it will take you a while. But that would be idiotic, wouldn't it? Few people - even those who buy sports cars - make those kind of uses. We know it's not for long-distance journeys, but we also know the statistics about the distribution of journey lengths.

Do the Top Gear team mention every fuse that blows? Do they honestly not see it as a huge step forward? I think there is a difference between being cheeky about a Ferrari and Tesla. Top Gear have given positive reviews to previously unfashionable brands in the past, despite the comedy.

They didn't take worst case mileage, they took mileage on their track. They said, quite clearly, in the show, that it would have only gone 55 miles on their track. It was being driven like a maniac, they clearly showed it being driven hard, they're not a walking tesla advert pretending that it'd go 211 miles at top speed.

The 3 day journey reference was debunking claims you could charge it with wind power and again was clearly stated in the segment of the show. It's specifically addressing claims tesla are making, from their own literature:

The Roadster, which consumes no oil whatsoever and plugs into conventional 220-volt sockets throughout Europe, can be charged with solar, hydro or wind energy.

http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-debuts...

See other reviews spouting pie-in-the-sky about how the tesla could be recharged by renewable energy:

http://www.topspeed.com/cars/tesla/2011-tesla-roadster-race-...

Compared to a lot of car reviews on Top Gear, Tesla got off lightly.

Just imagine if it were made in Mexico.

EDIT: For those that don't get the reference, there is a running bit/theme on Top Gear about a so-called Mexican Supercar that was released a while ago. They've been thrashing it, and Mexico, ever since. So much so that the US version of Top Gear has been edited to remove the comments, and the Mexican Government has issued official communications about it.

Just Google "top gear mexico supercar" and you'll see.

It's not like I just randomly slammed Mexicans with this post. That's what the Dutch are for.

Maybe not your FAVORITE guy ever, but I don't know if you can call yourself a motoring enthusiast if you don't derive at least a little bit of guilty pleasure watching them race a jet fighter in a Bugatti.

How that jet got in the Bugatti, I'll never know.

No, the Bugatti driver's other pastime is punching jets on the nose.

I do think Clarkson is a bit over the top anti-conservation; but suing him for that seems like the worst possible response. Something along the lines of a clever rebuttal in the form of a short video could've scored them some goodwill points.

He's over the top because he plays it up.

Its not a documentary. Its a play and the actors play roles to a degree of excess (although tbf their roles are pretty close to their real life personas).

Expecting the Top Gear folks to be fair, sensible or responsible is totally missing the point of the show in my opinion. These are the same guys that do - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjzpx_jUUA0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOvp69lnZbA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMcZH-1FEHo

Consumer Reports and Car and Driver are factual and fair. But they arent entertaining, passionate or engrossing.

Exactly this. Top Gear isn't fair (or balanced). That is what makes the show funny.

As I see it, Clarkson and the team are basing their eco ridicule on the long view. They know that if they praise the current half-baked electric car technology, they'll look quaint and whimsical in 50 years when electric cars are practical. Better to be insightful and honest about just how far short the current offerings fall when compared with mature fossil-fuel powered vehicles, surely?

You can't blame Clarkson. Top Gear's reviews aren't necessarily based on some objective standard. They rate a driving experience. For them, electric cars haven't provided the same experience that they are used to and it will be a while before mass-market electric cars do that.

I've got a deposit down on a Model S, and I don't think I could care less one way or the other. I thought the review was misleading and stupid, and I think the lawsuit is a stupid response.

But whatever, I'm still excited about the Model S.

What part of it did you think was misleading? At least according to this article, everything they said in it was true (and was supported by Tesla)

I saw the piece quite a while ago, but I found a bunch of things misleading:

1) The way they quoted the 55 mile range made it sound like the 55 mile range was more representative of normal use than the 200 mile figure. I don't recall them ever saying something like "Toyota claims it gets 20mpg, but we've worked out it only gets 3mpg on our test track". Maybe they have (perhaps they mentioned the Veyron's fuel consumption at full throttle), but it's certainly not a normal part of a review.

2) They quoted the charge time from a standard power socket, when nearly all charges would be done at a higher-power charging station at much shorter time. They didn't quote the faster charge time.

3) While watching, I seriously thought the one Tesla's engine had completely quit.

4) While watching, I seriously thought that the other Tesla's battery had gone completely dead without enough warning for them to drive it into the garage.

