Top Gear

James wears a hat.

And Richard is behind a low wall

Thank you. Hello and thank you so much, everybody.

Thank you. Thank you and welcome.

Now, last week you may remember we asked James May to test an exciting, fast Vauxhall

and he ended up reviewing a slow, small Fiat.

Well, this week, we asked him to go to Florida and try out a new type of electric car.

We said to him, "James, this time, can you try to stay on topic?"

Here it is - it's called the Fisker Karma,

and let's not be having any debate, it looks fantastic.

But maybe that's not surprising,

because the company that makes it was set up not by an engineer, as usual, but by a designer.

He was responsible for the Aston Martin V8 Vantage and the BMW Z8 roadster,

so obviously he knows his way around a pencil.

But it's not the looks we're interested in. It's what goes on underneath that bodywork.

As with most electric cars, underneath here is a great big slab of batteries,

and you can plug those into a socket at your house or your office

and recharge them and then you have a range of 50 miles -

which doesn't sound very good, does it?

But then, if I just touch this lever here,

I engage a two-litre petrol engine, which is under the bonnet.

But unlike, say, a Toyota Prius, the engine isn't connected to the wheels.

Instead, it drives an electricity generator.

At this point, the display is telling me I only have nine miles of range left,

and normally I'd be going, "Oh, God, will I make it?"

But no, because I know, with the touch of that paddle, or even leaving it to its own devices,

the petrol engine will make more electric.

So, it's driven by electric motors, but it has its own on-board power station.

You might be thinking you've sort of heard something like that before.

Well, you have.

Yes, I'm talking about the Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust,

which, I might point out, was also fitted with its own electricity generator -

and that was two years ago.

There is no polite way of putting this.

Fisker have, very blatantly, brazenly, I'd say -

copied my idea for a long range electric car.

Except they didn't have theirs styled by Jeremy,

but the technology is exactly the same.

As my lawyers will be making very clear quite soon.

Admittedly, the Fisker is much better built than the Eagle i-Thrust

and it's probably the most politically correct car on earth.

It has solar panels on the roof, because in the car,

all this stuff here runs off electricity and that would drain the battery,

but that can produce a sort of low-voltage circuit, if you like,

that can drive the radio and the sat-nav, interior lights and your iPod,

and even the little system that recognises this key -

This version I have here is called the Eco-Chic -

they have actually called it that,

because it embraces a lot of very right-on and ethically-sound materials.

For example, the glitter in the metallic paint

is made with ground-up minute particles of recycled glass

and on the inside, we find a piece of wood trim that is only taken

from trees that have been burnt down in forest fires or felled by storms

and it's not varnished, because there is no varnish in nature.

These glass inserts have in them a fossilised leaf -

a leaf that has fallen of its own accord, not plucked.

And all of the interior fabrics are very, very funky

and most importantly, there are no animal products in there at all.

The only animal product in this car is me,

all of which ought to keep this chap here very happy indeed,

and yet I'm told if I go any closer than this,

he'll still probably have my leg off...

Which just goes to prove that animals are ungrateful.

Basically, if the Fisker was any more green,

it would be chaining itself to a Japanese whaling ship.

But I like being in it. It's just a very nice place to be, the Fisker -

it makes you realise that just putting leather on everything is a terrible old cliche

it's what the Romans would have done.

And on top of that, I like driving it.

It's a nice-handling car, this.

It's not a Lotus, it's not a Ferrari 458,

it's a GT car. It's a GT car for long journeys, but that's nice to drive.

And even though its arsenal of batteries mean it weighs 2.5 tonnes,

it does shift along

The car will do 0-60 in just a tad over six seconds.

It doesn't have a very high top speed - only 125mph -

but the point is, electric motors produce excellent torque -

1,000 pound-feet, in fact, which is more than a Veyron.

I love electric-powered cars, just the sort of slight whining spaceship noise.

Now, the price. All electric cars are expensive,

and the Fisker - at 86,000 - is no exception.

This means it'll appeal only to the well-heeled petrolhead,

so since I was in Florida, I went to see one.

Hello there, James, me bonny lad. What brings you to this neck of the woods?

Yes, it's AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson.

It's the first car I think I've ever seen that actually looks like

the drawings that you see before they come.

Yeah, it's good-looking, isn't it?

It really is a cracking-looking jam-jar, look at the state of that!

Do want to try it? Absolutely!

Do you want to try mine? Yeah! All right, then.

Well... Mine's different.

Fantastic!

This is a 1928 Le Mans-bodied 4.5-litre Bentley.

Brian really does use this every day -

he uses it to go down the shop for a pint of milk.

Go on, me son! Born to do it!

Despite the mangled gear changes, I was very much enjoying living in the past.

I can feel a moustache growing!

God, the smell is tremendous. Hot castor oil.

Well-known laxative, I'll have diarrhoea by the time we get there.

