All language subtitles for James.Mays.Cars.of.the.People.S02E03.1080p.WEB.h264-POPPYCOCK

This is a model of KITT,

from the 1980s TV series
Knight Rider with the Hoff.

And this is the 1966
jet-powered Batmobile.

The fantasy cars of TV and cinema

were formed by our dreams
of the car of the future.

We liked the idea of a car
that would talk to us,

that knew where it was going,
that would fly

and we wondered
if it could actually drive itself.

Did anything come
of the wild imaginings

of the creators of these things?

Did any of it become reality
to filter down

to the real cars of the people?

'This week, before I deal
with the people's dreams,

'I want to start by talking
about me for a change.'

This is a BMW i3, an electric car.

It's my car.

If you haven't driven a modern
electric car, it is worth a go,

because it's mainly like driving
a car, there's no gearbox,

because you don't need one
and some of the controls

are slightly different, but it does
feel strangely enlightened.

This car, like many of its rivals,

is bristling with
user-friendly hi-tech.

And like all other electric cars,
it's powered by a simple battery,

without the need for valves,
pistons or gears.

# Just the two of us... #

You plug it in, and you
plug in everything these days -

your phone, your tablet,
your toothbrush.

Your ladyshave, whatever.

I don't have a ladyshave,
I just know that you recharge them.

KNIGHT RIDER THEME TUNE

'It's simple, yet sophisticated.

'It'll even park itself...

'while I'm doing my legs.'

I'm not touching the pedals.
I'm not touching the steering wheel.

It's doing it by itself!

It's witchcraft!

Are you watching?

It's just going to go forwards
a bit and then...

Ah.
TONE

It's good, isn't it?

'Electric vehicles like this
are at the forefront

'of a 21st-century battle

'to decide how our cars
will be powered in the future.

'And although rivals include
the fuel cells, solar energy,

'biofuel and liquid gas,
I quite fancy its chances.'

It's electric.

Smooth, quiet, clean.

Modern.

Or is it?

Let's go back 100 years or so.

Here is an early car from 1909.
It's a Baker.

It looks a bit like
a horse-drawn carriage

and, if you look inside
the interior,

it's described by the current owner
as a bit frou-frou,

or rather like a Victorian brothel.

But here's the interesting thing -

it's electric.

We modern people like
to think that our electric dreams

are a product of our hi-tech world.

But in large parts
of America in 1900,

the electric car was
the bestselling car of the people.

It was as fashionable as top hats...

and TB.

'But, just like today, it wasn't
clear which propulsion method

'would drive the car of the future.

'And the electric car faced
some high-pressure competition.'

This is a Stanley Model
740D Roadster,

and as you can probably guess
from the chuffing sound,

it's steam-powered.

Right, now this is like a car,

in that it has a steering wheel
in front of me,

a rather vague one,
I've got to be honest.

Everything else about it
is quite baffling.

The pedals are all wrong,
there's lots of lovely instruments,

but they're talking
about mysterious things.

We've got fuel system pressure,
boiler pressure,

cylinder lubrication, oil flow,
all sorts of things.

Hang on a minute,
open the regulator.

Climb this hill.

So all this stuff, this isn't
steam punk, this is actually steam.

Duba-duba-duba-duba,
duba-duba-duba-duba...

A steam car works in pretty much the
same way as any other steam engine.

Water is boiled in, well, a boiler,
by kerosene burners and then steam -

and I mean proper, superheated
steam at 300 degrees plus,

not the poncey vapour
that comes out of your kettle -

that is forced into cylinders,
where it pushes pistons along.

That then turns a shaft,
which drives the wheels.

That's all we've ever wanted out of
all these sources of motive power,

a rotating shaft. That's it.

The brakes don't work,
the steering is terrible,

and you do worry
that it's going to blow up.

But, for the people
of the early 20th century,

steam power was a trusted friend.

Steam had been around since the 18th
century, it had industrialised us,

it powered mill engines
and mine pumps and, of course,

it gave us the miracle
of the railways.

Steam was understood.

A steam engine will really run on
just about anything that will burn.

They can go very, very wrong
and become very, very sloppy

and they still work.

Steam power, it seemed, was not only
the past but also the future.

In America, sales began
to outstrip electric cars.

But coming up fast in their
rear-view mirrors was a rival system

destined to rule the world.

ROCK MUSIC

This is a Mercedes-Benz AMG DT.

It has a four litre V8,
developing 510 horsepower.

Is that a lot?
It is quite a lot, actually.

