Video: Jeremy Clarkson says Porsche 911 Turbo cleans LA's air
In the video above, Jeremy Clarkson, host of Top Gear, says the Porsche 911 Turbo cleans the air in polluted cities like LA. While, I have seen concept cars that can clean the air, I seriously doubt any existing car, especially the Porsche 911 Turbo, emits exhaust that is cleaner than air, even air in the most polluted cities. Here is exactly what Clarkson says:
When you drive this car through a really polluted city; Los Angeles, Calcutta, Harrogate(?), something like that; the gas coming out of the exhaust pipe is less toxic than the air going into the engine. And I am not joking, that's true. This then is like a small, efficient, easy to use vacuum cleaner. They should have called it the Porsche Dyson.
So, here's the question for a Sunday afternoon. What do you think? Is he wrong or does he have a definition of toxic that I don't understand?
[Source: YouTube]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
aaron 7:43PM (7/18/2008)
global warming is the biggest load of bull ive ever heard 20-30 years ago people used to burn coal in there houses day after day and the air now is cleaner than it ever has been the fictional story of the polar ice caps melting has come up as governments are trying to scare us and it is people like the owner of this website that are pointlessly annoying the majority of the public now please join the rest of us and enjoy petrol and aviation fuels and stop being pressured into groups of tree huggers and being the governments pack of scared dogs
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BlackbirdHighway 4:23PM (11/11/2007)
Well, I know an easy way to settle it. Let's just hook up the tailpipe to a facemask, and let Jeremy Clarkson wear it for oh, say 20 to 30 miutes.
If he is still alive, then yes, I will agree with his stupid statement. If he isn't, well then we have one less idiot in the world.
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Turbofrog 4:43PM (11/11/2007)
I could certainly see that for some emissions the conversion efficiency of the automotive catalysts could be so high as to remove existing contaminants.
I know that there have been vehicles in the past with catalytic-coatings on their radiators to convert ground-level ozone, for example.
Clarkson can be an ignorant blowhard at times, but he may not be completely wrong in this instance.
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BlackbirdHighway 4:46PM (11/11/2007)
Oh, and also the Tesla accelerates faster, and if it had a tailpipe, I would volunteer to try the tailpipe facemask test with it.
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BlackbirdHighway 4:56PM (11/11/2007)
Exhaust CO2% rates of modern gasoline motors varies between 9.9% to 15%.
The current threshold limit value (TLV) or maximum level that is considered safe for healthy adults for an eight-hour work day is 0.5% (Wikipedia).
The air going in is 0.0375 % CO2.
So the are coming out is about 270 times more toxic than the air going in, and about 20 times more toxic than what is considered safe to breathe.
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Matt 5:02PM (11/11/2007)
Harrogate certainly is toxic, in all senses of the word.
I think he may have been referring to the amount of unburnt hydrocarbons or something.
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SuperQ 8:54PM (11/11/2007)
Yes, the CO2 is only part of what is polluting. Current emission regulations have NOTHING to do with CO2. The regulate the ammount of CO, NOx, and VOC/Particulate emissions. Modern emission control systems take care of most of these, leaving very little "bad" stuff behind. This is good because most of what comes out of the tailpipe is H2O, CO2, and N2. The problem is you have to warm up the car's engine to get this process to happen. Cold engine starts (first few min of driving) produce LOTS of nasty incomplete reactions that are bad for air quality. This is why you have to warm up your car for a bit before taking it to get a smog check.
This is why I think Plug-In hybrid is the best option (besides all electric). If you can atleast get to work one-way on electric only, that reduces one cold start that needs to happen per day. This would go a long way to improving air quality.
Really, all these regulations are not "for the environment". They're just there to keep "air quality" within an acceptable level.
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soma 5:19PM (11/11/2007)
Auto manufacturers have been intermittently making this claim since at least 1976 (Volvo, when they introduced the first production vehicle with an oxygen sensor). But even if one ignores the production of greenhouse gases, and focuses only on toxics, it's not true. Sorry.
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Turbofrog 5:23PM (11/11/2007)
The question is, Blackbird, would you be willing to suck on the chimneys of all those coal burning plants that will be providing the electricity for the vast majority of Teslas?
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dygituljunky 5:31PM (11/11/2007)
Considering that Clarkson has pistons for lungs and oil in his veins, the air coming out of the Porsche or any other vehicle probably IS cleaner ... to him.
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why not the LS2/LS7? 6:01PM (11/11/2007)
It's not true.
For the lowest emissions vehicles (SULEV), air coming out of the tailpipe can have less trace pollutants than the air going in. But it still has more of the direct emissions of combustion than the air going in.
Note that the Porsche 911 is not in the lowest emissions tier. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's in the highest group. fueleconomy.gov puts it as a 6/10, which for CARB I believe means it's a LEV II, which is the same as tier 2, bin 5, the most polluting category allowed in CARB areas.
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Joseph 3:53PM (11/12/2007)
This man obviously knows very little.
The Porsche 911 is given a 6 rating for emmisions from fueleconomy.gov
Cars, like the Honda Civic NGV, are SUPPOSED to be so clean that the stuff coming out is cleaner than the stuff coming in. (I kind of doubt how true that is.) Anywho, the Civic NGV is given a 9 rating on emmisions. Therefore, there is no way on earth that what he is saying can be true.
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Kardax 9:59PM (11/11/2007)
Wow, nobody gets it. It's a joke, people.
When Jeremy Clarkson says "I'm not joking", he usually is.
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ug 1:17PM (11/12/2007)
I can't wait until gas is $10+ a gallon. That will wipe the smug right off Clarkson and every other I.C.E.-lover's face.
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phoenexius 8:49AM (11/12/2007)
saab performed the feat of "cleaning" the air years ago
http://www.trollhattansaab.net/archives/2006/01/google_video_sa.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7091492525320672012
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Lascelles Linton 1:30PM (11/12/2007)
Phoenexius, That's pretty cool :D
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Matt 4:14PM (11/12/2007)
"I can't wait until gas is $10+ a gallon. That will wipe the smug right off Clarkson and every other I.C.E.-lover's face."
In the UK its £4.68 for a gallon of petrol. Thats $9.85. Everyone still drives their cars just as much as before.
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Cassio 4:21PM (11/13/2007)
obviously you guys don't know clarkson, don't know sarcasm, don't know british humor, and (some of you) don't know there's a big, and much nicer world, outside america
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Damien 9:04PM (11/16/2007)
Thee is a car that scrubs the air. It's MDI Air Car
http://www.theaircar.com/
Damien Somerset
http://www.zaproot.com/
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HVK 3:56AM (11/19/2007)
Agree with cassio. some ppl are way of target.
If you knew Clarkson or had a sense of humour you'd have a clue. Stop trawling the Net for quotes on emmissions and develop a personality
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