Mr Bean feels Duped

[beej]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electric-vehicles-early-adopter-petrol-car-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson

I've only ever seen Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean. It's hard to picture him any other way. that said He nails it in this article.

Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master's in control systems. Combine this, perhaps surprising, academic pathway with a lifelong passion for the motorcar, and you can see why I was drawn into an early adoption of electric vehicles. I bought my first electric hybrid 18 years ago and my first pure electric car nine years ago and (notwithstanding our poor electric charging infrastructure) have enjoyed my time with both very much. Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they're wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run. But increasingly, I feel a little duped. When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn't seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.

As you may know, the government has proposed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The problem with the initiative is that it seems to be based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a car's operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe. Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions, which is a welcome development, particularly in respect of the air quality in city centres. But if you zoom out a bit and look at a bigger picture that includes the car's manufacture, the situation is very different. 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. How so? The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: they're absurdly heavy, many rare earth metals and huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they only last upwards of 10 years. It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile's fight against the climate crisis.

[YoDoug]

It's hard to think of Mr Bean as a serious intellectual. I know he is very smart, probably on the autism spectrum or Asperger's. The dude seriously cracks me up. His mannerisms and quirkiness get me. my son and I probably watch the Johnny English movies once a year or so.

That being said, spot on in his thoughts on the rush to go all electric.

IMO, just like Obama's failed Solyndra, Biden's big EV push is just gov coerced graft and kickbacks to the unions and special donors. That doesn't mean that there isn't an issue with carbon emissions, It is just the typical Lib tactic of using a real issue to line the chosen pockets and enforce more control over people.

[beej]

from the citizen perspective, you gotta be kidding me!


from the tooling perspective, BRING IT ON! just keep making the automakers change their tooling to some new thing.

their losing their minds....And I'm reaping all the benefits!

[gcode]

the rush to go all electric.

The rush to go all electric is not based on science.
It is a cultish religion that overlooks or ignores many inconvenient truths about the manufacture, use and practicality
of electric vehicles and the elimination of fossil fuels
Before these idiots are done, they will have 3/4 of the globe starving and freezing to death in the dark.

[mkd]

Like an idiot, I didn't buy the dip is TSLA.

[mkd]

Is that article 100% Rowen's work, or trash-guardian editorializing?
 No environmentalist or rational engineer should l be proselytizing the use of hydrogen, unless they can rewrite the second law of thermodynamics. Seems that's straight up FUD to bolster ICE advertising dollars.
 Tesla's build qualities allow long vehicle life without the legacy auto built in time bombs. Plastic internal engine part with your BMW purchase, anyone? Bueller....buelller