It does 193mph,

goes from 0 to 60
in under four seconds. It's amazing.

And it runs on petrol.

As indeed did
the world's first true car.

Back in 1885, when Karl Benz
ran the engine of his Motorwagen

for the first time,
he described the sound it made

as "the music of the future."

He was right, wasn't he?

Because if the music of the
20th century has a dominant note,

it's that of
the internal combustion engine.

'And that's odd,

'because the internal combustion
engine is rather demanding.'

The petrol engine in this car has
to have sophisticated electronics,

it has to have an oil pump,
it has to have lubrication,

it has to have valves
going up and down and springs

and it has to have a gearbox,
blah, blah, blah.

So, why? Why have we ended up
relying so much on this thing

when an electric motor
in particular is so simple?

The answer is not to be found
in the engine,

but at the other end of the car.

In here is a petrol tank holding
around 80, 85 litres of fuel.

Not a very big volume, to be honest.

That much beer would only
keep the production crew

of this programme going for about
an hour and a half, two hours.

But as petrol, it will drive
this high-performance car

all the way from my house in London

right up into the Highlands
of Scotland.

That is very energy dense.

Fossil fuels were a great gift
from nature.

If that were to be a battery,

it would have to be about three or
four times the size of the car

to do the same job.

The energy that
a few gallons of oil can yield

would send cars
far across the world.

And filling stations were quick
to spring up everywhere.

By contrast, national electricity
grids simply didn't exist,

leaving the electric car
confined to the city.

But what about
the people's favourite, steam?

Railways had conquered the globe.
Surely the steam car would prevail.

The steam car
of the early 20th century

was doomed by several factors.

Ford's moving production line
meant that his Model T,

his car for the great multitude,
came down in price constantly,

so by the time this car came out,
the Model T could be yours

for not much more
than a 10th of the price.

And the Model T, of course,

as well as making the car
an affordable proposition,

also cemented internal combustion
as the accepted way.

Pish.

Infrastructure, economics

and Ford's
mass production methods, then,

would decisively tip the balance.

By the 1920s,
the battle was as good as settled.

The petrol age had dawned
and its god was the piston engine.

Clean or not, oil had got us hooked

and had given us
the mobility we craved.

And, while engines slowly grew
more powerful and reliable,

the car itself became
a catalyst for rapid change.

Towns, cities, even nations were
built around its requirements.

COMMENTATOR: Roads are
getting better.

Many highways have been designed
that eliminate dangers and delays.

But, by the early '50s,
there was a new kid on the block,

leaving the piston engine trailing
wistfully in its slipstream.

Welcome...

to the jet age.

PLANE ROARS

MUSIC: Richard III
by Supergrass

The jet engine would advance
aviation in one giant leap.

But no-one would be daft enough
to suggest a jet-powered car.

ENGINE WHOOSHES

This must be one of the world's
rarest cars. I think it is.

Certainly one of the world's rarest
production cars. I think it is.

ENGINE WHOOSHES
It's a great noise though, isn't it?

It must have seemed
very futuristic then. It still does.

MUSIC: Apache
by The Shadows

'This is the world's
last working example

'of the Chrysler turbine car.

'And, if you haven't
already guessed,

'it belongs to
the superstar comedian Jay Leno.'

The car is 100% original.

Most jet cars of the period,

like, General Motors
had two or three jet cars,

and they had the bubble top.
And they looked like fighter planes.

'The car works by sucking in air
to mix with a fine spray of fuel,

'which, when ignited,
drives a turbine,

'sending power to the wheels.

'Only 55 were ever built.'

I mean, this does look outrageous
to us now,

because this is a bit of very
flamboyant 1960s American design.

Yeah. But this would have been

a mainstream-looking car,
wouldn't it? Sure, yeah.

You could have built this car
with a V8 engine

and it would have sold. Yeah.

They weren't trying to propose
that the gas turbine car

was an exotic, rarefied supercar
or anything like that.

It was going to be the way
your normal family car was powered.

Right. That was the idea, wasn't it?

'I'm desperate to see
under the bonnet

'and to soften Jay up,
so that he lets me drive it.'

Here she is.
This is all air filter right here.

This is what keeps it quiet. They're
massive things. Yeah. They are huge.

Well, the programme ran for a long
time. It started in the early '50s.

And in '54, they drove a turbine
car, disguised as a regular car,

across the country. So the idea
was to come up with something

that could get the job done

and still be reasonably, er...

..sensible in price.

