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....
Just to begin to Google the response:
ADDED: I made a "Rowan Atkinson" tag, then added it retrospectively. That was easy, because there were only 2 old posts containing his name. One, from 2021, included him only most minimally, I just said that somebody in a movie looked like Pete Buttigieg, "and Meade said take Pete Buttigieg and add Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson)."
In the comments, Tina Trent wrote: "You are not supposed to mention Mr. Bean. Rowan Atkinson has been cancelled."
What was that all about? I'm not an enthusiast of cancel culture, so I'm not making an effort to remember everyone who's been cancelled and why. I tried to research it and all I found was that he's been critical of cancel culture:
In January 2021, Atkinson criticised the rise of cancel culture. He said, "It's important that we're exposed to a wide spectrum of opinion, but what we have now is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob, roaming the streets looking for someone to burn. The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends up creating a simplistic, binary view of society. It becomes a case of either you're with us or against us. And if you're against us, you deserve to be 'cancelled'."
पोस्ट्स
८५ टिप्पण्या:
He is not wrong. I also have an engineering background, and the math just doesn't work out. Even if all electric power is from nukes, there is more pollution and carbon generated from manufacturing and power distribution than can be offset by the vehicles' use. Then, consider the replacement of batteries, if possible.
He’s a well known car aficionado, which gives him authority on the subject. And he enthusiastically adopted the green idea and now he’s being honest about how the whole gree nude eel has been hugely oversold and cannot fulfill the promise.
Ramaswamy is right: the organic demand isn't there. It is subsidized demand, and a mandate from govt and the auto mfgs from on high on the supply side. None of it is organic, and the technology will probably be there by 2050, but it certainly isn't there now.
Like most people I don't have a problem with electric vehicles if they provided the same functionality as an auto. They don't. Not even close. I wouldn't purchase an EV even if 50%+ of the supplier cost was subsidized as a pass-through to me.
Also, I will be refusing to buy any new vehicle after 2026. Looks like used cars from here on out.
Many, many people have long said that electric cars are a scam. But propaganda. But eco-ideological messaging. One must mine tons of minerals for batteries, one must generate electricity (i.e., coal, nuclear, or natural gas) to charge them because renewables (e.g., wind, solar, tidal) can't begin to replace fossil fuels today. One must drag around tons of heavy batteries as they go flat. One must deal with battery chemical hazards, etc.
* Toyota has long advocated hybrid vehicles and remained skeptical of pure electric vehicles:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/13/why-toyota-the-worlds-largest-automaker-isnt-all-in-on-evs.html
* The Youtuber "Rich Rebuilds" made his reputation from electric cars, but then soured on them by 2020:
https://insideevs.com/features/408425/rich-rebuilds-discusses-leaving-electric-vehicles/
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a33660589/rich-benoit-tesla-rich-rebuilds/
---
The near-term (100 year) future of humanity is highly dependent on fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels billions of people will die. With a slow fade over 100 years we might either develop better technology or reduce population growth rates (in the tropical region) and avoid a de facto genocide.
"Who cares what a comedian says?"
What's the relevance of his being a comedian? The topic seems to be electric cars, it might make more sense to address his arguments on that subject.
EVs will exist in that profitable-to-own niche as long as 80-90% of transportation road miles are still run using gasoline/diesel. Once they reach greater than 20% penetration, the cost of charging them is going to go up, and continue to go up as that percent of EV usage climbs.
It isn't enough to say that EVs can be charged overnight while electricity rates are low- this only will apply is very few people are charging EVs overnight. Once 20% of the car owners are doing so, that overnight power won't be nearly as cheap.
Omigosh! Atkison has jumped the silo. Now I will have to take Mr. Bean off my favorites list. Quick! I must go to the journalistas reaction before my mind starts to broaden.
Always a mistake to use facts and logic when discussing a progressive object of worship.
They are luxury virtue signaling products. Of dubious benefit to the environment even if u believe in the climate change religion. They are too expensive, have uncertain maintenance costs and who wants to sit around a charging station during a road trip? Our next car may be a hybrid if they lower the price spread from the gas model, just so I don't have to gas up as much. We do most of our travelling to see family in a blue state and I think charging and gas stations are going to be crowded in the future.
