Electricity? Hydrogen? Synthetic Fuel? What's The Future? | Top Gear Series 32
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2023
- A debate that rages on, and one that shows no sign of slowing down: what's the future of vehicular propulsion? And more importantly, what does the future hold for those of us who care about cars? From TG s32, Chris and Paddy take a surface-skimming look at the various alternatives for petrol power and EVs, and whether any of the newer alternatives can put a smile on your face...
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The problem is that for Hydrogen to be liquid it need to be stored at 700 Bar.
If you worked with compressed gases you know how much of a problem that is in pratice.
nah that's doable. The issue comes when trying to make it work in combustion engines. You simply cant store enough in a small enough container and still have a reasonable range. For HEVs it works but HICEs it doesn't. Synthetic fuels are the only solution for us lovers of noise.
@@CasperBritto Unfortunately the time is coming where if you want noise you'll need an mp3. Hydrgoen is the answer. Always has been. we just need to figure out the storage problems.
The problem with synthetic fuels is that they arrived about 20 years too late. In order to keep our planet habitable for the rest of time we need to be looking at carbon negative solutions. Carbon neutral was a great idea but it also came too little, too late and it was exploited with things like carbon credits, so the net result was more carbon dumped into the atmosphere.
just a random thought: imagine driving too and from work all week and at the end of it, you empty the waste tank of the car into a holding tank in your house and get a free shower. Saves on water bills that.
The problem with a electric car.. your children have a potential Exo Thermic Bomb under their feet...
There has been LPG Cars trucks, taxis, even buses.. for over 50 years.. storing gas under pressure... without a problem... so hydrogen, whoopee different gas, same vessel..
Electro nerds will tell its dangerous.. but they as Mythbusters proved. Have a high pressure release valve.. that battery under your feet is a bomb.. as Samsung note7 proved..
And you need crazy amounts of electricity to turn the water into hydrogen.
@@oliverburgess1036 You need crazy amounts of electrolyte (containing hydrogen)
unfortunately no matter what route we take the energy company will rinse every penny out of us even when they've mastered the process and can make an abundance of fuel.
There's no fuel involved in putting renewable electricity in a battery, and there's a limit to how much companies can charge for electricity because more people will just make their own from panels on the roof.
@@skierpage The Government will find a way to tax us.
i am my own energy company, synthethic fuels have no future they are even worse than hydrogen and hydrogen is absolutely terrible and will never become a reality, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to even try, but for that to comprehend you need more than 2 braincells
@@larssonk22 They'll try but it'll just develop a massive off grid illegal industry. Seems like win win to me.
@@larssonk22 In the USA its illegal to have say a Tesla battery and solar panel system unless you're already hooked up to the federal mains and paying a connection fee.
Porsche's synthetic carbon neutral fuel ⛽️ is BRILLIANT. I got to try it out in my Range Rover SVA and it ran the same as my usual 93-octane. No infrastructure or car changes necessary. $4 a gallon in USA. It'll go down with increased consumption
Yes! Let's get it done. Any way we can have ICU 's, manual gearboxes and that exhaust note with no harm to mother nature, get it done!
Existing refineries cannot produce synthetic fuel. Significant new infrastructure would be necessary.
Still produces toxins that kill you... but it's ok because, carbon neutral?
Where are you getting synthetic furl from? Porsche dealership?
Still wear and tear with services . Bevs will be cheaper and dominate
I hope synthetec fuel is gonna save all the nice cars
There's a good chance it will but there's also a good chance it will not be anything else but an expensive hobby for rich people and their supercars because it's just a waste of renewable energy sources, that we don't have.
@@kooooons the entire point of renewable energy sources is that they’re everywhere and always will be. There is only more infrastructure being made, so I think this would work very well in the future. It’s where aviation is heading as well.
Only the for wealthy but they can keep the classic running around on sunny Sundays.
@@kooooons There is no renewable energy, and the best way to fuel your car currently is with your regular fuel.
You don't need synthetic fuels for that...
Not so minor detail, all ICE emit many gasses apart from CO2 and H2O. Although in small cuantities it makes them fall out of any zero-emissions regulation. Nitrogen oxides, carbon particles, unburned fuel, engine oil fumes, etc. Not an easy problem to solve.
Not a big deal if you ask me
Not to mention brake dust and tire wear, makes up a big part of particles emmited by an ice car today, I think (And all of the particles emmited by an BEV). As far as I'm informed, the EU want's to put out regulations to even lower these, which in practice would require encapsulate the brakes and tires and suck the air out of this spaces through a filter, basicly mounting a vacuum cleaner to each wheel. This would also be nessecary for electric cars.
At the moment I can't say if find this idea of the EU right or exaggerated or funny or stupid. But I thougt it's an interesting thing to mention and to think about :)
But synthetic fuels are much cleaner in this regard, because they've much less impurities compared to natural gasoline.
@@skrlaviolette Sounds quite stupid to me. There are whole rivers filled with thousands of tons of garbadge and chemicals in asia and here they want to suck in break dust.
@@skrlaviolette EVs might be worse for both brake dust and tire wear considering they're usually heavier than ICE cars. Targeting ICEs with such regulation and not heavier EVs would be more than stupid. More importantly though, there are FAR bigger problems to solve regarding cars, the environment, and car's impact on the environment.
Beside the storage problem for hydrogen, the energy loss in the processchain is massive at 70-80%, from the point you create the energy to create the hydrogen until to you press the pedal and use the energy in your car. Compared to EV's, this process only has a 5-10% loss. You can charge 3 EV's at the same cost of one hydrogen car. However, if we can create an exessive amount of carbon neutral energy, that is not an issue, but right now we are not even close to create carbon neutral electricity for our current need.
