New Top Gear (2011) BBC 2 8PM!
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Soldato
I really don't like hammond, he's not funny and annoying, plus he looked bored during the disabled rally bit.
great series though imo.
lol?
great series though imo.
lol?
They are pretty big floors tbh, and like they said about the batteries and stuff only lasting 5-10 years, its not exactly a vehicle built to last is it? and when you think of the massive amount of pollution caused by creating those batteries in the first place and you have to replace them every 5-10 years, add the pollution caused by making the car and making the electricity to run the thing they are no better than the Blue Motion Golf Clarkson referenced just much more inconvenient...
Actually Hydrogen cars are coming along faster than electric cars, they are driving around California and many other places as we speak and recharging at "fast fill" stations. Hondas FCX Clarity has an average range of 240 miles and doesn't take a whole afternoon to fill up. Honda is aiming to begin mass producing cars using the technology by 2018.
Soldato
Too bad about the Lambo - I was really hoping it had retained some of the insanity of old......I was dreading them saying it drove like an Audi....and that's exactly what they said 
The Miura had a habit of going air-born around corners because the front end created lift instead of down force.
The Countach had the heaviest clutch known to man and you couldn't see anything out the back...it was horrid to drive, apparently.
The Diablo was a piece of junk that had bits falling off all over the place - I remember one of the first reviews when the gear lever snapped off, the aircon blew smoke into the cabin and finally the engine literally melted.
But who cared? They were like George Best....brilliant, yet completely and utterly berserk.
I suppose it was unrealistic to expect the same these days
The Miura had a habit of going air-born around corners because the front end created lift instead of down force.
The Countach had the heaviest clutch known to man and you couldn't see anything out the back...it was horrid to drive, apparently.
The Diablo was a piece of junk that had bits falling off all over the place - I remember one of the first reviews when the gear lever snapped off, the aircon blew smoke into the cabin and finally the engine literally melted.
But who cared? They were like George Best....brilliant, yet completely and utterly berserk.
I suppose it was unrealistic to expect the same these days
Soldato
Hehe, totally right.
If you want a fast car that is crap and falls to pieces you'd be better off with a TVR
Man of Honour
They have small floors, since they're small cars. Even big cars have small floors, really. The room I'm in now isn't particularly big and it has a floor 16 feet by 12 feet - much bigger than a car's floor.
That's a bit optimistic with Li-ion batteries because the problem is that the maximum charge drops over charging cycles and over time. Since the range is low with full charge and new batteries, any reduction is an issue. You could probably use the same batteries for much longer than 10 years, but you'd probably be down below 2/3rds range by 5 years, even if you're careful with how you charge them.
The vehicle will probably last longer than an ICE one. Electric motors are much simpler than ICEs, so they tend to last longer. You can replace the batteries.
With current batteries and electricity generation, that's a fair point.
Current electric cars are also more expensive to run. They might currently be cheaper to run (but more expensive in total cost of ownership), but that's only because of the massive difference in taxation. If electric cars become more than a miniscule minority of cars, the government will have to tax them a lot more. Battery replacement costs are usually left out as well - add at least £1500 a year for that.
Hydrogen cars in practice are electric cars. You can make a hydrogen-burning engine, but the method actually in use is to use hydrogen in fuel cells to generate electricity to power the car - an electric car.
They're not coming along faster than battery-powered electric cars, nor is there any sign that they will do so any time soon.
None of which is at all relevant to the point the previous poster made - hydrogen is at present not an energy source at all, merely an extremely inefficient energy carrier.
Yes, you can make an electric car with hydrogen fuel cells.
Yes, you can refuel it quickly.
What you can't do is make pure hydrogen at anything like a reasonable energy cost. The hydrogen used in those stations in California is a by-product of oil refining. The hydrogen is used in the refining process as well, so it isn't a waste product. There isn't an abundance of it even with oil refining at the current scale, so there is no chance of using it for more than a tiny fraction of cars even if oil refining is kept at the current scale (which would defeat the point, anyway). Then there's the pollution from the process, which includes a fair bit of carbon dioxide. You refer to the pollution cost of making batteries - there's one for making fuel cells too.
Water is pretty much 2/3rds hydrogen and there's a lot of water. So you can get enough hydrogen from that...so what you're doing is using electricity to extract hydrogen from water to power a fuel cell to generate electricity. You end up with maybe a third of the electricity you started with, and that's completely ignoring the problems of storing and transporting hydrogen. It should be obvious that is hugely inefficient and a big environmental cost.
Storing and transporting hydrogen...more big problems. Hydrogen breaks things, basically. Put it in almost anything and the container will become brittle and break. So you can't pump it through existing pipes. It also takes up a huge amount of space, as it's a gas. You can pressurise it to reduce the volume, but that has inherent risks and costs. You can liquify it, but that requires a lot of cooling, which is another big energy cost.
