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Ah yes let's avoid the real issue of car tyres producing 2000x the particle pollution per distance travelled compared to already insanely filtered exhaust and d

Ah yes let's avoid the real issue of car tyres producing 2000x the particle pollution per distance travelled compared to already insanely filtered exhaust and distract ourselves with tiny improvements that make no difference. ICE emissions will be irrelevant in 10 years when they're all but banned anyway, and rubber tyres will still be the only way to drive on the road. In fact it'll be way worse with the average EV being heavier and emitting more due to more tyre wear.

Neil44 4y ago
It’s hard to really quantify how big of an issue this is in my head, I mean a set of tyres will do 20,000+ miles and only loose a small percentage of their mass while doing so. How much damage is really being done? How much scope for improvement is there?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Depends on the sort of tires. For examples, studded snow tires can tear up the road surface quite significantly, tend to kick up a lot of sharp fine dust. It's such a big problem they're often banned parts of the year in some regions where they're typically used. Here's some science: https://www.ivl.se/download/18.1ee76657178f8586dfc89b/1619514960917/B1830.pdf https://www.ivl.se/download/18.1ee76657178f8586dfc89b/161951... It seems to largely suggest that GP is correct (see the figure in 5.3.8 for example), with the caveat that this is mainly a problem in colder regions of the world.
- chongli 4y ago
  The road itself gets torn to pieces as well. Furthermore, tire and road wear scales with the 4th power of the vehicle mass. Heavy trucks and buses cause far more damage than cars. But all that damage leaves dust all over the road which cars will scatter all over the place. Lastly, as pointed out above, EVs weigh a lot more, so the damage they cause will go up a lot, thanks to that 4th power scaling.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>ICE emissions will be irrelevant in 10 years when they're all but banned anyway Dream on. Germany and EU had to pull back from the ICE ban of 2035. Banning ICE by then is unrealistic considering the way things work right now. The frog needs to be boiled slowly.
sandworm101 4y ago
There are many steps that can be taken. At the moment, car designs make absolutely no effort to minimize tire particulates. I could see some basic airflow changes, along with rough filters, that could vastly reduce rubber particulates. And the real issue isnt even the rubber but all the random chemical additives in that rubber. Some basic study and perhaps modification could also reduce impacts.
- yyyk 4y ago
  "basic airflow changes" "basic study". You seem to assume it's easy, but give no particulars.
alex_duf 4y ago
I'm hearing both arguments from pretty reasonable people and I can't seem to make up my mind on this issue. Some are saying: yes it's a massive issue, and some are saying nah it's not, I can't seem to find a consistent view on this issue.
- 6510 4y ago
  We should just go back to this... http://jaar2014.middendelfland.net/middendelfland/metdetrekschuit12.jpg http://jaar2014.middendelfland.net/middendelfland/metdetreks... or even better! https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/pin-op-history-color--119486196335989281/ https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/pin-op-history-color--119486196...
totalZero 4y ago
I'm willing to bet that the additional mass of EVs has a marginal effect compared to the environmental impact of ICE fuel shipment and delivery.
ip26 4y ago
Are the two issues directly comparable? A large volume of tire particles settle near the road, going into the soil or washing into waterways for us to drink. Exhaust particles stay suspended in the air for a long time & blow far and wide for us to breathe. Both matter, both impact health, but we can't fix bad air quality by fixing tires.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Why do you believe this? It doesn't make any physical sense. Tire and resuspended road dust are in the 1-10µm range and they can fly as high and as far and for as long as a same-sized particle from exhaust.
  - ip26 4y ago
    1-10µm is a size, not a mass or chemical property. Maybe tire PM2.5 stays aloft the same amount of time as smoke PM2.5, but I don't see why that is a given. The press on the subject also annoyingly sidesteps a direct comparison. For example, you can read that tires product 2000x the particle emissions as tailpipes, and lots of ultrafines. Notice that statement does not tell you anything about the relative difference in ultrafine production.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      The media coverage on this is terrible but that is because the media is staffed full of people who did not study hard sciences. There's nothing wrong with the research on this topic and there is tons of it.
amluto 4y ago
