As always, great work by @AukeHoekstra and @MLiebreich to strip down this "study" to what it is, a simple PR stunt from companies that are lagging in the field of electrification and which fear the death of the ICE. Great summary here in @BusinessGreen. https://twitter.com/James_BG/status/1333710277691514880

Still, I think this is only one part the story. Because while my Twitter feed the last days have been completely cluttered with tweets about #Astongate I am pretty sure that the majority of my fellow @thetimes readers have read nothing about this since the article last Friday.

In the minds of the readers this is in fact just another piece of information that casts additional doubts on electric vehicles and the government's decision to ban ICE vehicles 2030.

And they do seem to agree that EVs are a pretty bad idea.

So, while the official or non-official PR agency of @astonmartin @Honda_UK @BoschUK and @McLarenGroup is bashed on Twitter I think it is still leading in half time after a bad VAR decision by the referee at @thetimes and other media to publish this.

It is a bad decision not because it's "against EVs". I don't even think it's bad because it comes from prominent manufacturers of internal combustion engines. It's bad because: 1. It's not new 2. It's totally unbalanced 3. It's not solid.

It's extremely important to look at a problem from different angles and highlight all relevant aspects. But to run a weak story from a biased messenger that already has been told so many times, and more importantly, been disputed and proven wrong, that's just bad journalism.

How's it possible to run stories like this without googling the subject and AT LEAST add "similar claims have previously been critiqued"?

What were the news worthiness criteria for once again hammer in this story, only this time based on a pr pitch – not even an academic study?

I'm a subscriber of @thetimes. I rely on it for facts and perspective. Now I happen to know a thing or two about EVs. But I don't know so much about vaccines, trade deals or national security. What's the odds that the reporting on that isn't as biased and unbalanced as for EVs?

BTW. It's the same for battery recycling:
Trillions on EVs on the road > Mountains of waste to be dumped on children in Africa > Nobody but a professor and a startup has a clue > Maybe a solution ahead but God knows > Doesn't look good.

Remember. Never check a good story.