It’s not that perfect (public transport) is more difficult than good (electric cars). More often good is the enemy of perfect since the industry is lobbying for it and against the other
Local commuter rail, walkable cities, and nationwide high speed rail are all necessary to completely eliminate 90% of individual car ownership. We should be advocating for these systems of convenience which will make car ownership obsolete while incentivizing EVs while the infrastructure is built up, not demonizing EVs and making them appear as useless and a waste of time for helping fight climate change. Plus we need EV utility vehicles and trucks for professionals who need them to do their job.
Incremental steps are not personal EVs. They are diesel and electric buses. EVs eliminate 1 problem (tailpipe emissions) while creating 2 more (battery manufacturing, increased vehicle weight making road and tire wear worse, and making them more deadly - there’s others, take your pick) and not addressing the other hundred problems with car dependence.
Buses use the same infrastructure as cars. Bus stops are stupid cheap in comparison to anything else. And then, bus lanes can be implemented to prioritise buses and keep them from getting stuck in traffic.
Ok you try riding the bus everywhere with your whole family dude. That’s not happening. It’s incredibly inconvenient. Especially given the infrastructure we have.
I’m loving my electric car and hope you all get one.
Having been to the UK and Germany, it’s incredibly convenient and much quicker than driving in many cases. I’ve used the metro where I live and it’s also much quicker, the only issue is the closest bus stop is 20 minutes away by foot. That’s easy to fix though.
I live in the UK, and I can say it depends greatly on your circumstances.
In general, if you’re traveling between an outside town to a city it’s usually an alright experience.
However, if your commute is between two outside towns then you have to be lucky, otherwise a car ends up being the only real viable option. My work is about 15 miles away, and before I had a car I had the only option of a railway line that ran through my town. If that line ever had issues getting cancelled or on the train strikes were on that day I couldn’t get to work because to get my work was 2 buses and 2 hours to go 15 miles. The train ran once an hour and didn’t call at half the stops on a Sunday including the stop I needed for work so if it was a Sunday I literally could not get to work.
It’s not even cheaper than a car when I factor in leisure travel, many places I regularly go to take longer to get to by car and are usually a worse experience whether that be service infrequency, long layover times or services getting cancelled/being on strike.
Oh sure, I agree that it’s not always perfect, but neither is driving. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been randomly stuck in gridlock because someone got in a crash on the freeway.
The issue here is entirely that there is no choice that can be made. You either drive, or you don’t go anywhere. I don’t want to need a car, I want to want a car. Cars are convenient, but when they’re required to do literally everything then they’re a massive inconvenience.
If I was able to make a choice, I could share a car with someone else. As it stands, we both have to own one.
Having lived in Germany, you obviously didn’t meet enough people. They fucking love thier cars dude. Yeah their buses are better, but I was shown many people’s cars as if they were a child.
Oh sure, obviously people like cars, but in the cities we’d park and switch from car to rail because it’s significantly faster. I also stayed in the city for a couple of weeks and didn’t need a car at all.
Compare that to the US where you need a car or you die, even in the city, and it’s not even a contest.
I have an electric vehicle. I ride it everywhere in my city and it costs basically nothing. It’s an ebike. I’ve done nothing to it, it’s a normal 350w motor capped at 32 km/h. And damn does it feel so much better than driving in traffic.
The number one (by a long way) selling vehicle in the US is a massively over sized truck. Designed to be so heavy to avoid falling under emissions laws.
There is no electric vehicle that comes even close to that. You want those people interested in electric cars. They don’t give a single fuck about what your think about buses and nothing you will ever do in your lifetime will change that. Ever.
Getting people into EVs is an across the board incremental improvement in the exact definition of the word.
You’re right about the massive benefits of transit and trains in particular would be so amazing… but none of the people we want getting out of F150s give a single shit.
I don’t care about getting people into things. That’s a highly individualistic way to look at the problem. Car dependency is a societal problem, and marketing won’t solve societal problems. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way we (specifically the government) view transportation as a whole. (And as an extension to that, there also needs to be a change in regulation to close that loophole for light trucks.)
What’s important to me is getting lawmakers and those advocating to the lawmakers on board with funding public transit and making the streets safer for all people using them. Yes we need people on board too but really only enough to get these ideas in lawmakers heads as a major issue. A minority. The majority of people don’t understand or care and that’s fine, because their minds will start to change once they see it actually working. In the words of NJB, there are not that many car people, bike people, or train people. Most people just want to get to their destinations as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We don’t live in a direct democracy. 51% don’t have to explicitly agree to laws. The government passes laws that are bad for people and the majority disagree with all the time. Not saying the majority of people disagree, I honestly think they couldn’t care less. I’m just saying we don’t actually have to recruit hundreds of millions of people.
Unfortunately, a major part of this plan is going to have to restrict what oil companies are allowed to do and nowadays that’s seemingly impossible. Only seemingly though. Nothing is truly set in stone.
