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The Top Gear Megathread! Mark II

quagmire said:
EDIT: I can't find any credible article that states the effect of fast charging on a batteries longevity. So I will retract that statement.
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Here is a short discussion of the effect of fast charging on the Leaf's battery pack. Fast charging the Leaf's battery wears it out about 10% faster, according to Nissan. The salient point here is that Nissan estimates that the battery pack will reach "end of life" in 10 years - IF your charging and use patterns match the parameters Nissan states. As the article points out, this estimate may be totally inaccurate in the real world. If you simply charge it willy-nilly, whenever you feel like it, or if you use the fast-charge option, then your battery pack could be toast in 5 years or less.

This is a big deal - EVs are much less flexible when it comes to "refueling" compared with fossil fuel powered cars.
 
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iGav said:
I'm simply wondering whether Ben Collins is still The Stig. ;)
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I think it would be appropriate to say that Ben Collins is a Stig.

Once a Stig, always a Stig. :D

combatcolin said:
Interesting, why bother recycling an old electric cars battery when you can just sell them off and someone can use it for another purpose.

You could imagine "Off Grid" community's around the world buying up surplus battery's.
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The market is definitely there. But their applications are limited by the fact that they are even more inefficient than when they were new. I don't know enough about battery tech to know how long the batteries will last, but if the degradation in performance is linear, after 20 years they will only have 40% capacity on a full charge (and I'm guessing that this estimate is very optimistic). Useless for powering a car, but still useful for a static battery pack connected to a solar panel.

DAC47 said:
Apparently the cars weren't even full charged to begin with

Andy Wilman weasels around the issue

http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2011/08/02/electric-cars-charges-answered/
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I don't think they are weaseling too much. The fact is, it takes 8-22hrs to trickle charge a Leaf, and while fast charging is a lot faster it's still a) much slower than refuelling with gas or diesel, and b) has an impact on battery life that Leaf enthusiasts themselves deem unacceptable. These are completely valid issues. Are TG biased? I think so. But in this case I think their criticisms were fair. The EV is still not a mainstream alternative to the "conventional" auto. The final judgement is a long way off yet.

My disagreement with TG in this segment was not their criticisms of the Leaf (which were, by TG standards, pretty fair); rather, it was their conclusion at the end. James and Clarkson both agreed that hydrogen fuel cells were the future. On paper they look better than EVs, but the fact of the matter is that engineers still don't know whether hydrogen fuel cells will ever be cheap enough, reliable enough and safe enough to replace gasoline and diesel. Calling them "the future" is still very premature.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
My disagreement with TG in this segment was not their criticisms of the Leaf (which were, by TG standards, pretty fair); rather, it was their conclusion at the end. James and Clarkson both agreed that hydrogen fuel cells were the future. On paper they look better than EVs, but the fact of the matter is that engineers still don't know whether hydrogen fuel cells will ever be cheap enough, reliable enough and safe enough to replace gasoline and diesel. Calling them "the future" is still very premature.
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Toyota just announced that their fuel cell vehicle costs around $129,000 now. While not exactly affordable, it is a pretty nice fall from $1 million+ it was 6 years ago.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-slashes-fuel-cell-costs-well-ahead-of-market-launch.html
 
Clarkson can made some really snide remarks at celebrities as he did so with George Michael.
 
A little more on-topic: The new season of the US Top Gear is on its second episode....I'm not sure I'll bother.

quagmire said:
Toyota just announced that their fuel cell vehicle costs around $129,000 now. While not exactly affordable, it is a pretty nice fall from $1 million+ it was 6 years ago.
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True, but it needs to be more than ten times cheaper to really become viable, and there is still no guarantee that it will ever get there. I read somewhere recently that Toyota was targeting a $50,000 price point by 2015 or so, which would be another big improvement.
 
steviem said:
It's never a write off when it is worth in excess of £1,000,000.
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The initial reports made it sound like the car burned, but the photos suggest that it may be recoverable, though the extend of the right-side damage is not discernible. Definitely a six-figures repair bill if so. It all comes down to the state of the monocoque.
 
I wonder if he excused himself from the other motorist who was looking after him by asking "if he might be permitted to make a short, violent exclamation?"

DAMN!

