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> And it is easily 10x worse to me in places that have a lax approach to auto emissions and safety. What surprised me was how noticeable the difference in emis

> And it is easily 10x worse to me in places that have a lax approach to auto emissions and safety. What surprised me was how noticeable the difference in emissions were even ICE vs. ICE, just getting around by bicycle all summer visiting family in Illinois vs. what I was breathing riding in traffic once back in California. IL exhaust is noxious in comparison. Then when Russia invaded Ukraine I learned CA fuel is an entirely different blend from the rest of the nation targeting better emissions with lower sulfur and particulates. So apparently CARB and all those frequent smog tests and spending more on gas actually makes a QoL difference, surprise! I fully expect many confirmations of auto emissions-caused disease/death once the nation pivots to electric. It can't happen soon enough. I don't even care if the electricity is produced via fossil fuels away from where people live. Having such large numbers of ICEs constantly spewing exhaust adjacent to where we breathe is categorically DUMB. And we sure have far more ability to clean the exhaust in a large-scale immobile power plant installation than little portable ad-hoc propulsion-as-a-30%-efficient-byproduct rube goldberg machines.

tablespoon 4y ago
> Then when Russia invaded Ukraine I learned CA fuel is an entirely different blend from the rest of the nation targeting better emissions with lower sulfur and particulates. So apparently CARB and all those frequent smog tests and spending more on gas actually makes a QoL difference, surprise! I recall reading somewhere that California's geography means they have to be super-diligent about emissions or their major cities will have a severe smog problems. I think it was something about mountains trapping the emissions and keeping them concentrated.
- blamazon 4y ago
  Los Angeles in particular is really bad. You've got like 20 million people (a number higher than the individual populations of 45 US states!) all living in flat area mostly hemmed on 3 sides by mountains and on the fourth side by the ocean. Winds tend to blow in from the ocean, and don't tend to pass over the mountains. This tends to trap a pocket of air over the city. This wouldn't be so bad if car usage wasn't so necessary to get around there, however car ownership in the LA metro is something like 80-90 percent, with around 1.6 cars per household on average. (Compare to about 32% and 0.45 per household in Tokyo, a very similar place in terms of geography and population) EVs represent about 1% of those cars, so, conservatively you've got about 15 million cars filling up that one air pocket overhead with combustion byproducts. It gets worse! Traffic in Los Angeles is so bad that a lot of those cars are in stop and go hours-long commutes every day which is a particularly inefficient regime for fuel use and emissions. On top of that this bad traffic has an interesting side effect: over half of all car trips in Los Angeles are less than 3 miles. This is also bad for emissions because the catalytic converter may not get to heat up and achieve full efficiency.

tablespoon 4y ago

> Then when Russia invaded Ukraine I learned CA fuel is an entirely different blend from the rest of the nation targeting better emissions with lower sulfur and particulates. So apparently CARB and all those frequent smog tests and spending more on gas actually makes a QoL difference, surprise! I recall reading somewhere that California's geography means they have to be super-diligent about emissions or their major cities will have a severe smog problems. I think it was something about mountains trapping the emissions and keeping them concentrated.

blamazon 4y ago
Los Angeles in particular is really bad. You've got like 20 million people (a number higher than the individual populations of 45 US states!) all living in flat area mostly hemmed on 3 sides by mountains and on the fourth side by the ocean. Winds tend to blow in from the ocean, and don't tend to pass over the mountains. This tends to trap a pocket of air over the city. This wouldn't be so bad if car usage wasn't so necessary to get around there, however car ownership in the LA metro is something like 80-90 percent, with around 1.6 cars per household on average. (Compare to about 32% and 0.45 per household in Tokyo, a very similar place in terms of geography and population) EVs represent about 1% of those cars, so, conservatively you've got about 15 million cars filling up that one air pocket overhead with combustion byproducts. It gets worse! Traffic in Los Angeles is so bad that a lot of those cars are in stop and go hours-long commutes every day which is a particularly inefficient regime for fuel use and emissions. On top of that this bad traffic has an interesting side effect: over half of all car trips in Los Angeles are less than 3 miles. This is also bad for emissions because the catalytic converter may not get to heat up and achieve full efficiency.