'The turbine, however,
could not compete

'with the cheap and reliable
piston engine.'

This was hundreds, if not thousands,
of dollars more.

And plus, the V8 had been...

pretty much perfected.

It is interesting actually, the V8
engine, well, the piston engine,

is actually a bit like the burger,
cos you have other...

We started to eat Japanese food
in Britain and America.

And we had Chinese food

and we experimented
with Indian and wholemeal.

But the burger doesn't go away,
doesn't it? No. There's still

millions of burgers every day.
You'll always have the burger. Yeah.

The V8 is a burger.

With cheese.

'Now that I've managed
to subtly shift Jay's attention

'onto the best baps in LA, it's time
to hit him with the big one.'

This is a question one man
shouldn't ask another,

I know, but...

can I have a go in your turbine car?

It's a bit unorthodox, but...

..I guess it'll be OK. Thanks.

Thanks, buddy.
We won't tell anybody.

Right, quick situation report.

I'm doing 3,300rpm.

No, 33,000. Sorry, 33,000.

It's difficult
to get your head round, isn't it?

Listen to that! Yeah.

The great advantage to this car
was it could run on any fuel

that burned with oxygen.

But when they took it to Mexico,
they ran it on tequila.

When they took it to France,

they filled the tank
with Chanel No.5.

Quite pleasant driving around.

The disadvantage was the turbine
could not run on lead,

so you couldn't fill it up
at the normal gas station,

cos the only gas available in
America at the time was leaded gas.

Right, so the only thing it couldn't
tolerate was the lead? Right.

Cos that would damage the blade.
That's a shame.

It's one of those things that,

given a few slight tweaks
to history,

it might have worked.

We might all have been driving
something like turbine cars. Yeah.

MUSIC: Tequila
by The Champs

So, like the early electric car,

thwarted by an electricity grid
that wasn't there,

the turbine car came just too soon
for the advent of unleaded petrol.

In the end,
Chrysler recalled and crushed

almost all of these
experimental cars.

# Tequila! #

But surely innovation
would be the way to go?

Especially for carmakers facing
slow-off-the-mark competitors.

There now follows a tale
of two sports car makers -

British and German.

One of them would plug away
bloody-mindedly at outmoded ideas

about car design
from the middle of the 20th century

and keep redesigning the same
basic car over and over again

for decade after decade.

But the other,
the other one was an innovator,

experimenting with new materials,
lightweight design,

flexible, small volume
manufacturing.

It would develop compact,
powerful engines of its own

and push at the boundaries
of contemporary styling

and even contemporary
colour schemes.

'One would go on to greatness.

'The other would disappear.

'And you can probably
guess how this goes.'

Or can you?

Because the radical freethinkers

were TVR of Blackpool.

And the stuck-ists were Porsche.

It's in 1963 that things
become interesting,

because that's when
Porsche revealed this -

the first of the 911s.

Now, Porsche would go on to make
many different cars, of course,

but this is the one that would
cement their reputation

over five decades and counting.

'For a new sports car, the 911
was already pretty old-fashioned.

'Not least the air-cooled
rear-mounted engine -

'a layout that dated
back to the 1930s.'

This was thought to be
the right way to do it.

Engine at the back,
so the drivetrain is simple.

Nice, a lot of space inside

and a more aerodynamic nose.

This layout is also...

What would be the right word?

Er, wrong.

Because the engine is right
at the back, behind the rear wheels,

it acts as a sort of pendulum
when you're going around bends.

This is at the root of the 911's
reputation for handling trickiness.

TYRES SQUEAL

'But what about the boy racers
from Blackpool?'

This is a 1965 TVR Griffith.

I know what you're thinking -

you're thinking,
"Here he goes again!

"He's going to kick the wheels off

"another great British
motoring institution."

But no.

I liked TVR.

TVR are a bit left-field.

TVR were a laugh.

But, look, we're in the same year.

Porsche has given us a rather
archaic and very expensive car

that does 131mph

and takes over eight seconds
to get to 60.

The TVR does 160mph.

It gets to 60
in less than half the time

and it costs less.

'TVR were all about
new thinking, new design

'and affordable power
and performance.

'Their aim was to appeal directly

'to the young male driver
of the time.

'Cars were certainly thrilling,

'but TVR would be in
a permanent state of revolution.

'There was the Tasmin, the 400,
the Griffith, the Cerbera,

'the Tuscan
and the outrageous Sagaris.

'Models came thick and fast,

'costing the company
a fortune in start-up costs.'

