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Actor Rowan Akinson says he feels ‘duped’ by electric car promises

Car-obsessed actor Rowan Atkinson has mentioned he feels “duped” by the electric automobile development, regardless of being an early adopter.

In a comment piece in The Guardian on Saturday, the 68-year-old wrote that he bought his electric hybrid 18 years in the past and his first all-electric car 9 years later.

“Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they’re wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run,” he wrote.

“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.”

Atkinson is well-known for his love of vehicles and studied electrical and digital engineering at college earlier than gaining a subsequent grasp’s in management methods.

The star wrote in response to the federal government proposing a ban on the sale of latest petrol and diesel vehicles 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,” Atkinson mentioned.

“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.”

He mentioned that within the lead-up to the Cop26 local weather convention Volvo revealed alarming figures that greenhouse gasoline emissions within the manufacturing of an electric car have been 70 per cent larger than within the manufacturing of a petroleum one as a result of resource-sapping lithium ion batteries.

‘Solid-state’ batteries are within the pipeline to revolutionise the sport however are mentioned to be “years away” from occurring sale.

“Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel, even though we are slow in developing a truly green way of manufacturing it,” Atkinson added.

“The biggest problem we need to address in society’s relationship with the car is the ‘fast fashion’ sales culture that has been the commercial template of the car industry for decades,” he wrote.

“Friends with an environmental conscience typically ask me, as a car particular person, whether or not they need to purchase an electric car. I are inclined to say that if their car is an previous diesel they usually do a number of metropolis centre motoring, they need to take into account a change. But in any other case, maintain fireplace for now. Electric propulsion shall be of actual, international environmental profit sooner or later, however that day has but to daybreak.

“As an environmentalist as soon as mentioned to me, if you actually need a car, purchase an previous one and use it as little as potential.”

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