Sadly, keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV, says actor Rowan Atkinson
He has a BS in electrical engineering and an MS in control systems engineering.
Keeping an older car, especially an efficient one, for more years, will reduce total lifetime carbon emissions versus replacing it with a newly built vehicle.
Atkinson notes the 3-year car lease model enables people to upgrade their vehicles every 3 years, and this unnecessarily results in replacing cars frequently.
We have two cars, and they are both about 8 years old. One gets 40+ mpg – while I gave great consideration to replacing it with an EV, it is more environmental and cost effective to maintain the vehicle and continue to use it for a long time yet.
There are many things I like about EVs, including home recharging from our solar PV array, the vehicle’s ability to recapture potential energy when driving down hill, and the efficiency of no power consumed when stopped at signal lights or stop signs.
