According to The Guardian, Aston Martin has landed itself in hot water after a recently published report refuting the advantages and effectiveness of electric vehicles was found to have been published by a public relations (PR) firm registered to Rebecca Stephens — the wife of the luxury automaker’s Director of Government Affairs, James Stephens.
The study in question postulates that electric vehicles need to travel at least 50,000 miles (80,500 km) before they can match the carbon footprint of a vehicle with an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and become a viable alternative. However, the study has already been disproved by experts.
The report has been attributed to Clarendon Communications, a PR firm that Rebecca Stephens is registered as the sole director of. In addition, the report was funded by Aston Martin (which only has gas cars so far), Honda, McLaren, and Bosch soon after leading vehicle markets like the U.K. and California announced plans to ban the sales of new ICE-powered vehicles in the near future.
What’s more, Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg’s clean energy research division BNEF, who was also the first to publicly challenge and rebut the report in a viral Twitter thread that came to be known as “Astongate”, managed to uncover that the PR firm behind the report was only recently established in February.
Auke, thanks for this. Let me add a nice twist. Clarendon Communications Ltd was only registered on 10 Feb 2020:https://t.co/E5VuqhCr0A
— Michael Liebreich (@MLiebreich) November 28, 2020
The study was presented as “groundbreaking” third-party research, and was “drawn from independent, referenced data” according to a spokeswoman for Bosch, who also said that the company fully supported its findings.
The report was actually based on findings from studies conducted by EV manufacturer Polestar, with key data points lowering the carbon footprint of the studied vehicles being left out entirely.
Not only have the report’s findings been definitely disproved by independent experts like Auke Hoekstra, who is an authority on EV emissions, but Rebecca Stephens herself revealed in an email to The Guardian that the report was “compiled” by the same companies that commissioned it.
With Aston Martin currently incurring the wrath of the better half of the auto industry (with EV enthusiasts leading the charge), will there be any bouncing back for the legacy sports car manufacturer?
