Essay by Eric Worrall
Comedy legend Rowan Atkinson, who plays Mr Bean, Johnny English, Blackadder, and many other comedy roles, is not happy with his electric vehicle.
I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped
Rowan Atkinson
Sat 3 Jun 2023 17.00 AESTSadly, keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV. There are sound environmental reasons not to jump just yey
Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems. Combine this, perhaps surprising, academic pathway with a lifelong passion for the motorcar, and you can see why I was drawn into an early adoption of electric vehicles. 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.
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. 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.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electric-vehicles-early-adopter-petrol-car-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson
Sadly Rowan suggests hydrogen might be the way to go. I suspect hydrogen, which in industry requires special handling qualifications because it is so dangerous, will die more quickly and explosively than EVs, if there is ever a serious attempt as mass adoption.
If only there was a compact and relatively stable way of putting energy into a vehicle conveniently and quickly. Even better if this energy product could be produced easily from a natural resource. Then we would have a green energy vehicle winner!
The following is Rowan Atkinson playing Dr Who for Comic Relief, a poverty alleviation charity. Sadly Comic Relief is totally woke on climate change, but they do some good works, so I usually give a few pennies.
Yeah, adding a bit of carbon to hydrogen stabilizes it, and in sufficient quantities lowers the boiling point to above room temperature. Wonderful technology!
Yeah, just add 8 carbons for every 18 H’s, and you really got somethin’.
There are already over 150 hydrogen filling stations in Germany and they’ve been using hydrogen powered vehicles on the roads since 2020. Fuel cell technology makes them fairly safe.
Even Liquid Hydrogen sucks as fuel, as it lacks density. Even if one solves the safety issues LH is just not dense enough. Better than Lithium Ion batteries, but fairly bad.
Yea I’m going to buy one of those new hydrogen greenie cars, and I’ll get a vanity license plate that says “Hindenburg”. Don’t wait for it.
When I purchased my 4WD the used car dealer mentioned he was looking forward to a lot full of hydrogen vehicles parked next to EVs. I said “maybe that would be a signal, time to retire”.
Put a SpaceX capsule on top – it’d be one way to get it into orbit, but possibly not intact!
Business will be booming.
I have yet to see a fueling station with public Liquid Propane pumps. Consumers are not allowed to refill their own propane tanks. Transfer of highly volatile and explosive compressed gas fuels is an inherently dangerous process that requires training and care. I cannot imagine my mother or most other people who are used to filling up with gasoline being allowed to refuel a hydrogen vehicle. I dealt with hydrogen, nitrogen, methane, propane and many other compressed gasses in the laboratory for over 30 years. Safety was always a major concern and the subject of rigorous staff training to prevent injuries and accidents. The idea of perhaps millions of untrained consumers trying to refill hydrogen or natural gas fuel tanks every day is a frightening prospect. So a hydrogen based transportation system probably means professional trained fueling technicians at every fueling station. That should be factored into the cost estimates.
It’s even more frightening when you realize that there are videos out there of idiots trying to put gasoline into a Tesla.
Salute!
Thanks, Rick.
Up at my cabin we use the propane for BBQ, and LNG for heating during winter – cleaner than the coal or firewood we used 30 years ago. No matter…
My relatives and friends with the pure EV’s tell me they are not cranking out bad stuff, but when I ask where did the volts, amps come from, and then what about the production emissions required to build the vehicle, they are clueless. TANSTAFL
The first good cold winter in many countries that are depending on the EV’s will be interesting.
Make no mistake, I would like to have a Prius or Ford Escape hybrid – save the planet, and have a backup if no charging station for a hundred miles, and great gas mileage.
Gums sends…
Slight correction: TANSTAAFL
There were a few occasions, back in the late 1990s, where my company borrowed compressed natural gas (CNG) vans from our landlord to travel from San Bernardino to Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center for technical meetings. (Our landlord was the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, on the former Norton Air Force Base) It wasn’t possible to complete the one-way trip on one fill of CNG, but there was a California state CNG fill station near the halfway point. The station had no attendants. Anyone who used the station did the refill themselves. As I recall, the maximum fill pressure was 3,000 psi. I had a lot of experience with airborne pressure vessels, and the idea of filling a big 3,000 psi filament-wound CNG tank – when we had fits about the long-term safety of a stainless steel helium tank holding 2,750 psi – was frankly a little unsettling. But I never heard of an accident or incident with those CNG stations.
