James May reviews his own cars – Tesla Model S vs Toyota Mirai

hello viewers here are two electric cars one of them may be the future or it could be both of them or it may be neither of them we don't know what's just around the corner because if we did we'd be there meanwhile let's do some finding out we begin with the blue one the Tesla Model S 100 D the D stands for dual motor there are two electric motors one on the back wheels one on the front so it's all-wheel drive and it's quick power is over 400 bhp naught to 60 takes a fraction over four seconds but let's not get bogged down in those old twentieth-century ways of measuring performance what actually matters is the power band that's the area of the graph between peak torque and peak power and because electric motors make Pete talk pretty much instantaneously this is fast everywhere it is just squeeze and go whee this isn't even the performance version that one the P 100 D has a beefier motor on the back axle and that one will kick Lamborghinis in the face and this is the Toyota Mirai I'm afraid this only has one electric motor on the front wheels and it develops a piffling 152 horsepower it has but half the torque of the Tesla this is not fast it is quiet though all electric cars are quiet obviously the Tesla is very quiet but this is really quiet listen yeah you see you can't really can you the only thing you ever hear is a faint noise a bit like a pump it also has a very nice ride very sophisticated a little bit like a Bentley Continental GT actually and since energy efficiency is important in electric cars it's worth pointing out that this is much lighter than the Tesla the Tesla weighs 2.2 tons but this way is a mere 1.8 tons well done Toyota now everyone thinks the future is full of self-driving cars but actually it's much better than that these two cars are so advanced I can drive them both at the same time now currently I'm in the Tesla which is quite a handsome looking car although let's be honest quite conventional meanwhile the other me in the mirror I thinks that the Mirai styling is more like the shock of the new which is not bad from a company whose own president once said that Toyota's were boring I like it though it looks a bit like a sort of angry fighting fish I do sometimes think it would look better if it was upside down most things in the Tesla are controlled with this big screen in the middle here and that's all perfectly familiar because it's just like operating a big version of your smartphone my only complaint is that you can't actually feel your way around the screen and sometimes I think I look at it for just half a second too long like that and you look up and the world is a completely different place by contrast things are already beginning to feel a little bit old-school in the yota you do have a touch screen here for sat-nav and audio but all the important information about what the car is actually doing is on the little displays up there you navigate those with the buttons on the steering wheel but it has to be said that your thumb is a great receptor that's what allowed us to progress so much more quickly than dogs and you only have to glance at that display like that and that's an exaggerated TV glance the tez is connected it updates itself and improves itself automatically over Wi-Fi and it includes things like retro video games on the big screen and jokes from the mind of comedy genius Elon Musk's such as fart sounds they did an update on you last week and the screen now includes Netflix right which one am i in oh yes it must be the MS Irby cuz there are no gags in here this is deadly serious does feel quite esoteric though and as a mirai driver you are part of a very exclusive club I describe the Tesla as party time it's a feel-good car it's fast it's on-trend it's always up for a laugh the Mirai is having a more earnest conversation in the kitchen like a quantity surveyor might but it is definitely more refined its brain is bigger than its gob that's a nice quality in people and it's nice in a car as well but anyway we must move on now to a deeply romantic subject something that Elizabeth browning wrote about all the time electricity now we come to the essential difference between these two cars the Tesla is a b e v a battery electric vehicle you charge it up like your laptop the battery itself down in the floor here is in fact a giant laptop battery actually it's lots of laptop batteries all joined together bloody millions of the buggers now you can charge it at home you can plug it into a domestic socket it will take two and a half days to charge fully you can install a home charger that's about two and a half times as quick you can use a regular public charger or you can use one of these a Tesla supercharger and these are epic now that's all plugged in I just have to sit here it's actually charging quite slowly today because there are a lot of people here it can be five times as fast as that but there's no matter because I just go into the Tesla menu and select Tesla theater and Netflix there aren't any decent car shows on Netflix I'll just have