Meanwhile, boring old Porsche

just continue to make the 911.

I mean, the wheel arches
swelled a bit,

the engine got a bit bigger,
but nothing really changed.

It took them until 1987

to fit a decent gearbox,
for Pete's sake.

This one, in the 1964 car...

is rubbish. And I mean rubbish.

I can't even find it half the time.

'Finally, in 1993,
it was completely restyled.

'But it came out
looking exactly like a 911,

'with the engine at the back.'

I mean, this has been going on
for decades.

Other people have realised
the folly of the rear-engined car

and thought, "No, actually,
we were wrong about that.

"It needs to be in the middle
or at the front."

But Porsche would just go,

IN GERMAN ACCENT: "Nein, nein.

"Nein, should be at the back.

"We will stick with it
and make it work."

And they have done,
all credit to them,

but why not just...

..put it up there!

'TVR may have had the engine right,

'but that was the only part
of the business plan that worked.

'The constant chopping and changing
lead to confusion,

'profit warnings and a string of
failed attempts to revive the name.

'The result was chaos.'

TVR folklore is a bit too good
to check, to be honest.

It includes stories
about windows falling out,

about the owner's dogs taking a bite
out of a polystyrene styling model

and then the results
being incorporated in the final car.

And then there's the one about the
workforce scrawling rude messages

about each other on the bare glass
fibre body works on the inside.

So that, one day, when the car
came to be repaired or restored,

you'd take a piece of trim off
and then, yes,

you'd discovered that
Yozza was indeed a right...

'Porsche, on the other hand,
would spend over half a century

'cautiously evolving the 911.

'And earning billions in profit.

'Today, a 911 is one of the world's
most coveted artefacts.

'Who'd have thought it?'

Just have a look at the astonishing
variety that TVR produced

over the years. Model after model.

Modification after modification,
ever bigger engines.

Incredible, dinosaur-inspired
paint schemes.

And, if you went back to the 1960s,

the other end of history's
telescope, you would say,

"Yes, TVR is going to win this one.

"Not Porsche,
with the dreary old 911.

"TVR with all its innovation,
all its soul, all its spirit."

And yet, nothing has
been made by TVR

since 2006.

'But it's nowhere near as dicey
as copying that rear engine idea

'and doing it really badly.

'This is the Chevrolet Corvair,

'a car that paved the way
for some of the most important

'safety innovations
in history of the car.

'Although, that wasn't
Chevrolet's intention.'

This is actually the second
generation of the Corvair

and it is quite a pleasant,
nicely sorted car,

but it wasn't always that way.

MUSIC: Bonanza Theme

'The first generation Corvair

'was deftly launched in 1960
by Michael Landon...'

Hi, I'm Mike Landon.

'..from Bonanza and
The Little House on the Prairie.

'The trouble was, the real cowboys
weren't the ones behind the wheels.'

Yippee-yow! Corvair!

That earlier car had a couple
of horrific design flaws.

One was that it had
the obvious rear weight bias

that you get
with a rear-engined car.

But it also didn't have
a much-needed antiroll bar

on the front suspension.

And that was because
that would have added a bit of cost,

so the management
at Chevrolet thought...

"Well, we'll just leave it off."

'As a result, the handling was
a nightmare, especially on bends.

'But, rather than fix the problem,
Chevrolet simply improvised.'

They addressed this, to some extent,
by fiddling with the tyre pressures.

They actually recommended tyre
pressures outside of the limits

advised by the tyre manufacturer.

'And this cavalier approach
meant that Chevrolet

'would start losing
their customers...permanently.'

Under certain conditions going round
corners, one of the rear wheels

on the rather crude swingarm
suspension could tuck under

and you would suffer sudden
and catastrophic oversteer.

And if you're not familiar
with these technical terms,

oversteer is when you go
through the hedge backwards.

'Things got so bad that
even the ads for this deathtrap

'seemed to be offering you
a one-way trip to the afterlife.'

VOICEOVER: There's a car down there

that can make you feel
you're way up here.

'By 1965, Chevrolet faced
over 100 separate lawsuits

'from the Corvair's victims.

'But still they did nothing.

'Until one man decided to take them,

'and the entire motor industry,
to task.'

Now I must bring up the most famous,
or perhaps notorious,

bit of consumer campaigning
in the whole of history.

Not just the history of the car.

It was the publication in 1965

of Ralph Nader's
Unsafe At Any Speed.

Now, Ralph Nader believed
that the American carmakers

knew about many of the dangerous
failings of their cars,

but couldn't be bothered
to deal with them.

