by Best known for his portrayal of the dim-witted character Mr. Bean on television and in films, British actor Rowan Atkinson may not seem like the world’s foremost expert on climate change and electric vehicles. But an op-ed he published this weekend declaring that “our electric car honeymoon is coming to an end” has put him at the center of a global debate and sparked a backlash among environmentalists and electric vehicle experts.
“Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they are great mechanisms: fast, quiet and until recently very cheap to run. But more and more I feel a little cheated,” Atkinson wrote in his piece in The Guardian.
Atkinson, an early adopter of electric vehicles who also owns a collection of vintage gas-powered cars, cites some common criticisms of electric cars, including that their production causes more emissions than gasoline car production. He also argues that given the environmental damage caused by the extraction of rare earth elements for the lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars, it is better to wait for the development of hydrogen-powered cars and trucks and to use petrol in the meantime. keep using.
Atkinson’s piece comes as the UK considers a ban on the sale of petrol cars by 2030 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. The European Union and California have also approved measures to phase out sales of new gasoline cars by 2035.
Genie out of the bottle
The speed at which the world is switching from petrol to electric cars is remarkable. According to the International Energy Agency, EVs will account for 14% of new cars sold in 2022, up 9% from 2021. China sold about 1,400 EVs in 2010, compared to 5.9 million in 2022.
Automakers have seen the writing on the wall and plan to spend $1.2 trillion on electric vehicle and battery production over the next seven years. That investment drives innovation, which in turn helps make EV battery production more environmentally friendly.
“The carbon footprint of electric vehicles is falling sharply in the three major industrial zones of Europe, America and China. A deep dive by McKinsey concluded that emissions from leading battery suppliers would fall by 75% over the next five to seven years,” Ambrose Evans —Pritchard, world economics editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote on Tuesday about the rapidly changing landscape for electric car battery production. “Batteries are already being made that don’t need cobalt anymore. By the end of the decade, we’ll start seeing solid-state batteries that are four to six times more efficient, so efficient that they can run on sodium instead of lithium for routine use cars.”
Lifetime Emissions
On its website, the Environmental Protection Agency notes that “greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric vehicle over its lifetime are typically lower than those of an average gasoline vehicle, even when production is taken into account.”
Auke Hoekstra, a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands who has conducted research comparing the lifetime emissions of electric and gas-powered cars, was one of many experts who contributed to Atkinson’s article.
British analyst Gniewomir Flis, established in the field of climate technology, also refuted Atkinson’s claims.
“High measured emissions mean that a battery car from the factory is more CO2 intensive than a petrol car. But with kilometers driven, petrol cars emit much more emissions. Reuters calculates that battery cars start to reduce CO2 after 21,000 km,” Flis wrote in a Twitter thread.
Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, summarized the views of many experts.
