Welcome to our shiny new YouTube channel: Top Gear Tech

Welcome to a shiny new Top Gear YouTube channel! Launching this September, Top Gear Tech hits your optional passenger infotainment screens with fire in its belly and a point to prove.

Namely that, despite all the luddite grumbling about the impending demise of NA V12s (granted, much of it from us) and outrage re the modern motorcar’s penchant for insanity-inducing beeps (again, guilty), the car world has in fact never been more fascinating.

Faced with extraordinary adversity, automakers are behaving extraordinarily. Companies that previously spent a century plotting the path of least resistance are chucking hail marys like Tom Brady in the dying seconds of overtime, manically scrambling to respond to the existential threat posed by EV mandates and Chinese usurpers. 

Results have been mixed. For every irresistible Renault 5, there’s a melted Mars bar Merc EQS. But the rate at which manufacturers old and new are innovating is unlike anything we’ve seen before. The sort of seismic technological leap forward once witnessed every few years now occurs on what feels like a weekly basis. And we need a place to talk about it all.

So, a new channel. Expect a generous helping of new cars (duh) with a particular focus on those that are pushing the envelope of what is technologically possible today, be they electric or otherwise.

For our first episode we’re starting nice and small, with a world exclusive on the whopping, so-long-awaited-that-we’d-actually-kinda-forgotten-about-it Tesla Semi. Eight years on from its glitzy unveiling, it’s ready and raring to disprove the notion that long distance haulage is beyond the capabilities of battery technology, as many believe. 

That’ll be followed by a look at the new Torcal: the first ever electric Bentley and an EV which, despite its luminescent schnozz, is actually at pains to make as little fuss as possible about its powertrain and instead just be A Very Good Bentley. We call it the “anti-Luce approach” and it’s a popular move of late (see new VW ID.Polo and Merc C-Class) that reveals interesting things about our evolving relationship with EVs.

Additionally, we’ll frequently venture beyond four wheels to shine a spotlight on the auto-adjacent tech stories worth your attention. In our third episode, we’ll take you into the mysterious world of synthetic fuels to meet the decorated former F1 engineer who is literally pulling petrol out of thin air. Could this guilt-free, dinosaur-free special brew be the silver bullet? The one-size-fits-all solution to a sustainable future? Can we sack off these pesky EVs and bring back burbly V8s? Turns out there’s a little more to it than that.

Elsewhere, we’ll explore sci-fi e-bikes equipped with anti-theft force fields, space age winter tyres with retractable Wolverine claws, 3D printers capable of spitting out entire supercars, and behind-the-curtain peeks at the futuristic factories making all of it possible.

Sound like fun? Hit subscribe and turn on notifications so you don’t miss a thing. We’ll see you in the future.