The upcoming new series of Top Gear, season 17, is in the making. The guys in the UK were spotted this week while two testing electric vehicles near the University of Lincoln.
Jeremy Clarkson and James May ran out of electricity for both their cars. While finding for some power, they stopped at the university to steal some power and recharge their vehicles. A large group of students assisted both TV presenters while searching for some electric juice.
Clarkson should note that those electric cars have much better range than a Ford GT that he previously owned. If there weren’t so much petrol stations in the world it would stuck quite fast LOL
Just wait for more public fast chargers and a better battery packs and a problem of EVs’ limited range will disappear :)
No! It’ll not! Fast charging destroys the battery. Remind me again how much costs to replace the battery with new one? Isn’t it cheaper to buy a new car? ;)
@kris_vd but you don’t need to use fast charger everyday :) only when you’re going for a long trip. Normally you will charge it during nights at your garage (note that electricity is even cheaper at night). And when batteries will have better capacity than today, you can easy use a vehicle a whole day without recharging.
btw 80 percent of drivers in the US, commute fewer than 40 miles a day and Nissan Leaf’s EPA real world range is 73 miles (100 Nissan offcial). So for daily driving it’s OK! Then think about upcoming Tesla Model S with 300 miles battery pack :) You will need to use fast charger only from time to time or even few times a year.
Sorry to interrupt guys but IMO electric powered cars never have worked and they won’t properly work. They are not eco-friendly because some huge electic plant have to produce the juice for your car and that causes a lot more pollution than driving a normal car for years that’s a fact for those who can be bothered about that. They are expensive, difficult to produce, the battery will run flat someday and it costs a lot of money to replace it and the distance they can cover is rubbish AND on top of all that it takes hours to recharge it.
Hybrids are better than that but still rubbish, I bet my money on the Honda FCX Clarity and H-Powered cars. That will be the next fuel as soon as the storage is sorted out, petrol and electric powered cars will be redundand and finally replaced.
P.S. looking forward to the next TG season, I can hardly wait for it :D
@luke today the biggest problem with electric cars are limited range and lack of charging infrastructure. The batteries are heavy and very expensive, but hey don’t forget about economies of scale :) nowadays it’s expensive, because cells are prodeced in a SMALL volume and developing costs are huge. Just think what will happen when mass production will start… the price will go down, dramatically. Of course technology improvments in battery chemistry will be a second very important factor which will decide about attractive of EVs. And then when one automaker succeed, others will join the competition. That will be good for customers, cuz after that prices could drop to a reasonable level and EV will be competitive to ICE.
and please note that electric motor would is perfect for sports cars. It’s efficiency is over 90% compare to +/- 30% with an ICE which never will be more efficient, because it’s technically imposible. Same with torque distribution no matter how good and advanced gearbox is. And next in EV you don’t need super complicated and expensive gearbox or even a clutch. It’s useless! Think about how good traction could be when max torque is always available. Then electric motor has only few moving parts compered to few thousands in an ICE. Think about realiability and service costs…
and finally Luke LOL do you know how efficienty is to produce H2 to use it in very expensive fuel cell to produce electricity that powers electric motor? hahaha and where can you buy hydrogen? and do you know about costs of buliding a whole infrastructure from zero! damn stop watching this pure entertaintment show and start to THINK :)
@Luke you said “They are not eco-friendly because some huge electic plant have to produce the juice for your car and that causes a lot more pollution than driving a normal car for years that’s a fact for those who can be bothered about that.”
yeah that’s true about NiMH battery that is used in Prius. But note that Leaf or Tesla and upcoming 2012 Prius Plug-in is using Lithium-ion battery which is almost 100% recycleable. And it has much better parameters than NiMH…
and you know why electric cars never worked? Because there wasn’t a proper battery which can be used in cars. Simply
Guys, pure electric cars had future only as a daily drivers in the city. IMO the true replacement of the ICE cars could be hybrid with extended range by small gas turbine engine running on alcohol. And for now no more electric sports cars! Let’s confine ourselves to daily drivers. PLEASE!