British actor and automotive enthusiast Rowan Atkinson has expressed buyer’s remorse amid the left’s relentless push for electric vehicles, revealing in a new essay that as an early adopter, he feels “a little duped.”
Rowan Atkinson — who played Mr. Bean on the popular British TV series — penned an editorial for The Guardian on Saturday detailing his experience with EVs. In the op-ed, he also criticized the British government’s proposal to ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars starting in 2030.
“Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they’re wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run,” he wrote. “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.”
I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped | Rowan Atkinson https://t.co/tKWEWAiPy9
— The Guardian (@guardian) June 3, 2023
He noted greenhouse gas emissions created in the production of an electric car were 70 percent higher than in the manufacturing of a gas car due to the use of lithium ion batteries.
“They’re absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of 10 years. It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis,” Atkinson wrote.
The British government is planning to outlaw new gas and diesel vehicles by 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,” Atkinson wrote.
As Breitbart News reported, the Biden administration is aggressively pushing for consumer adoption of EVs, and has even proposed the U.S. military also start using them — with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm saying she wants to require the military to move to an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2030.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com