Posted on 06/10/2023 7:38:38 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
“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.
“How so?” Atkinson said.
“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.
“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.
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.
Try that with an electric car.
He is correct, we’re this truly about the environment/climate which it is not.
That’s an engineering marvel.
Note the extreme reaction from the climate Nazi. Anyone exposing the truth must be marginalized and ridiculed
Yep. The climate nazis can’t stand any form of criticism.
MAYBE THE CLOWNS WILL LISTEN TO this CLOWN...
just end the subsidies.
And what exactly is the lifetime of a car? And is this the lifetime of an electric car, or any car?
Did those professors explain how those batteries can be disposed of.
Elon Musk proved SpaceX.
Elon Musk proved Twitter.
If Elon Musk says he can make electric cars affordable and better than current cars, I believe him, even if it means he is the only one capable of doing that.
He is right.
JAMBOG
Mr. Bean Actor Says the Electric Car ‘Honeymoon’ Is Over
06/09/2023 11:26:51 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 45 replies
Epoch Times ^ | June 8, 2023 | By Daniel Y. Teng
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4159642/posts
Welcome to Free Republic.
Faith in Musk can be understood. So far he has been successful.
I’m sure that we can always trust the “ICE,” to be more reliable than the EV.
We shall see.
going electric everything is not about the environment, it’s about the government developing the ability to control the American people’s mobility and way of life. It’s all part of the UN agenda 20/30 plan.
What are you talking about? Read my comment. Were this truly about the environment/climate, which it isn’t…
This has never been about climate. Their solutions are not solutions to anything. They are using fear as an end run around the constitution to enslave everyone.
Environmentalist is a synonym for socialist.
Is the climate changing? You bet. Earth was once a molten ball and now it isn’t. To think it will stay as it is is naive. Are we causing it? I sincerely doubt it.
That is an outright lie! The ULEZ standards are stated here:
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/ways-to-meet-the-standard
The Euro 4 standard for gasoline cars, for example, goes back to 2005, so pretty much all cars currently on the road meet that standard. None of that hydrogen/EV BS is required.
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