He talked about all sorts of things,

from sharp edges on interiors,

to gearboxes that could be pushed
into reverse

while you were going along
and so on and so on.

But, most famously, he addressed
the issue of the Corvair.

'And, with road deaths
from all vehicles

'topping 47,000 in the US alone,

'Nader had the people's
overwhelming support.

COMMENTATOR: When the New York
motor show opened this Easter,

the city's doctors paraded
with placards of protest

about the lack of safety features
on the new models from Detroit.

What he effectively investigated
was legislation covering the design,

especially the safety features,
of cars.

For the first time, he forced
the authorities to take an interest

in what car manufacturers
were getting up to.

'As a result, the Corvair, and many
other lethal cars, were modified.

'So it's thanks to Ralph
that I can happily drive this one

'around this bend without the need

'for my emergency pair
of brown trousers.'

What was becoming clear was that
the honeymoon of our love affair

with the car was coming to an end.

It would no longer be allowed

to blunder through
the world unchallenged.

'But the biggest safety innovation
of them all was made by a man

'from a far-off country

'abusing eggs
from his company's fridge.

'And what he'd achieve
would save more lives

'than any single innovation
in the history of motoring.'

The year 1959
saw a great leap forward

in the safety of a car's occupants.

Something that is reckoned to reduce
the risk of death in a collision

by at least 50%.

And you ought to be able
to guess what it is,

because you can see it
in this picture.

Yes, man on the sofa
in his underpants,

eating the takeaway pizza.

Yes, correct.

It is the safety belt.

Most specifically,
the three-point safety belt.

And this car, the Volvo Amazon,

was the first car to have
such a thing fitted as standard.

'Volvo's seatbelt pioneer,
Nils Bohlin, thought long and hard

'about where the straps should go.

'And he'd worked out that the
three-point system was the best way

'of comfortably restraining
the human body during an impact.'

It is a very, very simple idea

that is reckoned to have saved
over a million lives already.

'Volvo's gift to the world was
a generous one, but it also created

'a new marketing strategy that the
people's car hadn't known before.'

The standard seatbelt was the
beginning of a peculiar initiative

by Volvo, which is...

the idea of selling safety.

Volvo's invention
came just at the right time.

'As the '60s progressed,
car ownership was mushrooming

'and that meant
rocketing accident rates.

This car is the Series 2
Dodge Charger RT.

And it kicks butt...

big time.

# When the sun comes up
on a sleepy little town... #

'This 7.2 litre,
440 horsepower monster

'was a shameless celebration
of the petrol age,

'the US auto industry
and America itself.'

It was a bit of a golden era for
massive cars with massive engines.

And it was all...

Well, it was rather fantastic.

MUSIC: Sweet Home Alabama
by Lynyrd Skynyrd

'The Dodge Charger was a perfect car
for late '60s America -

'a time when cheap oil
flowed like running water.'

In 1968, gas - that's petrol -

in the US
was typically 34 cents a gallon.

Now, that sounds cheap, of course,
because it was a long time ago.

Actually, it was quite cheap
even at the time.

And there was probably
a good reason for that.

Detroit depended on
the oil companies to support them.

The oil companies depended
on Detroit to make a car like this

that would use
a lot of their stuff up.

So everybody was happy.

'Well over half a century
since the dawn of the petrol age,

'oil was still king and the piston
engines was still providing

'the soundtrack for the world.'

This car comes from a high point in
the Detroit motor industry's story.

A time when all that mattered
was the pursuit of power and majesty

and it didn't matter
what was consumed in achieving it -

how much fuel it burned,
how much raw material was used,

how much it weighed, how much space
it took up, how much noise it made,

how many instruments
you've got on the dashboard.

And here is a measure
of just how profligate

the American motor car
had become.

The average size of the four-leaf
clover highway interchange

being built on American roads
at the same time as this car

occupied the same area
as the mediaeval port of Dubrovnik.

And you can take that one down the
pub and have it on me.

'The muscle car,
like Detroit itself,

'had become an American icon.

'And, like all true American heroes,

'it was eulogised in song
and on-screen.'

MUSIC: General Lee
by Johnny Cash

# I'm a charger

# That charges through the night

# I'm thunder on the highway

# Looking bad, bad, bad. #

'Of course, America's gleeful waste

'and conspicuous consumption
couldn't last.

'The carefree days
of "howdy, pardner"

'would soon be ended
by their Saudi partner.'