As much as I agree, these are different things. EVs are fixing greenhouse gases. While the others are also bad things, they aren’t really global climate changers.
Not op, but the material gathering and building of EVs is far more energy intensive and resource intensive than gas cars. They do even out but it takes a number of years on the road depending on the vehicle.
Additionally they are very heavy which requires more infrastructure maintenance and therefore more emissions.
That is to say EVs are not a sure fire improvement and it depends on the car, the place you are, the supply chain producing your car, where it’s going to end up, and your own driving habits.
Or we could just invest in rail instead of doubling down on private vehicles. Then we can be sure.
Doesn’t need to be a “green energy paradise”, just a reasonably well connected first world country.
Take a look at Electricity Maps. Unless you live somewhere isolated or with very poorly developed grid infrastructure (or some central US states, apparently), you should see a non-trivial amount of electricity being generated by non-fossil fuels. For example, at the time of typing this 77% of the electricity I’m using is low-carbon and 50% of it is renewable.
That’s the kicker. EVs don’t have to rely on fossil fuels to operate (but they can make use of them depending on the grid infrastructure). ICE cars on the other hand are burning fuel wherever they go.
Walking or cycling will always be the least polluting means of getting around, but if you really need a car then you could do a lot worse than getting an electric one.
The problem is, the way I see it, all energy use is connected. Basically the problem we have is energy consumption grows faster than clean energy production. So requiring more green energy in this context still sucks. Even where I live where all of our energy is green (at least in the grid), extra energy can be sold either via selling it to other provinces/states, or by making deals with companies to do their production here where energy is cheap and green.
Energy is a commodity on a market. If you use it to inefficiently move people, you can’t use it for other things. Remember that to move a 150 lbs person in a car, you have to move about a ton and a half of car…
I’m really sceptic about that kind of metrics because many of them take carbon offsets into account, and carbon offsets are mostly greenwashing.
Power mix in the world right now is over 50% coal and gas, and only hydro is over a 10%. This is worldwide, so mix varies depending on where you are.
In the end EVs are no making a dent in power demand. They are increasing it. The percentage of fossil fuels is maybe going down but total fossil fuel consumption is increasing as our demand does. Green energy is only taking some of the slack from the increase.
EVs will be remembered as the thing we did to keep using cars and feeling good about it.
Except EVs still have a significant carbon footprint from their manufacture. So do train cars and buses, but to transport everyone in cars instead of public transportation would require orders of magnitude more materials, and therefore a much higher carbon footprint. Not to mention the poor land use that car dependency causes, which both leads to deforestation and impedes reforestation, which is a further climate change contributor.
EVs also have the ability to live longer. If an average EV is usable for twice as long as an ICE vehicle, its carbon footprint from manufacturing is already down to 50%.
So can transit vehicles, in fact they last even longer so I don’t see this as an advantage for EVs. In Vancouver, Canada for example, there are fully self-driving electric trains from the 80s that are still running perfectly fine today, and the only reason they’re getting scrapped soon is because they’re loud and uncomfortable compared to newer trains, which even then I personally don’t like the transit agency’s decision to scrap them because that’s super wasteful, they could probably run another 40 years with good maintenance.
also, if the West did adopt EVs en mass (hard to even imagine), all those ICE vehicles aren’t just disappearing. They’re getting exported to the rest of the world as cheap used cars. Nothing has been “replaced”, you’ve just made more cars and more pollution.
@TheLastHero@Masimatutu Nah, there's not much intercontinental transport of used cars. Too expensive and complicated. If the West adopted EVs en mass there would be a lot less gasoline consumption there, and little increase elsewhere.
I disagree. The UN predicts the number of light duty vehicles to more than double by 2050, with 90% of that growth happening in non-OECD countries. Granted that would be a mix of new and used cars, but the vehicle trade is only regulated on the national level. That means there are considerable financial incentives to export abroad and take advantage of regulatory inconsistency.
For example, stricter emissions laws means that many cars may not be able to be driven at all in a country, but those laws do not exist elsewhere- that will cause an oversupply of cars that can’t be legally sold domestically, but demand for cars is only grow in the global south as their economies and standards of living improve. Logistic and shipping costs also get cheaper every year and shouldn’t be relied on as a economic deterrent, and it’s apparently already cheap enough for the US, Japan, and EU to export 14 million used vehicles between 2015-2018. Rich counties and their populations tend to replace their cars far before their economic life is over as well, and vehicle values depreciate far quicker in the OECD compared to elsewhere. There’s goi lot of economic pressure to
That is because many cities/politicians refuse to enforce reasonable noise limits on automobiles. It should have never been legal/normalized to have exhausts loud enough to need hearing protection while outside of the vehicle.
those ppl will create noise at whatever cost lmao, I bet they’ll start attaching external speakers at some point to compensate for the lack of engine noise
Is this really substantial? With a skilled manual driver or a clever automatic gearbox, the majority of braking should be engine braking. It seems to me that regenerative braking is typically replacing what would be engine braking, the unplanned stops still use friction brakes.