You seem to have completely disregarded e-fuels in your argument 🤔 Convenient considering e-fuels make your beloved ev seem like a dumb idea 🤷♂️
@@shaneyamaha450 but these are facts. The facts TopGear so conveniently left out.
We need nuclear power plants, at least until we get nuclear fusion
@@robbymaria although nuclear in any form is the most expensive electricity. Let's try to get to fusion and keep knocking up turbines and solar with a little geothermal to keep us going. Air, gravity, dam.... any batteries to store excess when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.
mfs out here not realising electric cars are at least 5 years of use in a new gas car to even be better and its literally still based on child slave labor to mine battery materials. also nuclear is the real green, fuck any other "green" solution, solar panels are made in chinese concentration camps and wind turbines disturb local ecology. geothermal is kinda based tbh. biofuels are terrible, its the worst of gas and hydrogen combined, it releases co2 in production, consumes energy, and releases co2 in burn
We get to keep all our awesome cars - synthetic fuels all the way!!
Don't hold your breath.
JCB's take on hydrogen is what, in my opinion, makes most sense. They basically re-did their original diesel engines to work with hydrogen, without fuel cells.
It’s okay for a temporary solution, but obviously not suitable as a long term solution.
Yes HICE systems.
Same problem for both hydrogen and synthetic fuel, the production is very inefficient.
That's true, but when you consider the significant discrepancy in the cost (both in resources and energy) of building an ICE vehicle vs. a BEV (as well as the tremendous cost to recycle a BEV vs. an ICE), the two cancel each other out. A significantly lower initial purchasing price will offset the increased fuel costs over time with an ICE running synthetic fuels.
@@flyingphoenix113 the price of synthetic fuel is outrageously expensive for now. It will probably go down but realistically it will only be used for a niche of wealthy people buying cars costing the price of a house. I don't say it's bad but it will never be for everyday cars, and companies pushing SF doesn't say anything different.
@Uleertel , you might be surprised. Toyota, Tesla, et al. seem convinced that the price of EVs is going to go up, not down, due to ever-increasing resource scarcity (especially on the battery manufacturing side, though wiring is also a concern). It will also go up if EV automakers are required to add the cost of recycling into the initial purchase price. I think the two (BEV vs. Synth fuel ICE) will be close to parity in consumer cost long term. Electricity costs will likely be the deciding factor.
@@uleertel It won't go down far - i work on projects developing catalysts for the gas to liquids reactions (fischer-tropsch type processes) and the efficiency is not looking to go up much from where it is. Oh, and the best catalysts are cobalt....
@@flyingphoenix113 That makes no sense ICE burning Hydrogen or Synthetic Fuel is soo expensive it's not even physically possible at SCALE. Soo BEVs is multiple times less resource intensive and cheaper and a huge clue is it's POSSIBLE. "the two cancel each other out" is lala land absurd nonsense.
What they didn't say is how much electrical energy it takes to make that fuel. It's quite a lot so the chance that it will be from only "green" energy is highly unlikely
Synthetic fuel produces CO2, SOx and NOx. You don't want to be breathing that exhaust in.
Carbon capture offsets is the cheeky monkey being hidden away. Porsche aims to make a few quid selling carbon credits which really are fake because as soon as you burn this, you'll release the CO2 with extra pollutants. Sweet gig!
About 27kWh for 1 liter of eFuel. Or about half a battery of a 300km EV
@@_TbT_ don't forget range.
15kwh for green hydrogen is 35km driving. For synthetic fuel it's 20km. EV score 100km. So this can demonstrate when a kWh isn't a kWh. A bit like an Audi Etron 55 suv.... 384Wh per km. A Tesla Model 3.... 151Wh per km.
One is clearly more efficient, both more efficient than hydrogen or synthetic fuel.
FYI Porsche's Synthetic Fuel partner is EXXON MOBIL. Why did you leave that out?
So what? What's the issue?
So if a big oil company produces oil, they’re evil. And if they try and develop clean fuels to move away from oil, they’re evil…? I think you just hate capitalism, the same system that gives you every single luxury you enjoy in your life, including the electronic device you say gladly use to spout idiocy.
@@Briat763bc they are not incentivised to find the best solution for people / planet, instead their focus is on continuity of their profits. E fuels etc are a more energy intensive deployment of stored energy mostly bc of inherently poorer efficiency of internal combustion vs electric traction - so you need much more energy generation than you would to just go electric
That SVJ Roadster is perfection
Now you just need some carbon neutral tyres because they won't last long driving like that 😊
manufacturers need to start developing and pushing synthetic fuel for a gasoline replacement ahead of time. like now.
Only Porsche, and even it is investing billions in BEVs. This renewable synthetic fuel hype is primarily a smokescreen so fossil fuel companies can continue to sell their damaging product to reactionary car drivers who fantasize they'll be able to drive their car cleanly, instead of buying a better car. For decades every drop of synthetic fuel needs to go into aviation, where there is no realistic alternative.
you must live under a rock
The smart ones do not bother because they know it's not plausible. It's mostly a scam pushing implausible ideas that won't work at scale.
At the moment the stuff is "extremely ruurr"
you'll pay double the price, are you ready?