Brian, however, wasn't coping so well with living in the future.

Oh, Christ, now what happens?

I'm getting near the bottom of me battery level, oh my word.

Right, now... And... That means I have to do something, and I'm... Bugger.

What the heck is that?

I'm trying to follow James's instructions, which were as clear as mud.

There he goes, flying by with his thumb up!

He's having a whale of a time and I'm trying to figure out this computer thing.

Soon, the famous Geordie hat model wanted his Bentley back,

I've put it in sport mode - that means as I pull away,

every bit of electricity available to this car goes to maximum acceleration -

1,000-pound-feet of torque in the back wheels.

Yellow, yellow, yellow... Green!

Johnson makes a good start!

This could take it!

Come on, you little bugger!

I'm afraid Thunder Guts is a bit of a dwindling speck, ladies and gentlemen.

Did you enjoy that, me son? I did, although to be honest, I felt a bit cowardly.

Not as much as I enjoyed myself in this, I'll bet you.

Tell you what, your car looks heroic in my rear-view mirror.

But also, I'm afraid, quite small. Yes!

But it's starting to rain. It is, isn't it?

And I don't have a hood. Well, I do, but it takes 45 minutes to erect.

See you back down the other end. See you back down the other end.

Thanks guys, for that. Got to start the BLEEP now.

May! What? What's wrong with you? You've done it again!

You're supposed to be driving a Fisker, then you're in a Bentley with a rock star!

Next week, James is reviewing a Saab, OK,

and halfway through, he'll break off for a spot of scuba diving with Fergal Sharkey.

Can I just... The Fister, right. It's Fisker - it's a K. It's a K.

I THOUGHT that was a stupid name! Let's just move on!

Fisker. Can I just clear it up?

You have the traditional all-electric car, like a Nissan Leaf and a G-Wiz,

now that's just batteries and you have to charge them up at night, yeah? Yes.

Then you have stupid hybrids, like the Toyota Prius,

which are normal cars that have electric motors for a bit of extra power, yeah? Yes.

So the Fisker is... What?

It's actually a petrol-engine car, but in a normal car,

you get the power from the engine to the back wheels

through a gearbox and a shaft and so on,

on this one you use the generator and the electric motors.

I'm lost.

It's a more efficient way of tapping the energy in the fuel.

That's why it accelerates like a 400hp GT car,

but it only uses as much fuel as a...

I don't understand how it works.

I can't dumb it down to your level, cos I'm scared of heights.

Listen. It's energy, you use it to drive the wheels.

You get more of it by using that system.

People get confused. They talk about electric energy..

Just tell him it's magic. It's magic.

It's magic electric pixies.

That's all you needed to say.

That's not how it actually works.

I'm not bothered, actually. I am not interested.

Let's just do the news.

There are proposals in the corridors of power that

anyone who passes their driving test must be accompanied for the first few years on the road

by an experienced, sober person who is over 25.

You can kind of see why they think it is a good idea.

a stupid idea, the stupidest. I have spent 17 years ferrying my daughter about.

Last month she passed her driving test,

which means it is her turn to ferry me about, specifically to the pub.

What is the point if she gets to the pub and can't run me home if I have had a drink?

It is more complicated than that. She could not drive to the pub on her own.

So she would have to get an older boy friend.

Hello, Dad, have you met Keith, he's 53!

Why are you looking so excited?

He has brought his teenager with him. Are you her experienced driver?

This is embarrassing for you. Think of him as an experienced driver.

government ought to recognise that without the young people

who tear around in cars we would not have won the Battle of Britain.

That is a fact. That is a fact.

Teenagers, they sleep and tear about, that is what they do.

And they have more sex than us. They don't get fat or have hangovers.

Basically everybody else, the rest of us are just old and bitter.

Young is better. Young is better and the government should not say

children should have older people,

they should just say to my daughter, go to the pub and pick up your dad.

Cadillac has made a concept car, and here it is, it's called the CL.

It looks astonishing. It's got a twin-turbo V6,

and they say it is going back to their roots.

What, so it will rock for 5 hours after you get out of it?

Does it have a 400-year-old woman from Florida in it?

It is about grandeur, splendour, scale.

It is 19 feet long, enormous. It is only 50 inches high, long, low and mean.

They have built a plinth.

Yes, but it comes with a cigar humidor.

What, in America?

It is like saying there is a new car for Saudi Arabia with the mini bar.

One for Israel, the bonnet is made of bacon.

Don't smoke cigars in America.

It is a magnificent looking thing.

Now, a couple of years ago, Ferrari brought out a car called the 599XX.

It's slightly unusual, this, because it cost you a million quid,

but you couldn't take it home with you - Ferrari kept it.

Nor could you drive it on the road, even if you wanted to, cos it's not road legal

AND you couldn't sell it without Ferrari's permission.

The only thing you could do was ring Ferrari and say, "could you take it to such-and-such a track",