Very lightweight uneducated argument against BEV, ..but it's Rowan Atkinson (earning media amplification regardless)

[Mr Gus]

The thing is folks, we know Rowan Atkinson has a sharp mind, so you wonder how he was so blinkered in terms of hackneyied media effluant that is 5 years out of date & just plain wrong.

A bit like idiots who say of BEV's "Ah yes, but they still pump tyre pollution out" (as if ICE are completely innocent of that) ..no rationale

Please be more discerning as to which chip wrappers you source your info from Rowan. (maybe block D Mail online from your browser)

[Mart]

In Rowan's defence (and yes I'm playing Devil's advocate), the Volvo study is now infamous amongst critics. But critics aren't the sort to go hunting for the bigger picture, so won't know that it's been debunked.

What is sad, is to see just how negative the average person is about BEV's on comment sections. I expect it on the Daily Mail and Telegraph, was a tad surprised to see how negative most comments are on BBC articles, but almost heartbroken this week to see the comments on the Guardian.

To see someone posting that BEV's don't work, and that's why there are no BEV tractors of trucks, get over 70 upticks, is really disappointing. But it is early days, try this test, and simply ask friends, neighbours etc, if they've heard of BYD, and most won't have. That's not a criticism, just general awarenes at this point in time. Yet BYD is only behind Tesla for BEV production, and last year produced more BEV's than the whole German auto-industry combined.

Also sad to see are the general comments about the grid not being able to cope, not enough leccy, and often combined with 'should go hydrogen instead', despite HFCV's needing around 3x more leccy input, if they are to use green H2.

I thought we were further down the information line, but realise now that that's my failure, for living somewhat in a pro-BEV bubble, and not appreciating that the vast majority of folk are currently un-informed, through no fault of their own.

Hope this post is actually positive, despite it being a load of negatives, just early days, that's all.


Edit - Just a silly point, but I've noticed so many BEV vans recently, but only because they have the green stripe. So am ordering some green stickers for our BEV's (silly personal plates, so predate the green stripe). I know it's just a PR campaign by the Gov, but I think it works well, and folk may be surprised as they see ever more green stripes on the road.

[Mr Gus]

We opted for the green stripe (after much thought, mainly due to the crass manner in which Bo-joke sold the premise) the wife was going through londinium at the time (a lot) & we thought that the ANPR system might throw up a tantrum if that stripe was missing, ..you never know where software coding is concerned, so it was a precautionary measure, no more no less.

It's great to play devs-ad, (well done mart, something I do at home a lot) but Rowan knew where his piece was to be splurged, so it really would have been in his interests to do some up to date research & fine-tune his letter, especially as the tech is seen as contentious & itchy triggers (or letters to the editor) are concerned.

He dropped the ball, I doubt the neersayers, entrenched in their pre-conceived "ideas" would have come back to the original piece to absorb the hundreds? of info-correcting comments thereafter.

[Mr Gus]

Should have said, I hope Rowan read his own piece & will correct his now much publicised letter based on "new information", to get it in the press & ignore it...well that would be dafter than Baldrick at his worst.

[Mart]

Hiya Gus, yes it's a shame what he did.

I am actually surprised that general knowledge about BEV's is less than I'd supposed. But at least it will get better every year. Once folk drive or travel in a BEV, I think they realise just how superior they are, but fears about cost, range, and charging infrastructure still need to be addressed - which only comes with actual use, and the realisation that it's actually OK.

[Mr Gus]

Hi Mart, yes, till we can get them in even a 24kWh leaf (comparions to tesla should be crushed, based on efficiency of any ev motor efficiency) then we have problems.

I admire the "ask me about ev's" at fetes et al for their time & info given, need more of it for when folk are not dashing in/ out of shops.

(hope rowan visits a fete this summer)

Incidentally I received a blackadder stamped letter yesterday, when did that happen ?
(series 4, pants on head, pencils, "wibble")

[Krill]

Speaking as a recent "Convert", I have one observation, and it isn't purely about BEV.

I bought an Audi A4, diesel, 190bhp for around £30K including finance. This is all the car I need and it's still going strong, and on a good motorway run I will average over 70mpg, on a bad run I average 60. I reckon I can run this car until the 2030 without no real issues at which point it will be 12 years old.

I love the interior of my car, it is comfortable and I have a back issue, and the media controller is perfect with no crappy touch screens.

If I want to buy any new car I get a worse interior, worse media controller, and have to pay more. An equivalent A4 would cost me over £42500, over 40% increase in cost.

No matter how good the running costs would be I don't see how it makes sense to swap at this point in time, the costs are going to have to drop or there is going to be significant public backlash in the coming year (specifically the second hand market might go nuts).

Personally I hope that retrofitting battery systems takes off.

[Joeboy]

I was very sad when the Sion didn't make it.

A dacia style low cost EV should have appeared by now. Chinese or Indian maybe. Tubular monocoque, plastic panels. A couple of trim levels and off ye go. 150 mile range maybe.

Problem is though. People & finance. I might think a 15k EV is relatively cheap but most of the population pyramid won't be able to afford even that. I think the ICE has a long way to run yet.

Maybe a further narrowing of the emissions bands would help to remove the worst ICE polluters? Although I don't fancy telling someone that I've just condemned his £500 banger at mot that is his sole mode of transport to work and move family about. Again, people and finance are the hurdle.

[Krill]

I was very sad when the Sion didn't make it.

A dacia style low cost EV should have appeared by now. Chinese or Indian maybe. Tubular monocoque, plastic panels. A couple of trim levels and off ye go. 150 mile range maybe.

Problem is though. People & finance. I might think a 15k EV is relatively cheap but most of the population pyramid won't be able to afford even that. I think the ICE has a long way to run yet.

