Zerocarbonista

Greenbird rattling Top Gear’s cage

Filed under: Transport — dale December 1, 2008 @ 4:22 pm

Topgear\'s James, Richard and Jeremy

We thought the Greenbird had flown silently past the deafening roar of Top Gear towers, but we were wrong. Check out this link to watch the good ol’ Top Gear boys practically combusting internally at the prospect of cars powered by the wind. They got the wrong end of the stick of course - the fun end of the stick though - shame it ended up in the out-take bin…

16 Comments »

  1. Dale, what do you expect mate? You have to pity their lack of imagination…we love what you’re doing and we’d love to be showcasing Greenbird to the UK public at UK AWARE in Olympia in April next year. (Your retrofit leccy car would be great too!)

    Comment by Danny Carnegie — December 2, 2008 @ 12:31 am

  2. I like Top Gear, it’s an amusing and cleverly scripted piece of comedy entertainment. However Jeremy and his two performing monkeys increasingly making themselves look somewhat prehistoric. I’d really like to see a fair and unedited debate between that dinosaur and a representitive from the green team! Especially a green rep. making the case for sustainability rather than actual environmental issues. In that forum, anything that smells like the green argument or ’saving the planet’ gets dismissed as sensationalism or some kind of ivory tower liberalism.

    Comment by Chris — December 4, 2008 @ 1:31 pm

  3. Hey hello,

    Any publicity is good publicity I guess?

    I’m afraid for me the page says:

    “THE VIDEO YOU ARE TRYING TO WATCH CANNOT BE VIEWED FROM YOUR CURRENT COUNTRY OR LOCATION.”

    Perhaps you can repost the footage for the world to see? The guys from Carver did. The top gears don’t seem to delete it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zua8R79OPHY

    You could edit it and add some comments :-)

    Anyway,

    Good luck with the project, we have a world to save here!

    Comment by gaby de wilde — December 5, 2008 @ 1:25 pm

  4. Hi Gaby,

    Thanks for that - I have just asked the Top Gear bods if they could possibly add the clip to their Youtube channel… that will save anyone having to break their copy protection and/or break their copyright! Will let you know if they respond.

    Nice Wind Car site you have there btw :)

    And those Carver things do look fun - do you know if they made an electric one yet..?

    Comment by paul — December 5, 2008 @ 4:04 pm

  5. Hi Paul!

    The Carver One is über cool. They did sell a licence to venture one so they could use the tilting tech and there looks like they will have an electric version. You can see it at flytheroad.com…. but they seem to be taking their time in development :(

    There are some other tilting cars in development, but carver is the only one I know that is on the market. I am sure you can convert it to electric, but you would need wheel mounted motors and may only get a max of 60 miles per charge.

    Comment by Karl — December 6, 2008 @ 10:55 pm

  6. Nothing like restrictive practices on the Internet… that video can not be viewed in my region.
    It seems more and more clear that the only person on the planet who is unaware of how brainless Clarkson sounds is Clarkson himself.
    He’s a journalist (100% non technical/scientific trade) and his sidekicks are a musician and a radio announcer…
    Your local gas station attendant would have more of a technical/science background than that trio.

    Comment by Paul — December 7, 2008 @ 1:06 am

  7. They are all ignorant dinosaurs if you ask me - but even worse - the TV stations let them have air-time with shows pumping out all sorts of incorrect facts like James May’s Big Idea only two weeks ago when he stated that wind turbines only provide a meaningful level of power 25% of the time. Journalists and TV presenters should be made accountable for the rubbish they put out.

    Comment by Vicky Portwain — December 7, 2008 @ 5:57 pm

  8. Vicky, May’s not far off with his wind turbine comment.

    The actual answer for the UK is a load factor of: 27.5% for onshore turbines and 25.6% for offshore.
    See DUKES 7.4.

    Comment by Chris Vernon — December 8, 2008 @ 2:56 pm

  9. Chris - there is a very big difference between load factor and how much of the time any power generation system produces electricity.

