David SacerdoteThere's a reason that Rowan Atkinson almost never spoke in his role as Mr. Bean.
The Washington Post's response to his Guardian piece bashing EVs makes it pretty clear why.
Gift link is paywall-bypassing for the next couple weeks.
Alex 🔧🔮🌎🪿
@dsacer
It read to me that he was being realistic about the capabilities of the industrial base and tangible outcomes.
20 people halving their phase 1 emissions with a hybrid is better than one person eliminating theirs with an EV. We need to incentivize the maximum amount of reductions we can get with the small and growing battery supply we have.
@MisterMadge The manufacturing base isn't some small fixed thing though; it's expanding rapidly:
https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/weekly-data-clean-energy-manufacturing-is-expanding-rapidly/
And cars last for 20 years, which means that any big investment into deploying hybrids means burning fossil fuels after 2050.
The right move here isn't to just keep burning gas, but to move people out of cars where possible, and to use industrial policy to ensure that enough EVs are made for those who can't.
billheywoodQuoting the Volvo nonsense suggests he's not very good at assessing the quality of research as does reference to hydrogen and e-fuels
Just looks like a petrol head looking for excuses
Mark Scourse@billheywood @dsacer You could maybe have had this 'debate' ten years ago. It's utterly irrelevant now. The economics and the auto market has chosen #evs and economics of scale mean that even if you wanted #ice (why?) in a few decades you won't be able to buy one. Where are you going to fill it up? At what cost? Who's going to maintain it?
@markscourse @dsacer
Great point, it won’t take very long for petrol stations to start taking out pumps and replacing them with EV chargers and once that happens the writing is on the wall
Why would any fuel company spend the hundreds of thousands of pounds it costs to replace the underground tank for liquid fuel now?