Tesla's rebuttals to the Top Gear complaints were largely the same. They said the brakes didn't fail despite being broken. Power assisted brakes in any vehicle ARE broken if the power assist fails. It doesn't make the car undriveable, it does however make it untestable. You can't have non-power brakes on a high-performance sports car.
IIRC they did use the other vehicle. Because the Tesla needs time to recharge, whilst other vehicles just need a fuel change, one vehicle was for testing and one was for filming. This would provide them enough mileage for the one-day filming they do for a review. However with one vehicle down they used the 'test' vehicle they used to get a feel for the vehicle. This put the car into the recovery mode, which the Top Gear crew made fun of.
Tesla wanted a review. Top Gear isn't a non-biased program, they don't advertise to be. Tesla's vehicle had failures, they got exploited for a show KNOWN for being satirical, humorous and exploitative in its reviews. Tesla gave Top Gear a match, and Top Gear used it to burn them. They supplied their own failure, simple as, because ultimately they provided vehicles that failed. You review the material you have and not some idealistic bullshit green-freaks want to see.
Top Gear has a viewership higher than the population of the US. If you're reaching that many people, get your marketing and advertising execs to fork over some money to give additional vehicles when you're not able to fuel up the vehicle.
Tesla was dumb. Tesla got burned. Sucks to be Tesla.
Edit: Note that Tesla failed to recognize that they had almost a 5-minute spotlight on their vehicle, in front of an audience of approximately 350 million simply for the use of their vehicles (that is top gears only condition, is that the vehicles are provided for testing).
If you think the review is harsh, go watch reviews Top Gear has done for Hummer and for the F150. They make fun of the impracticality of vehicles.