The CO2 based climate "change" crisis is manufactured so the elites can screw us over.
Many may be surprised to know that electric cars are not new. In fact, their existence goes back far enough that Henry Ford's Model T helped kill them off.
Electric cars draw power from the grid which uses coal and oil-fired generators to keep the grid going. So EVs were never a way of getting off coal and oil. Moreover, the country doesn't have the capacity to charge millions of EVs even if we continue to use oil and gas generators. So, EVs can be a good option for a limited group but trying to force the country to adopt electric cars which on a country-wide scale the country won't be able to keep charged is just one of those pieces of deadly and stupid incompetence you find when DEI controls promotions and a senile man to whom nothing can be explained is President
Blood Cobalt: The Congo's Dangerous and Deadly Green Energy Mines - Foreign Correspondent - ABC News
ABC(D) news goes off script? wow.
That is an impressive link tower!
Mr. Bean is correct, of course. An electric car is only as clean as whatever produced the electricity. An electrical car charged by a coal power plant is a coal powered car. And that's just the start of the problems when it comes to widespread deployment. The batteries are toxic and it is going to be a major effort to recycle the things once they start failing in large quantities. We are heavily dependent on China for raw materials to make the batteries. The cars have short ranges and significant charge times, so they are impractical for many scenarios. Perhaps most importantly, the amount of additional electricity required to replace all the gasoline cars is massive, and unreliable wind and solar power cannot sustain a decent power grid now, much less with that additional strain. This has all the signs of a complete disaster.
Of course, the politicians don't care. A good portion of them are religious zealots that don't care what the fallout will be, and probably think it a good thing for the human beings to suffer for their sins. Another good portion are psychopaths who will personally benefit from this and don't care how many people they harm. The proles cannot afford cars?
What does that matter? The rest are idiots.
If we go forward with this, the results are going to be very ugly.
Only RacistFacistHomophobes question the desirability, necessity, and overall wonderfulness of EVs.
Well said, Rowan. So for daring to speak the truth....
One clear advantage of EVs is recovering some of the braking and downhill energy. Somewhat offset by the extra mass (batteries) to be carried about.
But clearly if every ICE vehicle were at once replaced by an EV, there is nowhere near the electric generating capacity and distribution grid required.
And the economic and environmental cost of finding, mining, handling, etc. the Lithium and other scarce materials required.
Thorium salt based standardized nuke plants would do much to improve the world's overall energy budget, methinks. Not only immune from daily fluctuations of daily solar and wind, but also from the longer cycles of oil and gas production and pricing.
"My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems. "
And yet you didn't do the math. If you had just done the math you would know the technology is just not there yet.
Not only in the range of the electric vehicles, ability to operate them in the cold, in the ability to generate enough electricity to charge them, finding charging stations, but also the tech to dispose of the batteries once they are worn out!!!
You see my degree was in business and computer science... and the bottom line matters.
The job of much online media is to link to and report on online media. It's part of the Circular Economy.
A circular economy (also referred to as circularity or CE) is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible.
Wikipedia
So much material, so little time. The "debunkers" need to be debunked. I did not read all of them, but the ones I did missed Blackadder's points. You can't correct someone if you don't even know what they are saying.
1. He does not say Electric cars are worthless, he says they are not ready yet.
2. The article that says the emissions curve crosses over at 21000 KM assumes that the electricity comes from pixy dust rather than from coal fired plants or other non-emissions-free sources.
3. The whole discussion of buying a car every three years is dumb. It makes the assumption that the 3 year old cars are scrapped upon replacement. How long the original owner keeps a care is irrelevant to the live of the car as many people (like me) love buying those 3 year old cars and then driving them for 15 or more years later and then selling them to some person who wants a very cheap older car to save money. A guy could cycle his cars every week and it would not matter. The question is, are cars being scrapped while they have useful life? Well, we did that with cash for clunkers once upon a time.
4. (through about 10) No time.
Anyway, all kinds of disinformation going on here. Maybe we should create a department of truth to deal with the fake news. Someone tell the twitter shadow-banners to prevent these things from being shared!
EVs are only possible because of federal income tax credits.