Great show
The amount of energy required to crack hydrogen from H2O (electrolysis) is three times the amount required to charge up a battery directly for the equivalent amount of energy/range. The hydrogen fuel cells contain a large amount of precious metals(platinum). So a moderate amount of electricity goes into an expensive, precious metals battery or a massive amount of electricity goes into hard-to-crack hydrogen fuel, with a high-pressure storage and a precious metal hydrogen converter(Fuel Cell) or Synthetic Fuel process. Either way, you still need a huge electrical infrastructure build-up and a large increase in mining precious metals to make this work... Think three times the current electrical generation capacity.
Still better than 1.5 billion batteries in the environment
@@robbymaria Wrong they can be entirely recycled
You’re looking at it wrong. You can get the electricity to power electrolysis machines from solar power to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. So power generation isn’t an issue nor efficiency if power is generated in that manner. 2nd hydrogen is now being stored in solids such as metal hydride as iron titanium powder FeTi (the hydrogen atoms get wedged between the metal atoms) which is way safer to store hydrogen and all you need to release the hydrogen from the metal atoms is a bit of heat anywhere from 200 degrees F to over 1,000 degrees F depending on what type of metal hydride is used plus you can shoot the tanks with a gun and nothing but a simmer would happen. By doing that you can still use combustion engines which we have and electric cars for hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles and use that same hydrogen in place of diesel and airplane engines, and nuclear fuel for fusion (with a bit more refining) and use the oxygen from the electrolysis for our rocket engines. Hydrogen & oxygen extracted from water is the real future in my book not EV’s.
@@boostav all the batteries? 100% of the components? It does not produce pollution? You sure?
Hydrogen will take off with a bang once the people start complaining about the old Cornish Tin and Copper mines that start to be reopened or the spoil heaps that are now nature reserves to mine the Lithium that's in the same rocks. (Pun not deliberate).
This truly gives me hope for the future, I really can't thank Porsche enough.
its nonsense that will never work and has 0 upside and everythin mentioned is a lie and completely wrong.
it's a Religion
Apart from the fact it's completely flawed in the fact it will take an order of magnitude more power to produce then you will get out of it...
Sure it'll be usable for motorsport and rich people but for the masses it doesn't make sense compared to putting that electricity straight into a battery or making hydrogen with it.
@@nebnollock5198 But what if it gets better :)
@@14ccs I think the problem is that by the time it's reasonably priced in today's terms, the EVs (battery and or hydrogen) will have matured to a level where they will be so ahead of it that we won't go for it anyway. Look at how battery capacity is increasing on EVs and more average cars are now starting to get produced for the average consumer, when we get used to EVs, the modern ICE engine will lose its appeal anyway.
@@taidee the appeal of the modern combustion engine will never go away, considering that electric vehicles have been around since 1890 and synthetic fuels came into fruition 30 years later which have been in aviation use since the 1940s, electric vehicles have had longer to mature and more financial backing placed into them then the production of synthetic fuels keeping in mind that synthetic fuels have been developed primarily for aviation which is a much more stringent environment then automobiles this process was refined instead of industrialized in a way to maximize capacity. Hydrogen is ludicrously more expensive then synthetic fuels right now, needing to replace the entire infrastructure with extremely high pressure systems, hydrogen still seems to be in its infancy at this stage starting in the 1960s. Experimentation and the possibility for a different future in automobiles shouldnt be discounted as irrelevant when you have done little to no research on the subject.
Ethanol is superior to synthetic fuel and cheaper to obtain. The principle is very similar.
And that's what was used before petrol, so it isn't new technology, just modernized.
Agreed. Our fuel has ethanol in it already. The reason this didn't take off is the impact of growing the stuff needed to produce it was beeing so badly managed we were losing natural habitat that had more environmental and conservational impact.
@@darkiee69 There were eelectric cars before petrol too. Petrol was deemed to inconvenient because of the lack of infrastructure when first being suggested. The irony is not lost on me.
When the first petrol cars wer available in the UK, the range was less than the distance between some fuel stations. And they were so rare, recovery was by horsee drawn cart.
Now if your electric car runs out of juice, it is usually a diesel van with a charger in it helping you. So we are still using old tech to bail out the new when infrastructure fails.
Great stuff Chris! I just had a meeting a few days ago with a German eFuel company. The price per litre? Aroud 5 €. Including local petrol tax and VAT. That's good news for us (e)petrolheads. Ok, still more than double compared to fossile petrol, but getting there.
Interesting indeed.!!
So either of the other fuel requires clean electricity to synthesize. Why not just make more of clean energy and people can choose between Battery electrics, Hydrogen electrics and Synthetic? Can’t we just let the consumer decide what they want?
So you want to waste money everywhere without considering if that thing will be used?
@@mantasignatavicius7787 but it will... consumers wants it bro.
What a dumbed down for the masses episode this was. A Hydrogen fuel station would need 18 Tankers to deliver this wonder fuel versus 1 Tanker for Petrol. Hydrogen fuel cell cars need a battery to get a car going?? Hydrogen production to pump is very inefficient. If you burn synthetic fuel you inevitably create lots of lovely carcinogenic gases and again its production to pump is massively inefficient.
Exactly, people love to gloss over the absolutely abysmal volumetric energy density of Hydrogen.
That's going to create a lot of nice ice on cold winter roads with water as exhaust.
Burning Oil produces Water too
@@dahe614 That's true! But not very much.
@@ptbfrch heard it produces a lot more, because ICE's are so inefficient, but because it is in gas form, you only see it when the engine is very cold.
Hardly a concern my roads are made of 30% salt for most of the year lol
come to Australia.
on second thoughts, don't...