:D
 
The thing with electric cars like the LEAF is that they're the first generation of a completely new technology. They're not going to be perfect. The problem is the infrastructure for charging and the like isn't there because no one is buying the vehicles, and companies or local authorities won't build charging stations because there's no cars on the road that would use them to make them worthwhile.
 
steviem said:
It's never a write off when it is worth in excess of £1,000,000.
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Well, to put this in perspective, a McLaren is an extremely expensive personal car but compared to a lot of specialized industrial/commercial/heavy vehicles, it's price tag isn't unique.

I don't know it works for expensive, only-100-built supercars, but insurance companies will total-loss $1 mil+ equipment any time when the cost of recovery and repair is more than replacement. You don't have to look very far to hear genuine stories of exotic car owners who receive estimates for relatively minor repairs that are well over the original cost of the vehicle.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that this repair bill would cost well over £1,000,000, in which case the insurance company WILL total loss it.
 
Tonights episode of Top Gear America was just horrible. Ever since the truck episode in Alaska they have been improving. The first two eps of season 2 was good. And this nights episode had tons of potential. But, it failed. First of all, the beast is based on the Kodiak, not the GMT-900 HD platform. Second, why were they using the F-450 while the others were 3500's? Adam complaining the Cummins was a 6 cylinder?

I know Top Gear is about entertainment and not objective reviews, but seriously? The only good thing about the truck segment was the F-450 pulling the train. Besides that and the drag race, the rest of the tests were jokes.
 
Signal-11 said:
It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that this repair bill would cost well over £1,000,000, in which case the insurance company WILL total loss it.
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IF the car can be rebuilt (i.e. if the monocoque is salvageable), then I don't think that it is going to be a total loss. It's a well known fact that Mclaren F1s are all worth considerably more then their original purchase price, and Atkinson's McLaren is a GTR model, which I'm guessing is worth even more than a "standard" McLaren F1.

They were all hand-made at a low production rate and McLaren still performs any and all service on them. McLaren can return the car to essentially "new" condition as long as the owner has the money. And the market for the car is so strong that I would be willing to bet that someone, somewhere is willing to pay the price if Rowan isn't. Even as a salvageable wreck the car is probably worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

EDIT: Found a photo:

McLaren-F1-Rowan-Atkinson-crash-02.jpg


The photo makes things look bad, but possibly worse than it really is. The rear subframe with the engine, transmission and rear suspension has torn free but the monocoque may have survived. At minimum it will require an engine & transmission rebuild or replacement, a new rear subframe, suspension, engine ancillaries and rear bodywork - not to mention plenty of repairs to the front half. I would not be surprised if it costs somewhere over half a million pounds to repair - though that ought to still come in well under the value of the vehicle.

For most cars, even most Ferraris and Lambos, this would be a writeoff. But possibly not in the case of a McLaren.

EDIT: and after looking at the photos again it doesn't seem to be a GTR model, though several news outlets described it as such.
 
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Surely the best thing for the environment is to keep the car you have. The amount of electricity and carbon emissions to build a brand new car would be far greater then just to keep driving your old car.
Although this would still be a problem when we reach peak oil.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
IF the car can be rebuilt (i.e. if the monocoque is salvageable), then I don't think that it is going to be a total loss.
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I think that's a stretch.

They were all hand-made at a low production rate and McLaren still performs any and all service on them.

And the market for the car is so strong that I would be willing to bet that someone, somewhere is willing to pay the price if Rowan isn't. Even as a salvageable wreck the car is probably worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
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It doesn't work that way. If the insurance company total-losses it, it will sell the car or what remains of it. Then someone else might get a crack at it. Insurance companies frown on the kind of thing you're suggesting, at least while they're still involved.

I would not be surprised if it costs somewhere over half a million pounds to repair - though that ought to still come in well under the value of the vehicle.
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I wouldn't find it surprising to learn that labor and labor alone for repair costs over half a million pound. This is a job for a half dozen master mechanics and engineers over the course of a year. It can only be done by a handful of people. My Toyota dealership charges me 100USD+/hr on labor. Lambos and Ferrari dealer shops, over $1000. McLaren? I'd be curious to know. I'll also venture a guess that this is going to take high hundreds of man hours of labor.
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I swear, didn't Mr. Bean crash a McLaren a few years back? I remember being blown away back then when I discovered that he had one, let alone crashed it.

Or my brain is seriously messed up. :confused:
 

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