How Far Can You Get On an Electric Car Battery? | Top Gear Classic
The Nissan is £30,990, nearly twice what you’d pay for a normal car of this size. And the Peugeot is even more expensive, £33,155. Yes, with both you get £5,000 back from the government, but even with that they’re not good value. A mine isn’t even very well equipped. Have you got satnav in your car, James? Uh, no. I haven’t. Have you? Yeah. Cruise control? Nope. So, that’s £3,000 more expensive than this and isn’t as well equipped or as big. And what’s more, the Leaf can even deliver your own personal greenpiece lecture. It’s talking. By the 12th of May, electric cars worldwide saved a total of 344,000 eco trees. What? and 659 tons of carbon dioxide has been reduced. What? What? What do they mean? What’s an eco tree? What are you saying, woman? Still, there is an upside to the nagging and the cost. These days, ecoism is seen as cool. People like James May and me, petrol heads, were dinosaurs really. So, if you have one of these cars with zero emission and full electric plastered down the side, you are more likely to get a girlfriend. You just have to hope she doesn’t live at the other end of the country. James, can I just ask what range do you have left? I have 19 miles. I was down to 14 miles. So, as is the way with all cars, we decided to buy some go juice in the next town, which turned out to be Lincoln. And then I realized we might be there for quite a while. Uh, James, I have another readout on my dashboard. Guess how long it will take to charge this up to 100% fully charged. Well, a few hours, I suppose. Is it 11 hours? What? By the time we reached the city center, my range was down to 7 miles. So, I looked on the satnav for the nearest official charging point. 40. The nearest charging space it gives me is 45 miles away. I can only go seven. That’s very useful function you’ve got there. Okay. Covent Garden car park 77 mi away. What possible use is that? We pulled in at the council offices to see if they could help. Do you have any idea where we can charge electric cars up in Lincoln? Electric cars? Just needs a socket. Really? You do, don’t you? We didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Let’s check with our team. There are definitely no points within Lincolnshire. Not in Lincolnshire. Who’s pushing who? Do you know where we can charge? Various people suggested friends who might be able to help, but they were all too far away. 32 miles. 32 32 miles to Inigan. So, we stopped at a restaurant in the marina to ask if we could buy some of their electricity. Use some of your charm. It’ll begin with the word hello. Ready? Hello. Hello. We were just wondering, we’re trying to We’ve got two electric cars, right? And they’re running. James has a way with women. Okay. I should imagine they’ll be able to talk her into it. No problem at all. And it’s going to take 12 hours. No, James. Yeah, I do apologize. I think I’ve Those boats must be getting power from the shore. Yes, they’ll have plugs like caravan sites do. But yeah, getting to the boat park meant more driving. So that now my car was saying it’ need 13 hours to charge up. Very low battery charge. Search for nearest charging station. You’re just wasting electricity telling me that. I’ve only got four miles left now. Jeremy must be running on whatever the equivalent of empty is for a battery. We’ve just got to stop somewhere and beg for the use of a socket. No, that’s it. No, that’s it. That’s it. Oh, not there. This is the future of motoring here. This is all of your lives here. This is what’s going to become of you all. Obviously, the solution would be to get a tow from James. However, do not tow this vehicle with all four wheels on the ground or this may cause serious and expensive damage to the motor. Thank you. Thankfully, some of the large crowd we’d attracted kindly push me to the boat park. However, I see two problems with this, James. One of them is that you’ve got to get across that water. Yes. And the other one is it’s too short. Yes. Right. We’ll have to push it somewhere else. So once more, we appealed to the good people of Lincoln who pushed me to the university where finally we found somewhere to charge up. See that blue light on the dashboard? When all three are flashing, it’s fully charged. Okay. Right. We now had a 13-hour wait, but thankfully we were in the magnificent city of Lincoln, where there are many things to see and do. I like a good cathedral. I would never normally be brass rubbing. And do you know why I’ve never done it? Cuz all the cars I’ve ever owned have been powered by petrol or diesel. Look, it’s Hammond, only in a dining bell. It does look a bit like Hammond, actually. Lincoln Castle was uh founded by William the Conqueror 1068, 2 years after the um Norman conquest. You can’t build a stone castle on on the earth and banks. Anyway, initially you have to wait for the for the banks to compact down. That is the best building in the world really for a department store. That’s fantastic piece of architecture. What are you doing? I’m doing an abstract floor rubbing. Look at that. That’s quite interesting. Basically in in um the ice age the linkage shear edge big lump of limestone. Do