Que bendicion! ahh, compartan compartan compartan compartan compartan compartan .
It's unfortune so many people think this is the only way cars could go....
People have started using transport specifically designed to be personalized (and therefore inefficient), instead of the much more specialized trains, trams and still more ecological buses.
It shouldn't be this way though, why can't we just reduce global car usage by 95% by heavily prioritizing public transit? That way the 5% of them that are left are left to enthusiast and weekend use and any pollution that we end up with is merely a fraction of what we get now.
I would think your whole thing trough before typing it out 🙄
It all sounds good in theory, but unachievable in real life.
@@nicolasdujardin5691 is it though? there are countries that are very much centered on public transport, walking and cycling, with cars being a comparatively small portion
japan has something very similar going on, with narrow streets handling the comparatively small portion of cars, where metro lines handle the majority
Switzerland in the mean time has the best train network on earth probably
Germany which is an automotive giant has a mix of the two, so it's only countries like the us, australia and certain third world countries that haven't implemented anything alike
France, Italy, China and many others have
0:48 No one will build a "green" hydrogen plant which will have a utilization factor of about 40٪. Billions of dollars invested into ax
plant which sits idle 60% of the time? Un, no. The only entity inefficient and irresponsible enough to do that is a government and that spending would drive inflation even higher.
5:11 Again, no one is going to build a multi-billion dollar plant which runs intermittently and unpredictably about 40% of the time!
They are building the plants, but you're right the that only intermittently cheap electricity means the capital expenditure cost is high. So current industrial users of hydrogen and airlines feign interest in future green fuel while continuing to burn through the cheaper dirty stuff. And sadly you can see the commentersrs here buy into the hype, continuing to drive their polluting gassers while fantasizing that someday they'll be roaring around on cripplingly expensive renewable e-fuel.
Couple of errors here - as an SA motoring editor I drove a hydrogen BMW in Germany perhaps 20 years ago. Including a fill-up...
Amazing car.
Epic ending for this video!!!
Hydrogen containment is a little more of an issue than Propane molecules.
Let’s hope these technologies are ramped up sooner as opposed to later.
I hope not, as these are actually not good. Please see my comment at the very top.
LOL Not even going to attempt mass producing any of this. It's just fairy tale dreams.
@@Neojhun they will make enough until the carbon credits schemes are changed to be more reflective on objectives. This will give Porsche breathing room. Unlike Toyota who are now an anagram for Kodak. I give Toyota until 2025 tops. Perhaps the Japanese government will buy them?
In fact, Porsche has started developing synthetic fuel as an experiment for their racing cars, like the Porsche 911 GT3 Racing Cars.
That color on the gt3 is amazing, anyone know what it's called?
Ruby
Rubystone red found on the 964 RS I think
There are two ways to make Hydrogen. Cheap inefficient way is to burn natural gas and convert it. Green way of creating hydrogen is electrolysis is expensive and will not be used. The urge to go hydrogen is the great hope of people that own gas stations.
Cracking methane is not burning it to get hydrogen.
If you burn a hydrocarbon, you get H2O, water.
Correct Derek. The big oil giants are hoping and praying that hydrogen takes off big style, then they can once again exercise an iron grip on the production and pricing. The big oil execs must surely cringe at the very thought of people being able to "fuel" their cars at home at a cost of around a 5th of the price of petrol. I pay 10p per kwh on my Octopus Intelligent tariff. That works out at about 3.5p per mile in my Kia EV.
Yeah this hydrogen and synthethic fuel will always be fuel of the future, it will always stay in the future.
The inefficiencies in making both fuels are so great, it will never become cheap. While an EV is very cheap to drive, already for some years now. Of course it is expensive to buy, but those prices are coming down now too.
god i wish james had this opportunity in TG or TGT to explain it to us so i can cure my insomnia
Please do a review of Gumpert Nathalie sport car which uses a methanol fuel-cell system
Hydrogen is dumb
Elon Musk calls them hydrogen fool cells.
How much energy does it take to make the synthetic eFuel? Extracting and separating the Carbon from the air sounds like a daunting process. Then extracting Hydrogen from water also takes a tremendous amount of energy. Then you still have to combine and refine those into the actual fuel. Not to mention the fact that you then have to transport it half way around the world because currently the only place it is produced is a remote part of Chile. FYI: 10 Quid per liter is about $45 per gallon in the US.
I don't think the energy and time spent on developing synthetic fuel is any more than finding and extracting crude oil or digging up materials for batteries. It's just that it's a new thing, will take time to become streamlined. Imo it's the best way forward.
@@roshjam4984 Digging up batteries requires far and far less energy than making synthetic fuel for a car's life.
Once the production scales up, it will be more efficient and less expensive.
Still will be more expensive than electricity
@@jonathansmith7306 Not considerably. Thermodynamics is not very forgiving when converting electric energy to liquid fuel.
When you consider E-Fuels are currently about x5 the price of regular fuel and they’re in their infancy, it shouldn’t take long for that to come right. Along with that the production facility looks like something that could be setup in any country in the world, meaning every country could have their own production. It’s an absolute no brainer
Wow what a news 🤩
I love it 🔥
I’m very surprised the BBC even let them film this.
Loved profesor Harris 😎
That Lamborghini going round the track makes me wanna say no to electric cars.
Please do a review of Karma Automotive GS-6 which uses a methanol fuel cell propulsion system from Blue World Technologies
LOL Lifespan of like 50,000 miles. Methanol is an amazing solvent.