5) They implied that the environmental impact from the power plants is roughly the same as the environmental impact of gas anyway. (oddly showing nuclear cooling towers while talking about power plants causing global warming.) Power generation obviously has an environmental impact no matter where it's done, but the nuclear scare plus polar bear mention just felt bizarre.

6) They implied that somehow hydrogen was magical and had no environmental power generation issues.

I don't disagree with their defense, but the piece felt very political in that it seemed designed to say things that are technically true, whilst leading viewers to conclusions that are false. All-in-all, I felt like I was watching Clarkson on an anti-environmental soapbox more than I was watching either a piece of entertainment or an automotive review.

I love Top Gear, but I was annoyed by the piece, and it won't bother me a bit if Clarkson has a few obnoxious days because of it.

The review would've been 1000x better if Hamster or Slow had done it.

>I don't recall them ever saying something like "Toyota claims it gets 20mpg, but we've worked out it only gets 3mpg on our test track".

They actually kind of did for Toyota Prius here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk

The Prius using more fuel than the M3 when driven at the same speed - it's still surprising, even though clearly they hammered the Prius while the M3 was puttering behind slowly. A bit of a ridiculous test.

The other thing they said though does make you pause to think, and I quite liked it: Rather than selling your fuel guzzling vehicle now, it's quite possibly much better for the environment if you keep driving it, but drive it slowly. Making a brand new car has a huge environmental impact, so large that the difference in fuel consumption would take a pretty long time to overcome it. In the case of a Prius it's even more complicated as the batteries are particularly environmentally unfriendly - and there's a lot of those in a Hybrid.

But that was a silly and contrived test, which had absolutely no bearing on the real-world fuel efficiency of the car. If you're choosing a car to drive around a track all day, by all means, avoid the Prius.

I do love Top Gear, though, and Tesla should have known better than to hand their car to them.

A lot of people that like cars have been emotionally connected to the internal engine. These "car enthusiasts" enjoy everything about cars, albeit frequently do not analyze emerging technologies with a long-term vision. They like the sound the engine makes and the thrill of acceleration. That is nice and I can respect their decisions. That sentiment of connection to the internal engine has been challenged first by Tesla Roadster.

What I view as auto fans mistake in judgement is to portray electric cars through the lens of mistrust in the new design. Someone who has only driven IC cars will keep trying to find fault with a one that is not. Tesla is the new toy a boy can play with. Clarkson has been living with old habits and 'old' cars to question his own assumptions about car technology. This is what I had found when speaking with people in the automotive industry.

Yet, electric cars require a lot of future development to meet the high standards that they will be judged by.

I also think it would have been a good idea if they spent the extra 30 seconds talking about how you can have a higher-power charging station to speed up charging, I'm sure they also would point out that they may not exist where you are when you want to use it.

I'm sure in some places you'll be fine, like LA or San Francisco where I suspect they have more charging stations than the average town.

And this is an obvious chicken/egg problem and if you explain it, people will understand.

Maybe I should add, the same chicken/egg problem exists for the Hydrogen car which was shown later in the show.

To be honest hydrogen is a nice idea but just looking at one item, compressing, hydrogen just seems like loss of energy. I don't know if it will ever work.

Just know one thing that electric 'engines' are the future, I don't know where the power will come from though.

In their Prius review Clarkson said there was a big gap between Toyota's stated 65 mpg and the 45 mpg they saw with normal driving on roads. So, they have noted manufacturer mpg exaggerations before although they don't do it as a normal practice.

Maybe only on environmentally friendly cars?

*edit.. don't mean to be a dick, I just don't think this fact helps their case much. I watched the episode, and it irritated me quite a bit even though I think Top Gear is normally pretty fun.

While it didn't directly involve Tesla, what got me about that episode was the claim that battery cars are totally irrelevent because of 'hydrogen power'.

They point out that the power for electric batteries has to come from somewhere, and completely gloss over that for hydrogen.

Why they didn't go all the way and advocate fusion powered cars is beyond me.

> Why they didn't go all the way and advocate fusion powered cars is beyond me.

Isn't that what the hydrogen is for? <g>

Hydrogen is not an energy source, but a means by which to store energy. You know, like a battery.

Energy can't be created or destroyed, just transformed from one form to another. So nothing is really an energy source. I'd say "energy source" is the vernacular for stored energy, in terms of where humans source their energy for machinery, electricity, etc.