Lincoln just told EVs owners not to park their EVs in their garage as they might catch fire even when not running. That's a problem.
Electric cars are like climate change--inconvenient facts never lead to a reassessment of the situation, they lead to a circling of the wagons and a defense of the orthodoxy.
I had an argument on twitter once with a columnist for the Toronto Star who was promoting subsidies for EVs, which I characterized as welfare for the rich. People rallied to his defense, arguing that over the life of the car, EVs are cheaper. When I objected to them basing their entire argument on imaginary future savings, they had nothing to say. Not one admitted I was right, but they had nothing to counter it either.
And so it goes. Black Adder will win himself no new fans among the smart set, but he is right.
If he had spoke about the complexity of nuclear energy at an industry awards ceremony, we would hear how stunning and brave he is to speak out. His degrees would be used as examples of how much he knows about electrical generation. Instead, he spoke about his lived experience, which didn’t fit the narrative.
It's not about facts.
electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be....
How does one acquire an engineering degree without understanding calculus, and physics?
Rowan Atkinson is one of the greatest British Comedians. Just like Ricky Gervais, does self depreciating humor extremely well. I believe both are very intelligent.
I would hold the opinion on either of these comedians above a whole bunch of so-called scientists, any day.
The cost/benefit of adopting EVs is a matter of contention. We can say with certainty that EVs emit less air pollution than gas powered vehicles. But lithium-ion batteries, the kind that power almost all EVs, use minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite. The polluting effects, and the human costs, of extraction, processing, manufacturing, distribution, and ultimate waste disposition of minerals such as that impose enormous costs that are often ignored.
I"d see the EV more as a source of electricity in your garage when the power goes out, for running vital things like sump pumps and computers.
“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious,” -- Orwell
The value of EVs is in shared/shifted environmental hazards from conception to sequestration, a Green solution notable for the assertion of CO2 as a pollutant, and carbon as a forward-looking health risk.
I've owned a 2002 Prius and a 2008 Camry Hybrid. Both cars were great, though a bad seal on the Camry's moonroof resulted in the insurance company totalling the car for water damage.
I was hoping that hybrids or fuel cell cars would be the wave of the future. Purely electric/battery powered vehicles just never made sense to me.
The idea that electrical vehicles are more environmentally friendly is so dubious that he should be embarrassed to mention his credentials. I’d have more respect for someone without any science background who fell for it than someone who had matriculated in electrical engineering. Where in the world did he think the energy was coming from?
It's a full-court press by the Press !
Environmentalists used to say that everyone should "act locally and think globally."
https://simplicable.com/new/think-global-act-local
If you take the time to think globally about many of the "green technologies", you'll find they're terrible from a global perspective. We obtain many of the rare earth elements needed by these technologies from countries that don't really care about how environmentally nasty their extraction techniques are.
Is there anyone left that actually cares what the facts are, or do we only listen to the fantasies?
JournoList is alive and well.
Where does the electricity come from? Coal? NG? Oil? Nukes? Space solar? Windmills? Solar farms?
Why not convert our trains to external electric if it slis such a great idea? A lot easier than converting the auto fleet.
John LGBTQ Henry
"it’s a complete non-starter for trucks"
This won't change for decades. Therefore, the choice will be between green zealotry and efficient transportation.
Of course the supposed emission superiority of EVs depends on many assumptions, many of which are necessarily uncertain--the emission profile of future mining, the long-term use and recyclability of batteries, the energy sources of local power systems, etc. Even if they reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the long run, the further question is: how much and with what benefit--i.e., does the humungous cost of the transition produce an equivalent advance in human well-being?
Mason G said...What's the relevance of his being a comedian? The topic seems to be electric cars, it might make more sense to address his arguments on that subject.
The relevance is that, like with actors and rock stars, his access to a microphone is not based on his scientific acumen, so it has to be established independently from the reach of his voice.
Rowan Atkinson has been a modest leader in the fight for free speech in Britain for many years. Here is one speech to "ReformSection5," under which police were instructed to arrest people for mere speech acts deemed by authorities to be "insulting" to others -- and thousands were arrested. He observes that he is too beloved a public figure to fear such repression from the government, so he is speaking for those who are not protected by identity or fame:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xUezfuy8Qpc (Rowan Atkinson on Free Speech)
God bless Mr. Bean. He pulled that turkey of "hate speech" laws off his nation's head and dispatched of it (at least temporarily) with the most stirring defense in modern memory.