    Although DUKEs may show average load factors of 27.5% that is very different to how much of the time electricity is produced. Most studies show wind turbines produce electricity 75-95% of the time depending on location. Grouped as a whole for the contry there are virtually no times when no electricity is produced. In fact a turbine with a load factor of 27.5% could in theory produce electricity 100% of the time just not at its maximum rated output. There is a big difference.

    This misrepresentation of load (or capacity) factors has been used for years by the anti-wind lobby, in a very disingenuous way.

    Comment by Martin — December 8, 2008 @ 5:28 pm

  10. not to mention that the average load factor quoted is based on old data and old models and in no way represents contemporary technology.

    though archaic in approach, the video is a good chuckle.

    Sam

    Comment by Sam — December 10, 2008 @ 4:08 pm

  11. Hi

    Firstly we must move forward to a green future….But presentation can help and I think this may upset a few people! But here goes…

    - The pinnacle so far of mankind and the petrol head era was reaching for the stars and man landing on the moon must be recognised as such…once the green movement acknowledge this and accept it in their literature and not slag off all that has gone before, when people just did not realise, we will get a lot more people on our side and move this essential growth of green issues forward…..we are all in this together…the closer we make ourselves to the main stream now the easier it will be for us to lead them towards the future!!

    Comment by Mike — December 13, 2008 @ 9:21 pm

  12. Clarkson will always be Clarkson. I very much doubt he believes most of the stuff he comes out with to be honest, he’s just going for a reaction. The more people rise to it, the more he’ll do it. James May actually strikes me as a pretty intelligent chap, and he did give the Honda Clarity a pretty good review in a recent episode. Same episode had the Tesla in it as well, and was generally quite positive. I think people need to take Top Gear far less seriously…they’re entertainment, not a lobby group! To be honest, I think both camps are guilty of dubious statistics and selective reporting to some degree.

    Comment by Phil — January 6, 2009 @ 1:20 am

  13. Thanks Danny. Sounds great, would love to come along. If you drop us an e-mail with details in it I’ll make sure it gets to the right people. Cheers.

    Comment by dale — January 6, 2009 @ 10:14 am

  14. I agree with you Vicky, they should be accountable. But the recent episode with the C4 program that fake graphs on climate change to make their point - it was ruled entertainment… kind of tells us it ain’t going to happen. Apparently, according to the watchdog, it’s TV and we should all take it with a pinch of salt - I paraphrase of course. Cheers.

    Comment by dale — January 6, 2009 @ 10:29 am

  15. Chris, Martin and Sam - Martin has it dead right, anti-wind guys confuse the issues of load factor and efficiency all the time, sounds like May took it a step further if he described load factors as a measure of how often windmills produce ‘a meaningful level of power’ - that really is silly.

    Load factors are a very interesting statistical handle actually. If you calculate one for everyday things, like for example a car, you get a figure of about 1%..!, try a kettle it’s even worse, mobile phones… try them all. It shows what a spurious statistic load factor is if you use it to try and argue something is not efficient and therefore ‘not worth bothering with’ as the anti’s love to do.

    Even ‘like for like’ (looking at generators) wind stacks up - take nuclear power for example, if there’s one power source that is ‘rocket science’ this is it, you’d expect it to have a vastly superior performance to wind, load factor wise - I mean you get to turn it on and off (and up and down) as you like. But the typical load factor of Britain’s Nukes is not even double that of typical wind. Surely something that relies completely on the weather to make power should perform far less well compared to the ultimate high tec generator - interesting that it doesn’t.

    Load factors for wind are increasing, as Sam says, the stats are based on all UK wind farms and therefore have many very old tech machines in there. 30% onshore is not unusual now with new machines, from a modest site - 40% in Scotland.

    Cheers.

    Comment by dale — January 6, 2009 @ 10:35 am

  16. Hi Mike, I think landing on the moon was an awesome feat, of engineering and of daring. Not sure if that’s an unusual view in green circles. The ’space race’ spawned solar PV technology amongst other advances. I was a young boy when they landed on the moon, it was inspiring then, and still is. Cheers.

    Comment by dale — January 6, 2009 @ 10:42 am

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