I wonder how much off the energy giants record profits will go into producing these new types of fuel ⛽️
Fossil's easiest to exploit for now unfortunately... add onto that the insane levels of coal and oil industry corruption in countries such as the us and australia and you have full on monopolies
95+% of all the hydrogen in the world is made from fossil fuels, coal in China and "natural gas" everywhere else, with huge CO2 emissions. The 70M tons of hydrogen used annually by industrial processes must switch to green hydrogen, but that will require 400 gigawatts of electrolyzers and a terawatt of renewable energy and will take decades. Fossil-fuel companies KNOW this, so they promote dubious new uses for hydrogen because it will only increase demand for their dirty stuff for years to come.
Hence all the Hydrogen EconomyTM hype, when the central energy story is the electrification of everything powered by renewable energy.
0
Porsche's partner is EXXON MOBIL. Love how the propagandist love to ignore that part.
@@Neojhun and? What’s wrong with an oil company trying to cut down their carbon use. Everything you use an enjoy in your life including the device you made this comment on was made by a big corporation. People that slander capitalism seem to forget that it has built literally everything around you.
They should all be available, but people should be told truth. My pick would be hydrogen powered technologies like Honda and BMW had over 10 years but got fight and pulled plug, now Hyundai has one but not for fuel economy.
Use electricity to make hydrogen to then compress it, store it and use it in a car that will then convert it back to electricity to move itself is nonsense. This is a fantastic waste of energy.
Also for e-fuel you're gonna need a extraordinary amont of electricity to create them, and this will also cost quite a lot...
omg im wearing the same jumper as Chris Harris
The last 3 and a half minutes was pure car pornography.
I remember the Top Gear video extolling the virtues of diesel when that came out, and now look at it...
The times change, at some point we’ll probably ditch lithium ion batteries for something else.
'When diesel came out' was around 1890. I'm assuming you're talking about Top Gear when it was a live show touring music halls comparing different breeds of cart horses.
@@grahamthompson5581 yes thats it. ha.
its interesting that no one is talking about that flames
One of the best drifts
The future will be a mixture of all fuel sources, obviously.
Not really. Compressed natural gas for cars died, diesel is fading, only three car companies are left half-heartedly pushing hydrogen alongside gargantuan battery investments. Nothing will ever be more efficient than putting renewable electricity straight into a battery to power a motor, which is why most car companies are making vague promises to completely electrify at some point in the future. Only rich Porsche drivers will be able to afford renewable fuels for their classic cars.
-There are fuel stations all over the country
-how many?
-twelve
They aren't that evenly spread either. Some are by research centres.. Some (suspiciously) are close to refineries.
If you bought your 400-mile range hydrogen car living in Penzance you'd be just a 228 mile drive from your nearest filling station in Swindon.
There are 6 around London, 2 in Swindon and 2 in Aberdeen.
I believe some have planned closures.
Yes, and in the case of the UK at least, not all of those 12 hydrogen filling points have public access, or are open outside office hours.
@@londonwestman1 The nearest hydrogen filling point to me is 87 miles from my home. The nearest EV charging point is bolted to the side of my house.......
The overall process efficiency needs to be assesed...
3:28 Hyundai with Vision 74: Hold my bear
Chris Harris is really the only hope for this show. Too bad he missed out when Jeremy, James and Richard were in it. Good work chris Harris. Real car people can’t relate to the other hosts, more like the other hosts can’t relate to real car people. Oh well.
thanks for making an episode I want to watch again.
I'll forego Paddy's accent.... just this once.
That doesn't happen often, you could say that it is quite rurr.
very very ruuhr.
An ICE is very inefficient compared to a fuel cell..
If you mean a hydrogen fuel cell, then the Toyota Mirai hardly breaks any records. It's fuel consumption is abysmal. And the efficiency of the fuel cell is around 23%........ I personally don't see the point in using huge amounts of electricity to produce hydrogen, to then use a fuel cell to convert it BACK into electricity at a *loss* to drive an electric motor in a hydrogen powered car. Why not skip the hugely inefficient hydrogen production process, along with all the transportation that would be needed (the hydrogen won't just appear at pumps on it's own) and simply charge the battery in an EV in the first place?
@@Brian-om2hh We(Denmark) plan to produce way more wind energy than we need. We would need insanely large and very expensive batteries if we took that path. We'll send some to Norway, for hydro storage. But the plan is to produce hydrogen when we produce too much for the grid. Some of that will be combined with CO2, from 'direct capture' in biogas plants, to produce green methanol. That can be used in planes, ships etc.. But I believe a lot of the hydrogen will be sold as it is.
top gear is back
Nice one, TG. When I saw the title of the video, I was hoping it would focus on synthetic fuels. It did. Yay. Electric cars have their place for some, but... hell no. And I say this whilst currently having a new BMW i3S in the garage. We've had it almost a year. It's brilliantly useless and uselessly brilliant. A really interesting, novelty cul de sac.
I get that this is Top Gear, but the real solution is to drive less and have better infrastructure built around people and not cars. Cycling paths, dedicated bus lanes, trams, and trains. The problem with saying that the synthetic fuel they used in the video is carbon neutral therefore it's what we should do is that we should aim to be carbon negative. And cars, being the least efficient for of transport beside a plane, is the problem, not the fuel that powers them.
This. It would be better for the environment to leave all the private cars running on petroleum but dramatically cutt their use in favour of bikes and public transport, than to switch all the cars to electric/hydrogen/synthetics.
I’m already doing my part. I drive my cars just once a week.