As in ‘light the invisible touch paper and retire to a safe distance’?
And the Titanic was sunk by a ‘burg’, spooky..
Titanic was sunk by incompetence.
I’m actually thinking that was deliberate. Apparently on board were all of the rich fellows who were opposed to the private central bankers’ scheme to take over our money supply, and then conveniently they all sank on a ship that had no lifeboat room for the men – only for the women and children. Things that make you go “hmmm”…. now it all makes sense…
“Hindenburg” would be a good name for the model.
Here’s a list of other possibilities.
https://www.airships.net/hydrogen-airship-accidents/
I have commented on the safety hazards of hydrogen-filled airships in these pages on more than one occasion. My comments – which minimized the hazards of hydrogen in that application – were based on bad information, and I retract all of them. The airships.net website is an excellent source of historical and technical information on airships.
My industry – the space launch industry – has mastered the safe use of huge amounts of liquid hydrogen, which allowed the United States to land men on the Moon, among other things. But it isn’t cheap. The same is true of the petroleum refining industry, which uses massive amounts of liquid hydrogen, again safely. The safety of hydrogen is a matter of economics. It isn’t clear to me whether it could be economical for the average person’s motor vehicle fuel, but it really isn’t necessary – so why try it?
We Need more slebs like Atkinson to start pointing out the downside realities….
Good on him to put his head above the parapet…
I’m only surprised it took someone with an electrical engineering degree so long to discover that EV’s aren’t the best use of resources. But I suppose that for someone who usually has a dozen or so cars in his garage with badges that read Aston Martin, Bentley, Mc Claren, BMW to choose from so he probably only uses the EV a handful of times a year and will always be fully charged ready when he wants to drive it, so it might take a few years for the penny to drop. Probably when he tried to sell it and was told “9 year old EV?.. not interested unless you put a new battery in it, then I might give you half what it cost you”
I’ve worked with a number of engineers, both electrical and mechanical, that are so narrowly focused that total life cycle cost never enters their view. Hazard of specialization.
He He. My brother, who holds a BE in Mechanical Engineering, knows next to nothing about cars, and our dad was an excellent auto mechanic. The degree doesn’t confer common sense ability.
Only when you move into management from a specialized engineering focus does one begin to realize all the costs involved in a product. Even management is many times removed when only using purchased products.
The electricity for Mr. Atkinson’s EV came 43% from fossil fuels in 2019, 17% from nuclear power and 8% from imports. The rest was generated by wind, solar, biomass and hydro.
Milo,
that is a false assumption, you cannot use proportion of grid inputs to calculate what an ev’s electricity source is.
Broadly speaking, when additional load is added to the grid it is met by gas generation (in the U.K.) as that is the only type of generation that responds to the additional load. Nuclear and renewables are always at maximum available so cannot give any more.
It is slightly more complicated than that but as a basis it is accurate.
UK generation right now:Gas 13GW Solar 4.97GW Wind 3.49GW
Gas is providing 39% of electricity.
With respect to CO2, EV’s are nowhere close to “zero emissions”.
Mr Bean is correct that his car doesn’t emit any nasty chemicals, but in effect it’s emitting plenty of CO2 – which is a good thing, as it’s what plants and trees need. With an electric car there are additional losses e.g. DC to AC conversion, power line losses, charging losses.
If Mr Bean really cared for the environment he woulod scrap his EV and buy an efficient petrol car.
Sadly Mr Bean is deluded as he seems to think there is a “climate crisis”. As deaths from extreme weather globally have been dramatically falling over the last 100 years, it’s a very odd kind of crisis. Just a shot in the dark, but his “crisis” could be completely imaginary, something created and sustained by endless doom mongering by the media and the climate cult.
Chris
Someone that rich might have built their own dang solar plant in their seventeen-car heated garage.
The problems with hydrogen go far beyond safety. It is difficult to compress requiring much more energy than to compress an equal amount in terms of energy content as natural gas. It’s energy density by volume is low. As many as a dozen semi compressed gas tankers will be required to carry to a fueling station the same amount of energy as as one single gasoline tanker. And once at the station a compressor will be needed for unloading. Those who advocate hydrogen are simply ignorant of its properties and their consequential problems, perhaps willfully so – pretty much the same as those who advocate climate extremism
I think greens are pinning their hopes on “low” pressure storage media. But most of the ideas don’t seem very scalable or durable.
I call it moonshot mentality. When I point out that the technology does not exist I am told I lack imagination. So I am watching the wall of reality fast approaching.