Regen braking can be significantly stronger than engine braking. Unless your battery is at 100%, it can essentially replace all friction braking outside of emergency stops.
I see this argument a lot about EV’s being heavier. And while it is true (for now) the actual weight difference is fairly nominal when comparing two popular closely spec vehicles.
Curb Weight Toyota Camry 3310 lb. Tesla Model 3 3582 lb. +272 lb.
The report goes on to note that pm10 is still reduced in heavier EVs with a smaller tradeoff for increased pm2.5. There are nuances sure, but I still interpret this as a net positive on particulate matter and a step in the right direction. That is something we should not discourage in a world that is still struggling to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Fuck cars, but let’s try to make incremental improvements where we can.
Abstract: Assuming lightweight EVs (i.e. with battery packs enabling a driving range of about 100 miles), the report finds that EVs emit an estimated 11-13% less non-exhaust PM2.5 and 18-19% less PM10 than ICEVs. Assuming that EV models are heavier (with battery packs enabling a driving range of 300 miles or higher), however, the report finds that they reduce PM10 by only 4-7% and increase PM2.5 by 3-8% relative to conventional vehicles.
You could also potentially use them as a solution for more efficiently allocating energy, less by pumping energy back into the grid, and more by running home power from the car battery during peak hours, rather than having to produce too much energy during off hours, having to shut down the power during peak hours or provide limited access, or having to provide power for less people. You can make the power go further, and especially for renewables which have potentially less consistent energy production (the nice part being that peak demand roughly lines up with peak production for solar power, at least, in the summer). But none of that’s really an attractive proposition to the american car buyer who wants to travel as far as possible at the drop of a hat, and you have to make car batteries larger and the cars themselves less efficient to compensate for this power draw and power storage that may or may not be happening at any given moment, so it’s sort of self-defeating with the american car market.
Obviously, it isn’t really a more equitable or more efficient solution broadly than doing something like pumping water uphill. Or trying to limit demand in the first place by decreasing surface area of homes, by moving towards multiple units in one building, increasing r-values by using better building materials you could shell out for with a larger amount of occupants, yadda yadda urban design garbage. Stuff that generally is antithetical to car-centric infrastructure and thus electric cars. You also potentially run into problems where the as the grid as a whole becomes less relied upon, they make less money, and then the grid starts to fail further in a positive feedback loop. Poor people can’t afford rooftop solar and electric cars, because most of them can barely afford rent and aren’t really the ones making those decisions anyways.
Only at low speeds. At high speeds for a modern car the tyre noise is louder that the engine noise, and since electric cars are heavier they would be noisier.
And reduce the propping of petrostates
Replace mining oil with mining rare metals. Not a big improvement.
They also help normalise the usage of renewable energy (this is a factor that shouldn’t be overlooked, imo)
Why? Electric cars are causing a huge load on the grid and will continue to do so. In countries that haven’t managed the load and invested heavily in renewable capacity, those EVs are powered by fossil fuels.
They also do all those things much worse than transitioning away from car dependence.
And they give people an excuse to not move away from cars.
And they are so much heavier and deadlier than ICE cars at the same speed that they may actually actively discourage other modes, like walking or cycling.
edit: Look, I think every car should be an EV. And I also think there shouldn’t be many cars because cars still suck. Both can be true.
And they are so much heavier and deadlier than ICE cars at the same speed that they may actually actively discourage other modes, like walking or cycling.
whether a car has an ICE or a battery is the last thing on my mind when avoiding them
I was able to find the movie on YouTube with A seance scene which however does not seem to be the same scene (or at least a different angle) from the picture. If anyone has the time to scroll through all 4h of that movie the scene in the picture might be in there.
EVs also greatly reduce brake dust, as most use regenerative braking under normal circumstances, leaving traditional braking for hard (emergency) braking.
New EV models tend to be heavier and quicker—generating more particulates and deepening the danger. In other words, EVs have a tire-pollution problem, and one that is poised to get worse as America begins to adopt electric cars en masse.
Tires were already a problem, but when we switch to electric cars, according to Michelin, we increase tire wear by up to 20%. According to Goodyear, it’s up to 50%. This is validated also in other research that we’ve seen.
edit: To be clear, EVs are better than ICEs and every car should be an EV. But EVs also suck and we still need to transition away from car dependence.
The comprehensive study has found that in everyday driving, particulate emissions from tires are 1,850 times greater than the equivalent exhaust emissions. This is only made worse by the heavier battery packs fitted to electric vehicles, which increase vehicle mass and, in turn, place further strain on the tires.
edit: this is not to say the tire particulate has the same greenhouse effect. Experts overwhelmingly agree that EVs are better for climate change. But EVs are still bad for the environment.
