Atkinson's article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electr...
He then says (no citation) that EV batteries "last only upward of" 10 years, the strange phrasing because British tabloids are shy about actually telling a provable lie. Atkinson knows EV batteries last longer than 10 years, but he wants to make it sound like they don't.
He trots out the usual parade of distractions: solid state batteries, hydrogen, and (least practical of all) e-fuel. The obvious implication is that we shouldn't invest in workable EVs now, instead better to wait for some (supposedly) perfect technology someday in the future. Classic 'kick the can down the road.'
Using older cars longer sounds good, but eventually it's like an old fridge: more expensive to operate (and dirtier) than replacing it with a newer model. Atkinson never mentions the fraction of pollution that comes from operation vs manufacturing, conveniently pretending the manufacturing is all that matters.
He also gives an extremely silly argument that confuses using a car for three years and "selling it on" (ie reselling it used) with junking a car after three years.
All in all, I expected more from a nation-duping article.
[0] https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1332464525602410498
What's EV batteries secret sauce then? Extensive over-provisioning? I'm under the impression that pretty much all battery cells used in consumer stuff will wear out after a decade or less of use, and will be much diminished from rated capacity, even if they still technically function. And I'd imagine EV batteries are almost always stored rougher environment, not in a climate-controlled room like most people's stuff.
The 'exception that proves the rule' is the 1st gen Leaf, which had passive thermal control and poor longevity.
EV batteries are slightly over-provisioned (like most devices), but they also provide more tools to manage lifespan. I'm continually shocked how my Apple devices have no ability to limit charging to 80 or 90%. They're just constantly frying the battery.
That’s more complicated than “buy an electric car to save the planet!” but it’s less wrong.
His conclusion, in his words:
“Increasingly, I’m feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and that’s no bad thing: we’re realising that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created. We should keep developing hydrogen, as well as synthetic fuels to save the scrapping of older cars which still have so much to give, while simultaneously promoting a quite different business model for the car industry, in which we keep our new vehicles for longer, acknowledging their amazing but overlooked longevity.”
I met him and Ben Elton when they were on some kind of Brits abroad | wife hunting trip in the antipodes - Elton found himself a Jam Tart [1], Atkinson was chasing bigger game whom he once shared an organ with [2] and lucked out.
Many conversations about dinner tables were had and at least one book resulted [3]
But this was all very much in the early 1980s pre mega stardom days - R.A was introduced to me as an engineer rather than as a comedian.
[1] https://freotopia.org/music/jamtarts/index.html
[2] https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/persons/robyn-owen...
Then the author claims that cars are "fast fashion" items and seems to not understand the difference between leasing (renting) and owning. Those 3 year old cars are not sent to the junkyard after the lease expires, which the author sort of acknowledges while still insisting that passing your usable car to someone else in order to drive a new one is a terrible thing.
Then the implicit suggestion that we should keep old internal combustion cars around in hopes that someone might someday develop a practical synthetic fuel sometime in the future is just weird, even if it might have some validity simply due to the environmental cost of building a new car, but is really just unsupported opinion.
It finally closes by recommending that people should simply continue driving their dirty old smoker cars unless "they do a lot of city centre motoring", but does not even mention public transit or bicycles.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/08/fact-che...