That the technology doesnt exist is a feature not a bug. Can never be refuted that way
All the hydrogen tank trucks would have to be “double bottoms” (TWO semi-trailers) – one to deliver to the “station” and one to power the truck.
That, or they would need to deal with the irony of hauling a tank of compressed hydrogen behind a DIESEL truck tractor.
In his defence, if you read the original article, he does discuss power sources other than hydrogen like synthetic fuels and the proposed solid state batteries, as well as suggesting keeping cars for longer than the 3 years that seems to be the fashionable average. Given his background, his hobby of racing and his attraction to V6, V8, V12 and V16 petrol engines it’s probably not surprising that he comes out with some very good reasons to keep ICE cars on the roads, despite his celebrity green credentials.
That’s not really a defense, since none of those things are needed.
Very true. However I did mention he has his celebrity green credentials, add to that the original article was written in the Guardian so presumably this was written for the metropolitan elite, not those of us in the real world. Given all that, despite mentioning hydrogen, it is a remarkably sane article, or as sane as the metropolitan elite can get.
Rail Engineer magazine in the UK looked at Scotland’s plans to develop hydrogen powered trains
“Transport by road in hydrogen tube tankers carries about 1 tonne of hydrogen which is 130bn joules of energy. In contrast a diesel tanker typically carries 40,000 litres of diesel which is 1800bn joules. Hence if hydrogen was not produced on site, a depot wth a hydrogen fleet would require 14 times as many road tanker deliveries than one with with the same sized diesel fleet to fuel their trains”
Now imagine all the hydrogen deliveries that would be required to maintain thousands of hydrogen vehicle refuelling stations
https://www.railengineer.co.uk/scotlands-hydrogen-train-supporting-the-hydrogen-economy/
Quote contains mixed units of tonnes and litres and no way to convert for comparison.
1 liter=1000cc=0.8508 kg diesel.(about 2lb) 40k liters is 34,302kg or 34.3 metric tonnes. So the diesel tanker carries 34/35 times as much mass, but only 14 times as much energy.
Sunlight>wind>turbines>distribution>charging stations>EV travel.
Wind>sails on vehicles>Free travel
Which is simpler?
Both are about as practical and reliable. /sarc
Someone has actually tried an experiment
Marconi rig landsailers are fun on a dry lakebed. They do not fare well on the road, even when the road is next to the lake.
If it were possible to deliver power to a moving vehicle from outside, EVs would be great, even if you were generating electricity from fossil fuels, as this eliminates widely spread particulates you have from on-board liquid carbon fuels. A below ground in a slot, or less desirable, overhead trolley conductor, or drive through stationary field coils.
Some imaginative system would be required to allow for individual choice (pulling over for a burger, interchanges etc., etc.
“A below ground in a slot, or less desirable, overhead trolley conductor,
Both been done for years in public transport …
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.tT2SkDClzTH3Rgh8OAkNrQAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=1e86d762f667a2f8d432026f14f10707a0223322d316e9ebaacc7dda0a340940&ipo=images
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.explicit.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.rmmXxOHltP3Rm0uBTVhFQAHaEr%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=1e2025c83c67ce6ac481bbbb2618616541913d197ac387f4eee478d36981c372&ipo=images
… & rejected
Go & research why they were scraped.
“drive through stationary field coils”
Good luck with that if you have a pacemaker !!!
Why not put wheels on a big crystal radio? 😎
Sunrace solar car competition was not new when I went to engineering school almost 30 years ago. School kids today are still making slightly better versions of the same ineffective solution raced by last year’s contestants – “slightly better versions” is a generous generality. Usually they’re counting on commercial electronics and material science advances for which they can claim no credit.
Electric motors are far superior to internal combustion engines. They’re more efficient, lighter, simpler to manufacture and maintain, and produce more power and torque per kilo. But they run on electricity. Electricity storage in batteries is inefficient and expensive and they’re heavy. The practical compromise based on current technology is hybrid motors with an internal combustion engine to generate electricity, modest batteries to store electricity, and electric motor(s) to charge them. Despite our knee-jerk reaction to mindless governing elites imposing as yet impractical non-fossil-fuel infrastructures instead of letting the market make those changes as they become cost-effective or practical, we still need to consider the reality that a fossil fuel economy is not going to last forever.