My EV is under 4000 pounds what about all those 8000 pound trucks SUV on the road. Ford latest Raptor or what ever it is is heavier the the F150 Lighting EV. Brake dust shouldn’t even matter on a EV, I’ve 170k on my original Brakes. Gas cars still use electric the “gas refinery” and the pollution from the refinery. And there’s still much less environmental impacts like no oil changes no NOX no Co2 and ETC.
Your EV is worse, per distance and per capita, than any non-car mode of transportation. Compared to ICEs, it’s better in one particular way, worse in others, but still causes major environmental damage through bad land use. Cars are one of the biggest killers worldwide, and EVs may make that problem worse.
Oh yes, I forgot about how brake dust is burning towns to the ground because of extreme weather and inundating low lying regions with rising sea levels.
Do you seriously think a community called “fuck cars” is trying to defend gasoline cars over EVs? This is a public transportation gang good sir, madam, or otherwise.
I was talking about tire dust being worse than brake dust. Was that a typo?
Literally no one is arguing that EVs aren’t better for the climate than ICEs. But a lot of the climate harm of cars is not just tailpipe emissions, but bad land use. Pavement, parking lots, urban sprawl, are major contributors to climate change. I don’t understand this idea that if we push to move away from cars, it will encourage ICE use. It’s an inane argument.
edit: I also haven’t seen studies of how much air particulate matter from tires contributes to the greenhouse effect. I don’t doubt it’s still better than ICEs, but it could still be significant.
You said tire pollution is potentially worse for the environment than tailpipe emissions. That is a wildly irresponsible thing to say. That’s what I was objecting to.
There absolutely are people arguing that ICs are better for the environment, as if climate change doesn’t affect the environment.
If you’re going to buy a new car, don’t, but if you’re going to buy one anyway, prioritize reducing of ghg emissions.
Edited: changed “euphemistically” to reducing, my fault for not proofreading my auto correct (I use swore typing on my phone so sometimes things go really sideways)
Then you’re responding to the wrong comment. The comment you’re responding to is one where I say that tire pollution is worse than brake pollution. In the thread where I say that tire pollution can be worse in some ways than tailpipe emissions, I specify that EVs are still better than ICEs for the climate.
So you’re responding to a comment where I didn’t say what you claim I said, while accusing me of holding a position I don’t hold.
I don’t think I’m in the wrong comment chain, and I think I commented before you clarified re climate change.
Also I’ve edited one of my comments explaining a really weird auto correct replacement i didn’t catch, which may explain why you feel I’m accusing you of things.
Thanks for observation that noone asked. I don’t need to argue in a topic where one fact ends the “discussion”.
EV’s are full of unrecyclable garbage, same with your shitty solar panels and wind turbines, you know nothing and therefore it’s pointless to argue with you, so I’m not going to do it.
I’m not sure what you were expecting. It is not unreasonable to ask for actual reasons to support your ideas, especially hot takes like “petrol will always be superior”.
👆 This guy is a troll. He’ll say whatever he can to get a rise out of people. He doesn’t argue with any sort of consistent logic and just deflects once he can’t figure out what to say next. Not worth engaging
You’re not going to get actual reasons. This guy is a troll. He has spent the entirety of his day old account picking fights and deflecting the logical retorts. Just thought you should know
Hey, this guy you’re arguing with is a troll, although you probably already figured that out. He declared yesterday that he lives to be an asshole and spends his time mostly picking fights and deflecting the ones he’s losing. Just thought you should know that you’re engaging someone who doesn’t argue in good faith
Tires were already a problem, but when we switch to electric cars, according to Michelin, we increase tire wear by up to 20%. According to Goodyear, it’s up to 50%. This is validated also in other research that we’ve seen.
I’m not seeing anything about how brake dust is nearly as big of a problem. Literally dozens of articles about how bad tire pollution is. I’m not even mentioning microplastics! Tires are the biggest source.
Forgive me, but the articles suggested that the problem with tires was their deteriorating into miroplastic particles with use. What other miroplastic problem with tires is there that you’re not mentioning?
You’re right, I wrote that confusingly. I mean to say that the research I linked to is just about air pollution from tires. There are also non-air pollution consequences, as microplastics leak into our food supply, drinking water, our environments, our oceans, etc. This is no small matter.
Everyone who cares about the environment is in favor of EVs over ICEs, but some bad effects will actually increase with EV use. We need to transition every remaining car to EV, but we also need to transition society away from cars.
Yes, much heavier. It wouldn’t be such a big problem if car sizes weren’t exploding, and if people didn’t demand such absurdly high battery ranges “just in case”, even though their daily commute is not 300 miles. Consumers also seem to want unnecessary power instead of efficiency, negating some of the benefits of the transition.
I have an EV that I just charge at home when I need to, once every 5-8 days depending, and then in the morning unplug it. That covers driving to work, shopping, gym, school runs and occasional trips to the airport. The stats show most cars never go more than 20-30 miles on average. Maybe there are some hyper commuters, or people who drive hundreds of miles per day but they’re atypical, not the norm.
