Actor Rowan Atkinson provoked a shit storm this month with a critical piece about electromobility for the British newspaper The Guardian. According to Atkinson, himself an enthusiast of electric driving, EVs are not that clean at all because their production is much more polluting. We know that argument. It was introduced two years ago by Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, who linked it to a plea for more honesty about the ecological footprint of the electric car. The confession was obviously grist to the mill of plug-hating petrolheads. They gratefully took off with the loot; see, you filthy mess!
I do not find that triumphalism in Atkinson’s piece. Apart from carelessness at a detailed level, he sketches a down-to-earth vision of the energy transition. That lithium ion batteries are leaden and degenerate, although he may be mistaken about their lifespan – it is not untrue. That we might be better off waiting for lighter, more efficient solid state batteries – it’s no nonsense. There is nothing unreasonable about Atkinson’s benevolent words about hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
Of course that’s not the point. Everything Atkinson says is dismissed in advance as shameful resistance to the energy transition. It is fuel on the fire of the good side, which throws itself licking its lips at the enemy to display its own excellence. Anyone who does not support a good cause without reservation may go to hell. The woke ghost also has a hold of this segment. And so Atkinson is not unexpectedly portrayed as a kind of tokkie. As the amateur who forgot that EVs more than offset their initial footprint with zero-emission miles, much faster than stupid Mr Bean realises. That hydrogen is stupid and synthetic fuels are a retarded hobby of Porsche. That batteries last much longer than that sucker cried.
Well, you can draw up such a discussion. I wouldn’t have paid any further attention to it if I hadn’t recently reaped similar responses with a similar piece. Then it dawned on me how this theme too has been politicized, and how that polarization is damaging the debate.
In letters to the editor, I was addressed as the primitive life form that was in urgent need of a lesson in evolution, while I had emphatically portrayed the EV as a worthy final goal of the energy transition. My answer that I drove electrically myself, I had not mentioned it in my piece, some of the letter writers fell on the roof a bit raw. Of course I had to keep fitting into the hate frame. I kept thinking, as I answered those no doubt benevolent people: What a curiously aggressive time this is. It seems like the 1960s, when the relations between establishment and counterculture were also so tense. When everything seemed to revolve around whose side you were on.
I’m not on any side. As an enthusiastic EV driver, nothing prevents me from mentioning the disadvantages of plugging in, or pointing out the downsides of the energy transition. The indeed heavy batteries, especially in plug-in SUVs, the often unnecessarily high energy consumption in connection with the drastically increased energy prices. Plus the much too high financial threshold for people with lower incomes, because fully-fledged EVs remain so damn expensive and the government lets ordinary citizens down. Hoho, you say, what about those purchase subsidies? Ammehoela. An average monthly income subsidy for private buyers with two to three times the average, while average households are forced to continue to drive dirty used cars on petrol and diesel, which they are then driven out of the city with, that is what this is about. Are we totally screwed now?
In short, there are quite a few issues that politicians and industry will have to address in order to really get the transition started. In European sales it has indeed risen sharply, but now significantly flattening market share for EVs with almost 14 against 14.3 %, now just below the level of new diesels. What that means? That more people buy electric cars, but not nearly enough. Reasons? Price, infrastructure, range anxiety, sometimes blunt reluctance – but above all price. It’ll be fine, but not right away. In the meantime, it pays to keep exploring all reasonable alternatives.
It can still go either way. Just got out of the hydrogen-powered BMW iX5, and I noticed how wonderful it was to be able to fill up that warehouse in a few minutes. Atkinson’s sobriety, in all its excusable oversimplification, is probably more realistic than grandiose vistas. But maybe you have to really like cars first to understand that.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl