Man of Honour
Actually, this has been pointed out over and over again. And ignored over and over again. I first pointed it out in post 1889 and I wouldn't be surprised if other people had pointed it out earlier in the thread.
New Top Gear (2011) BBC 2 8PM!
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Actually, this has been pointed out over and over again. And ignored over and over again. I first pointed it out in post 1889 and I wouldn't be surprised if other people had pointed it out earlier in the thread.
Oh come on, that's a stupid question - that's like asking who's going to suck all this oil out the ground refine it into petrol, ship it around the world and store it in conveniently located stations with a pump on the end for me to stick in my tank.
You can say it isn't economic, but if it isn't then li-ion cars aren't either.
I feel sorry for the people who spend a lot of money on one and find their range is less than 20m in 3 years time.
That isn't a problem, it's an issue, but not a problem.
Batteries are limited and the resources used to make them scarce and polluting.
Hydrogen is just wasteful of input energy - there's plenty of energy, even clean energy, it just costs a lot.
The bigger problem for energy is long term storage that doesn't require energy to maintain it (e.g. not cryogenic or leaking).
Caporegime
i thought that
There must have been some kind of forgiveness by the TG crew to let him back on.
Oil is worth something without doing anything to it and the input costs to refine are very low - its a process not a production line. You can't compare it to batteries, you cant just dig them out of the ground.
How much are people going to pay for a full charged battery do you think? Would be interesting to work out the business opportunity for these charging stations?
Man of Honour
I think weight is an issue, given that EV battery packs can weigh 500Kg. That's a lot to be moving around if EVs replace ICEVs, especially as battery stations would see several times as much use as petrol stations (even with a 500Kg battery, range is a little over 200 miles). Size is also an issue. It's not a deal-breaker, but it is an issue with the current size and weight of batteries and the very large number of swaps that would have to be done.
Huge improvements look imminent, though, possibly an entire order of magnitude. Not just on paper - it's already well into the prototyping stage. A 50Kg battery the size of a small suitcase would be much easier to handle for battery swapping.
The rate of improvement shows up a practical problem, though. How can you standardise the design when the technology is changing so much? You run the risk of either stifling development by locking it to the standard or making the standard rapidly obsolete. The possibility of rapid obsolescence would make it difficult to get the standard accepted at all - what company is going to pay for the infrastructure that might be obsolete in a few years?
The cost of the battery will have to be met by the driver in one way or another. You won't have to pay £10K every 3 years for a new one, but you will have to pay extra on each swap to cover the cost of the depreciation of the battery. Although the next generation of batteries should lose maximum charge much less quickly, so the cost would be much less.
Much more dangerous as well, due to the very high pressure. The ongoing expense would be higher too, because whatever you store it in will break much quicker than storage for petrol or diesel. Hydrogen is a real bugger to store.
But the biggest problem is getting the hydrogen in the first place. I'll belabour this point again, because it's the most important one. There is no known way, not even in theory, to obtain hydrogen on a large scale without a huge waste of energy. Hydrogen is always (on Earth) found bound to other atoms. To get just hydrogen, you need to break those atomic bonds. That requires energy - more energy than you get back from passing the hydrogen through a fuel cell. Hydrogen is not an energy source. It's an energy carrier and it's a very inefficient one.
It's possible that the efficiency of hydrogen as an energy carrier might be improved to possibly usable levels with odd approaches such as using biological reactors based on termite guts (seriously, it is being investigated), but they are only possibilities in early stages and even if they exceed the best hopes they still won't make hydrogen a fuel. Just a less inefficient energy carrier.
True. There will be some use for home charging using much higher power than a 13a socket, but it will only be viable for some of the people who have driveways or garages.
Which, thankfully, some people are doing.
Of course, you then have the problem of supplying the energy. Moving away from oil as a fuel doesn't mean reducing the amount of energy required. It just changes the form of the energy. A very large increase in electricity generating capacity would be required. That's not an insurmountable problem, but it is a problem.
Soldato
Perhaps that section was filmed a while ago when it just when the info was released in the his bio...?
Thinking about it they only talked about it at the time of the middle eastern/usa special at xmas.
Man of Honour
OK, it isn't a problem if you have such a vast amount of electricity produced at so little cost that you can waste at least two-thirds of it and not care.
But we don't and we won't have any time soon. So it's a problem.
Caporegime
Perhaps that section was filmed a while ago when it just when the info was released in the his bio...?
Thinking about it they only talked about it at the time of the middle eastern/usa special at xmas.
Hammond made jokes about him being Jilly Cooper, and telling the Army guys not to tell him anything, and warning them he might start writing stuff.
It was definitely after the bust up.