I’ve had the car 6 months and haven’t even tried using a public charger. That said, public charging infrastructure in Ireland is very spotty and if I did need to make a long journey I probably would be concerned about where I was going to charge and have to plan ahead. I am expecting that since over a 1/5th of new car sales are electric that the situation will improve over time. The UK is much better, France / Germany are even better and Norway is insanely good. Demonstrates it is possible and will happen eventually.
I think governments could do much to alleviate range anxiety if every public charger was required to be visible in a national database - occupancy, cost, reliability, rate of charge and other information so that apps could be built around it. At the moment it’s a hodge podge of apps which seem to have their own partnerships with different providers so it’s very hard to know all the chargers from a single app.
here is the RAC - a major road assistance company in the UK & Ireland - explaining EV particulate emissions. Basically, no the particulates aren’t any worse from an EV and are actually better compared to ICE, both brake and tyre.
Doesn’t mean particulates are good in any circumstance, but this argument, that somehow EVs are even worse, which is largely being propagated by people & groups with a vested interest in ICE cars is a complete nonsense.
No dummy, the RAC is one of the biggest automotive companies in the UK. Tyre repair companies also say it. Common sense says it. If tyre tread on EVs was substantially less than ICE vehicles it would be borne out by data but it is not.
It literally is borne out by data though. The way that source wriggles around is crazy.
They carefully pick the worst case scenario tire wear number then use it as a baseline for the mathematics that underlie the sentence
the tyres would be bald in less than 1,358 miles, or two months’ worth of driving
and extrapolate that out to
we now know that tyre wear is nowhere near as big a contributor to particulate matter emissions as some media coverage has suggested
The dancing around weight and tire wear is even more absurd:
modern electric vehicles aren’t actually that much heavier than many modern petrol or diesel cars, especially with the recent trend towards bigger and heavier SUVs
and a long section about taxi tire math that ends with the buried admission
Ryan notes that his diesel taxis do tend to get an extra 5,000 to 10,000 miles of lifespan out of their front tyres
But even if you aren’t interested in reading that source with a critical eye and recognizing the ways it manipulates language and information to make a point (I’m still not clear why a towing company wrote this), you can literally just look next to the authors name and see:
Author of this report commissioned by the RAC
I genuinely cannot understand why you’d choose to believe a dubious blog entry from a towing company over research from literally any other source.
Shame on you for making me bring out the [ ] over the British equivalent of a triple a guide.
But even if you aren’t interested in reading that source with a critical eye and recognizing the ways it manipulates language and information to make a point (I’m still not clear why a towing company wrote this), you can literally just look next to the authors name and see:
The RAC isn’t just a “towing company”. It provides a range of motor services like breakdown assistance, insurance, vehicle inspections, servicing, fleet management. Therefore it happens to know a great deal about automotive matters unlike say Forbes or some other outlet which does not. It’s also not some stealth EV proponent controlled by some shadowy puppet master, it just happens to have knowledge from supporting fleets of EVs of their outcomes. The AA, a similar organisation also debunks EV myths, again coming from a position of experience.
If the towing company is so smart and has all the data and experience, why do they have to commission reports that they then deploy every narrative manipulation technique in the book towards when reporting upon?
Couldn’t they just publish all their good data in a peer reviewed journal?
The Guardian article mentions that there’s some hope of mitigating that problem though:
The average weight of all cars has been increasing. But there has been particular debate over whether battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which are heavier than conventional cars and can have greater wheel torque, may lead to more tyre particles being produced. Molden said it would depend on driving style, with gentle EV drivers producing fewer particles than fossil-fuelled cars driven badly, though on average he expected slightly higher tyre particles from BEVs.
Dr James Tate, at the University of Leeds’ Institute for Transport Studies in the UK, said the tyre test results were credible. “But it is very important to note that BEVs are becoming lighter very fast,” he said. “By 2024-25 we expect BEVs and [fossil-fuelled] city cars will have comparable weights. Only high-end, large BEVs with high capacity batteries will weigh more.”
That might be so in Europe. I am not so optimistic about the US, where car sizes keep increasing. We seem to want to “consume” the extra efficiencies with more powerful engines and bigger range.
I have already responded to multiple people who asked for sources, which you apparently didn’t bother to check. One source I cite mentions a 20-50% increase in tire wear. A simple internet search will bring up literally dozens of articles.
It’s always amazing how the laziest and nastiest people on the internet, like yourself, are always the most ignorant. You don’t need to start shit to support your point.
You are angry about people not finding it despite wanting to prove your point not me. Add the source into OP instead of bitching at people who were not part of your conversation with others. Or don’t be rude about it.