@@leftaroundabout I think in a perfect ideal world yes, but that would mean no new cars ever again which just isn't going to happen. So people are going to buy brand new cars (and in some cases that could be a good thing) which means then electric is better seen as almost all parts of the lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars today can be recycled as long as someone does the work. So switching to electric is the way forward for cars but other forms of transport are the way forward for people.
@@seanfitzpatrick7441 agree in all points.
@@seanfitzpatrick7441 your electic cars are dumb. No manual transmission.
Does anyone remember the name of that old science show? I think it was on bbc. This reminds me of it ?
Brainiac, Horizon, Tomorrows World?
@@karlkiessling yesssss im pretty sure it was Brainiac. Thx
I thought that Honda made a civic that used hydrogen about 20yrs ago?? And a few other vehicles as well. Cheers
If the supply chain for synthetic fuels are as well opzimized as for fossil fuels then the price will go way down as well
Welp guess what we live reality. Synthetic Fuel is not possible at large scale and Fossil Fuel ain't going to be cheap anytime soon.
Synthetic Fuels look like the stuff of dreams ❤️😩 Sure let all of the NPCs drive their Electric SUVs, just let us drive our Fun Cars with Synthetic Fuels 🌚❤️
Loved and enjoyed the interview but one thing I felt really bad for Stig who stood there wearing that helmet for about an hour. I bet he enjoyed.
The other problem with Hydrogen and in particular Hydrogen fuel cells is that there are no catalysts available with the combined high efficiency and longevity of Platinum Group Metals, which are of course among the rarest metals on the planet. I was super excited about synthetic fuels, but they still require hydrolysis and the end to end efficiency is about 4x worse than BEVs. I envision a day where eFuel will be say $10/gallon and only the wealthy can afford $1000 or so to go take your Lamborghini or GT3 out for a day at the track, while the rest of us will be driving our silent soleless BEVs.
If it only didn't require at least 10 times more energy than an EV needs to drive the same distance, it would be a good solution
a solution to what? it has no upsides, the whole show is a pile of lies, leaving out the reasons why it will never work
@@JohnSmith-pn2vl synthetic fuels
@@JohnSmith-pn2vl but the thing is it will work, and it does work, of course at the moment its scale is tiny but its technology will improve. Synthetic fuels are the future.
This is exactly what I needed. I've been hearing about Porsche working on developing a type of synthetic fuel, but I just needed it explained by Chris Harris.
Chris Harris doesn't know what he's talking about. He's just been given a poorly researched script by a BBC researcher.
this was painful to watch, its all nonsense lies that have nothing to do with reality, they should take it down asap.
Maybe you two should actually tell us the part where they were wrong Instead of just spouting 'slandeeer!!' like a bunch of villagers from the 19th century and then refusing to elaborate.
Lambo isn’t the last NA V12 though, we have the GMA cars
Fun summary. It's worth noting that green hydrogen is vanishingly rare at the moment. Most of the production is from natural gas, which kind of misses the point.
It's really disappointing that this is dressed up as if it's based on science, but doesn't consider the well to wheel (or EV equivalent) efficiency at all - that's the most important science here.
Hydrogen and synthetic fuels can't touch battery electric for efficiency. In the case of environmentally friendly fuels, efficiency has a direct bearing on cost. Hydrogen is circa 30% efficient and synthetic fuels probably even less, and that means they would be at least 3 times as expensive to run as a BEV.
People won't pay 3 times as much for fast fuelling, that's not going to happen. The noise is an ongoing problem for sure, but that's the only issue here really - and someone will deliver a decent solution to that with a BEV eventually.
It's a done deal, all in all. Its BEVs. We just need to get used to it.
I sense fear of change in your video. Don't be frightened of the future, embrace it. EVs are that future - with a few tweaks over the next 5-10 years making them more fun.
Take your love for electric cars to the moon ! They pollute like ***** on the long term, are heavy and stir no emotion ! Electric is NOT the future, at least for petrolheads on this channel and not only
Evs suck. Unless you can put a manual transmission, they will never be fun.
@@heavy_ang_patay Efficiency and technology doesn't pause for your nostalgia or what you think is fun. EV's will take over, and you can still buy a used combustion car at $50+ per gallon.
@@rozburg I'd rather advocate for better transportation and just stop there. Leave the gas, diseal, and hydrogen cars to people that actually enjoy driving.
I sure do hope it becomes affordable and plentiful because people care more about their own wallets than the environment.
I’m not sure how we can manage that… 🤔 we need 15 billions of L of oil and this synthetic fuel is less efficient than conventional gas ⛽️ so we would need more to run the 1.4 billion cars in the world
The fact is that regular fuel is actually the best option currently. 🤯 I know, right?
@@chibacha21_CarBoi no. EVs with green electricity are the best option. We cannot continue to burn stuff.
With about 27 kWh of green electricity needed for just 1 liter, this is never going to become affordable or plentiful. With that number, an EV can drive more than 100 km. How far can you drive with 1 liter?
@@_TbT_ Okay. Good bye and big boom with your explosive EVs...
You missed Hydrogen Combustion engines.
theres hope
Synthetic fuel is not a bad idea. The problem is that it will never be cheap enough. A better idea would be to take the hydrogen you were going to put in your Mirai, and to instead put it in a slightly modified Lamborghini.
Toyota (and others, like renault) are developing this, they recently made their brilliant GR Yaris engine run on H2 and put it in a corolla
Yeah, though the problem would be that it will have zero range.
