Actor Rowan Atkinson 'feels duped' by electric vehicles

The actor and comedian is a known 'petrolhead' with a collection of classic cars.

But the 68-year-old, who lives in Ipsden in south Oxfordshire, and has a degree in electric and electronic engineering, has criticised electric motoring, saying it is "not quite the environmental panacea it's claimed to be".

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He told the Guardian: " 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."

The actor added: "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 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one.

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"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 about 10 years.

"It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis."

Mr Atkinson also criticised the 'fast fashion' of car buying, pointing out that drivers keep new cars for an average of three years before choosing a new vehicle.

He urged drivers to increase the number of years they kept cars and unless they had an "old diesel" in a city centre should delay getting rid of their petrol vehicle in favour of an electric one until better technology came along.

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The actor, who bought a McLaren F1 in 1997 and sold it almost 20 years later for £8m, concluded: "Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day but that day has yet to dawn."

There are now more than 760,000 fully electric cars on Britain's roads and 400,000 hybrids.

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Andy is the Trade and Tourism reporter for the Oxford Mail and you can sign up to his newsletters for free here. 

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