While you are technically correct, that's not the best model for this. Energy in oil is ultimately stored energy from the sun. But for hydrogen powered cars, we must take one stored form of energy (e.g. fossil, nuclear) and use it to make the hydrogen. Or skip the oil step and use solar.

So question is, are we storing new energy, or converting previously-stored energy to a different format? The latter is an externality as obviously oil, uranium etc were around long before humans.

Exactly my point. I've put hydrogen power in quotes in case that was unclear.

Like oil stores energy from the sun.

It is both. You can use it in a fuel cell form whereby you keep the water produced from its combustion, run electricity through it and get oxygen and hydrogen back. Alternatively though, the way hydrogen is turned into energy works if you just refill the hydrogen and throw away the water.

The point about hydrogen is that you can fill up in a traditional manner (quickly), rather than having to charge a battery.

At battery changing stations, empty batteries can be swapped for fully charged ones. That takes about the same time as it would to fill a fuel tank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

  Israel is the first nation in the world that partnered with Better Place 
  to have an all-electric car infrastructure. Shai Agassi believes that 
  in Israel by 2016, plus or minus a year, more than 50% of cars sold will 
  be electric and that by 2020, Israel will achieve oil independence. 
  The Baran Group signed an agreement with Better Place to build 
  51 battery switch stations over the course of 2011 to cover all of Israel.

Meta-comment:

Please don't post quotes using pre-formatted text. It forces the browser to use the full width. That, in turn, puts a horizontal scrollbar on my browser, so I have to scroll back-and-forth to read any of the comments.

I find it works much better to quote using asterisks. (We could also lobby pg for a BLOCKQUOTE feature)

That's a brilliant solution to the problem for cars that aren't Teslas, which has something like 1800 batteries lining its cabin floor. I don't think they'd be easily swapped.

For cars that don't implement batteries this way, I'm wondering how they allow for non-floor-mounted installations preventing the batteries from destroying their handling.

Further, how are the filling stations expected to deal with the variety of non-standard battery types on the market?

you can make hydrogen via other means, directly from sunlight, for example, although admittedly that technology is not here yet.

His point was Hydrogen was just another form of battery.

Like Oil.

you mean the technology where you connect electrodes to solar panel or wind turbine, put them into water and hydrogen and oxygen come out?

The energy has to come from somewhere, but it doesn't have to come from electricity (every conversion means energy is lost, and a light -> electricity -> water conversion is potentially less efficient than a more direct conversion).

Hydrosol-2 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrosol-2) is an example of solar hydrogen production with no electric current intermediate - it involves high temperatures, so I'm not sure how much energy is lost maintaining that temperature compared to captured producing hydrogen, but it could theoretically be more efficient.

Since you have a deposit down, just out of curiosity, are you a home owner?

Just look how it turned out for Morris Marina fans.

I think you are VASTLY overstating the importance of Top Gear, which is essentially an entertainment talk show which happens to talk about cars.

Name another entertainment show which talks about cars and has Top Gears global reach.

Sure, they're the global leaders when it comes to automotive ENTERTAINMENT, but that is precisely because they are entertaining, not journalistic.

Just about EVERY "review" they do on cars is heavily biased, and in more than a few cases, outrageously so.

Anyone who watches the show without understanding that it is entertainment, first and foremost, needs to lighten up, get a sense of humour, and not take themselves so seriously.

Those are the types that TG go out of their way to ridicule on the show.

This is kind of like how we discuss things like privacy concerns on Facebook here where the vast majority don't care. Sure there are real motoring enthusiasts talking about stuff where TopGear is irrelevant, but for the rest of the world, the vast majority, I don't think this is the case.

I suspect it is about headlines. They have even taken out a google ad on the search "tesla top gear" pointing to teslavstopgear.co.uk

However, the review is clearly heavily scripted (do Teslas really just run out of power and then require pushing down the road?). In the UK, the powers-that-be at the BBC have recently taken a dim view of this sort of constructed TV posing as reality (after "Socksgate" and "Sachsgate", an explanation of which is probably beyond the scope of this discussion...).

I could not agree with your more.

Even if there was nothing wrong with the car. What Tesla should have done is, take it on the chin, say something in the lines of 'we will correct and make it better', even though nothing is wrong, and then do a retest, and simply have that test on their terms. And then really, they could have gone from good to great.

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