There are two claims in the article that were not made clear in the episode:

1) The Leaf had a full charge when delivered, but it was drained to 40%

2) Clarkson drove around in circles until it died, in Lincoln.

Now I can understand both of these things from a television perspective. Obviously everything in Lincoln was staged, including their arrangement with the university to charge there. Clearly they drained the battery so that it would die in Lincoln, as that's where they had prepared to shoot.

It makes sense from a TV perspective but it's unethical, especially given the direct harm it can have on livelihoods and the effort to transition off fossil fuels. There's no substantive difference between doing what they did, and merely pretending that the car died when it had half a charge left. Top Gear is a comedy show, but it isn't satire. The audience has no reasonable expectation that when the hosts make claims about certain cars, they are being dishonest for the sake of comedy. Sure, we know the challenges are staged, but that's not what this is about. It's as if, in testing the new Ferrari, they replaced the rear tires with winter tires then complained about how the read end was uncontrollable. This crosses the line directly from creating an entertaining narrative to slander. Given JC's very public views on anything to do with the environment, as well as their previous run-in with Tesla, you'd think they would be careful not to give the impression that they will intentionally lie to disparage electric vehicles. With this latest incident, that is exactly the impression they give.