Engineering explained made a good video about the subject, you should check it out
@Arga well, I guess you could use a combination of compressed hydrogen storage and gas (instead if liquid) fuel injectors. Should do a bit for your mpg
The whole problem is that at best you're going to be looking at 30-40% efficient for an ICE before you even factor in how much energy it takes to create it in the first place. An electric car for comparing is around 90% efficient and you can put the electricity straight into the vehicle .
Hydrogen in a internal combustion engine is not a good idea. BMW had a hydrogen 7 series and it was inconvenient to say the least. The hydrogen is gone from the tank after 1 day of parking.
You might want to discuss the relative efficiencies for making these "fuels" in your next, and extremely sombre video. There is only one use case where synthetic fuels are a remotely viable option. Thats long distance air travel, and it's only cos there is no other choice.
The reality is that it is a viable option for any ICE owner who is willing to pay for it. And, it is greener than any EV (currently, at least) thanks to the lower input and recycling emissions for the life cycle of an ICE vehicle.
It will also be quite likely the long term answer for cherished and vintage cars. Some people pour enough love and commitment into their throbbing V8s for £10 a litre to be OK.
@@flyingphoenix113 you lost me at greener.
This + presenting hydrogen as a viable option for passenger vehicles was just ridiculous. Felt like a paid ad.
@@flyingphoenix113 Part right, part wrong. You see, it isn't suitable for cars as a lot of energy gets pumped into it to only support the "carbon neutral" praise that companies and governments push slightly. And generating "green electricity" means killing birds and other animals and actually destroying the environment. Sounds stupid until you actually read the dark facts.
Elegant!!
What happened to the hydrogen BMW 750-h ?
nothing beats good ol gasoline⛽👍
Except it's expensive, far more toxic, inefficient thus weak. Heck even E85 is better than normal Gasoline.
I think you guys have forgotten the reason we're moving to EV's. Hydrogen requires nearly as much energy to produce as it delivers and likewise with synthetic fuel. You then have the problem of transporting it and storing it safely. They're both a complete waste of time.
Exactly. "We're not carrying around a great big battery which is really really heavy" he says sitting in the 2 ton Hydrogen car. As for eFuels, the same burn for 10x the cost and with all the same NOx nasties as normal petrol.
i think nerds and cars dont go well together, everybody wants to see flames shooting from the exhaust
You forget r&d exists
@@AutomatedHomewhere did he say all the "Nox nasties that normal fuel produces"?
Chris said "all the synthetic fuels emit is the co2 that was used to produce it"🤔
There is some really interesting research on using copper catalysts to create synthetic fuels.
I would recommend that you go find and read those papers before making broad sweeping statements because it isn't as simple as you put it.
This could be a viable stopgap that buys us time to build clean energy infrastructure properly. These sorts of undertakings are REALLY difficult and take a long time.
If we just rush the transition it will probably just result in people continuing to use fossil fuels because the new infrastructure keeps breaking.
Look how long it has taken Tesla to perfect their Electric car design. It used to have all sorts of problems.
Its a good option but not practical for everyday use. Who will build out and pay for the ridiculous cost of infrastructure. As well you will never fill hydrogen at home, like an EV where 90% of people charge.
What happens to that water vapor being released? How much fog will there be on highways or black ice on cold days?
Burning hydrocarbons produces water, how much of an issue is that now?
nothing because this will never be a reality
@@user-yn5sk5ru5g - depends on the difference in quantity and temperature. We’re burning hydrocarbons so we’re releasing steam and CO2 so probably less water and it’s warmer. With a hydrogen fuel cell we’re letting it combine with oxygen to create electricity so I doubt it’s as hot and there’s only water produced, no CO2. But again what’s the difference in quantity. This video at times showed a stream of water coming out of the tailpipe so I’m guessing it produced more water.
@@JohnSmith-pn2vl it will
Synthetic fuel 🤔 = exhaust fumes. When I see a video of a presenter breathing in exhaust fumes from these cars and he manages to …. ahem… not die, then maybe Ill be interested
Saw an interview with a producer of synthetic fuel a couple of months ago, he said that the fuel is ready to go and all we need is people that can invest in production. And if we did it would be a lot cheaper then todays petrol and diesel.
Lithium powerd EV´s is a dead end...
That person was lying. It's obviously never going to be cheaper to use far more electricity to make a fuel by splitting then recombining water and CO2 than to put electricity straight in a battery. The only car company investing in production is Porsche because they know their customers can afford brutally high prices for renewable e-fuel.
The price of hydrogen in California at the 40 stations that the government spent $100M on recently jumped from $12 a kilogram to $23. Toyota and Hyundai are only to sell a few thousand HFCVs by offering $15,000 in free fuel.
😂😂”fuel is ready to go.” The amount fuel you need on a global scale cannot be met with these so-called “synthetics.”
They belong to a generation who really love cars as they were made for. This is to enjoy and feel them throught the emotions.
We need to pray for e-fuels and hydrogen evolution as soon as possible rather than inert smartphones with wheels.
At this moment I feel as sad as they look like while driving electric cars.
There is a rise of hope considering Porsche, Toyota, BMW, Hyundai and others are investing big quanties of their resources to develop that technologies. Today there is still a great threshold of uncertainty for the future. AND HOPE.
This would be so much better if Clarkson was presenting this
...How exactly is synthetic fuel carbon neutral ? What comes out of the exhaust ?
In theory, the same carbon that came out of the atmosphere to create the biomass that made the fuel. Carbon neutral.