Compare that with using electricity directly rather than using electricity to extract hydrogen to generate electricty. No conversion losses, easy transportation with very low energy costs, storage isn't an issue and when you end up with at least 9/10ths of the electricty you started with, as opposed to 1/3rd or less.
Hydrogen is absolutely dreadful as a fuel at the moment. In fact, it's not a fuel at all. It's a way of wasting energy and breaking things.
There's more sign of big enough improvements in battery technology than there is in technology for hydrogen extraction, storage and transportation.
There are working prototypes of batteries that are far less polluting to make, require far less uncommon materials, lose their maximum charge far less quickly and have far higher charge to weight and charge to volume ratios. Expect them in the market within 5 years, maybe less. The STAIR research project finishes next year and they had working prototypes 2 years ago that were a fivefold improvement over Li-ion.
There are some ideas that might at some point lead to less inefficient ways to extract hydrogen. Maybe they will come to something, maybe not.
So...batteries are already much more efficient in terms of energy and less polluting as a result, but charge time is a major issue. The next generation of batteries won't change that, because charging efficiency isn't the problem (it's already very high).
The obvious solution is to not charge them in the car. Drive into battery station, swap battery, pay, drive out. Discharged battery charges in the battery station. It's as fast as refueling and the battery stations can be added to existing petrol stations, increasing capacity as electric cars become more common. The main thing that would be needed is to make batteries much smaller and much lighter for the same charge...which is exactly what is happening.
It might be the case in the future that hydrogen becomes a viable energy source. It would take a whole slew of huge advances, but it might happen. For example, some people are studying termites with an eye to maybe at some point building a biological reactor that extracts hydrogen from woody materials, based on the termite digestive system. That could be much more energy efficient than extracting it from water. But it's currently an idea in the initial research stages.
Right now and for the forseeable future, hydrogen is a seriously bad way to power cars. It's a massive waste of resources and it couldn't even be made to work at all except on a very small scale.
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Too bad about the Lambo - I was really hoping it had retained some of the insanity of old......I was dreading them saying it drove like an Audi....and that's exactly what they said
The Miura had a habit of going air-born around corners because the front end created lift instead of down force.
The Countach had the heaviest clutch known to man and you couldn't see anything out the back...it was horrid to drive, apparently.
The Diablo was a piece of junk that had bits falling off all over the place - I remember one of the first reviews when the gear lever snapped off, the aircon blew smoke into the cabin and finally the engine literally melted.
But who cared? They were like George Best....brilliant, yet completely and utterly berserk.
I suppose it was unrealistic to expect the same these days
I have to say, this does seem to be a recurring theme on Top Gear - "Wow, this car is totally amazing! It's fast! It's acceleration is brutal! It's handling is sublime! The grip levels are astounding! But, I wouldn't buy it because it's not crap..."
Im all for cars being a bit quirky, but they said it about he MP4-12C and a couple of others cars have fallen under the same criticism. I was watching last night's Lambo review and I knew as soon as he started praising it so much that at the end he was going to say the same thing, it's "too good".
It just doesnt seem like a criticism to me. Comfort and reliability are advantages that most modern everyday cars incorporate, and now even supercars are comfortable and easy to drive, as well as offering blistering performance - why is that a bad thing?
I see what you did there.
Man of Honour
It's standard on electric cars, since it's easy to implement. An electric motor can easily be made to work as a dynamo. It's usually known as regenerative braking. It's surprisingly effective, but it just extends the range from bad to bad (just not quite as bad).
Factor in battery replacement costs as well, plus the cost of the extra money spent on buying it. Either you're buying it with money you could otherwise put into savings of some kind or you're buying it on credit - either way, you're losing more money. Then there's the tax issue. Right now, with hardly any EVs in use, the government can afford to eat the miniscule loss of tax revenue from ICE fuels. If EV use becomes more than an expensive political statement from a tiny minority, the government will have to tax their use as much as they tax petrol and diesel.
I'd be very surprised if you'd ever recoup the difference in purchase prices, even if you ignore the tax issue (and the government won't ignore it, you can be sure of that).
Oh come on
you/me/99% of readers knew exactly what I meant even if I can't spell properly, besides the person I was replying too wrote floors, I wasn't gonna question an op's spelling at 3am ^^Good point, what I should have said was "Hydrogen fuel cell cars are coming along faster than conventional battery powered cars.
It is also the most abundant element in the universe making up 3/4 of everything. Considering we are rushing to replace fossil fuels because they are scheduled to run out sometime in the next millennia isn't the most abundant element in existence a good place to start looking?
The thing is, one thing the Miura, Countach, Diablo and to an extent even the Murcielago had in common was looking/sounding better than they were, for the money their competitors were kinda, well better, Lambos are more about the panto/drama than the performance.
