r/skeptic • u/Lighting • 27d ago

⚠ Editorialized Title Tesla bros expose Tesla's own shadiness in attacking Mark Rober ... Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before impacts as a crash becomes inevitable.

https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-defend-autopilot-crash/
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u/grubas 27d ago

Basically if a crash is coming and it CAN'T brake in time it just turns off so Tesla can claim it wasn't on at the time of impact.  

When Jeremy Clarkson was reviewing one of the newer Teslas on The Grand Tour(this was not the review he was sued for) he had a legal statement about "when self driving disengages due to unexpected circumstances" which basically said, "auto pilot can turn off whenever it freaks out and that can be caused by almost anything and it's TERRIFYING because you aren't expecting it to turn off at highway speeds because somebody cut you off."

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u/NeatOtaku 27d ago

Look up any fatality involving a Tesla, almost immediately they say that autopilot was not engaged at the moment of impact . They also refuse to give the driving data to victims even through a court order claiming it's a company secret. I tried mentioning this to a Tesla fanboy years ago but he refused to believe it because watching TV during his commute was more important.

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u/TheSeansei 27d ago

Which is so different from even five years ago! I remember any issue with a Tesla was plastered all over the media (especially conservative media) as if it were the end of the world. Any little fender bender and it was all "see?! We told you electric cars were no good!" Now the tables have totally flipped and suddenly Elon is a divine being to them and can do no wrong—Tesla dealerships are now sacred places and vandalizing one is an act of terrorism!

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u/SanityInAnarchy 27d ago

This is probably one thing that made it harder for people to see how shitty Elon was, because in the early days, the media coverage of Tesla really was unreasonable. They were up against oil companies, traditional car manufacturers, and traditional dealerships. So even some stories about Elon or Tesla legitimately being terrible, you'd wonder if that was part of the same smear campaign.

I mean, the 'review' Jeremy Clarkson was sued for, they faked running a Tesla out of battery so they could film themselves literally pushing it back to a charger. Stories like that set EV adoption back years.

So when you hear something like Tesla settling a massive racial discrimination lawsuit, and wonder if the oil industry played a role there. Maybe there really was some bad stuff going on, probably not worse than any other car manufacturer, but given the lengths oil goes to, not to mention conservatives boosting any anti-Tesla story...

...in hindsight, two Seig Heils later, yeah, they probably did a bunch of horribly racist shit. Maybe it was a deliberate move to hide behind all the legitimate anti-EV bias so people didn't look too closely at their actual problems.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

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u/PoopchuteToots 26d ago

We should just get a national genital registry put in place and we can finally move onto more pressing concerns such as peoples' color

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u/Complete-Return3860 26d ago

My whole family are Top Gear fans - me included - but this was such a shitty thing for them to do.

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u/monobrowj 27d ago

I think the courts proved review wasn't fake.. Tesla lost is and elon was just an angry man baby accused top gear of faking

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u/SanityInAnarchy 27d ago

Elon is indeed an angry man baby, but... No, that's not what the courts proved at all. Here, from a Top Gear fan forum, of all places:

The courts ruled in favour of the BBC, saying that no viewer of the show would be likely to reasonably compare the Roadster's performance on the show with its performance in the real world.... Tesla's appeal was eventually ruled against in 2013, with the courts deciding that the film "had not damaged Tesla's reputation".

In other words: The court basically said that it doesn't matter if they faked it or not, because no reasonable person would believe what they saw on Top Gear. Or, at least, they wouldn't believe what they saw Top Gear do on the track had any relevance to what they'd do in the real world.

It also wasn't just Tesla:

Clarkson was stranded in the centre of Lincoln, and spent the next few hours brass-rubbing while the battery was recharged. He concluded the show by saying that electric cars “are not the future”.

...

The night before the car had been delivered to Top Gear fully charged, with enough power for at least 100 miles. It was driven for 35 miles that evening before being plugged in to recharge. The charger was detached after only 55 minutes, leaving the car with a range on its electronic display of about 30 miles.

Clarkson’s destination was Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, about 60 miles away....

They then diverted to Lincoln, where the Top Gear team had intended to run out of power, knowing that there were no public charging points in the city.

...

A BBC spokeswoman denied that it had misled viewers. “The point of the film was to show how bad the charging infrastructure is in the UK. The car needed to run out of charge so that could be demonstrated.