Here is Kwik Fit, the largest tyre repair / refit retailer in the UK saying the complete opposite. They say that conventional tyres wear faster. The downside of EV tyres is they’re still more expensive. It’s not hard to find similar points made by others who have the knowledge to make the comparison.
You’ve completely misunderstood. EV tires are designed to wear slower because EVs eat through tires faster. If you put more expensive wear resistant tires on a lighter conventional car, it would obviously wear even more slowly.
Your link is not journalism. It doesn’t even cite its sources. It’s literally a blog entry by a tire company encouraging you to buy tires. The multiple experts cited in the actual news articles I posted say increased tire wear from EVs is a huge environmental problem.
Wait, so you you’re saying EV tyres are designed to wear slower, and yet they eat through tyres faster? Did that even make sense in your head? And if this design is a thing (slower wearing I mean) then why don’t ICE vehicles also do it?
And no EV tyres are not more expensive because of whatever you imagine but because of simple market forces - EVs are less common therefore, tyres cost more.
And yeah my link is not journalism. It’s pointing to actual companies that deal with breakdowns and replace tyres. The sort of people most people would implicitly trust to know what they’re talking about.
I don’t know if you’re willfully misreading me. I am saying that EV tires only wear slower when they do because they have to be specifically designed to withstand the extra friction. But EVs wear equivalent tires faster than non-EVs because EVs are heavier. If you don’t understand this, I’m not sure how to explain it to you.
Imagine someone saying “Chairs for obese people last longer than those for normal weight people.” That may be, but only because they are designed that way. You can’t change the laws of physics. EVs are heavier. As the many experts across the actual journalistic sources I cited say, that means more friction and more wear.
What is the climate denialist outfit you’re referencing? Each article cites multiple experts and different sources making multiple different claims. None of them rely on a “single study” and they are all from high quality sources, so your claim is ridiculous on its face.
Just don’t go race mode everyday and and it will be reduced to just heavier weight. Get smaller than supers sized truck and it will compensate for the weight as well.
What does this mean? What is the “it”? What does “compensate” mean? Equivalent EVs are heavier. At the same speeds, tires will wear faster and accidents will kill more people.
Yeah but for some reason people drive for a cap of coffee in freaking truck. Also i think you understand what i reacted to, if not you can use “show context” above my replies all the way till the beginning of this thread.
No they don’t massively increase tyre dust. In fact, if you go to motoring organisations, or actual tyre repair / refit companies they will tell you straight out that tyres on EVs don’t wear any faster than regular tyres. The only difference really between an EV tyre and a regular one is the cross section which is different to account for the generally higher weight of an EV.
Well obviously less vehicles of any kind would be a benefit. Cities designed around people with public transport options would always beat out a society where everyone has a car. I think there is more push on this in Europe than the US, where outside of the big cities public transport is virtually non-existent. Urban planning should emphasis central districts to create transport hubs where people eat / work / shop and therefore demand to make public transport. And outside of that cycle routes, footpaths etc.
But electric vehicles are still much better than ICE vehicles. Over their life time they account for 1/4 emissions (depending on how power is generated) and those emissions can be more effectively captured. And of course renewables bring the emissions down year on year. There is a direct correlation between NOx emissions and respiratory deaths so this is a good thing. Also less CO2 emissions and contribution to global warming. Also, particulates are much less - brakes are not the primary source of deceleration in an EV (regen is) so pads don’t see anything like as much use as an ICE car. Some EVs are even going back to using drum brakes where the dust is basically captured inside an enclosed drum. The tyres also aren’t any worse or faster wearing than ICE vehicles so in that regard it’s even.
Agree with almost everything you said here, EVs are definitely significantly cleaner than ice vehicles but you’re oversimplifying a little when it comes to brakes and tires. Some cheap evs are going to drum brakes but the vast majority of modern evs are using significantly larger brakes with softer pads than equivalent gas vehicles due to the acceleration offered by electric vehicles. Its possible that as time goes on and electric vehicles make up a bigger market share of economy cars this will change.
The bigger issue with clean EVs is the insane amount of rubber they use in their tires. I’m not sure where you’ve heard the tires on EVs are roughly equivalent to ICE, sue to the weight increase EVs use much bigger tires that wear down faster than gasoline vehicles and I’ve read a few studies about the possibility of these tires throwing more “marbles” or small pieces of rubber than their lighter ICE counterparts. All this not to mention the increased road maintenance required by doubling the weight of the average car in the last thirty has me concerned were trading toxic fumes for other forms of pollution.
I wouldn’t say Volkswagen ID cars (ID.3, ID.4, ID.Buzz), Audi Q4 e-tron are cheap cars but they’re using drum brakes. Drum brakes are actually more efficient since a pad isn’t rubbing against the plate, impeding efficiency. It’s also easier to integrate electronic parking brakes into the mechanism. I imagine other EV makers will follow suit if for no other reason than it saves money and weight.