Predictions about “peak oil” have failed since the doomsayers started screeching about it during the 1973 OPEC oil embargo over support for Israel in the 1973 war against Egypt and Syria. Since then, technological improvements have opened up vast new reserves and improved the efficiency of fossil fuel consumption. But the global population and oil consumption have doubled since 1973. It may increase another 25% before it peaks. Unless we discover that fossil fuel deposits are being created naturally fast enough to satisfy current consumption levels for transportation, we will have to eventually figure out a way to package up energy ourselves as efficiently as petrol stores it instead of drilling for it, perhaps sometime in the next 40 years or so according to many projections.
That probably means “storing” energy in manmade hydrocarbons. That’s not as easy or efficient as extracting it from the ground, but so far seems more practical than batteries and hydrogen. In the coming decades we will probably not be able to just burn what mother nature has serendipitously created for us over millions of years. We will have to create our own stored energy in processes that realistically will be powered by nuclear reactors when we get over the mindless resistance to them. One thing is certain, the dimwits who are our governing elites are the least qualified to make those decisions. The entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers working on the problem are the ones who will get us there.
Unless, as noted above, we discover that the Earth creates reserves as fast as we can consume them, which seems unlikely.
“ we still need to consider the reality that a fossil fuel economy is not going to last forever.”
Why not? “forever” is only meaningful to each individual, while the individual is still living…. besides which, HUGE possible ‘fields’ are being discovered almost daily. In addition to this fact, isn’t “biotic oil” still in the “possible/probable”?
Not sure what you mean by HUGE “possible” fields but actual oil discoveries have not replaced oil consumed in a year in more than a decade.
The day that nuclear energy is accepted over wind and solar, I will trade my BMW coupe for an electric model. Until then I will enjoy the rush of a powerful ICE car.
I’ll still keep my ICE car, thanks. The problems with range, charge times and spontaneous combustion aren’t going away if they get more intelligent about providing reliable, affordable electricity.
Stinkerp,
what you say about electric motors and storage is true but then you need to factor in the generation, transmission and distribution of the electricity to the consumer. There is a lot of energy required and lost before the consumer uses it.
There is much to be said of the efficiency of burning the fuel at the point of use rather than remotely as in evs and heat pumps.
“The practical compromise based on current technology is hybrid motors with an internal combustion engine to generate electricity, modest batteries to store electricity, and electric motor(s) to charge them.”
Maybe you didn’t read the entire comment?
“…mindless governing elites…”
Is that a three-way oxymoron?
Triple tautology?
“Electric motors are far superior to internal combustion engines.”
Okay. Remove all subsidies and watch them win.
A masters in EE control systems?!
I have a B.S. in EE. I took a 400 level class in control systems. That was a very difficult class. Sparse matrices of partial differential equations, linear algebra, a bit of chaos theory… all mixed together. I was thrilled to have gotten a “C” and managed to pass, but OMG.
He is definately very bright. A genius at playing the fool. The greens will now try to cancel him but I doubt they can. He may even be a happy sign of the times coming.
The idea that incompetent people achieve great success is illogical. Like “unattractive” tv actresses are fashion magazine models with pretend thick glasses and a bad haircuts, super-successful singers, actors or politicians (or their parents) have what the market wants. Mr Bean delivered whatever weirdness his demographic wanted from him, which apparently involved acting like a dummy.
“My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems.”
This means he know jack shit about power engineering. I am a mechanical engineer and often refer to what happens to the electricity after we make it as PFM (sailor slang pure F ,magic).
Cell phones and PC have been called disruptive technology and use tiny amounts of power (30 watts for I am typing on).
I have often heard that EV are also a disruptive technology and will penetrate the market like cells phones and PC.
EV have been around for more than 100 years. Not disruptive!
The reason is the need for power. I have 4 golf cart batteries in my motor home that supplies my power needs for a day (1200 watt-hours) except for air conditioning.
The batteries are very heavy. Gasoline for charging batteries is light (1/3 gallon per day.). I can charge my batteries with gasoline, propane, or diesel.
Weight is very important because of tires. I have a GVWR. I can carry 90 gallons of diesel fuel, 30 gallons of propane, and 730 pounds of water. With careful planning I can go camping without electricity or water hookups for about 4 weeks without overloading tires.
I also take a precaution of going to a scales so I can properly inflate my tires.
Bottom line is that storing energy in a battery is inefficient and compounded by additional weight.
I am waiting to see how BEV would be better for the environment. At least in the US, we have cleaned up the air so that part is already done.
.
“Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions”
Yuh, as long as you forget about the fossil fuel used to produce the electricity- regardless, so what- no great accomplishment to end producing that wonderful plant food, CO2!
No doubt he earns a lot more than most of us- so he can afford an electric car. I might buy one too if I had that kind of money- but I don’t- most people don’t- so forcing everyone to buy one is going to piss a lot of people off. I wouldn’t be surprised most people in western nations still don’t get it. They might have heard about net zero- but it won’t sink in until the day comes they need a new car and they look at the prices. Just that alone- never mind all the other negative features. They won’t go broke buying one just to “save the planet” because the “commoners” now that’s bullshit. That’s when they’ll be a big sale on pitchforks.
I think affordability is supposed to come before mandates. The promise of a future market could enable cost-downs. Its would be a shame if the design and manufacture doesn’t employ many Westerners.
You know, I am still driving mom’s 2000 ICE Honda, with no intent to give it up. If it was an EV, I would have tossed it years ago, because I would not have bought a new battery system. Gets 35 miles per gallon, and costs little to keep going. I don’t begrudge anyone their belief system, but don’t insist I hold to it.
I have a 1994 Ford 150, a 2004 Buick, and even a 1985 Chev. K4… all still ‘doing the job’ in our mountains … why would I want a vehicle lasting only 10 or 12 years, and costing much more?
EVs are the Tupperware equivalent. Just throw them away when the color fades 😀
Except real Tupperware lasts forever, faded or not. We have some that’s coming onto 50 years old and they still do their job. No EV will be able to truthfully say the same.
EVs are more like the cheap plastic containers your take out comes in.
Please don’t insult all my cheap black plastic Chinese food take-out containers, that I’ve collected over the past decade and regularly nuke the hell out of them reheating my food. Waste not, want not.
Water vapor is the big greenhouse gas. Taking seawater, separating out the H2, and then burning it, is going to increase water vapor and cause greenhouse warming.
Golly.
Since EV’s mainly run on fossil fuels, no way they are better for the environment than ICE’s.
… assuming power generation does not change
Not assuming anything. Currently, most electricity comes from fossil fuel. EV’s are an environmental disaster at present. That MIGHT chance in years to come, but, we only have 10 years to save the climate.
Why does nobody mention lorries? Huge Danish artic full of bacon just rolled past. Electrify that! You must be joking or a lefty
The lorries will have to go vegan. Solved!
Look for a story about Scotland’s brand new electric HGV. They’re not joking.
The batteries for a full sized tractor trailer truck in the US weigh 16,000 lbs, I have been told.
And who doesn’t love an electric bus?
Most of the public busses here in Atlanta run on CNG (compressed natural gas), so the pollution reduction benefit of electric ones would be minimal.
Meanwhile, the Biden maladministration has allocated $1 billion USD to promote electric school busses, a paltry fraction of the eventual cost.
Most of the benefits of battery electric vehicles can be had with current hybrid drives at a fraction of the cost and no additional supporting infrastructure required.
“$1 billion USD to promote” Wow. The word promote sure jumps out. 1000 million-dollar salaries…
How about a comedy skit in which an EV driver is forced to pull off the highway with a dead battery only to hitchhike with more EV drivers and failing cars on the side of the road in a string of mishaps. The scene can end with a field of cars waiting in lines for a few charging stations and tow trucks.
Good Super Bowl commercial idea for Ford F150 et al.
There is a compact and efficient way of storing energy in a vehicle. It’s called a ‘petrol tank’.
Mr Atkinson foresaw the alarmist tendency to fail in this sketch perhaps?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-hJQ18S6aag
I’m just glad he’s getting there. There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner etcetera…
Perhaps he still needs to watch Obama’s statement about future electricity prices.
Rowan, this is the intention everywhere such people operate:
There is, see this–.
Brilliantlightandpower is now at the stage or organising manufacturing and supply facilities. It runs on the Suncell which they have invented, tested and proved. That follows from the search for cold fusion which did not suceed but found a way of producing energy from hydrogen nevertheless. In recent years years they discovered that the combination of hydrogen, a metal catalyst, a plasma and a further controlled voltage through the plasma worked. That was reported by experimenters world wide. The sharing reminds me of the early days of computers.
BLP are seemingly the most advanced and have put in $120M and 20 years to date. They expect to be in the market within 12 months. For those who are curious their website has amazing detail showing design and test results. brilliantlightpower.com
So where are the independant observers or trained physicists who have replicated this apparent breakthrough in physics? Something doesn’t feel quite right about this.