Maybe a further narrowing of the emissions bands would help to remove the worst ICE polluters? Although I don't fancy telling someone that I've just condemned his £500 banger at mot that is his sole mode of transport to work and move family about. Again, people and finance are the hurdle.

As much as we can talk about accessible public transport, until automated buses exist it's a no go for all the shift workers of the world. For example, what is the young kid working a nightshift in the nursing home going to do if it takes him/her 90 minutes to get back home, and then another 90 minutes to get back to work and they've got 12 hours and kids to deal with?

Of course, none of this get mentioned by Mr Bean, but the more salient argument for synthetic fossil fuels to power current gen vehicles is because it can lower the cost to this segment of society and provides more revenue for further RE power plants (although this would certainly be for petrol, and not diesel vehicles...)

[smegal]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... c-vehicles

In a widely shared comment piece for the Guardian, comedian Rowan Atkinson said he felt “duped” by the green claims about electric vehicles (EVs).

In support of his contention, however, Atkinson repeats a series of repeatedly debunked talking points, often used by those seeking to delay action on the climate crisis.

Moreover, he suggests alternatives to EVs that are not yet widely available, would be less beneficial to the climate and are guaranteed to be more costly.

Atkinson’s biggest mistake is his failure to recognise that electric vehicles already offer significant global environmental benefits, compared with combustion-engine cars.

While EVs won’t solve all of the problems associated with car use – from traffic congestion through to our increasingly sedentary lifestyles – they are an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.

In its latest report, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said, with “high confidence”, that EVs have lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional cars. The IPCC said that electric vehicles not only “offer the greatest low-carbon potential for land-based transport”, but their use would save money. (Despite elevated electricity prices, EVs are still much cheaper to run than petrol cars in the UK.)

Indeed, without a widespread shift to EVs, there is no plausible route to meeting the UK’s legally binding target of net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050 – and the same is true globally.

Contrary to Atkinson’s article, EVs cut emissions in the “bigger picture” taking into account vehicles’ full life cycles, from the extraction of oil or mining of lithium for batteries through to actually driving the cars.

As Carbon Brief noted some years ago, EVs already cut planet-warming emissions by two-thirds on a life cycle basis relative to combustion engine cars in the UK – and the benefits are growing.

Atkinson cites Volvo figures showing emissions from producing EVs to be 70% higher. This is misdirection. While many details of the Volvo study have been thoroughly debunked, the more important issue is that the emissions from producing batteries, while significant, are quickly outweighed by the CO2 emissions from fuelling petrol and diesel cars.

Atkinson is also wrong to say that the UK government’s plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 “seems to be based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a car’s operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe”.

For starters, the government’s cost-benefit analysis of its policy plans for cars talks in detail about life cycle emissions. Specifically, it mentions government-commissioned research that proves EVs offer a large and growing emissions benefit on a life cycle basis.

Echoing Carbon Brief’s findings, the analysis says: “BEVs [battery electric vehicles] are expected to reduce GHG emissions by 65% compared to a petrol car today, and this rises to 76% by 2030.”

That same analysis gives one answer to Atkinson’s touting of hydrogen as an “interesting alternative fuel” to replace petrol and diesel. The research shows that hydrogen vehicles would only cut emissions by 39% today, relative to petrol engines, potentially rising to 56% by 2030.

Another answer is that there are still only 72,000 hydrogen-fuelled fuel-cell vehicles on the planet, accounting for a tiny fraction of the roughly 1.5bn cars on the road globally. In comparison, about 14m EVs are due to be sold this year alone, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Even Toyota, the carmarker most closely associated with pushing hydrogen vehicles and cited in Atkinson’s article, has recently started to follow the rest of the market in shifting towards EVs.

Atkinson goes on to suggest hydrogen for trucks, inaccurately claiming electrification is a “non-starter” due to the weight of batteries. Yet manufacturers sold 60,000 electric trucks last year and now have 220 heavy-duty vehicle models on the market, according to the IEA. European electric truck sales grew fourfold in the first quarter of this year alone, according to Volvo.

As Auke Hoekstra at the Eindhoven University of Technology has argued, electric trucks will not have a major weight disadvantage over diesels. More importantly, says Hoekstra, they will be much cheaper to own and run.

The main problem with hydrogen vehicles is the same as for the “synthetic fuel” that Atkinson is also keen to promote. Specifically, both of these alternatives are incredibly inefficient, requiring many times more energy to drive the same distance.

Figures from NGO Transport and Environment show EVs can be driven two to five times further on the same energy as would be needed if using hydrogen or synthetic fuels. This thermodynamic disadvantage inevitably makes these alternatives much more costly to run than EVs.

A few of Atkinson’s other claims are worth mentioning.

He says EV batteries only last “about 10 years”. Yet “most modern lithium-ion units are likely to last the lifetime of the car”, according to Autocar. Tesla’s batteries are “designed to outlast the vehicle”.

He complains that new cars are only kept for three years before being sold. Yet he does not reference the secondhand market, and the fact that British people are keeping their cars for longer than ever.

He claims that it is better to keep running old petrol cars than to replace them with EVs. Yet a new EV would start benefiting the climate in less than four years, relative to an old combustion engine.

He claims that lithium-ion batteries contain rare earth elements. They do not.

In concluding, Atkinson says people should “hold fire” on EVs. This is linked to the false premise that EVs “will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn”.

The alternatives he promotes are not yet widely available, are less beneficial for the environment – and are thermodynamically guaranteed to be much more costly.

In contrast, and contrary to Atkinson’s central claim, EVs already offer significant emissions savings – and their widespread use is central to meeting UK and global climate goals.

Simon Evans is the deputy editor and senior policy editor at Carbon Brief