Atkinson: save the planet, drive a gas-guzzler
ROWAN ATKINSON feels “duped” by electric cars and has urged motorists to keep using older fossil fuel vehicles.
The actor, who played Blackadder and Mr Bean, and is a “car person”, claims advances in electric batteries will be of “great environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn”.
In The Guardian, he explains how despite owning his first hybrid 18 years ago and then a “pure electric” nine years ago “electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be”.
Atkinson, 68, writes that “our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end”. He has an electrical and electronic engineering degree, and points out that although electric cars have zero emissions on the road, research by Volvo suggests greenhouse gas emissions during production are 70 per cent higher than petrol vehicles. The lithium-ion batteries require “rare earth metals and huge amounts of energy” to make.
He said: “It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis”, and adds that CO2 emissions could be dramatically cut if our current cars bought new were kept by the original owner for five years, rather than sold after the average of just three.
He writes that “we’d be enjoying the same mobility, just driving slightly older cars” explaining how a “wider range of options need to be explored”, including hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
He concludes: “In terms of manufacture, these cars have paid their environmental dues, and it would seem right to look carefully at ways of retaining them while lowering their polluting effect.”
He concludes: “Friends often ask me whether they should buy an electric car. I say that if their car is an old diesel and they do a lot of city centre motoring, they should consider a change. But otherwise, hold fire for now.”