Mr. Bean
These days, British comedian, actor, and writer Rowan Atkinson enjoys automotive tech and writes for the U.K. daily The Guardian. Famous for his slapstick character Mr. Bean, Atkinson was originally graduated from university with degrees in engineering. And early on he found the promise of rechargeable electric vehicles very appealing. He became an early adopter.
From his commentary, submitted by commenter Josh:
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.
The problem is that governments like that of the U.K. have determined that gas- and diesel-fueled vehicles must be relegated to the dustbin of history, even if by force of government fiat. Of the things that governments do effectively, bans and prohibitions of large machinery tend to be among the more successful. Thus, the U.K. government has decided to outlaw petroleum-fueled internal combustion engines (ICEs) starting in 2030. Other governments around the modern industrial world have etched similar plans for their citizenry into their calendars.
As Atkinson says, the current technology for battery vehicles is not entirely as efficient as it is for modern ICEs. Lithium ion batteries, although they are a great advancement for batteries, make vehicles much heavier. They still take much longer to refuel than gas or diesel equipment. Alternatives that perform better remain the subject of preliminary research. But no one can say when any of better technology might become viable.
Atkinson concludes:
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.
Hear, hear.
Pollution / climate change / global warming is a multi-faceted problem that requires multiple approaches and multiple solutions. Democratic governments, consisting of a thick layer of politicians floating atop a sea of bureaucrats like a layer of oil that shifts with the breeze and the tide, don't like *multiple* solutions to anything because those require actual leadership (which is hard work) to create buy-in from the public / electorate. And *multiple* solutions don't fit into an easy, handy, one-size-fits-all scenario / political narrative that can be driven wtih flashy words and catch phrases. Hence the headlong rush into a *clean* all electric transportation fleet with little to no thought or planning as to how that might actually happen without becoming a complete clusterf*#@k that creates as many or more problems than it solves, since EVs as currently constituted and manufactured are anything but *clean* in the larger sense and for the long run.
As just one example, I've yet to hear anyone in government (or elsewhere) talk about what the hell we're gonna' do with all those worn-out batteries in about a decade or so, even if infrastructure, pricing and performance problems are overcome uncustomarily quickly and EV numbers increase greatly due to widespread acceptance. We've had multiple decades to deal with nuclear power plant waste in a safe manner, and we haven't even begun to do that in any meaningful way. So, I guess, among other things, a few bajillion toxic dead batteries lying around is just one result to be expected from government's aversion to anything resembling a common sense, well thought out, well planned and nuanced policy solution(s) to a large problem.
The problem isn't in getting government to do *more*. It's always willing to do more. The problem is in getting it to do *better*. It can, at times, do good things about environmental problems. Anybody heard of anyone having a problem with acid rain of late? And I haven't heard of the Cuyahoga River or Lake Erie bursting into flames for a while. But as the problems get larger and the stakes rise, those willing to rise to the occasion with anything more than single path narratives on both sides of the political aisle are a scarce commodity. And until we start electing leaders instead of just politicians, we can only expect more essentially meaningless rhetoric to go along bad policies with more problems that could have been avoided if we, as voters, demanded better.
The AQI continues to fall, now down to 172 and there is barely a hint of smoke in the air, at least to a sense of smell. The forecast is looking much more normal over the next few days. There are definitely fewer folks out walking and some people are wearing masks again, which is interesting in this community as it was not fully supported, let's say, during Covid.