As for tyre wear, I’ve already pointed to links from the RAC & Kwikfit who I trust know what they’re talking about. I suppose if you drove an EV like you just stole it you might suffer wear but I imagine most people don’t drive like that and actually drive their car anticipating the need for acceleration / deceleration to maximize regen. And that style of driving also happens to reduce wear on the tyres.
yeah and tyre abbrasion correlates with weight, which given the current trend of “Same car but now EV = lots heavier” that one’s just gonna get worse, same for brakes. Pretty much just trading exhaust particles for more particulate dust from tyres and brakes
@showmustgo@Masimatutu I wonder if the tires edison invented that were made from golden rod would have been any better. it was more profitable to make tires how we've been doing it for 80 years.
That’s still much better though. Lots of people die from lung cancer and other lung related illnesses due to pollution in cities. Also, if emissions are concentrated somewhere else it’s more economical to treat them, instead of being spread out in an urban area.
This whole crap that something has to be 100% perfect to be a proper solution has to end. I’m against the use of cars, but let’s be seriously, they will never go away.
Exactly, also electricity from fossil fuels is still cleaner, the process at the plant is way more efficient and way more scrutinized (check every car and every producer and every user or check plants, which works best?)
They eliminate a part of the emissions, since one big engine (like a power plant) can be run more efficiently than many small engines (in individual vehicles).
Similarly, transporting electricity through wires creates less emissions than transporting fuel with trucks. Both serve the purpose of refueling other vehicles.
Even coal powered EVs are better than gasoline cars.
I feel the most consequent stance is to demand all the things. Not to reject all the things except for the one pure solution.
As long as ICE vehicles are still sold, even make up the most of the sales, supporting EVs is moving in the right direction. At the same time, even better solutions can be demanded and supported.
The point is that electric cars are shit, have never been a solution to anything, and that they shouldn’t be presented as one, doubly so when as a technology, public transport exists.
We will get public transportation from one million people city to the next in billionaire tubes. And exploited drive-app drivers will drive people around inside them, because public transportation isn’t flashy or profitable enough without the vacuum and the time savings.
I’m not unsympathetic to the fuckcars movement, but I have to ask about the road salt. When it snows and the roads are icy, what’s supposed to happen? What’s the plan for getting around, for getting to work, for getting to school? We can be using beet juice and other less impactful de-icing brines, but you still need the cars to get people where they need to go. Is the argument that people should stay home? Are we suggesting that colder climates just shouldn’t be populated? Busses need the road salt, too. Trains and trolleys de-ice their tracks. Even urban areas where you can walk everywhere need to salt the sidewalks.
This incidentally is why used school buses from Colorado are highly desirable in the skoolie community (a skoolie is a used school bus converted to a motorhome). In addition to the generally high-quality transmissions and retarders (essentially for handling mountainous terrain), the “sand” you use doesn’t promote rusting-out of the bus bodies like road salt does. In a sense, though, this is still bad for the environment: the extended lifespan of these vehicles keeps them on the road spitting out carbon dioxide longer then they otherwise would.
Where I live it’s common to spread gravel on the snow to increase grip. And then, of course, it is expected that everyone has the appropriate shoes and bike tires to not slip.
And even when salt is used, cars need a lot more salt per person than other modes of transport does.
If it’s cold enough to freeze the ground, I’m not riding my bike. First, having the right tires is one thing, but black ice and surprise potholes will eat your snow tires. Second, it’s going to be too cold to be out in the cold air for the several hours you need to bike to school or work.
Busses require the same amount of roads as cars. So you’re going to need the same amount of salt for busses. You might need less for sidewalks, but that’s only because people cannot walk as far as they can drive.
If everyone who normally takes the car would switch to taking the bus, all of a sudden you’d only need one lane in places where you previously needed two or three, because cars are very space-inefficient, so that makes a big difference.
Also, it’s not quite true that they’d require the same amount of roads. I don’t know about where you’re from, but where I live buses use about a quarter of the roads and you can still easily get anywhere by bus.
Additionally, salt isn’t used for rail vehicles at all.
I think public transit is important, good for the environment, and should be a much larger budget item everywhere.
But your math simply isn’t true everywhere. You can’t take 20 cars off the road and put them all on a bus, because those 20 cars aren’t going to the same place at the same time. Urban areas that already have busses blanketing the city and running constantly, the math works and you just need additional busses to up capacity. But for where I live, on the edge of suburban and rural areas, you’d need a thousand more busses on the road to cover every route and destination. And these are places where most roads are only one lane in each direction. The major highways would still need several lanes because of the additional busses to fill demand for additional routes, and smaller roads would need to be widened in many places to allow for the larger turning radius of a bus.
So you need the same amount of salt to cover the same amount of road. Maybe some areas could recapture a lane or two for bike lanes and pedestrians, but you still need to salt those, and they won’t have the benefit of being driven upon, which crushes ice and moves it out of the way. One or two slip and fall lawsuits later, and municipalities are just going to close them any time there’s a little snow.
