Tesla is fuming after Britain's famous car-trasher, Jeremy Clarkson, faked a loss of battery charge to illustrate the drawbacks of a car that otherwise amazed him. Video below.
The Guardian: It was billed by Jeremy Clarkson as the ultimate test for an electric car – a drag race against a Lotus Elise on BBC2's Top Gear. And it was a test that the £92,000 Tesla appeared to fail after it dramatically slowed down on the show's test track and was pushed into a garage to await charging.
But it has since emerged that the Tesla, which can be powered from an ordinary domestic plug, did not run out of electricity.
The car's California-based manufacturer said that the charge on neither of the two Teslas used in the Top Gear test fell below 20%.
The BBC today denied it had misled viewers, saying that the programme had "at no time" claimed that the car had run out of power. Programme-makers instead showed it slowing down to illustrate what would happen when the car did run out of charge.
But some viewers were left with a different impression. "I understand trying to make interesting TV, but when it materially changes the image or performance of the product, it's pretty underhanded," said one viewer on a car website.
Another said: "How pointless, in the same way if a car runs out of petrol I know what happens without a reconstruction of the event."
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