Michael Moore Presents: Planet of the Humans
Watch the documentation of energy production from recovery to reclamation, stay for the human "burden"... uh, burden on the Earth if you like.
Toyota has long advocated hybrid vehicles and remained skeptical of pure electric vehicles:
A hybrid design (e.g. electric and gas) is optimally versatile, more efficient, and sufficiently reliable in variable contexts, if more complex in design and manufacturing.
It sounds like he enjoys novelty, and possesses sufficient capital, which may have delayed acknowledgement of tangential issues. There is an advisory, warning, really, in engineering: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
For a trained electrical, electronic and control systems engineer, Rowan Atkinson is stupid. Scientific American, when it was still a reputable science magazine, did a story about the end-to-end efficiencies of an electric vehicle vs. a gasoline car. There are so many losses in power, from the power plant, transmission lines, battery storage and finally electric motor efficiencies. Electric vehicles are no more efficient than gasoline cars, plus the fact they're heavier and cost more.
Pure EVs are not ideal vehicles. They take too long to charge, the battery power suffers greatly in cold weather due to battery chemistry and power required to heat the cabin. A gasoline car uses waste heat to heat the cabin and gasoline still burns in cold weather.
He should have known that the energy density for EVs is much less than gasoline. Breaking chemical bonds releases far more energy than charging the electrolyte in a battery. An electric vehicle that weighed the same as a gasoline car would have a far smaller range than a gas car.
I will note this is another Streisand Effect event by the media.
You can TELL that people LOVE and ADORE electric mobiles.
How can you tell?
The government provides a subsidy
There are NO road use taxes
You get to use the Carpool lanes.
SOON, the law will REQUIRE their purchase
Nothing says Love and Adore, like having to be paid to use something
Well, SOMETHING says Love and Adore.. Even More! and that's Being REQUIRED to use something
"EVs will exist in that profitable-to-own niche as long as 80-90% of transportation road miles are still run using gasoline/diesel. Once they reach greater than 20% penetration, the cost of charging them is going to go up, and continue to go up as that percent of EV usage climbs."
The industry standard for cost of charging an EV is 4x the residential electricity rate per kw/hr of the locality where the station is based. In some places, that is incredibly low, meaning a full charge from let's say 10% is going to cost you as much or less than the cost of one gallon at a gas station. In other places, like CA, it's going to cost you as much as $2-3 kw/hr, maybe more, meaning whatever savings in gas you thought it was getting you are already eroding...significantly.
In that sense it would be very similar to a Giffen Good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good), but only for a little while until stabilization occurs. At no point in this entire conversation is the implicit realization that electrical generation rates would have to increase to accommodate even a 20% rise in EVs on the roads. And - what a shocker - renewables wouldn't be even close to meeting that demand.
Electric vehicles, charged at EV charging stations, for almost as much as you paid for gas, powered by more coal and oil, for environmental signaling, subsidized by carbon credits and offsets financed and corporate level, and ultimately seeded by your tax dollars. Efficient!
I heard or read that EVs were twice as heavy as gas cars due to the batteries. If true then wouldn't that impact the capacity loads on bridges and multi level garages? I'm not an engineer so i'm just wondering.
As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible.
Anyone remember "Cash for Clunkers"?
Read the article and I'm struggling to see the issue with it. If you care about the environment, particularly related to climate, you should be well aware of all sources of emissions from raw material to manufacturing to operations to disposal. This year, I test drove a few EV models and asked a few questions about performance, particularly range. The answers to my questions told me what Rowan says in the article; EVs are not ready for extensive use. They are still for early adaptors (much like Apple products).
"the battery power suffers greatly in cold weather due to battery chemistry and power required to heat the cabin."
I know how I would inevitably deal with this deficiency; I wouldn't heat the cabin. I'd put on a lot of warm clothes and drive around like an icicle. I'm really looking forward to that (not).