MUSIC: Gimme Shelter
by The Rolling Stones

'In 1973, after yet another
squabble in the Middle East,

'the Saudis and others
banned oil sales to America.

'Even when the embargo was lifted,

'petrol prices stayed high

'and cars like the Charger
were left gasping.

'And, so, people began exploring
cheaper and cleaner alternatives

'to their beloved gasoline.

'And that reopened the door
to some old thinking.

'Remember the Baker Electric
we saw earlier?

'Let's see how that idea
was coming along.'

It's bad news, I'm afraid.

By the 1980s, battery technology
had not really moved on

from the state it was in
back when the Baker was built.

The big revolution that was
brought about by mobile phones

and laptops and that sort of thing,
that hadn't happened yet.

And, anyway, electric power
was still for milk floats

and meals on wheels delivery vans
and nutty professors.

So an electric car of the people
would have to be very light

to make the most of the feeble
battery technology of the time.

It would also have to be simple,
it would have to be very cheap

and it would have to be cool,
because being cool

was very important in making
a new idea catch on.

COMMENTATOR: Imagine a vehicle that
needs no petrol. Just a battery.

'Yes, in 1985, that height of cool
was hoped to be achieved by this.'

ELECTRONIC FANFARE PLAYS

COMMENTATOR: The Sinclair C5.

It's a new power
in personal transport.

Well, here it is.

Six foot of plastic with foot pedals
and an electric motor,

not unlike the one
that drives your washing machine.

This is brilliant.

I like it.

'The Sinclair C5 wasn't actually
fitted with a washing machine motor,

'although it was made in a factory
that built them.

'The 12-volt motor it did have
could completely burn out

'on even a mild hill, though,

'so it was fitted with these
user-unfriendly pedals, too.

'It might make you look like a
kamikaze reject from a Tron movie,

'but it was actually the product
of some incredibly forward thinking

'by its genius inventor -
Sir Clive Sinclair.'

It's ideal for shopping,
for, you know, going to the office,

going to the station,
going to school.

Any relatively short-range trip.

'He was so proud of his baby
that he even named after himself.

'That C stands for Clive.

'Yes, it's the Clive 5.

'I told you it was cool.'

Sir Clive Sinclair gave many of us
our first pocket calculator.

He also introduced my generation
to the marvels of computing,

with the ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum,
and they were brilliant.

He was a clever man.

Sorry, I mean he IS a clever man.

Cos, despite this,
he's still alive.

'In fact, he wasn't just smart,

'the man was damn near clairvoyant.'

I believe firmly that all cars

ought to be electric
by the next century.

Back in 1985,
when this was launched,

the environment hadn't yet become
a mainstream force in politics

and fashion,
so this was very modern thinking.

'There were plenty of advantages.

'It was under 400 quid
and five miles on this thing

'would only relieve you
of one penny in running costs.

'You didn't have to tax or insure it

'and you didn't need
an MOT or number plates.

'Plus, if you were a feckless youth,
it got even better.'

Strictly speaking,
the C5 is not a car.

In the eyes of a law,
it's an electric tricycle,

which means anybody
aged 14 or over can drive it.

Ride it. No, drive it.
Whatever you do.

'For some reason, though,

'not everyone was thrilled
about the idea of unlicensed kids

'hammering around the highways
on a plastic tricycle.

Argh!

I'm very unhappy

that it's being sold

without essential safety equipment.

I wouldn't like to
let my children out in it.

REPORTER: Are you happy
at the thought of 14-year-olds

taking this onto the road? No.

There are one or two other issues.

Because you are so low,
a lot of people don't see you.

They only feel you
as they run over you.

Your head is at about
the same height as a lorry's exhaust

and, er...

there's no reverse gear.
Did I mention that?

It is catastrophically slow as well.

But it's quite good fun.

Because it's so small,
the sense of terror at 50mph

is like nothing
I've ever experienced before.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

Oh, for God's sake!

Engaging pedals as well.

I can see why it's got
the little drain holes in the seat.

I thought that was
to let the rain out.

Th...

Agh!

DRAMATIC MUSIC CONTINUES

LORRY HORN BEEPS
Yes, all right!

LORRY HORN BEEPS REPEATEDLY

Oh, come on!

Agh, I can go in this lane,
cos I'm technically a bicycle!

Stick that in your tipper!

HE LAUGHS MENACINGLY

'So forward thinking alone,
alas, just wasn't enough.'

REPORTER: The critics
say it's not safe.

REPORTER: The C5 has been a flop.

