I agree with you on the last points, but they're clearly burning it round the track, not driving in suburbia so Tesla's moaning about the figure is a bit moot.
If Tesla want to stick to the 211 claim on a track it's a whole different matter. From the press release Tesla seem to be saying that Top Gear lied about how far it would have gone on the track, which is nonsense.
After all they knew exactly where Top Gear was taking it, all cars go there.
Overall I thought that Top Gear were positive about the car in terms of raw performance, just as something you'd drive it's not practical even as a sports car.
"The company claimed it could run, even if driven briskly, for 200 miles, but after just a morning the battery power was down to 20% and we realised that it would not have enough juice for all the shots we needed."
I could be mistaken, but I think Tesla said that neither car was reduced by more than 25% (maybe it was below 25%). The roadster keeps a large amount of data store about it's usage so it'd be easy to determine who was telling the truth. Either way pushing the car into the garage was never necessary and was done on purpose, I'm not sure the intent.
If Tesla want to stick to the 211 claim on a track it's a whole different matter. From the press release Tesla seem to be saying that Top Gear lied about how far it would have gone on the track, which is nonsense.
After all they knew exactly where Top Gear was taking it, all cars go there.
Overall I thought that Top Gear were positive about the car in terms of raw performance, just as something you'd drive it's not practical even as a sports car.