It was the 14-15 may up at Brynffynon, was Marshalling and had a chat with the guys during the pre-race meeting,
And heres photo evidence
http://www.songasport.co.uk/11BCCCr2/100.jpg
and others from the rest of the event its round 2 btw
http://www.bcccimages.co.uk/
If anyones interested in Marshalling or taking part, championship website is crappy but here http://www.marches4x4.com/index.html
And heres photo evidence
http://www.songasport.co.uk/11BCCCr2/100.jpg
and others from the rest of the event its round 2 btw
http://www.bcccimages.co.uk/
If anyones interested in Marshalling or taking part, championship website is crappy but here http://www.marches4x4.com/index.html
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I'll give you the bit about storing and transporting hydrogen, but at the end of the day we have two competing technologies (plus maybe even more - Biofuel, Gas?) competiting to replace petrol as the fuel for vehicle engines.
Who's to say what will happen and where? There could be a massive game-changing breakthrough at any point in any technology.
On a side note, would anyone here consider the noise (or lack of it) from an electric engine to be a problem?
Who's to say what will happen and where? There could be a massive game-changing breakthrough at any point in any technology.
On a side note, would anyone here consider the noise (or lack of it) from an electric engine to be a problem?
Sort of. I'd certainly miss the sound of twin turbos screaming from a RB26DETT. Or a thundering V8. But it'll just make the sound of petrol engines that much sweeter when they come out from under their covers for a run in the sun, when alternatives do end up taking over.
Then there will be the diesel engine fans who're the equivalent of steam tractor owners. Smoke and noise everywhere.
Just make more, it's less of an issue than making enough batteries a year to satisfy 1) new cars and 2) old cars needing new batteries.
We know how to make almost limitless electricity, it's not cheap, but it's there.
Not really, machines move 500kg weights around all the time.
sounds like high explosive to me.
Standardise the packaging and interface but not the internals, charging electronics can be build into the battery unit.
I pay for refineries at the moment too but not all at once, who's going to finance batteries over their useful life unless they can profit from them?
Bleeding obvious, thanks, hadn't thought of that.
Your first point is simply conjecture, battery tech is still moving and other materials are being looked at (for example Potassium ion batteries, potassium being far more abundant than lithium and K-ion batteries doing far more power cycles (millions) than lithium-ion ones), and ignores the issues behind building more power stations not to mention hydrogen fuel cells using platinum as a catalyst.
Making more batteries would require an increase in production and manufacturing, making more power stations would require an increase in production and manufacturing, you're not convincing me with that argument.
Clarkson didn’t give our electric car a sporting chance, says Nissan
The Times
Ben Webster Media Editor
Last updated August 2 2011 12:01AM
When Jeremy Clarkson claimed on Top Gear that owners of electric cars were “more likely to get a girlfriend”, regular viewers of the BBC motoring show knew a put-down was coming from the self-proclaimed petrolhead.
“You just have to hope she doesn’t live at the other end of the country,” he said in Sunday’s episode, which showed him being pushed in a Nissan Leaf electric car that had a flat battery.
Clarkson was stranded in the centre of Lincoln, and spent the next few hours brass-rubbing while the battery recharged. He concluded the show by saying electric cars “are not the future”.
It was embarrassing for Nissan, which has invested heavily in electric cars and plans to create 800 jobs by building the Leaf in Sunderland. The programme appeared to show that despite advances in battery technology and £5,000 government grants for six new models, electric cars cannot be trusted to get you to your destination.
However, information from a monitoring device inserted by Nissan into the Leaf suggests that it is Top Gear, not the car, that cannot be trusted.
The telematics device sent Nissan constant updates on the state of the battery. It showed that Clarkson had set off that day with the battery only 40 per cent charged.
The night before the car had been delivered to Top Gear fully charged, with enough power for at least 100 miles. It was driven for 35 miles that evening before being plugged in to recharge. The charger was detached after only 55 minutes, leaving the car with a range on its electronic display of about 30 miles.
Clarkson’s destination was Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, about 60 miles away. He and fellow presenter James May were shown in the programme stopping en route in a bay for disabled drivers, angering motoring groups for disabled people. They then diverted to Lincoln, where the Top Gear team had intended to run out of power, knowing that there were no public charging points in the city.
At no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip.
The device also showed that Clarkson ignored the option to switch to “eco-mode”, which extends the Leaf’s range by slowing the acceleration.
It was the second time that Top Gear had shown an electric car apparently running out of charge. The BBC is being sued for libel and malicious falsehood by Tesla, after an episode, first shown in 2008, in which a Tesla Roadster raced against a petrol-powered Lotus Elise.
The programme showed the Tesla dropping speed on the race track and eventually being pushed into a garage to be recharged. Tesla alleges that the scenes were rigged to fit a script. The BBC said that it would be “vigorously defending” the claim.
Andy Palmer, Nissan’s executive vice-president, said that Sunday night’s episode had been misleading. He said Nissan had added a significant safety margin to the range to prevent drivers from running out of power. The sat-nav system warns drivers at the start if they do not have enough power to reach their destination. It appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than ten miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat.
