The actor who’s famed “Mr. Bean” character has made the world laugh for decades now says he feels duped by the happy talk and propaganda pushed by those support electric vehicles (EVs), and now he is ready to go back to gas-powered cars.
Rowan Atkinson told the Guardian that he bought a hybrid nearly 20 years ago and recently bought an EV and has perfectly enjoyed them.
But after looking into EVs, he said he started to feel “duped” by the whole line of propaganda surrounding the cars.
“But increasingly, I feel a little duped,” Atkinson wrote in his op ed. “When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.”
“Sadly, keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV. There are sound environmental reasons not to jump just yet,” he wrote.
He went on to note that the manufacturing of battery packs pretty much makes EVs a disaster for the environment, even though when operating on the road, they are far better on emissions than gas-powered cars.
but the stats on the road are a smoke screen for the real emissions that EVs cause.
“In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are nearly 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one,” the actor wrote. “How so?
“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.”
He noted that these batteries are not environmentally-friendly at all.
Atkinson was still buying into the idea that we should begin relying less on gas-powered vehicles, but, he noted that “I’m feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end.”
He also points out that these giant, expensive, heavy, short-lasting batteries won’t work for larger vehicles like trucks and buses.
There are far more reasons than that, too, of course. They can’t withstand even low-speed crashes with out being totaled, they are worthless on the used market because of the expense of replacing depleted battery packs after 10 or 15 years, and they are too expensive for most people to even afford, meaning most people will never even have a car if EVs is all we have for purchase.
Regardless, Atkinson is right, EVs are simply not ready for prime time.
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