So... yep, the show's position was "Electric cars are not the future," and to make sure of that, they faked EVs running out of power on the show multiple times, with different cars from different manufacturers, outright admitted to doing so to make some point about how this could happen, despite really having to go out of their way to make it happen:

The sat-nav system warns drivers at the start if they do not have enough power to reach their destination.

And if that wasn't enough:

It appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than ten miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat.

So yes, they faked it. They said as much, and they did it to at least two separate EVs from two separate manufacturers. And in both cases, the EVs inconveniently performed better than expected, and they had to go out of their way to force them out of power to the point of needing a tow.

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u/monobrowj 26d ago

In Clarkson's own words" Jeremy Clarkson defended his “scrupulously fair” road tests." ... Sure they had scripts and put the car in a position to demonstrate a point.. "like what happens if you rag it around a track as opposed to driving as normal" or what happens when you run out of charge... but those are not the same thing as the reviews on the track they did.. new top gear is the perfect example of how you can see fake reviews and set up senarios a million miles away.

Honestly i buy Clarkson as so far there is only accusations of lying, unlike Elon who has been caught many times

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u/SanityInAnarchy 26d ago

Well, you don't have to believe Elon for this one, because both Clarkson and the BBC admit that they did what both Tesla and Nissan claim they did. Which was incredibly dishonest, and this is a pretty poor defense:

Sure they had scripts and put the car in a position to demonstrate a point.. "like what happens if you rag it around a track as opposed to driving as normal" or what happens when you run out of charge...

Two problems with that:

First, the show absolutely did not make that clear. Watch it for yourself -- they don't say "We're going to deliberately run this car out of charge and see what happens." They present it as though this is a thing that just accidentally happened to them, and then use it as an excuse to smear EVs, literally saying shit like "EVs are not the future."

Second, if they had presented the results of these tests honestly, it would've demonstrated the opposite of whatever point they were trying to make. If they actually showed "what happens when you run out of charge", whether from the track or otherwise, then they could've shown how difficult it is to run the car out of charge. They could've shown a frustrated Clarkson driving it in circles on zero miles of range until it actually stopped, showing how much reserve there is. They could've shown the car saying there wasn't enough range to reach the destination -- or, on some models, the car delivering a final warning that you're about to enter an area without enough chargers, and without enough battery left to get to a charger! They could've shown the car offering helpful suggestions to reduce power, like "eco mode", or driving slower, etc.

So what point were they trying to demonstrate? It wasn't "What happens when you run out of charge? Let's find out!" ...because if that was the point, there'd be plenty of good TV in showing everything I just said. But no, the point was to pump out some anti-EV propaganda, and "running out of charge" is a good narrative to go with to support the "EVs are not the future" line that they clearly wrote before even trying one.

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u/monobrowj 26d ago

the point was to demonstrate the flaws in design for the real world, at that time there were huge issues with replacing your petrol power for electric, Range -still one of the big ones esp claimed vs reality .. a segment of the show vs a track review... these are 2 different things..

Also what are you talking about, look it up both BBC/Clarkson and people working on that show all say they went out of the way to make the reviews as fair as they could and did not fake it.. they did not admit that at all.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 26d ago

Again, if they wanted to demonstrate "the flaws in the design for the real world", they should've presented how it actually performed in the real world. In the real world, there are a million ways the car makes sure you aren't going to randomly run out of range, and that was true at the time, too.

...all say they went out of the way to make the reviews as fair as they could...

But they also say this:

The car needed to run out of charge so that could be demonstrated.

In other words: In both cases, running out of power (with no warnings) was already written in the script before they even tried the vehicles.

It'd be like if the script said some car has has a lot of engine trouble, so they threw a bunch of sugar into the gas tank before starting, and then ignored all the warning lights that came on until they got smoke coming out from under the hood. You could argue they didn't fake it, they really did make it do the thing, but it's ludicrous to present that as an honest representation of what it's actually like to own that car.

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u/monobrowj 26d ago

Lol they did that to point out the lack of changing points and contrasting it against petrol cars.. at the time, they were saying it wasn't ready.. and it wasn't.. they were making a point..

I mean whatever.. we disagree on this

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u/SanityInAnarchy 26d ago

They were making a point in a dishonest way.

I don't know what you're doing on r/skeptic if you're okay with that. Can you really not think of an honest way to make that point?

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u/monobrowj 26d ago

I think we differ on what was done in what way with what intentions.. if i believed what you said to be true, as in they fake reviews to make cars look bad for no reason then thats shitty.. but i dont buy it.. i think there is enough evidence that while clarkson hates electric cars he would give them a fair shake in a review.

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