Welcome to the gleaming new Top Gear YouTube channel. Arriving this September, Top Gear Tech will land on your optional passenger infotainment display with plenty of passion and a case to make.
That case is this: for all the Luddite complaints about naturally aspirated V12s heading for extinction (much of them from us, admittedly), and the fury over the modern car’s habit of producing madness-inducing warning chimes (also fair), the automotive world has never been more compelling.
Confronted with remarkable challenges, car makers are doing remarkable things. Brands that once spent a century choosing the safest possible route are now throwing Hail Mary passes like Tom Brady in the final seconds of overtime, frantically trying to answer the existential challenge of EV regulations and Chinese rivals.
The outcomes have varied. For every irresistible Renault 5, there is a Mercedes EQS resembling a melted Mars bar. Yet the speed of innovation among both established and new manufacturers is unlike anything we have encountered before. The kind of huge technological advance that used to appear every few years now seems to happen weekly. We need somewhere to discuss all of it.
Top Gear Tech and the latest new cars
Hence the new channel. Expect a healthy serving of new cars, obviously, particularly those stretching the boundaries of what technology can achieve today, whether they are electric or not.
Our opening episode starts modestly, with a world exclusive featuring the enormous Tesla Semi, a vehicle we had waited so long for that we had almost forgotten it existed. Eight years after its glossy reveal, it is ready to challenge the widely held belief that battery power cannot handle long-distance freight transport.
Next comes the new Torcal, Bentley’s first-ever electric car. Despite its glowing nose, this EV is keen to make as little noise as possible about its powertrain, preferring simply to be A Very Good Bentley. We call this the “anti-Luce approach”, and it has become a popular strategy recently - see the new VW ID.Polo and Mercedes C-Class. It also says intriguing things about our changing relationship with EVs.
Beyond four wheels: fuels, bikes and factories
We will also regularly look beyond cars, highlighting automotive-adjacent technology stories that deserve your attention. In episode three, we enter the secretive world of synthetic fuels to meet the highly decorated former F1 engineer who is quite literally extracting petrol from thin air. Might this guilt-free, dinosaur-free concoction be the silver bullet? Could it offer a universal answer to a sustainable future? Can we ditch these irritating EVs and restore the burble of V8s? As it happens, it is a little more complicated than that.
Elsewhere, we will investigate sci-fi e-bikes fitted with anti-theft force fields, space-age winter tyres featuring retractable Wolverine claws, 3D printers that can produce whole supercars, and behind-the-scenes visits to the futuristic factories that make it all possible.
Sounds enjoyable? Subscribe and switch on notifications to ensure you miss nothing. See you in the future.
25 minutes 1 second
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!
Leave a Comment