REPORTER: Eight months later,
retailers have slashed prices

of the C5 trike
to try and shift their stocks.

HORN BEEPS

THEY SHOUT
Keep going.

'To try and keep his much-abused
electric dream alive,

'Sir Clive even
sold his computer business

'to that bloke off The Apprentice.'

REPORTER: It was confirmed today
that the assembly line

has reverted
to producing washing machines.

'The Clive 5 was not alive.'

So, in the end, everybody suffered,

because Sir Clive
lost a load of his money,

we didn't get the low-cost, electric
urban transport solution we wanted,

and we also ended up with Alan Sugar
barking at us from television.

What a bum deal!

One of the criticisms regularly
levelled at Sir Clive Sinclair

and his Clive 5 is that he never
did any market research.

Well, good for him, I say,
because market research

wouldn't have given us
the home computer,

or television, for that matter.

Progress, as George Bernard Shaw
once said,

"depends on the unreasonable man".

If he'd done any market research,
he'd never have built this

and then we wouldn't know
what a daft idea it is.

THAT is progress.

The C5 was just a stepping stone.

It's a learning exercise.

But what it leads to
is very much more important.

'And, fast forward 30 years,
and we appear to have solved

'the feeble battery issue
that bedevilled Clive's invention.

'Today, there are
electric vehicles out there

'that have side-stepped
the battery issue altogether.'

Now, this is something
I approve of immensely.

It's a hydrogen fuel cell car.

It's the Hyundai ix35.

It's actually the first truly
commercially available

fuel cell car in the world.

It will cost you £53,000,
but new stuff is expensive.

Remember the first video players,
the first digital cameras.

A few rich people have to buy them,

then the idea will catch on
and we can all have them.

Then it becomes a car of the people.

Anyway, look, the interesting thing
about a fuel cell car

is that it's really an electric car.

The wheels are driven
by an electric motor.

But, instead of having a battery
that has to be recharged,

it has a hydrogen fuel cell,
which is...

well, you can think of it
as a sort of on-board, miniature

electricity generating station.

And a very good one, because the one
in this car makes 100 kilowatts,

which means you could
run your house off it.

And the great thing
about the fuel cell car

is that you simply fill it up
with liquid hydrogen,

which takes about the same amount
of time as it does to fill a petrol

or a diesel car up
with conventional fuel.

And the range of this car
on one fill-up,

if you drive carefully,
is 350 miles or so.

And then you can fill it up again,
which will take you three minutes

and then you can do another
350 miles.

What's not to like?

'How does it work?

'Brace yourselves.'

Look, this does all get a bit
"double chemistry with Mr Stink",

so I'll try and keep it
reasonably simple.

Hydrogen in the tank
at the back of the car

combines with oxygen in the air
to make electricity.

So, in that sense,
it's a bit like a fossil fuel,

it relies on the atmosphere to work.
Good.

The other interesting thing
is that the hydrogen in the tank

combines with the oxygen in the air
to give us, as an exhaust,

er...water, which is H2O, remember.

Hydrogen and oxygen.

You can drink it.

This all sounds very
Friends Of The Earth,

but there is a catch.

Currently, there are only
four hydrogen filling stations

open to the public in Britain.
And one of them's in Hendon.

And that's awful,
because the know-how has been around

for longer than you think.

There are two bits of technology
on this car that predate

the flatulent internal combustion
engine in Benz's Motorwagen.

To be honest, they predate
the original Rover safety bicycle,

which was the inspiration
for every bike you see over there.

Now, one of them
is the electric motor.

That's not such a surprise, maybe.

But the other one
is the fuel cell itself.

The basic principles of which
were worked out

back in the middle
of the 19th century.

The technology
is perfectly understood,

it's perfectly reliable,
it's perfectly usable.

The only thing we are waiting
for to make this

fabulous dream of hydrogen happen...

is a hydrogen infrastructure.
That's all we need.

Everything else,
like this Hyundai...

..is ready.

It's extraordinary, really,

to think that we may be on the brink
of a people's car revolution.

But, despite this exciting progress,

there's still one deeply unreliable
component in this.

And all cars.

That component, of course,

is me. Or you.

Whoever. The driver.

CRASHING

Most leading carmakers
are already experimenting

with elements
of driverless technology.

And tech giants Google
have gone the whole hog

and are trying to eliminate
the steering wheel altogether.

All you have to do is sit in it
and look stupid.

ENGINE REVS

Now, Audi think
rather differently about all this.

They say the car will be autonomous.

