I want public transport more than anything, but where I live there’s little to none, I can’t do anything about that other than voting for parties that apparently have little chance to win. What I can do is buy an electric car, sue me.
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’m tired of people looking at me crazy because I keep suggesting we need better public transportation rather than fucking electric cars. We are 100% going to replace every car in America with an E.V before we ever expand access to public transportation. And we will do this because the car manufacturers stock prices will go up if we do.
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.
So, I think it’s kind of naive to believe that we can solve everything tomorrow/very soon with public transportation. It’s pretty easy to believe that if you define the rural/urban divide to include a lot of suburbs as urban, which sort of, gets away from the bleakness of the situation a little bit, I think. I think I remember somewhere around a third being split between each form, with a little less being in the suburbs compared to either rural or urban, so it’s pretty evident that, even of a portion of the people that work in cities, live just outside cities, those people live with untenable densities for public transportation. I think that’s solvable, right, in the long term, by local municipalities, over the course of the next 40-50 years give or take, because infrastructure gets decroded, needs to be replaced, and you can replace it in the meantime just by reworking the standards, something which is generally self-evident to voters as a better solution and creates a positive feedback loop as long as people aren’t completely propagandized to.
The only problem I think you might encounter with this is that it’s very hard to get this going in a place that doesn’t already support it at all. It’s much easier to create public transport if you have somewhere to go, if you’re already on the outskirts of a large city. If you make a walkable place in the midst of a collection of townships and municipalities which don’t support that, you’ve become less permeable to cars, and those other municipalities need to provide public transport that goes to your town where they can spend money on your goods and stimulate your local economy, and that doesn’t strike me as something likely to happen. This is the structure of lots of shitholes in america already, because the lack of density kind of lends itself towards a fragmented series of municipalities joined together with dogshit social services rather than a singular contiguous government.
But, then, I also think it’s kind of insane the level to which we accept cars and car-centric infrastructure as inevitable even within this context. If you want to slowly increase density, I think there’s really a lot of progress that could be made, not specifically by the technology of EVs, but just by making cars smaller. Like, we already see that in europe, japan, whatever. EVs have bigger batteries on average, sure, but you’re not going to see people get up in arms about the increased pollution that E-bikes cause, and that’s the same fundamental technology of a battery electric vehicle in a different form factor. I feel like the first and most obvious step towards a solution would be decreasing the absolutely extreme size of cars in the US, in any case. You can still be compatible with your 15 mile city outskirts shithole suburb while driving a car that’s the size of a geo metro or smaller. It’s worked so far for me, anyways. Decreasing size totally strikes me as a bigger win than transitioning to EVs, a higher priority, maybe, though, they’re not really mutually exclusive in any way. Smaller lighter cars can be safer in crashes because of the decreased mass, decreased need for stopping power, they can be more gas efficient, possibly much more gas efficient, especially with hybrid technologies. It strikes me as a much simpler solution, one that legitimately requires less production to solve the issue, is more efficient.
Definitely so it’s not a binary all or nothing - one way or another. It needs to be governments putting their fingers on the scale and pushing development in a way that lowers CO2 emissions, energy use, reliance of fossil fuels etc. I think some countries like the US are too far hooked on cars to think they’ll change over night to optimal urban designs, so even pushing people to use EVs, install solar on their houses etc. is a positive over what exists now. Perhaps in due course, they’ll change but it needs political will - to increase urban density, change building codes, create hubs etc.
They conveniently left off the 3 month oil changes, grease fittings, transmission fluid, gear oil, brake fluid, power steering fluid, etc. Cars have a lot of fluids and after market additives that people use to try and pass the inspection tests. Also the corruption where people pay off the inspectors to make sure the vehicle passes
I’m sure that there’s a decent chunk of corruption with inspections, but there are also states like Arkansas where we don’t ever have to get our vehicles inspected… It’s absurd how shitty some of the cars and trucks are that I see regularly.
Yes, pollution is a big problem. Not sure why so many people ignore it.
I keep it simple and use the communal traffic(bus/train) instead. I have never bought a car and don’t miss it as i live near the things I need grocery store and workplace(bike 5km).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I live in a city with about 2 million people. It has major sprawl and lots of guys with big trucks to compensate for little personality. The city has a brown haze floating over it that is a result of tailpipe emissions.
EVs may not be the solution to climate change, but they are helping my local area with air pollution. Well… they would if they were more popular. Every time a local buys an EV, ten more prosthetic penises are sold.
EVs also help with the brake disc “dust” since a lot of the braking is “regenerative breaking” done by the electric motor and does not use the brake pads at all. They require less maintenance, and have fewer parts in them, so fewer manufacturing materials. With very few exceptions, they are also smaller vehicles with more safety features which should result in fewer pedestrian casualties.
Obviously having no vehicles at all would be even better at solving these issues, but that’s not practical for our current reality. Maybe in 100 years.
I will say that “autopilot” features should absolutely be outlawed and cause nothing but trouble to everyone.
Which market is it that is producing smaller EVs? They’re all just regular cars turned EV, which means they’re heavier and you can’t feature-rich your way out of physics as per pedestrian safety
China has some great small, low and medium range electric cars. They’re not allowed to be sold in the U.S. due to protectionism, but they exist, and they’re cheap as hell compared to most EVs.
Emissions Analytics has found that adding 1,000 pounds to a midsize vehicle increased tire wear by about 20 percent, and also that Tesla’s Model Y generated 26 percent more tire pollution than a similar Kia hybrid. EVs’ more aggressive torque, which translates into faster acceleration, is another factor that creates more tire particulate mile for mile compared to similar internal combustion engine cars.
I will say that “autopilot” features should absolutely be outlawed and cause nothing but trouble to everyone
Autopilot is a pretty broad category. I like the autopilot on my car, which is nothing like elon musks self driving bullshit. It only turns on on supported highways and uses lidar instead of machine vision. All it does is maintain a following distance and follow the curve of the road. On Long drives it stops your foot and arms being fatigued and frees up a lot more mental space to look out for road hazards, it has a camera in the wheel that makes sure you have your eyes pointed at the road. I don’t see any risks for this sort of simple autopilot but it does have a lot of upside.
I’d definitely rather ride the train if it didn’t cost 200 dollars and come once a day, but until it gets better(and I’ve been writing a lot of letters to my officials) my self driving ev is the best alternative.
100 years is ambitious only if you want to remove all of the cars. There are plenty of milestones that can be attained fairly quickly :
Smaller cars. Less energy, materials, etc. Safer for other road users (you don’t get hit on your vital organs, better vision for the driver and everyone else since pedestrians can easily see over the car).
Less car use is available now, if we just empower the alternatives (make bike usage safe, make public transport good enough)
No more cars in cities. Bikes + trains mostly do the job, you can rent a car if you leave the city, or park it at the outskirts.
Even smaller cities used to be liveable without a car. This could be brought back, but that’s probably a tough hill to climb.
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