Once again, I’ll say that the argument against cars is compelling. We should work to provide more public transit, because it is better for society to have reliable public transit. We should protect bike lanes, because it is better for our health and the environment, and encouraged freedom and development for adolescents. We should make more residential areas walkable because it is better for communities to be walkable. It fosters relationships among neighbors, encourages the support of local businesses, and improves the health and wellbeing of everyone who lives there.
Those are the arguments that get you there. Talk about the good it does, not the bad it doesn’t. People who don’t already agree with you will pick the one thing that doesn’t ring true and key in to ignore and dismiss the rest.
And even when salt is used, cars need a lot more salt per person than other modes of transport does.
Can I get a source on this? I’m not even sure what you mean by it, because salt clears active roadways as much as it does backroads, so how is this being measured “per person”?
Where I live it’s common to spread gravel on the snow to increase grip. And then, of course, it is expected that everyone has the appropriate shoes and bike tires to not slip.
You’re talking about pedestrians, but what about non-pedestrian traffic? The roads are more than just avenues to get to the grocery store, they’re also how the grocery store gets stocked with goods for rising out storms. It how the ambulance gets to you.
And what about the disabled or elderly? Can you get a wheelchair across the gravel?
For pedestrians and bikers, you need a lot less surface to deice, plus the lower speeds means it is not quite as vital to see all the snow gone directly. And yes, you will need roads for different purposes, but you would need a lot fewer of them, and with fewer lanes, if everyone wouldn’t take the car. Also, for supplying stores, a lot of the things trucks do can easily be done by trains.
Here in Canada there are definitely de-icing/ snow removal machines used on the tracks. Large propane heaters keep switches clear of ice so they can operate. Hi-rail trucks will go ahead of trains through the mountain passes to ensure the way is clear. During particularly bad snow storms they can use machines like this to clear the snow.
The trains will also release gravel on the rail to improve braking times.
When it snows and the roads are icy, what’s supposed to happen? What’s the plan for getting around, for getting to work, for getting to school? […] Are we suggesting that colder climates just shouldn’t be populated?
This line of questioning is really important, and it’s why I think there’s no addressing our devastation of the environment without digging deep into the assumptions of our society.
Society, as we understand it today, requires all of us going to work and school every day, no matter the weather, otherwise it doesn’t work. We can’t live like that. It just doesn’t work. We exist in the world, and our attempts to pretend like we are somehow apart or above it, that our daily lives shouldn’t be impacted by it, are destructive. We just can’t be in such a hurry all the time.
So yes, when the weather is bad, we need to slow down, focusing our efforts on our highest priority infrastructure, like ambulances, with everyone else taking a beat, or even pitching in. To do that, we need to rethink our society, because as things stand now, I agree with you, that’s not really possible.
This is why I think degrowth and socialism are the only human way through the climate crisis. Capitalism is a death cult of infinite growth that forces each of us to contribute to our own destruction every day because we have to get to work to live every single day.
Yeah, I think the argument is that you shouldn’t need the cars to get people where they need to go. This can be addressed two ways: either we don’t use cars or we don’t need to go (as far).
People should be able to travel with other modes that require less salt to deice, and cities could be built to not require cars for most trips. Salting sidewalks and bus lanes is better than salting those things plus roads and highways.
It’s also worth considering that yes, people should be able to just stay home. People shouldn’t be at risk of losing their job/home because they couldn’t safely make it into work. Parents shouldn’t have to rely on school as daycare.
I’d be curious to see if urban heat Island affects salt use. Maybe if we build dense enough, we don’t even really need salt to cover 99% of the population.
So…the issue isn’t cars, it’s capitalism? All we need to do to get rid of cars and all their negative effects is rearrange our country on a socioeconomic level?
Yes, capitalism is the root problem. Some people argue that you cannot overcome climate change under capitalism (and neoliberalism, specifically).
But I think it’s unlikely we’ll be able to change the underlying system without society collapsing in some way. Or a revolution.
However, I don’t think you have to get rid of capitalism to reduce cars and make a positive impact. Climate change is a scale: the more we do now, the less bad it will be in the future. So doing something is still better than nothing, even if it doesn’t solve the problem entirely.
Reducing cars (and therefore emissions) can be helped by improving public transport and increasing the number of options for transport. In many places, cars are the only way to get anywhere, especially in countries that focus on car infrastructure. Having the options to bus, train, bike, walk, or drive will reduce the number of drivers. In the case of bike lanes, at least in my country, there is evidence that adding bike lanes increases the number of cyclists (and therefore decreases the number of cars on the road). “Build it and they will come,” if you will.
I have a car, but I most often bike or take the bus. We can’t get rid of cars entirely; there are reasons people need them (tradies needing vans with their equipment, certain disabilities needing customized transport options, courier parcel delivery, etc.). But reducing the number on the road at any time is helpful.
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