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recently published a fairly lengthy series of articles, The EV Transition Explained that goes into some detail about the many things involved in getting rid of internal combustion engines.
Despite the author being apparently all in on Climate Catastrophe (he asserts that we will have to learn to travel less, eat less meat, widen our comfort zone for house temps, etc), he does bring up some real issues:
- The local distribution transformers have a service life of about 20 years. But add the load of charging EV's, and their lifetime goes down to about 3 years.
- There won't be nearly enough charging stations in the time frame allowed.
- Advanced load management upgrades are required down to the local level.
- Range limitations make most consumers very resistant to EVs.
- Total Cost of Ownership is very dependent upon electricity prices.
Lots more in the series. Here are a few things left mostly untouched:
- Average vehicle weight will increase by about 1,000 pounds. Parking garages will have to greatly reduce capacity to maintain structural reserves. Also, pavement longevity will be greatly reduced.
- An EV similar to an ICE costs about $10,000 more. How long will batteries last before range goes down sufficiently to require replacement?
- Replacing an EV battery is very expensive. — about three times the cost of a rebuilt ICE. EV advocates talk about much lower maintenance costs. To a certain extent, that is true. However, modern ICE's require little more than regular oil changes, plus spark plugs and drive belts at about 100,000 miles, and the engines are good for about 220,000 miles. The ICE maintenance costs don't come close to covering the price differential with EV's.
- About weight. Is this a good time to bring up tires?
Then there is more prosaic stuff. Highway gas station forecourts typically can serve 12 vehicles at a time, with an at-pump period of 10 minutes (high estimate, but an easy number to work with). That ten minutes gets more than 400 miles range on my sedan. The fastest available chargers add 200 miles in 30 minutes..
Ignoring the limitations that battery life considerations place upon charging rates and range — and that is some significant ignoring — service station forecourts will need 144 chargers to not impose additional wait times beyond the hour+ required to charge the battery.
EV's, outside of use scenarios limited to white liberal women, are losers. No one would be considering them if they weren't being shoved down our throats sideways.
but also the tech to dispose of the batteries once they are worn out!!!
Tesla recycles theirs into megapacks for energy storage.
An electric car is only as clean as whatever produced the electricity.
Yep my home state of Califuckedyouovia is running a huge scam using the bordering states in which we claim the moral high ground while using their coal-fired electricity to power our Teslas. Ironically (not really) the new "rules" here force power companies to prioritize wind and solar, so we are forced to pay for that BS power at exorbitant rates during the day while we ship our "excess" legacy (mostly natural gas) electricity back out of state for other states to use cheaply during peak midday times. Zero carbon - net zero = biggest scam in history.
All that is needed to be said: EVs are hard on the pocketbook and are completely unnecessary. Discontinuing carbon-fueled vehicles is a far more serious economic adventure than eliminating buggy whips.
Lincoln just told EVs owners not to park their EVs in their garage as they might catch fire even when not running. That's a problem
If they are submerged in a big puddle or flash flood they catch fire. If the battery is damaged in a collision they catch fire. When they catch fire it takes 3000+ gallons of water to put them out and they burn so hot other things catch fire. (This is the same reason laptops are screened carefully when flying and LI batteries cannot be shipped air except by UPS with special packaging.) Also many models have an integral battery like the old unibody cars, which means they can't be replaced. When they no longer charge the whole car is scrap. Ditto some models that can't accept bodywork: got a fender bender? You are SOL and need a whole new car.
Cars like THAT are only suitable for the super-rich who actually want to waste money.
Dave Begley said "Lincoln just told EVs owners not to park their EVs in their garage as theymight catch fire even when not running. That's a problem." That's a bit strange since Lincoln doesn't sell any EV's.
It's been over 100 years since the petroleum revolution began, and it's been going on for so long that its ubiquitous quality, permeating our modern economy through and through, has rendered it invisible to human perception. Hydrocarbon energy has a thumbprint in, quite literally, every single thing that we touch, consume, or are made aware of, every second of every day.
