Tesla's Top Gear Lawsuit Fails

In 2011, American carmaker Tesla sued the BBC for libel and malicious falsehood over a 2008 Top Gear episode that said its Roadster would run out of power after 55 miles of hard track driving. Top Gear had not driven the car that distance, but the program later said Tesla's own engineers had calculated and supplied the 55-mile estimate using data from the test. The courts struck out Tesla's claims after ruling that viewers would not confuse racetrack performance with normal driving. Tesla finally lost the case when the Court of Appeal dismissed its appeal in 2013.

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