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NETWORK / 8 / FEBRUARY 2019 INTERVIEW From TV to EVs Robert Llewellyn is a British actor, comedian and writer. He plays the mechanoid Kryten in the TV sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf and former- ly presented the TV engineering gameshow Scrapheap Challenge. More recently he has become an advocate for electric vehicles and presents YouTube series Fully Charged. In an exclusive interview with Network editor Alec Peachey he talks about his passion for EVs, gives his views on the energy sector and provides an insight into his TV career. Q. When did you first start getting interested in electric vehicles? I think it was 2001 or 2002, while filming Scrapheap Challenge in California. Many of the engineers I met were working on various aspects of the very early developments in electric cars. I had my first ride in a Prius in 2001 and was fascinated why anyone had made the effort to marry an electric motor with a combustion engine. I then learned about all the problems cities like LA had with air quality, childhood asthma, etc. Q. What regulatory and technical barriers must be overcome to al- low for the widespread adoption of electric vehicles? In terms of regulatory, I think this is happening already. More and more cities around the world are introducing clean air zones and tightening restrictions on which types of motor vehicles will be allowed on city roads. In the next four to five years, most major European and many American cities will increasingly restrict access to diesel vehicles. This will particularly affect light delivery vans and I think we'll see elec - tric vans and buses long before the mass adoption of electric cars. Technical barriers are also rapidly disap- pearing but this is as much a matter of general public ignorance, psychology and hands on experience as technical issues.

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