My impression was that the 'seriousness' came into play because they did not merely claim that the car had poor range on a track, but that it ran out of juice while they were testing it, which was not the case. Making untrue statements to make a true point about a limitation of the car was permissible since nobody reasonably expects anything else of Top Gear. I doubt a "serious" publication can get away with that sort of thing though.

I'm a fan of both Tesla and Top Gear, and Tesla's complaints about Top Gear always seemed a bit daft to me. That is mostly because of who Top Gear is though.