Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson blamed for slow electric car sales
Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson blamed for slow electric car sales
The Green Alliance thinktank tells peers in the House of Lords the actor's views are "damaging" to the government's plans for phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles.
He suggested solutions like drivers keeping the same car for longer periods of time
That's what i have been doing... Is that wrong, or just too much anti-consumerism to be presented as a good thing in our society?
He's right honestly, cars, especially electric cars, produce a large portion of their CO2 emissions when they are manufactured.
We would all be better off if people kept their "gas guzzlers" but only used them rarely. A car in a garage has zero co2 emissions.
Which is one reason this anti WFH campaign pisses me off so much. We could cut emissions quite a bit just from that but we can't even do that little because: greedy assholes.
Was I the only one who, during covid lockdowns, was amazed at how fucking clear the air was? Did everyone just forget? Idk why most humans can't look at that and go "we all need to make this permanent" and then do it. But we evolved to prefer the worst of us in charge.
Anyway. Yeah. I WFH and drive about 5000 miles a year. And we tend to keep our cars 10-15 years. It's way more affordable than a new car every few years, assuming you get a car that has low maintenance costs. More people oughta do that.
Yeah, this is the industry blaming a famous person for making sense.
Replacing the gas guzzlers with EVs would be great, but the cost/benefit ratio isn't there. If you need a new car and can afford an EV, get one.
Car manufacturers need to do more to make EVs more affordable. They need to do a better job making their argument that they are good cars with significant environmental benefits.
They won't, because they still want to sell gasoline cars.
I live in a car city but I only use it to go groceries or maybe an event. I go twice a week tops.
All my friends told me I should have gotten a Tesla and that because I'm a tech guy that I'd buy a Tesla. I'm like, I don't drive enough, so I bought a used Civic.
By the time this Civic needs to be retired, there should be plenty of affordable options for me? Or maybe I can move to a place that doesn't require one.
They offset all those emissions by the time they've reached like 80k km in places where electricity is produced using coal (compared to a gas vehicle that increases its total emissions as time goes) so no, he's not right actually.
That's not even taking into consideration the wear on emission equipment and cars age.
nah even an ICE car in a garage is not neutral : it needs oil & filters changes every 1-2 years if you want to keep it running, and gas does not like to be stored more than 3-6 months.
This said, so you are so right we should stop using cars as much as possible and walk, bike, take public transports, or rent when needed.
It depends on how much you drive, and what you drive. If you have a Prius and drive 2000 miles a year the emissions payoff for getting an EV would probably be longer than you’d even want to keep the car. If you’re in a diesel F350 and do 20,000 miles a year, mostly city, then yeah an EV will be net zero in like 5 years or less.
As I’m sure someone will mention inevitably, not using a car in the first place is the best option. Public transit, walking, biking, are all much better solutions.
Anti-consumerism is bad because it would expose the fact that our economy is overproducing shit we don't need, so we would need a massive reorganization of society. You can tell who that is bad for.
A portion of the public thinks that anything saying that you shouldn't immediately hop on the electric car bandwagon this moment is saying that electric cars are failures entirely. Drive your internal combustion car til it's dead, it's already here and will be phased out itself over time. No sense in making significantly higher artificial demand, leading to further pumping out cars that, no matter how you look at it, are expensive to the environment to build. Let the adoption come as cars start dying, let the EV industry keep advancing, and get one as your next car whenever that is.
It's sky news, a far right media outfit with questionable factual credibility. Notice they didn't say that this what they attacked him on, only that it was in the piece that they were criticizing. It's intentionally misleading to make you think their position is ridiculous.
Don't fall for this propaganda.
No it's not wrong. Hell, I drive EV and lots of people ask me about it, And of course I'd love if more people did it, to cut down on fossils, but realistically it's always a financial decision, so I honestly tell them "If you already have a car, and don't need a new car, then it's a bad financial decision to buy a new car."
However, when you do need a new car, then it's likely a good decision to buy an EV, but you need to run the numbers if you want to know for sure. There are a lot of factors in this, some of which are dependent on your own personal milage and finances and others on where you live and what is available.
If you do run all the numbers for the duration of ownership, it's likely always a good decision to buy a new EV in comparison to ICE cars, and the thing that made my decision was that in my case, it wouldn't even make sense to buy the cheapest beater car, because over the years that I expect to drive this car, it's cheaper to buy a new EV than to exchange and/or repair older ICE cars. But I'm sure it varies. You gotta have some idea of how much you need to drive for the next 5 years, and most people probably don't.
Atkinson is sort of right in advising people to hold out a while. The prices are dropping and in just a few years, it won't even be a question. However I also understand the criticism, because as a public figure he should not be passing out blanket statements like that. There are likely people who will not buy an EV now because of his statement, even if it's against their own self interest.