It will be a robot car
for all the boring bits.

So driving along the motorway,
heavy stop-start traffic,

all that sort of thing. But then...

when it comes to fun time,
you can take over.

I'm in my Audi RS7
with 552 horsepower

and I'm on a track day in Spain,

in Catalunya, in fact.

ENGINE DIES

DOORS BEEP

Ooh!

How did I do?

2 minutes, 20. 2:20? Yep.

Yeah, I think
it'll go faster than that.

ENGINE REVS

'This, if you haven't guessed,

'is the experimental
autonomous version of the RS7.'

So, Thomas Muller, very briefly,
please. How does it work?

James, the car works
like a professional race driver.

You know, it knows
the track already.

Through differential GPS and through
cameras, it's a complex technology.

Depending on the stability
of the car,

depending on the driving dynamics,

it's going to choose the best path
to go through all this course.

But, in the end, it's like
a professional race driver.

What, so it makes excuses
all the time?

'So, can a car capable
of analysing track conditions

'to follow the best racing line

'beat a car journo
with years of experience?

'To find out if
it can better my time of 2:20,

'it's going to take me captive
for a high-speed lap.'

All I actually need to do
is keep my thumb on that button

and the car will drive me round.
That's it.

And I was about to say I'll just get
the seat in the right position

for the pedals and everything,
but I don't need to.

Technically, I could sit
in the back and do this.

But they won't let me.

So...

goodbye, cruel world.

Right. If I hold this button,

the car will go.

And I mustn't touch anything.

ENGINE REVS

MUSIC: Lonely Boy
by The Black Keys

That feels weird.

Don't brake. Don't brake.
Don't brake.

It's braking for me.
Excellent. That's a result.

Actually, this is the hardest thing
I've ever done.

Don't touch the steering wheel.
I'm not touching the pedals.

Into the right-hander.

It's drifting across.
It's done that properly.

Brakes! Brakes!
Argh, that's the hairpin.

That's slowed right down now.

It's going to give it the beans
as it comes out of there.

ENGINE ROARS

70, 80.

Agh, I don't like this one!

Don't touch the brakes!

Oh, God. This is the long straight.

Here we go. 88, 88, 90, 91.

Now it's 100.

That's about 120.

Ooh.

Ooh, might have to edit
some of that out.

Come on, I've just done
the vorsprung.

And now on the home finish straight.
It's going straight.

I'm going to take my finger
off the button.

And there it is. It's a car.

I wasn't scared in the slightest.

'Maybe not,

'but the car's own lap
was eight seconds faster than mine.

'In racing terms,
that's the difference between

'a night out with James Hunt
and a night in with James May.

'And that's a slightly
depressing thought.'

A lot of people say, the autonomous
car will be the end of driving.

I think, actually, it could be
the end of the car, as we know it,

as a means of just getting around,
because, if we can develop a system

that clever,
that keeps us all apart,

why not use it
to get around up there?

Because that's where
all the space is.

And then the car can become a hobby.

Excellent.

'All right. So maybe I'm getting
carried away with the flying thing.

'But autonomous technology
is already with us.

'My i3 can park itself, remember.

'However, just as in 1900,
we still don't know for sure

'what the people's car
of the future will be.

'Even the old ideas
refuse to go away.

'Remember steam cars?'

Chuffa-chuffa-chuffa-chuffa...

'People are still experimenting
with those.

'This one does 160mph.

'And turbines?

'The fastest car on earth
is powered by a jet engine.

'With some help from a rocket.'

ENGINE REVS

'Good old TVR
has risen from the ashes...'

Blackpool uber alles!

'..and has plans
for an all-new car, again.

'And Clive Sinclair -
he still dreams

'of an elegant,
electric transport solution.

'Until that happens,
he's funding this -

'the electric A-bike.

'So, where does this leave
the man in the street?'

I actually think
we're in a golden age of the car,

because, for about 120 years or so,

it developed very slowly.

It just crept along incrementally.

But, all of a sudden,
we're looking at things

like new methods
of propulsion, new materials,

possible autonomy, connectivity.

It's all really fantastic stuff, but
it is very much work in progress,

because - here is a slightly
depressing statistic -

the real-world range
of my electric BMW i3

is about 75 miles.

The real-world range
of the electric Baker

we saw right at the beginning
of the programme...

it's about 75 miles.

Hm.

Right, to the Batmobile.

MUSIC: Batman Theme

HE LAUGHS MENACINGLY

POLICE SIREN WAILS

Subtitles by Red Bee Media