Top Gear is a scripted comedy show. Tesla thought (and you seem to think) that Top Gear is a serious car review program, it hasn't been that for at least twenty years.
Of course Top Gear are going to make a joke about an electric car running out of juice, that's the obvious go to joke to make. You cannot sue someone because you don't find them funny.
It just comes across as petty or out of touch on Tesla's part.
> Um, yeah, the review wasn't good from a review-standing-on-its-own standpoint. There was much back and forth but ultimately the review was inaccurate / imprecise in many areas[2].
There was a lot of back and forth, follow up articles, a rebuttal, a Tesla piece. But even after all of that a lot of the issues still remain. The way Tesla reacted to the article was completely over the top however, that was more the issue, they could have issued a rebuttal but instead they went nuclear right out of the gate.
> It didn't seem like a nice thing to do but I also don't care that much that Musk did it.
I don't care either, I just don't like what it represents. Tesla does something wrong (which even they admit they did), someone criticizes them, and they're banned from buying a Tesla.
You can argue there is more to the story, but Musk/Tesla never said there was and the blogger directly said there wasn't. They just said they got a call notifying them to the ban/cancellation out of the blue. Boom, done. Musk hasn't gone on record saying he was rude on the call, or whatever, people just make that up to justify why Tesla/Musk is right.
Considering Top Gear[1] scripted it out to make the car seem shitty why would you be surprised that they tried to sue?
> had a massive battle with the New York Times, because the NYT instead of publishing a puff piece published an article critical of Tesla's Model S.
Um, yeah, the review wasn't good from a review-standing-on-its-own standpoint. There was much back and forth but ultimately the review was inaccurate / imprecise in many areas[2].
> All of the Tesla fans love to blame all of this stuff on everyone else (the person who got banned, Top Gear, NYT, etc) but ultimately the point still stands that Tesla actively goes after people who offend them. My only point was that it could happen to YOU or ME if we're not careful.
Yup, fair enough. But also keep in mind that, as an owner of a company, you have the right to "fire the customer". After working in retail there were plenty of times when a customer, even rightly so, criticized things you do but ultimately you can't just keep them around because they're disrupting others (one reason among many, many reasons). I'm not sure if there was ever more to the story than was published or not (I've seen plenty of people tell a completely different story after leaving our store to other people). It didn't seem like a nice thing to do but I also don't care that much that Musk did it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear_controversies#Tesla_R...
[2] http://www.poynter.org/2013/elon-musk-on-new-york-times-tesl...