A BBC spokeswoman denied that it had misled viewers. “The point of the film was to show how bad the charging infrastructure is in the UK. The car needed to run out of charge so that could be demonstrated. Since we weren’t testing the range claims, it made no difference how much charge we started with. We don’t say how much petrol went into a car when it started a journey.”
Andy Wilman, Top Gear’s executive producer, said: “Our film was a snapshot of living with an electric car. A film is an impression of life. We are allowed to put into a film what we want to. We can’t cover every base.”
Top Gear controversies
• March 2011: Tesla motors files a libel suit over the programme’s depiction of the “breakdown” of their Roadster electric car in 2008
• February 2011: Clarkson calls Mexicans “lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight oafs”
• February 2007: programme-makers stage a train crash two days after the fatal Cumbrian rail crash
• December 2009: a gay couple are reportedly refused tickets to see the show
• 2004: the BBC compensates a parish council after Clarkson hits a tree
The Times
Ben Webster Media Editor
Last updated August 2 2011 12:01AM
When Jeremy Clarkson claimed on Top Gear that owners of electric cars were “more likely to get a girlfriend”, regular viewers of the BBC motoring show knew a put-down was coming from the self-proclaimed petrolhead.
“You just have to hope she doesn’t live at the other end of the country,” he said in Sunday’s episode, which showed him being pushed in a Nissan Leaf electric car that had a flat battery.
Clarkson was stranded in the centre of Lincoln, and spent the next few hours brass-rubbing while the battery recharged. He concluded the show by saying electric cars “are not the future”.
It was embarrassing for Nissan, which has invested heavily in electric cars and plans to create 800 jobs by building the Leaf in Sunderland. The programme appeared to show that despite advances in battery technology and £5,000 government grants for six new models, electric cars cannot be trusted to get you to your destination.
However, information from a monitoring device inserted by Nissan into the Leaf suggests that it is Top Gear, not the car, that cannot be trusted.
The telematics device sent Nissan constant updates on the state of the battery. It showed that Clarkson had set off that day with the battery only 40 per cent charged.
The night before the car had been delivered to Top Gear fully charged, with enough power for at least 100 miles. It was driven for 35 miles that evening before being plugged in to recharge. The charger was detached after only 55 minutes, leaving the car with a range on its electronic display of about 30 miles.
Clarkson’s destination was Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, about 60 miles away. He and fellow presenter James May were shown in the programme stopping en route in a bay for disabled drivers, angering motoring groups for disabled people. They then diverted to Lincoln, where the Top Gear team had intended to run out of power, knowing that there were no public charging points in the city.
At no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip.
The device also showed that Clarkson ignored the option to switch to “eco-mode”, which extends the Leaf’s range by slowing the acceleration.
It was the second time that Top Gear had shown an electric car apparently running out of charge. The BBC is being sued for libel and malicious falsehood by Tesla, after an episode, first shown in 2008, in which a Tesla Roadster raced against a petrol-powered Lotus Elise.
The programme showed the Tesla dropping speed on the race track and eventually being pushed into a garage to be recharged. Tesla alleges that the scenes were rigged to fit a script. The BBC said that it would be “vigorously defending” the claim.
Andy Palmer, Nissan’s executive vice-president, said that Sunday night’s episode had been misleading. He said Nissan had added a significant safety margin to the range to prevent drivers from running out of power. The sat-nav system warns drivers at the start if they do not have enough power to reach their destination. It appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than ten miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat.
A BBC spokeswoman denied that it had misled viewers. “The point of the film was to show how bad the charging infrastructure is in the UK. The car needed to run out of charge so that could be demonstrated. Since we weren’t testing the range claims, it made no difference how much charge we started with. We don’t say how much petrol went into a car when it started a journey.”
Andy Wilman, Top Gear’s executive producer, said: “Our film was a snapshot of living with an electric car. A film is an impression of life. We are allowed to put into a film what we want to. We can’t cover every base.”
Top Gear controversies
• March 2011: Tesla motors files a libel suit over the programme’s depiction of the “breakdown” of their Roadster electric car in 2008
• February 2011: Clarkson calls Mexicans “lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight oafs”
• February 2007: programme-makers stage a train crash two days after the fatal Cumbrian rail crash
• December 2009: a gay couple are reportedly refused tickets to see the show
• 2004: the BBC compensates a parish council after Clarkson hits a tree
Five controversies per decade isn't that bad really considering its the BBC's top show. Well within acceptable I would say.
Soldato
The price of those two cars are for rich people who want green credentials that then use thier v8 sports cars during the weekend. It just doesn't have the right price or range. What is there out there at the moment that a normal family can buy as a day to day car and is within budget?
The thing is that Top Gear have an obvious bias against electric cars and despite what the spokeswoman says the conclusion at the end of the piece was that electric cars are no good. By picking a destination within range of the car and intentionally depleting the battery before setting off so it runs out there is a clear intent to subtly insinuate that the range is poor.
Dedicated Micros.