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Man of Honour
Oh come on
It was too good a joke to pass up. It gave me a wonderfully bizarre image of driving my room down the road.
Since that isn't true, you shouldn't have said it.
No. I've already spelled out the reasons in some detail in my previous post.
Put bluntly, it's bloody stupid to waste vast amounts of energy generated from non-renewable resources in order to pretend you're conserving non-renewable resources. It doesn't make any sense at all. It wouldn't make any sense even if hydrogen use could be scaled up past "negligable", but it can't.
It can't replace more than a few ICEVs and it's massively wasteful even for that irrelevantly small amount.
It's not just that it's bloody stupid, though. Promoting it over an alternative that might actually be viable undermines the whole idea of creating viable alternatives to ICEVs.
True, it is a fun image, tho pretty similar to the Google cube ^^
Battery powered cars have been going since the 1980's and are no further ahead than Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars which havent been going as long, I would take the FCX over a leaf any day (assuming I lived somewhere where I could recharge either and not out in the sticks)
Isn't that the argument against electric cars?
As the tech progresses it will get better and better. If you had told people 300 years ago that whale oil was going to be replaced by something called kerosene that would be refined from a black rock we dug out of the ground and by something called petroleum that was refined from a black gunk that we found by drilling into the ground they would have laughed at your ideas as infeasible, nonsensical and downright laughable.
The two situations aren't even close to comparable, that you would even suggest such an analogy suggests you don't really understand what Angilion is saying.
There aren't huge amounts of free usable hydrogen just waiting to be tapped in the Earth so we have to make any we want to use. Whichever method you use to make it you have to break the chemical bond to the other element the hydrogen is bound to, this requires a lot of energy, you can use catalysts to try and reduce this amount but even then you will always be spending more (and probably quite a lot more) energy in making the hydrogen than you get back from using it. This is just simple thermodynamics. Batteries in a car are a much more direct way of using produced electricity and will be more energetically efficient, this is particularly important when you consider the number of vehicles in use.
Soldato
This.
Plus lets also not forget the extra cost in transporting and storing hydrogen compared to electricity (where a grid system already exists).
Either you'd need to build a hydrogen pipe network or you'd transport it via road like petrol/diesel, but that would require it to be refigerated/pressurised which would add to the cost.
I really don't see hydrogen becoming mainstream due to the logistical issues and the fact that even in liquid form, currently the size of tanks required from provide a car with decent distance is large.
To be honest we're more likely to solve the problem of storing Hydrogen as we are to solve the problem of making li-ion batteries practical.
The beauty of our capitalist world though is we don't need some government body to decide which is best for us (no matter what they think), we'll end up with whatever is the best commercial proposition in the end. These 'early adopter' electric battery cars are just a part of that process.
Whatever technology is the least worst at a price the market will bear will win out in the end.
The beauty of our capitalist world though is we don't need some government body to decide which is best for us (no matter what they think), we'll end up with whatever is the best commercial proposition in the end. These 'early adopter' electric battery cars are just a part of that process.
Whatever technology is the least worst at a price the market will bear will win out in the end.
Soldato
I think biofuels and hybrids using small gas turbines will be the near future. Once the govt get the bee out of their ass regarding hemp, it has the potential to be far more productive for biofuel than crops like corn.
You've stolen my sig :/
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Man of Honour
Not true. I've already explained why. Twice.
I'd prefer not to do so much damage to the environment, so I'd take the Leaf or (the greenest choice at the moment) a highly efficient ICEV.
No. I've explained why. Twice. A process that results in the loss of less than 10% of the electricity is less wasteful than a process that results in a loss of more than 60% of the electricity. They are not the same thing. They are not comparable. Saying that one is much more wasteful than the other is not an argument against both. That's not including the waste in storing and transporting hydrogen, which is significant.
Not if I was able to demonstrate it to them and explain it to them.
You, and all the other hydrogen advocates, are determinedly ignoring fundamental problems that are not simply a matter of refining existing technology. Solving them requires entirely new technology that doesn't exist, using processes that don't exist.
It is possible that hydrogen might at some point become a viable option, but treating it as inevitable and merely a development of existing technology shows a very basic ignorance of the subject.
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Man of Honour
You've picked the least of the major problems with hydrogen and decreed without any supporting evidence that it's more likely to be solved than one of a number of different approaches to battery development, as if that is a compelling argument to focus on a hugely inefficient energy carrier with much bigger problems inherent in the way atomic physics work.
There are working prototypes of batteries 5 times better than li-ion and theoretically they can be developed to 10 times better than li-ion.
There isn't even theory that hydrogen can be made anywhere near as efficient an energy carrier as a battery is, not even close, not even on paper. That's before the problem of storing it comes into play, which might or might not be solved to some extent, and the problem of transporting it.