to watch the crown or as the Queen ourselves calls it when she's watching it the crying so that little session there lasted about 15 minutes it gave me an extra 43 miles at a cost of 3 pounds 38 this is a sort of thing we talk about these days it's not top speed or nought to 60 or anything like that its kilowatts and updates of software and how much I paid for my last session and where I was it's a fabulous and exciting community that I've joined the missile is an h f c/e v a hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle hydrogen stored in a pressurized tank in the back feeds the fuel cell to generate electricity on demand so you fill it up pretty much like a normal car here's how I always stand back a bit from this because that pressurizes to 700 bar and I know it won't but I imagine if that flew off it would hit me right in the fuel cells that's half the kilogram the pump talks to the car through a little transducer thing so it can't start filling if it isn't all secure still pumping 0.8 of a kilogram 1.2 kilograms right so that's finished it's depressurized the slight risk on a day like this is that the nozzle freezes to the car but it has done no it hasn't 1.2 kilograms and for that let's go and have a look at the scores inside that was 1.2 kilograms so 1.2 kilograms of hydrogen cost me 14 pounds 40 that will take me an extra an extra 65 70 miles of range and that took what 2 minutes good I actually think there's a place in the future for the B Evy and the HF CEV I mean most people don't drive very much they just commute to work and go to the shops in which case what's wrong with the battery electric vehicle you just charge it up at home whilst you're asleep or down the pub or or watching the Grand Tour on Amazon no need to waste your life away visiting fuel stations that's great but if you do beat mileages say you travel around the country selling encyclopedias then you really want the HFC evie because you can fill it up as quickly as a normal car there's actually a bit more to it than that and I did promise in an earlier video that I've had an argument with myself about it and as I seem to have parked up just over there that's what we that's what I'll do but everybody knows producing hydrogen is energy inefficient you need electricity to crack hydrogen and then you turn hydrogen back into electricity why not just put electricity straight into the car yeah but in the bright future of abundant sustainable energy from wind and sunshine and nuclear fusion efficiency isn't the issue hydrogen becomes a transportable fuels like oil yeah but you can use renewable energy to charge batteries but you still have the battery and it's heavy and it uses valuable materials imagine the size of the battery you need for a ship or an airliner imagine how many batteries you're going to need if everything goes electric well batteries will get smaller this is just the beginning well fuel cells will get smaller and more powerful there's no hydrogen infrastructure there's already an electricity grid but the infrastructure is growing it's already growing massively in Germany and Japan the grid will have to expand to charge everybody's car hydrogen can be dispensed from existing fuel stations quickly where all these battery cars going to be charged at home or what if you live in a flat or in a city Terrace well you'll have inductive charging in the road yeah more massive infrastructure change look hydrogen is difficult to manage it has to be stored under pressure it's inefficient it attacks metals it leaks out yeah but they're working on that storage in matrices that sort of thing hydrogen is explosive is used in massive bombs oh yeah they're nuclear bombs using uranium and plutonium hydrogen is just the accelerator what about the Hindenburg well that was like a carry a bag full of hydrogen not a carbon-fiber tank and anyway the fire was mainly the inflammable skin most people are going to be terrified of hydrogen look my garage at home contains a hydrogen car a car with a massive battery and a car with the tank full of super unleaded in it the hydrogen car scares me the least my cars faster ha my car is cooler mine farts mine looks like a killer fish yours looks stupid yours looks like a Vauxhall you've gone the wrong way you

Channel: DRIVETRIBE

Views: 2,594,757

Keywords: jeremy clarkson, richard hammond, james may, cars, top gear, the grand tour, tesla, toyota, EV, electric, fully charged, car throttle

Id: GaIW5CQQ3Zo

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/myroy93]

This is more entertaining than Top gear

[u/ycnz]

Shit. It does look like a Vauxhall. Cannot unsee.

[u/fishboy1]

I really feel like both of them have a future, I can't imagine pure EV's taking off here in aus outside of the main cities, and even in those it's pretty difficult to get by sometimes. The infrastructure also seems an awful like a more volatile and high tech version of LPG which has been in common use for a very long time here.

[u/davidnotcoulthard]

Welp, looks like I'm not the only guy who likes the Mirai's looks (maybe still the only one to unironically?)