Modern environmental regulation seems to be comical in the degree to which it focuses on the wrong things. Here’s actual data (no comment on quality): https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/planning-and-research/particulate-matter/pm_discussion_022720/community_pm_discussion_handouts_022720-pdf.pdf?la=en&rev=01bcffcee596440ca0d95b926de3d98c https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/planning-and-research/p... So vehicle exhaust is 5% of fine particulate matter in the Bay Area, whereas road dust, tire, and brake emissions are 20%. (Where’s the breakdown between brake dust and tire dust? EVs and even hybrids can substantially reduce brake dust. Heck, an eddy current brake could too, if anyone cared to build one. Might be bad for unsprung weight.) And commercial cooking is 8%, it I suspect this massively understates the problem, since commercial cooking can easily concentrate its emissions right where large numbers of people are walking around. But here’s the hilarious commercial cooking regulation: https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/dotgov/files/rules/reg-6-rule-2-commercial-cooking-equipment/documents/rg0602.pdf?la=en https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/dotgov/files/rules/reg-6-rule... Read the second paragraph: it applies only to charbroilers and only in restaurants that buy 500 or 1000 lbs of beef per week. That fancy Greek restaurant that smokes up three square blocks of a fancy downtown, but it’s all lamb and fish? No emission controls. That little neighborhood place making tasty bento boxes with pork, and probably less than 500lbs anyway? No emission controls. That portable smoked turkey place at lots of county fairs? (Those are IMO horrible to be around.). No regulation. And let’s not even mention the single biggest source: residential wood combustion at 12%. It’s politically hard to address, but residential wood combustion serves almost no economic purpose and could come very close to stopping without harming people or the economy. Almost everyone already has a perfectly fine non-wood-fired heater, and a narrow exception would be fine. And yet BAAQMD is willing to ban the sales of gas fired water heaters in a few years, never mind all the existing buildings with tankless heaters in a place where a heat pump retrofit is impractical. And also never mind that we already have gas fired water heaters with quite low NOx emissions and essentially zero particulate emissions.
- fooblaster 4y ago
  I think it might be fair to point out that particulate emissions from vehicle exhaust is likely low because of the regulation, not that they were regulating the wrong thing. On an unrelated note, how did they come up with these numbers for percentage contribution? It seems quite difficult to attribute cause outside of a controlled laboratory setting.
hokkos 4y ago
2000x by mass maybe, but not airborne particules, so this number is irrelevant to the discussion of clean air
fooblaster 4y ago
Can you post some literature on this, as it just doesn't pass the smell test for me? At the rate I drove my old car I would have burned 1200 gallons of fuel before changing the tires on the vehicle. I find the gap here pretty hard to overcome. Alternately, is the issue about road wear particulate as a result of tire contact? That seems more plausible to me.
- 6510 4y ago
  google is your friend I suppose? Not literature but the first hit https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre... which links to https://www.emissionsanalytics.com https://www.emissionsanalytics.com which has a page on tires https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/tyre-emissions https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/tyre-emissions that points at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a9400b37e3c3a8c47522029/t/6401654ea9f21d70a4dc9040/1677813072073/BTAS-website-presentation.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a9400b37e3c3a8c47522...
  - seattle_spring 4y ago
    Just curious, why are you, jeffbee, and several other commenters being so hostile here to anyone who asks any questions?
    - 6510 4y ago
      No hostility intended.
xiphias2 4y ago
This is the most stupid thing I have read, and it makes me angry, becuase it's just the anti-electric car movement. As a person heavily affected with asthma, I get very sick whenever ICE vehicles are going nearbly, or somebody smokes a cigarette, or starts burning their furniture. I never felt sick from car tyres of electric cars. Maybe the people who are not affected shouldn't try to guess, when many of as as we are getting older feel the difference and it affects our life.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  [flagged]
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
EVs are not necessarily heavier than equivalent ICE cars. They are supposed to become lighter at roughly the same time they become cheaper up front, 2024-25. But, I'm all for taxing cars for their externalities so I welcome these ridiculous anti-EV talking points. We might end up with clean EVs that are taxed by weight which is a double win.