People not interested about driving apart from A-B, will stick to electricity.
But people who love driving, are looking for the day synthetic fuel to become widely available.
An irrational nostalgic fondness for farting and grumbling noises arising from thousands of contained fuel explosions doesn't make you a car lover, it just means you're old.
@skierpage Chris Harris and literally every car journalists say, you're wrong. Unless you drive a 500hp ev. Also, most ev being bought by older people. Which means you're just simply stupid.
You better have a big wallet
@@final0222 500 horsepower EVs will be commonplace and cheaper than petrol equivalents just like the Plaids and Lucid Air Sapphire are at 1,000 HP Automotive journalists are familiar with the sound of explosions, but it doesn't make the car better.
@skierpage , as someone who has thrashed a Model 3 Performance to and past its limits, it absolutely does. Sound is a key component in our perception of speed. Your body acclimates quickly to the G-forces, and the acceleration is no longer impressive (I acclimated after just 1 day). All you're left with is an inferior, less soulful, and ultimately unrewarding driving experience making you wish you'd have gone for the petrol-powered equivalent (especially one with a manual transmission).
The problem is that for Hydrogen to be liquid it need to be stored at 700 Bar.
If you worked with compressed gases you know how much of a problem that is in pratice......... thats where evolution comes into play my friend. Yes, I have an understanding of high pressure gases....
So to get synthetic fuel you have to use energy to make H2, then use more energy to capture CO2, then use energy to transform.
Economically, it will be hard to compete against batterie and only H2 cars.
The usage will be for machines that need high density energy fuel, or are exclusive combustion.
And still, it will face methane
A hybrid HICE (hydrogen internal combustion engine) and fuel cell hypercar was my final year design concept at Uni. It is such a great underfunded fuel source. My argument back then (about 6/7 years ago) was that EVs are only as green as the powerstations you get the energy from. They are also catastrophic in terms of lithium mining. It was such a fun project, so so happy hydrogen is finally getting the respect it deserves.
You failed right?
Where does the AT LEAST FOUR TIMES MORE energy required for making the synthetic fuels come from?!
And don't you say Chile.....
Whatever percentage of electricity mix isn't low-carbon, green hydrogen from that electricity is 2 1/2 times worse than battery because of the inefficiency of the detour through hydrogen. Lithium mining isn't "catastrophic" the way mining then burning billions of tons of fossil fuel is.
@@skierpage Hey as long as the Lithium mines aren't close to my water supply...
Can you believe the largest lithium mining corporation wanted to build one close to the Danube in Europe? All the waste would go to Romania and infiltrate the largest fresh water system in Europe.
If you want to sponsor a lithium mine in your neighborhood go ahead.
The rest of us are tired being used as a chemical toilet.
@@markopecinovic4475 where's your outrage over Chevron refusing to pay the indigenous people in Ecuador the $billion in fines it owes for oil pollution, or the farmers in the Nigerian Delta ruined by Shell's oil pollution?
If you're so concerned about the harms from making 1/2-ton batteries, then buy a smaller EV with a smaller battery, buy from a manufacturer like BMW or Tesla that claims to source "responsibly mined" materials, or better yet don't own a 2-ton manufactured product. But if you're going to drive a car, get an EV because it's undeniably better for the environment than burning through many tons of dirty fossil fuel in operation.
@@skierpage What is Ironic is that you mentioned two countries that I lived in including the oil drenched shores of Lagos....
Have you ever seen a lithium mine? Or for that matter an oil spill? ...in your life...
Do you know what lithium mining does to water?
I don't trust any corporation for sustainable mining, it's a sham. That is why they pick places like Borneo to exploit, or simply drain through destabilization like Serbia.
The only thing is, hydrogen is very complicated to store properly...
nah
That's fairly easy to solve. Insulation is key for containing H2 in liquid and gaseous form. Cryogenic embrittlement is the larger concern when passing LH2 through plumbing or storage.
and the production of it, is very energy intensive.
That's one problem among many. The cramped overpriced Mirai solves it by filling the car with three bulky expensive carbon fiber hydrogen tanks, and it weighs more than a Tesla Model 3.
@skierpage , it also goes significantly further than a model 3 on a full tank. It's an apples and oranges comparison. A closer comparison would be the Model S Long Range, at which point, the Mirai is significantly lighter.
Need to see the hydrogen ICEs!
NOOOO. This Aventadoris not the last v12 from Lamborghini its The Invencible and Autentica, Yes they are based on the Aventador's platform, but feature unique bodies designed by Lamborghni's Centro Stile.
I'm glad someone made an awesome video explaining to people where the car industry is going when it comes to alternative fuel. We love are engines. I like some of these electric cars but I don't want to drive my phone lol 🙃 😅 😆 😂.
The hydrogen car is an EV (electric motor, battery with cobalt) with added high pressure hydrogen tank and plumping. It’s ridiculously dumb for passenger vehicles. Synthetic fuel will be a really expensive motorsport fuel. It will pollute residential areas just like regular fuel and its production and transportation costs money and produces emissions. It’s a white elephant.
Hydrogen - yes - just the sort of thing you want in your garage ... What could possibly go wrong? H2 leaks and burns metal, and rubber too. How much did BP pay for get this shallow propaganda aired? Or was it Shell?
We need a campaign for synthetic fuel now. With development it could be cheaper and carbon negative. EVs, ICE and H cars can co-exist. Write your MP/Senator, etc
Does the water need to be fresh water? Because fresh water is and has been a scarce resource for a long time. Desalination isn’t a cheap process either.