The angst over the supposed Climate Doom cloud that hangs over us is ridiculous when one considers the practical solutions. We could eliminate about 25% of our worldwide hydrocarbon consumption with one completely-achievable solution: Replace electrical power generation by coal, oil, and gas with nuclear plants. 25%! Come on, UN IPCC ,tell us how long it will take according to your plan of projected misery and a lifestyle of 'doing without'.
Once construction is finished on a nuclear plant, the power generation is almost carbon-free from then on. Are we doing that? No. The focus is on harassing consumers in First-world countries that have already made huge strides in their environmental goals - not all of them good. And why would the harassment be focused on societies like us? Because we're the easiest to bully, to smack around and manipulate with regulations. The rest of the world just says, 'F*ck off', and rightfully so.
Good to see nuclear power gaining ground in popularity, but: Faster, please.
The cost/benefit of adopting EVs is a matter of contention. We can say with certainty that EVs emit less air pollution than gas powered vehicles
This staement is only true if the entire life cycle is ignored and the problem of charging batteries, which are far less dense carriers of energy than gasoline, is left out of the equation. In the real world the inputs to manufacturing are important and the displaced pollution is still happening somewhere to create the inefficient electricity to power the EV. That the emissions aren't from a tailpipe (and are therefore very much "dirtier" than ICE emissions) is a factor few are taking into consideration when pushing the all-electric option. It is the height of arrogance to expect others to endure power plant pollution so we Californians can drive "emission free" vehicles. It's a myth. There are no emission free vehicles.
The Model T killed off the first wave of electric cars because those EVs were impractical, just as EVs are impractical now for people who live in mountainous areas, or cold climates, and who rely on their cars to be there as and when needed. If you live in a place like San Diego, you can sneer at those living in the Adirondacks, maybe, or in Idaho, who need to get around no matter what the conditions.
"Even if all electric power is from nukes, there is more pollution and carbon generated from manufacturing and power distribution..."
???
Mr Sheufelt, I think Dave Begley was talking about the city of Lincoln, Nebraska and not Lincoln the automaker.
"No one would be considering them if they weren't being shoved down our throats sideways."
You don't need to be an electrical engineer to recognize that paying people to make and buy a product while outlawing the competition is a sure sign you're looking at a "Not Ready For Primetime" product.
Two points: EVs make sense in areas where a person doesn't have to worry about needing a lot of range; here in the NYC metro area people routinely have "station cars" that effectively never travel more than 20 miles a day.
Also Without fossil fuels billions of people will die is starting to look like not so much a bug but a feature for a certain type of intellectual; Paul Ehrlich has been wanking to to idea of "depopulation" since 1968. Immanentizing the Eschaton seems to be the end game for so many progressive projects.
A well maintained ICE vehicle, is an eco-friendly resident, with green benefits. Emit for a lush and viable world.
idea of "depopulation" since 1968. Immanentizing the Eschaton seems to be the end game for so many progressive projects
Planned Populationhood is a wicked but viable solution to the emission of excess carbon and climate change.
A whole lotta doth protesting
Who cares what a comedian says?
Yes, the only comedian we're supposed to take seriously is Zelenskyy.
“The near-term (100 year) future of humanity is highly dependent on fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels billions of people will die. With a slow fade over 100 years we might either develop better technology or reduce population growth rates (in the tropical region) and avoid a de facto genocide”.
At the minimum, population reduction is the goal. They’ll take genocide if they can get away with it.
Trivia - the Aston Martin he drove in Johnny English actually belonged to him.
Cancellation is a cultural thing? I didn’t realize we had a culture of forced sponsorship for people and things that didn’t suit you. Since when does everyone have an obligation to platform everyone who wants a platform? Is this blog “cancelling” jazz bands who’d like to use it to broadcast their shows?
Anyway, why would you quote the headline this guy made without giving any room to why he said it?
"Who cares what a comedian says?"
#2 on the Top Gear lap-time board, so I suspect he knows a bit about driving.
He can be more than one thing. Two even.
A Tesla Plaid goes 0 - 60 in 2.0 seconds. What do I care what you tiny dots in my rear view mirror think?
"A Tesla Plaid goes 0 - 60 in 2.0 seconds. What do I care what you tiny dots in my rear view mirror think?"
I have an idea. Let's do five laps of Spa. Sixteen miles or so. I'll match my Porsche Cayman S against your your $20,000 more expensive Plaid. Oh, and 1800 pounds heavier.