Yeah, i'm driving a 20+ year old car and while i feel guilty about the higher emissions older design have, it's still run and in awesome shape. Got talked by my ex for still using an old car, but meh, if it still run it still run.
Definitely getting an electric car next though, if i ever have that budget. Even then the local electricity production is still not ready for clean energy.
CONSUME!
No!
Oh alright
But I'm full, father! I can consume no more!
I’m holding on the the car I bought in 2019 until I can do an electric conversion on it.
I don’t need a NEW car.
Me too, my car is 10 years old, all paid, I only have 83'000 miles on it, yeah I changed brakes/rotor and a couple of stuff mainly in suspension/linkage because of pothole... but that's it.
A new Toyota Corolla makes roughly 100g of CO2 per km driven and a car produces on average 5.6T of CO2 when being manufactured. You've driven through the CO2 equivalent of manufacture in roughly 60000 kms. I chose the Corolla for this comparison because it's pretty fuel efficient.
The lifetime emissions of an EV are lower than an ICE car. Engineering explained has a good video breaking the math down. If you're planning on keeping your car for more than 3 or 4 years and you're able to, it makes sense to buy an EV
Seymour Skinner 'Am I out of touch?' meme:
- top panel caption: are EVs too expensive and not practical enough yet?
- bottom panel caption: No, it's Mr Bean's fault
On what the article touches, he is not wrong. Buying a new car, even if it's an electric one, will have more impact than a lot of time using a gasoline one, especially if the country doesn't produce electricity in a sustainable way.
Also, if you want to help the environment, you shouldn't be replacing cars, but removing them, public transportation, and walkable cities are so much better in this regard.
Sadly, electric cars isn't about saving the environment and the planet. Is is about saving the car industry
Except that no, he's not right and if you're going to drive, the sooner you switch the better
The rule of thumb is: if your ICE car is still in working order, it's less damaging to the environment to just keep driving it. If you absolutely must buy a new car, get an electric. That being said, I don't trust that Rowan won't be "Mr. Car Guy" and promote his bias towards ICE cars due to his extreme wealth and love of exotic whips.
The thing is that cars have a huge secondhand market.
So if you buy a new car, you sell your old one to someone else, who sells their car to someone else, who sell their car to someone else, ... all the way until one of the horrible gas guzzlers at the bottom gets finally replaced.
So in a way it is improving the environment if you look at the whole picture.
Yeah there is far more game theory than the other post implies. Supporting companies in producing EVs and are driving EV technology in a healthy way, and considering down pressure effects for the secondhand market are far more important than your individual emissions over a short period of time.
Also, not fully convinced by the rule of thumb. It works well when considering the sustainability of static things, but I think it falls apart when considering things that have active impact like cars.
Here is an article where Reuters found that you only need to drive 13500 miles before an EV is cleaner than an ICE in the US. At a certain point, it is better to push ICE cars into retirement and build EVs.
Reduce - Reuse - Recycle. In that order.
love of exotic whips
To be fair, Musk also had a McLaren F1 before he bought Tesla and paid people to shut their mouths about his not starting it himself
I forgot whip was slang for a car and was thinking he had a collection of the other kind of whip.
Three orange whips.
Not true. Watch this https://youtu.be/L2IKCdnzl5k?si=yVCXvZw00SQlwI7Y
There are a lot of issues with his calculations.
For people driving 12,000 miles a year their mpg will be higher, more highway miles.
The 10mpg difference in new car vs old for similarly sized cars is over 20 years. The 2001 impala I used to have got 25 mpg.
People that buy new cars typically have cars less than 10 years old that they are replacing. People typically don't go from a clapped out 20 year old car to a brand new one. The "old" car most people are trading in is getting 30-35 mpg.
I'd put the number at 5-7 years for a car that's less than 5 years old.
Similar to the theory that The Simpsons made a generation not trust nuclear power.
I think 3 mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima and Sosnovy Bor and Ibaraki and Forsmark were probably more influential in terrifying the general public about nuclear power.
It's weird that the first one you listed didn't have any injuries or deaths. I think you might be a victim of that fear mongering, friend
That was Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that did that. The Simpsons merely rode a wave that had already crested.
Well, Mr. Atkinsons stance is not really off. EVs are still in their infancies, and need to get out of puberty before they are really useful and affordable.
Charging infrastructure is another huge bottle neck. I don’t have a charging station anywhere near my home, so even if I had an EV, I wouldn’t be able to charge it anywhere.
Then there’s also the grid. If everyone were to plug in their EVs in the afternoon, that would overload the grid beyond its capacity.
Here’s Rowan’s original article since I couldn’t find a link in the actual article.
All of the points he makes are good ones, IMHO. The one about three year leases is especially good, and something the government could act on right now. There’s no reason to ditch a car after three years. Both of my cars are almost a decade old and will probably keep running for another decade with good maintenance.
And here's the rebuttal about he's mostly spouting FUD or down right lies.
