Ive seen the episode. They made it look like even though battery cars have crazy torque plus high speeds, they shut down in middle of road plus take hours to charge plus are unreliable. They did this allegedly because top gear trio are petrol heads and have nothing but hate for electric cars since they don't consider

that episode had two roadsters , both of which develop problems apparently

Tesla lost the case because it couldn't prove in court that it actually lost sales because of that episode.
 
from what i read, top gear admitted that the car had not run out of juice. judge sort of stated that the show was not a definitive review program and was an entertainment piece so the drama around pushing the car was part of the joke or whatever.

top gear had said in the program that the car would not meet its marketed range under their test conditions. which was quite obvious because no one drives road cars like they drive cars on their test tracks. so they were not completely wrong about the statement that the car stopped before it reached the marketed range.

the car also developed defects during testing which was confirmed by tesla engineers. brakes sort of gave up because of rough testing and the car entered battery saving mode in which it restricted speed which gave clarkson some more things to joke about.

i do not think the three monkey group has tested the tesla model s or tesla model x. these are more mature electric cars. and it does not fit their petrol-head optics. the trailer for season 2 also does not indicate that tesla would feature on it. i guess musk would have already mentioned it if tesla was requested for test cars for this season.

it's insane that an american car show does not mention or include tesla cars in their entertainment segments. tesla is one of the leading luxury car maker in usa market today.

there is also another angle. musk and bezos are competitors in the space race. musk is essentially kicking his ass in that market. so that might also be the reason why the grand tour does not want to promote a competing product on their show.
 
and of course as musk said... that the entire segment was already scripted. they had planned to show that the car stopped in the middle of the track. they just did not drive it for long enough to actually finish up the battery. they could have done it properly to demonstrate that electric cars would eventually run out of juice. just like a petrol car of course. and you would have to push it. just like a petrol car of course. the only difference is that petrol cars can be fueled where it stopped. and in a matter of minutes. electric cars do not have that advantage.

getting tesla today would make them look bad because it is likely to beat much more expensive cars in drag races and even on their test track. honestly, the only argument left against electric cars is the charging time. and charging port requirement. and that is probably not going to change anytime soon. even if you make the entire surface of the cars with high capacity solar cells, it just would not be enough to keep up the charge when the car is being driven.
 
Exactly, it looks like they scripted it before hand to fail. At that time, tesla was small niche automobile maker and a bad review by top gear would have seriously hampered it or even outright kill the brand. Glad that didnt happen.

Another conspiracy angle: The show is sponsored by Shell, the oil company

Here's the entire episode by the way.
 

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