Saturday, April 2, 2011

Tesla Motors Sues The BBC



Tesla Sues The BBC

Yeah the legal team at Tesla has sued the British Broadcast Corporation for false reporting on the performance of the Tesla Roadster. I am not one to defend the British Biased Conspirators often as their reporting on the Middle East is so anti Israel that I simply tune them out, but in this case of the need to support thermodynamic truth I come down on the side of the BBC.

Here is the Bloomberg article that reported the filing of the false reporting case

"Carmaker Tesla Sues BBC’s ‘Top Gear’ TV Show Over Electric Roadster Test
By James Lumley - Mar 30, 2011 8:27 AM PT

U.S. electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA) sued the British Broadcasting Corp.’s “Top Gear” show alleging libel and malicious falsehood.
Tesla claims the show, one of the broadcaster’s most successful programs, faked a scene that appeared to show Tesla’s Roadster car running out of energy, according to papers filed at the High Court in London yesterday.
Tesla, which has lost money every year since it was founded in 2003, is seeking to become the leader in battery-powered cars, aided by supply agreements with Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) and Daimler AG. (DAI) The Palo Alto, California-based company said last month its fourth-quarter net loss widened to $51.4 million from $23.2 million a year earlier as it increased investment in the Model S, an electric sedan due in 2012.
In the Top Gear report, first broadcast in December 2008, presenter Jeremy Clarkson said that, even though the car is “biblically quick,” and “the first electric car you might actually want to buy,” its range is limited.
“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,” Clarkson said, according to a transcript of the show included in the filing.
The report showed the car being pushed into a hangar, according to the suit. Tesla said the Roadster that was pushed into the hangar hadn’t run out of power and didn’t need to be pushed. Top Gear’s allegation that the car’s range is 55 miles is defamatory because it suggests Tesla “grossly misled potential purchasers of the Roadster,” the filing said.
International Audience
Top Gear has a U.K. audience of around 6 million viewers and an international audience of 350 million, the broadcaster says. It is viewed in more than 100 countries and has been the most-viewed show on BBC2 for a decade.
This is the second time in less than a year the program has become involved in a High Court lawsuit. In August, the BBC sued News Corp. (NWSA)’s HarperCollins to block it from disclosing the real name of the “Stig,” the race driver who tested cars on the show with the visor of his helmet down to hide his identity.
“We can confirm that we have received notification that Tesla have issued proceedings against the BBC,” the broadcaster said in an e-mailed statement. “The BBC stands by the program and will be vigorously defending this claim.”
Nigel Tait, a partner at London law firm Carter-Ruck, said in a message that he made the claim on behalf of Tesla.
The case is: HQ11D01162, Tesla Motors Limited & ors vs. British Broadcasting Corp.
To contact the reporter on this story: James Lumley in London at jlumley1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net."


Per Jeremy Clarkson of Top gear the “biblically quick” car will only travel 55 miles on a charge. The Old Testament actually does mention a biblically quick car. It states that Moses came down from Mount Sinai in a Triumph.. Going back to the point of the Teslacle only getting 55 miles on a charge when raced on the track that Top Gear used to challenge the roadster. The battery pack on the roadster holds 54 kilowatt hours of charge. My guess is that the batteries will use 90% of their charge before needing a push into the hanger. Therefore the BBC is reporting that when challenged to perform like a race car on a race track the Tesla uses about 50 kilowatt hours to travel 55 miles of about 0.9 kilowatt hours per mile. I did some rather tedious calculations of how the Tesla would use up energy on a Formula 1 race track. I used the F1 track in Melbourne Australia as an example. The track has 18 turns of which 12 are hairpin and the track is about 3.1 miles long. If one takes the mass of the Tesla and the energy needed for the acceleration to 125 miles per hour from 30 miles per hour that the car will need to slow down to in the hairpins and the energy needed to move at the average velocity of a 100 miles per hour one can calculate the range on a formula 1 track of about 30 miles. I then calculated the energy the Tesla might recover if the regenerative braking system can regenerate under these severe driving conditions. Tesla claims 64% of the energy can be reclaimed so I used this figure to give the Tesla the full advantage. I then came up with a range of some 50 miles. I therefore have to concur with the BBC that when the Teslacle is challenged on a race track its range approximates 50 miles.

The other gonadwhere company in the lithium vehicle space, AONE has seen its stock tank. It now trades at $6 a share and it will raise more money by selling many millions of shares at this price of $6 a share. This company is a disaster and its IPO of two years ago was at a price more than double of the price now needed for the secondary offering. Tesla got a price boost this week when some thermodynamic moron who is a wall street insider gave TSLA a price target of $70 a share. This moron most probably predicted back in 2007 that the average price of a US home would increase to half a million dollars based on his cash flow model. TSLA is a dog and its range may be 250 miles when it is driven on the Iditarod course in Alaska. But alas at such cold temperatures the heating of the cabin of the car and the heating of the lithium ion batteries would also rob it of precious range. The British Biased Corporation (BBC) should prevail in their defense against Teslacle in the great courts of the UK provided the judge applies the laws of thermodynamics.

3 comments:

  1. Hey
    I was going to forward you the story this weekend but It was naive to believe the "green"brain would have missed outon this - love your blog. Ray Friedman

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Ray. I think the British courts will still use the laws of motion that Sir Isaac postulated oh so long ago. You should look up on you tube the top gear show of the Tesla on the track and then another show that showed that a M3 BMW gets better gas mileage on the track than a Prius. Toyota did not sue the BBC as they do understand Sir Issac Newton. The track sure is hard on battery cars

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  3. Literally this was a fascinating read and journey to this resourceful website. The authentic and technical details on Telsa motors especially on Telsa Roadster. Also I would like to appreciate you for bringing a good focus on Bloomberg Article. This was totally great. Basically my internet browsing story was to reveal some excellent, super safety an affordable price of racing suits particularly produced by FervoGear. But seriously it was not less interesting.

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