I love electric vehicles – and was early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped (opens in new tab)

  >Atkinson is a pretty heavyweight knowledgeable car guy and as he says in the article has a university degree in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems.

Apparently none of that stopped him from thinking that cars get thrown in the crusher after the first owner is done.

FTA:

  >Currently, on average we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on, driven mainly by the ubiquitous three-year leasing model. This seems an outrageously profligate use of the world’s natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in. ... It’s sobering to think that if the first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced.

Far from "vastly reducing" CO2, duration of first ownership has almost no effect. Total vehicle lifespan (not just the first owner) is what actually has a huge effect on lifecycle CO2.

With such a glaring and elementary logic error, it's impossible to take anything Atkinson writes seriously.[0]

Besides that, all his points are just regurgitating the same tired anti-EV talking points we've been hearing for 15+ years now:

"Hydrogen is right around the corner!" (please ignore how the unavoidably terrible thermodynamic efficiency causes unavoidably terrible per-mile economics)

"Or e-gas!" (ditto)

"Or combustion hydrogen!" (even harder ditto)

"Batteries have some problems, don't you know?" (Nirvana Fallacy; nothing's perfect, but batteries are already better than the alternatives and improving fast)

"Batteries are improving fast so we shouldn't make EVs yet." (why do you think EV battery technology is improving so fast?)

The "support" for these claims is invariably cherry-picked, like the fact that manufacturing emissions are 70% greater, while ignoring the fact that EVs more than pay this back in reduced operating emissions (meaning EVs have lower total lifecycle emissions overall).

So like I said, nothing beyond an extremely typical hydrogen puff piece, which are always (and always have been) just anti-EV puff pieces in disguise.

[0] to be fair, perhaps Atkinson actually knows this and he is 'just' making his argument disingenuously; in that case his word has even less credibility

> I think the problem with some BEV owners, (probably due to the endless virtue signalling high pressure guilt sales models) is their almost complete lack of understanding of the issues Atkinson discussed here, or in some cases an almost wilful refusal to accept basic logic, physics and alternatives.

Thank you for pointing this out. It is so tiresome to see repeated "You should charge at home". But what if you can't charge at home? Like 50% of people in EU living in apartments can't charge at home? Let's just ignore this glaring issue with BEV?

What about the issue that charging outside of home is equally or more expensive than taking gas, but on top of that you are wasting much more of your own time in order to facilitate charging.

And let's not forget on unique application for almost each charger stall and each app has uniquely crap UX. Why do I even need an app? Why isn't there contactless/NFC payment terminal? Vending machines have them, why charging stalls don't?

Jaguar recalling vehicles because they got the electrical system wrong is nothing new, it’s been like that since at least the 70s.

Surely someone buys them just because they are fun drives. I can’t be the only one.

I’d put Rowan Atkinson squarely in the car enthusiast/gear head category.