Allegations of libel and malicious falsehood have been leveled by Tesla Motors Inc; the US based electric car maker against British Broadcasting Corp’s “Top Gear” while suing them for the same.
Tesla filed suit in a London High Court stating that a popular program of BBC depicted a Tesla roadster car was running out of electricity and alleged that this was a faked up video footage.
The broadcast that is being referred to is one that was carried out in December 2008 and the commentator Jeremy Clarkson had gone on to qualify the car as “biblically quick” as also the first of its kind but with a limited range, he had added.
The actual script that Clarkson had read out was: “Although Tesla say it will do 200 miles, we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles and if it does run out it’s not a quick job to charge it up again.”
Tesla claims that the car that was thereafter pushed into the hangar was not required to be done so. That the statement of the car’s range being only 55 miles was a misleading one for prospective buyers of the Roadster. The car they claim had not run out of power and had been shown like that in the footage just to mislead the viewers.
Top Gear is a very popular program of BBC and has a viewer rating of 350 million with the audience spread across about a 100 countries. In fact, “Top Gear” has also been rated as the most popular program of BBC2 for a decade. The program has already faced a similar high voltage law suit this very year when they sued News Corp’s HarperCollins for blocking the real name of “stig” who was the test driver of the show though his identity had been hidden by a lowered visor.
In an email statement the broadcaster said, “We can confirm that we have received notification that Tesla has issued proceedings against the BBC. The BBC stands by the program and will be vigorously defending this claim.” The suit has been filed on behalf of Tesla by Nigel Tait, a partner at London law firm Carter-Ruck.
Source: autonews
