‘Mr. Bean’ Star Admits He’s Been Duped by EVs, Gives Scathing Rebuke to Left’s Push to Drop Gas-Powered Cars

A famous star has given a scathing rebuke to electric vehicles despite being an early proponent of them.

On Saturday, Rowan Atkinson, who is famous for his role as the title character in the comedy “Mr. Bean,” wrote an opinion piece for the British newspaper The Guardian in which he lambasted the failings of EVs despite his previous support for them.

He said he bought a hybrid 18 years ago and an EV nine years later and “enjoyed my time with both.”

“But increasingly, I feel a little duped,” Atkinson wrote. “When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.”

Despite the vehicles emitting fewer pollutants than a gas-powered car when running, he said, the manufacture of the heavy lithium batteries used to power them produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the manufacture of a petrol car.

“In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are nearly 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one,” the comic actor wrote. “How so?

“The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: they’re absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of 10 years.”

Atkinson said that although people are trying to develop alternatives to heavy lithium batteries, those are still years away from being fully realized, meaning millions of heavy lithium battery-powered automobiles will be produced, further harming the environment.

He wrote that we need to seriously look at ways we can retain the use of gas-powered cars.