Paul said...
"My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems. "
"And yet you didn't do the math. If you had just done the math you would know the technology is just not there yet."
You're not a car guy. Car guys understand. All that torque. Yeah. I can see the attraction.
I think the Black Adder raced for awhile.
Puddin'
The subject is electric cars and the comedian and electrical engineer Rowan Atkinson.
If you're going to play with yourself do it somewhere else.
If you really want to help the environment, swallow your pride. Keep driving the old car. Toyota Camry, 1998. 240,000 miles. Still going.
"A Tesla Plaid goes 0 - 60 in 2.0 seconds. What do I care what you tiny dots in my rear view mirror think?"
The tale of the hare and tortoise. Wait, wait... Got free flowing electrons?
Come Tesla, come pit stop, waiting on charge.
"A Tesla Plaid goes 0 - 60 in 2.0 seconds. What do I care what you tiny dots in my rear view mirror think?"
Better idea. Same five laps of Spa, but in a more comparable car: BMW M340i. $35,000 cheaper, 1000 pounds less heavy.
Like most people I don't have a problem with electric vehicles if they provided the same functionality as an auto. They don't. Not even close. I wouldn't purchase an EV even if 50%+ of the supplier cost was subsidized as a pass-through to me.
I've been seriously considering buying a Tesla (as a second car). My purchase decision isn't based on environmental factors however, but the feature suite of the car electronics and the fact that it is upgrade-able.
Traditional car electronics suck. It's Windows 3.11 era interface. They are getting better, driven by market competition.
Conversely, Tesla interiors suck. It's like they were made in some hobbyist garage.
"A Tesla Plaid goes 0 - 60 in 2.0 seconds. What do I care what you tiny dots in my rear view mirror think?"
I tell you what, I will race you from NYC to LA, I will drive the gasoline powered car of your choice, as long as it is reliable enough to make the trip. No, you don't get to bring along a support vehicle with a generator.
"I tell you what, I will race you from NYC to LA, I will drive the gasoline powered car of your choice, as long as it is reliable enough to make the trip. No, you don't get to bring along a support vehicle with a generator."
$1,000 on Tim!
I didn’t realize we had a culture of forced sponsorship for people and things that didn’t suit you. - puddingtime (h/t primus)
How DARE you say this during PRIDE MONTH!
I'm slowly coming around to where you just might be a very smart parody account.
All that is needed to be said: EVs are hard on the pocketbook and are completely unnecessary. Discontinuing carbon-fueled vehicles is a far more serious economic adventure than eliminating buggy whips.
Gadfly, if only the bolded part of your comment were true. If only. But that statement was made, has been made for decades, and clearly it's NOT enough to stop the apparently inexorable march toward 200-mile range, comparing parking garages, and child miners in countries progressives don't care about. Hence all the other, equally true, critiques that we all trot out whenever possible - which are still not enough.
My son just bought a couple-of-years-old EV in California, just before moving to Seattle. He wanted to drive it up instead of having it transported, so had to stop every 200 miles or so to charge. At one point he sent around a text on our family chat asking for ideas for things to do while he waited at charging stations. He started the ball rolling by sending a picture of himself wearing a sheet mask.
Our daughter suggested robbing whatever store was nearby, but he reminded her regretfully that his getaway vehicle would not be available. Her reply: "Rats."
If you are interested in Teslas from the consumer end there is a channel on YouTube called, "Rich Rebuilds" He is the sole reason that there is a 'right to repair' a Tesla. He is not only informative but entertaining too. If you're into electric cars give him a watch. He dropped an LS into a model 3 and it screamed.
Jim. Don't engage stupid people. It just might wear off on you.
It’s interesting how the conversation around electric vehicles and even the people promoting them, like Rowan Atkinson, can get caught up in the noise of cancel culture. It makes one wonder if such distractions are preventing us from focusing on practical matters, like how to make electric vehicles more accessible. For many, the biggest step towards adoption would be having reliable electric vehicle chargers for home. Perhaps that’s where the discussion should turn – to the real-life issues of infrastructure and support, rather than who's been cancelled.
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