Electric vehicles on Top Gear next weekend

[MB]

The final episode of this series of Top Gear is aired this weekend.

On the show, Jeremy Clarkson will be driving a Tesla, James May will be driving a Honda Clarity hydrogen car, and the Toyota Prius and G-Wiz will be on hand to be laughed at.

If you want to watch, it's BBC2 at 8pm. You might just want to watch from behind the sofa though...

[MB]

Well, if you missed the programme, you missed a good show. Jeremy Clarkson gave a great review of the Tesla - there was no doubt that he loved the car, despite one or two setbacks with reliability.

James May did a very positive review of the Honda FCX Clarity as well.

When I spoke to the Top Gear office last week, it was obvious that the Tesla had hit the spot. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the car and I got the very strong feeling they were impressed.

So perhaps Boris Johnstons suggestion in last weeks show that 'Top Gear' should be renamed 'Top Plug' could actually happen in a few years time

[cianof]

Very interesting show.

Clarkson summation on the Tesla Roadster:
"What we have here is an astonishing technical achievement. The first electric car that you might actually want to buy. It's just a shame that it the real world, it doesn't seem to work"

I reckon Clarkson and chums are BEV luddites. They seem to be putting their bets on hydrogen. Time will tell.

[MB]

Not really. They had one car break down on the circuit and another which ran out of charge after 54 miles instead of the 200 miles plus Tesla claimed.

I don't think Top Gear are putting their bets on hydrogen, or anything else for that matter. They're simply reporting what they find.

Had the car performed better and more reliably, you would have had a different conclusion to the piece. Let's see what happens when they get their hands on the Lightning GT next year...

[cianof]

They had a bad run during their test with the short range, the breaks and the motor cutting out due to overheating. That was a shame. Hopefully it didn't over shadow the Teslas good points that were also mentioned. I think Clarkson was definitely impressed with Teslas accelerations.

In terms of balance, I would have liked if they had mentioned fast charging options when mentioning that it takes 16 hours to charge from standard domestic supply. The long tail pipe argument with regards to BEVs also made me cringe a bit too as this applies to hydrogen fueled vehicles too.

Overall the show is light hearted and fairly entertaining but I still think there's a batteries are bad, hydrogen is good vibe at the moment.

I hope the Lightning GT will change all that.

[Night Train]

One thing with the range is that not many normal users will be using it full throttle on a race track. The petrol cars don't have much range on their track either in comparison.

[MalcolmB]

Maybe it was just me, but I got a strong impression that they dismissed the Tesla as a novelty while waxing lyrical about the hydrogen fuel cell as being the propulsion source of the future. Same old red herring.

Clarkson did his usual trick of asking where the electricity comes from for plug-in cars, which is a valid question, but of course skipped over the fact that electric vehicles use energy much more efficiently than fossil burners.

I was genuinely surprised at James May's unreserved enthusiasm for the Honda Clarity; I expected a little deeper analysis from him. Yes, hydrogen itself is clean, abundant and produces very low emissions when burned, but where does that come from? How much energy does it take to produce it? How much will it cost to set up the distribution infrastructure? How much will it cost at the pump? What will the explosion be like when the first one goes up with a bang?

I know Top Gear is just a lightweight entertainment programme and I don't expect a balanced analysis from it, but even I was surprised at the way they made the fuel cell sound like the answer to all our problems. But then of course they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo...

[qdos]

Actually I think it was much more positive than you're all making out.

The simple message was "Wow electric powered is impressive!"

Of course we can all argue till the cows come home where the energy comes from but they all agreed that an electric motor is what should be driving the cars of the future and that they quite fancied it so long as it went Vroom Vroom rather than whine whine

[ChrisBarron]

I was genuinely surprised at James May's unreserved enthusiasm for the Honda Clarity; I expected a little deeper analysis from him. Yes, hydrogen itself is clean, abundant and produces very low emissions when burned, but where does that come from? How much energy does it take to produce it? How much will it cost to set up the distribution infrastructure? How much will it cost at the pump? What will the explosion be like when the first one goes up with a bang?

I think the range wasn't bad considering that it was being drivein flat out. Let's be honest, the Bugatti Veyron only has a range of about 55 miles too when that's driven flat out (2.1mpg X 26.4 gals).

There was no mention of how driving style affects the range of the FCX either. Shame. Nor any mention about the Honda's 288V Lithium battery pack which drives the car as an electric and uses the fuel cell as an onboard charger. Some people might get the wrong impression that batteries aren't included with the fuel cell FCX.

Here's a couple of figures, cold hard, facts from an American hydrogen manufacturer.....
The most prolific and cheapest way to get hydrogen is through water electrolysis. The energy required to compress the hydrogen to the required 5,000psi (and more) is massive.

To produce 1kg of liquid hydrogen requires about 70kWh. That's enough to power the FCX for about 72 miles, and the Tesla for up to 300.

No doubt fuel cells will get better, but I don't think we can get to the point that the savings from manufacturing fuel cells on a large scale could ever negate the energy cost required to produce the hydrogen. In short, the hydrogen industry, one way or the other, will be a gross user of energy.

Chris

[Peter Eggleston]

I have been driving my electric truck for 6 years now and it has never broken down. I am sure that if I drove it the way Clarkson does, then it would break quite easily and quickley. When I was a lad I had a beetle which was supposed to have a maximum speed of 60 mph. I got it up to 80 mph down the M6 quite easily, but only the once on that engine. BANG !