Mr. Bean Actor Says the Electric Car ‘Honeymoon’ Is Over

The actor and comedian behind the popular Mr. Bean character has called on drivers to hold off buying an electric vehicle (EV), saying the environmental benefits do not stack up.

Rowan Atkinson, a long-time motor enthusiast with a degree and master’s in electrical engineering, said current EV technology was more harmful to the environment than it was worth.

“Increasingly, I’m feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and that’s no bad thing: we’re realising that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created,” Atkinson wrote in The Guardian newspaper.

He pointed to figures released by automotive giant Volvo revealing that greenhouse gas emissions during the EV production process were 70 percent higher than building a petrol car.

“The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all-electric vehicles: they’re absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of 10 years.

Workers at a factory for Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., which makes lithium batteries for electric cars and other uses, in Nanjing in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province, on March 12, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Evaporation pools for the extraction of lithium at the Salar de Uyuni, a vast white salt flat at the centre of a global resource race for the battery metal lithium, outside of Uyuni, Bolivia on March 26, 2022. (Claudia Morales/Reuters)

“It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis,” he said.

He also pointed to current efforts to develop newer technologies, like solid-state batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, and synthetic fuels, but noted more time was needed before they became mainstream.

Atkinson said a bigger problem beyond technology was the current three-year leasing model for car ownership, where owners move onto a new car at the end of the timeframe.

“This seems an outrageously profligate use of the world’s natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in,” Atkinson said, saying owners could just learn to use their cars for longer instead, effectively lowering demand for new vehicles.

Another solution, he said, was for those concerned about the environment to simply drive less.

“As an environmentalist once said to me, ‘If you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible,'” he wrote.

British comedy icon Mr. Bean at Buckingham Palace to celebrate 25 years, the release of Mr. Bean 25th Anniversary DVD Boxset, and new animated episodes on Boomerang at The Mall in London, England on Sept. 4, 2015. (Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images for Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)

Atkinson’s comments have sparked criticism from media outlets (via “fact-checking”), including the Washington Post.

Some experts derided the comedian for his apparent lack of recent energy expertise.

“Love it when a weird, British 90s celebrity who is notably not an energy expert spreads misinformation about EVs on @guardian. Just the best!” Leah Stokes, professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote on Twitter.

Auke Hoekstra, a Dutch EV researcher, claimed Atkinson had “cherry-picked” key facts.

“He’s complaining about current batteries and implying we have to wait for better ones. But the current ones will already last the lifetime of the car, and the car will emit 3x less CO2 over its lifetime. (Yes, I’m sure about this, because that is my actual field of study.),” he wrote on Twitter.

Atkinson’s comments come as governments of developed countries implement bans on the sale of petrol vehicles amid the global push for net zero.

The United Kingdom is considering a ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 and hybrids from 2035. The capital London also has an Ultra Low Emissions Zone that forces drivers of cars that are not powered by either hydrogen or batteries to pay a 12.50-pound daily charge.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the California Air Resources Board is pressuring the federal government to approve a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035.

While authorities in the Australian Capital Territory—home to the nation’s capital Canberra—are also moving to establish a similar “zero-emissions” zone like London.

In fact, the ACT’s pledge follows a global agreement by the C40—a grouping of the world’s biggest cities—to only operate zero-emission buses from 2025 and to establish a “zero-emission” zone within their cities by 2030. The pledge was signed by cities like Auckland, Austin, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Seattle, and Vancouver.

They are not all idiots in Hollywood. Peter Weller and Brian May come to mind.

Some others are Jeff Baxter from Steely Dan, who has worked as a defense consultant, and John Tichy, a guitarist with Commander Cody. Tichy had a Ph.D. already when he joined the group and later became head of the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. And then there's Woody Paul, the fiddler for Riders in the Sky, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.

EVs have their place. But they cannot replace ICE vehicles as the primary autos, it will never be feasible.

(But of course they know that)

They outlaw ICE transportation and EV cars are of course are out of reach for most individuals, then they automatically have their 15 minute cities or starvation for outliers, whichever is expedient. We are all Eloi.

I think there's an economy of scale problem - what's feasible for a large ship is not always down-sizeable.

But modern engineering has solved some of the problems that stymied the Stanley brothers.

According to the author, it was the big wreck in a speed trial that torpedoed the Stanley for the public. He also mentions the *smell* of the kerosene . . . "You could see a Stanley before you heard it, and smell its owner before you saw him."

Don't you feel suckered in at least five ways?

You pollute more than your old car because of the initial manufacturing materials and process.

You spent way to much for the privilege of vurtue signaling.

You will experience exponential degradation of the lithium ion batteries.

You now have to worry about your car becoming a Molotov cocktail.

You are going to pollute with the unrecyclable car when you are through with it.

All of that and a few other mendacious deceptions would make me very torqued. I am jacked up to know they are being sold, just like wind farms and solar panels.

Nothing virtue signaling about my wife's and my decision to go solar and get an EV. It's all about protecting our retirement investments from runaway energy inflation costs by the Dims' stupid war on energy.

It won't work for everybody. All the parameters have to be right for your situation (i.e. climate, plan to be there at least 10 years, your regular power consumption habits, your regular driving habits, if solar on your roof then you need a metal roof so that your solar panels aren't in the way when you replace your shingles in 10 years, etc.). But we just happen to be in that kind of situation. End result, our house is now all electric, most of our driving is in the EV car (which means charging at home unless we take it on a long trip) and, 80% of our power is free from solar.

Thus, when the Dims keep making energy costs go up while also making energy less dependable, it impacts us only 20% as much. That's not virtue signaling. That's protecting my family from some of the government bureaucracy by making us more self-reliant (at least energy-wise). I don't know one lib that takes on more personal responsibility and wean himself from some of the government control over his life.

In that same manner, we're growing more of our own food. I doubt we'll be as self-reliant with our garden. LOL

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