you know what this hill’s called? Hill. No steep hill. Oh, is it? Yeah, that really is. They spent ages thinking of it. Can you see the square frontage? There’s a square within the square. Yeah, that is like a Norman fortified building. So, the west front now. Um Nissen are going to start putting fast charge points at all their dealerships. You’ll be able to go in and charge your car up in 30 minutes. The problem is if you do that all the time then you could ruin the battery pack in 3 years. Really? How much is a new battery pack? £7,000. Really? Well, actually Niss can’t say how much it is, but we rang an expert and he said today’s money £7,000. How long do they think batteries will last if you charge them slowly and don’t thrash them? If you charge them up when they’re half empty rather than letting them get all the way flat. Maximum 10 years, possibly five. It’s not that long, is it? No. Are you going to go? I can’t go. Actually, I can’t. Well, I was since you put that in. My word that I’ve got doesn’t fit anymore. As evening fell, we really were running out of things to do. I think mine’s worked quite well. Yeah, not bad. Hurt like hell. Is mine all right? Look. What does it He’s just having one in. What does it say? [Laughter] What? The next morning, after the longest refueling stop in history, we set out once more for Clethorps. As of the 12th of May, your energy economy was 0.21 to 1 kwatt hours per mile. The cost of charging this up at the university with its cheap deal was £2.34. But if you charge it up during the day, depending on who your supplier is and what deal you’ve done, it could cost you £830. That’s £830 to do it says 100 miles. To do 100 miles in a Golf Blue motion diesel will cost about the same. But remember, the Golf is over £7,000 cheaper to buy, and its fuel tank is unlikely to be worn out after 5 years. And there are other issues, too. One of the problems with the electric car is you drive constantly as if you’re on an economy run because a part of your brain is acutely aware that when it’s gone, you’re in for a big weight. And it will get different. They’ll have quick charging and three-phase charging and the batteries will improve. Yes. But today, with this car on sale, you simply have to accept that you’re going to learn a lot of medieval history. Plus, you really do need to be able to work out where you’ll be when the charge runs out. And that’s not easy. So, I’ve now done 26 miles since I set off, but I’ve lost 40 miles of range. Interesting. I’ve also done 26 miles, but this is the bit you’ll like. I’ve gained 2 mi of range. A lot of people think I have a downer on the electric motor. I don’t. Nothing wrong with it at all. Theoretically, it could be immensely powerful. And I like the Leaf. It’s beautifully made. It’s very quiet. It’s extremely comfortable and spacious. Good car. But the batteries it uses have to be recharged from the mains. And I don’t think that’s the answer. I think that what I’m actually driving is a squareial or a laser disc or a beta tape machine. Batteries. Batteries are rubbish. Batteries are rubbish in everything. Think of all the things you’ve got at the moment that are battery powered. Like torches and mobile phones and digital cameras and laptops. I bet you they’re all either completely flat or going flat very quickly. Eventually, we arrived in Clethorps. We’ve made it to the seaside. And it was on the dodge that we had an epiphany. [Music] This is an electric car, but it has no onboard battery. It takes its power from the chicken wire in the roof. Yes. So, all we have to do really is put chicken wire like that above all the motorways and dual carriageways in Britain. Then you drive to your nearest one. You extend the pole on the back of your car and off you go driving on the mains. It gets better than that, you know, because if the traffic’s really busy on the motorway, the government could just cut the power a bit and everyone would go slowly. And then if it was empty, they just increase the power and everyone would go fast. Exactly. Actually, and if there was an accident or some bad congestion ahead, they could just turn the whole thing off and everybody would glide to a safe halt at the same rate. We have solved it. We have solved it. If you think about it, if you’re driving along the motorway and you’re really bored, you could just deliberately crash into someone to amuse yourself. That’s true. And motorways are boring, aren’t they? Exactly. So, you just drive along doing this to the man next to you. These cars then are not the future. But they did at least bring us to where the future lies. I know I’ve got over steer. Nobody does this deliberately on the motorway, do they?
That time when Jeremy Clarkson and James May embarked on a trip to the British seaside in two new electric cars, taking an impromptu and thoroughly informative visit to Lincoln along the way.
From Series 17, Episode 6
Watch the full episode on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0133rm5/top-gear-series-17-episode-6
Chapters:
00:00 Electric car comparison
02:11 Search for charge
05:25 13-hour wait
08:01 Back on the road
10:30 Arrival
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