I imagine most of us here read his article with a positive outlook saying "yes, yes, these are concerns we acknowledge and are being handled, so this is more of a cautionary price than a true argument against it" while the other side is saying "see? See? They don't work at all!".
I read the Guardian rebuttal before his actual article. Interesting that they had to make multiple amendments to address some of what the Guardian called out. Of course, nobody really sees the amendments because the majority of readers have already passed through. I definitely agree that the 3-year turnaround is a massive misdirection though. First off, people are going to buy new cars regardless. It's required to create a sustainable used car market. Second off, selling/returning a 3-year lease car means there must be someone buying/accepting that return. It's a lease return, not a scrap disposal. Obviously marketing and sales wants you to get a new car sooner, but it's still necessary. Cars all eventually die.
This article was amended on 5 June 2023 to describe lithium-ion batteries as lasting “upwards of 10 years”, rather than “about 10 years”; and to clarify that the figures released by Volvo claimed that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are “nearly 70% higher”, not “70% higher”. It was further amended on 7 June 2023 to remove an incorrect reference to the production of lithium-ion batteries needing “many rare earth metals”; to clarify that a reference to “trucks” should instead have been to “heavy trucks for long distance haulage”; and to more accurately refer to the use of such batteries in these trucks as being a “concern”, due to weight issues, rather than a “non-starter”.
Just paid £650 out to get my 2007 Astra hatchback through an MOT.
It doesn't get driven much so it makes zero sense to replace it. Even if I'm spending double that in a year to keep it on the road it's still waaaaay cheaper than me paying for a "new" one. It's got bodywork rust now though and it's apparently really hard to find a place that'll do repairs like that :(
The biggest reason to get a newer car is the safety features (back up cameras, audible warnings, brake assist, etc.). I had my previous car for over 15 years and the new features were a huge upgrade.
Going on ten years on my current one, and seeing how much safety and tech has improved since then gets me wanting a new one.
But yeah, if you don't drive often, then it might not matter much.
Call it a hunch, but I think it's got less to do with the opinions of a celebrity and more to do with the fact that a large portion of the population can't afford the high price of an electric car.
Well they don't make anything even remotely like my R55 Mini Clubman anymore so I'll probably be keeping it forever. That's my effort to save the environment!
I wish I had enough money to afford to buy a new car, I probably wouldn't do it because affordable would still mean living paycheck to paycheck. Not sure why I would want a second mortgage on something that depreciates that quickly.
I don’t want a new car. They lose most of their value the first time you start them up, and then continue losing value quickly. And then there’s the emissions of manufacturing and transportation.
Plus there aren’t any new cars that don’t have features I actively don’t want, like sending my usage information back to the manufacturer.
Both cars I own are about 9 years old and I plan on keeping them until they’re more expensive to fix than another used car.
As far as preventing use data, you can usually unplug the cell modem, or you can put a faraday bag over it in order to prevent it from connecting.
I'm sure that there is also a software solution for these issues as well. I have a cable and software for my car that lets me enable and disable features.
Public figures should be held accountable for false statements.
No. Make political parties accountable for the rambling of their MPs.
You see what an absolute shit show that would be? Banning people for opinions the government decide are false historically doesn't go well
I think in general we should hold people accountable for the things they say, but have you read what Atkinson wrote? He didn't lie, he presented his opinion and recommendation. I disagree with some of what he said, but I understand where he's coming from.
Not to mention he makes a point of putting his credentials at the top of the article. He's got education and experience that are informing his opinions, and he made them in a reasonable way without attacking anyone else.
If the government listened to his feedback and took steps to mitigate it - like making leases be a minimum of five years rather than three - it would be one thing. But they're just dismissing everything he says.
Mr Bean made me buy a Morris Mini
It's cute how they blame Rowan Atkinson, when we all know who's fault this really is... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkrcxLgHn-w
I'm not one to side with a bigot, but this is just pathetic.. He makes perfectly valid points, if EV manufacturers want to prove him wrong, maybe they should be doing a better job (or admitting that shifting from one type of car to another isn't the solution to all of our problems, but simply a way for the auto industry to continue to make profits off of "solutions" to the destruction they've had a massive part in creating).
Not hard to prove him wrong...
Many people I know actually are back on fossil fuel cars, just because no one has the time to wait for hours till they're loaded again, sadly there's no battery quick change system around. And till then, I haven't got the time either. That's just the reality, I cannot afford to lose any more customers just because we're not there on time.
Don't know why it should be so downvoted - the problem is real. Battery swaps, if properly implemented, could be an amazing solution. Or we have to better figure out fuel cell technology to improve conversion efficiency.
I understand the general policy is "it's a worthy sacrifice", but many people just really won't be able to accept such drawback, either due to packed schedule combined with requirement for personal transportation or yes, simply because it's heavily inconvenient.