Neil44 4y ago

It’s hard to really quantify how big of an issue this is in my head, I mean a set of tyres will do 20,000+ miles and only loose a small percentage of their mass while doing so. How much damage is really being done? How much scope for improvement is there?

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Depends on the sort of tires. For examples, studded snow tires can tear up the road surface quite significantly, tend to kick up a lot of sharp fine dust. It's such a big problem they're often banned parts of the year in some regions where they're typically used. Here's some science: https://www.ivl.se/download/18.1ee76657178f8586dfc89b/1619514960917/B1830.pdf https://www.ivl.se/download/18.1ee76657178f8586dfc89b/161951... It seems to largely suggest that GP is correct (see the figure in 5.3.8 for example), with the caveat that this is mainly a problem in colder regions of the world.
chongli 4y ago
The road itself gets torn to pieces as well. Furthermore, tire and road wear scales with the 4th power of the vehicle mass. Heavy trucks and buses cause far more damage than cars. But all that damage leaves dust all over the road which cars will scatter all over the place. Lastly, as pointed out above, EVs weigh a lot more, so the damage they cause will go up a lot, thanks to that 4th power scaling.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>ICE emissions will be irrelevant in 10 years when they're all but banned anyway Dream on. Germany and EU had to pull back from the ICE ban of 2035. Banning ICE by then is unrealistic considering the way things work right now. The frog needs to be boiled slowly.

sandworm101 4y ago

There are many steps that can be taken. At the moment, car designs make absolutely no effort to minimize tire particulates. I could see some basic airflow changes, along with rough filters, that could vastly reduce rubber particulates. And the real issue isnt even the rubber but all the random chemical additives in that rubber. Some basic study and perhaps modification could also reduce impacts.

yyyk 4y ago
"basic airflow changes" "basic study". You seem to assume it's easy, but give no particulars.

alex_duf 4y ago

I'm hearing both arguments from pretty reasonable people and I can't seem to make up my mind on this issue. Some are saying: yes it's a massive issue, and some are saying nah it's not, I can't seem to find a consistent view on this issue.

6510 4y ago
We should just go back to this... http://jaar2014.middendelfland.net/middendelfland/metdetrekschuit12.jpg http://jaar2014.middendelfland.net/middendelfland/metdetreks... or even better! https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/pin-op-history-color--119486196335989281/ https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/pin-op-history-color--119486196...

totalZero 4y ago

I'm willing to bet that the additional mass of EVs has a marginal effect compared to the environmental impact of ICE fuel shipment and delivery.

ip26 4y ago

Are the two issues directly comparable? A large volume of tire particles settle near the road, going into the soil or washing into waterways for us to drink. Exhaust particles stay suspended in the air for a long time & blow far and wide for us to breathe. Both matter, both impact health, but we can't fix bad air quality by fixing tires.

jeffbee 4y ago
Why do you believe this? It doesn't make any physical sense. Tire and resuspended road dust are in the 1-10µm range and they can fly as high and as far and for as long as a same-sized particle from exhaust.
- ip26 4y ago
  1-10µm is a size, not a mass or chemical property. Maybe tire PM2.5 stays aloft the same amount of time as smoke PM2.5, but I don't see why that is a given. The press on the subject also annoyingly sidesteps a direct comparison. For example, you can read that tires product 2000x the particle emissions as tailpipes, and lots of ultrafines. Notice that statement does not tell you anything about the relative difference in ultrafine production.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    The media coverage on this is terrible but that is because the media is staffed full of people who did not study hard sciences. There's nothing wrong with the research on this topic and there is tons of it.

amluto 4y ago

Modern environmental regulation seems to be comical in the degree to which it focuses on the wrong things. Here’s actual data (no comment on quality): https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/planning-and-research/particulate-matter/pm_discussion_022720/community_pm_discussion_handouts_022720-pdf.pdf?la=en&rev=01bcffcee596440ca0d95b926de3d98c https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/planning-and-research/p... So vehicle exhaust is 5% of fine particulate matter in the Bay Area, whereas road dust, tire, and brake emissions are 20%. (Where’s the breakdown between brake dust and tire dust? EVs and even hybrids can substantially reduce brake dust. Heck, an eddy current brake could too, if anyone cared to build one. Might be bad for unsprung weight.) And commercial cooking is 8%, it I suspect this massively understates the problem, since commercial cooking can easily concentrate its emissions right where large numbers of people are walking around. But here’s the hilarious commercial cooking regulation: https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/dotgov/files/rules/reg-6-rule-2-commercial-cooking-equipment/documents/rg0602.pdf?la=en https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/dotgov/files/rules/reg-6-rule... Read the second paragraph: it applies only to charbroilers and only in restaurants that buy 500 or 1000 lbs of beef per week. That fancy Greek restaurant that smokes up three square blocks of a fancy downtown, but it’s all lamb and fish? No emission controls. That little neighborhood place making tasty bento boxes with pork, and probably less than 500lbs anyway? No emission controls. That portable smoked turkey place at lots of county fairs? (Those are IMO horrible to be around.). No regulation. And let’s not even mention the single biggest source: residential wood combustion at 12%. It’s politically hard to address, but residential wood combustion serves almost no economic purpose and could come very close to stopping without harming people or the economy. Almost everyone already has a perfectly fine non-wood-fired heater, and a narrow exception would be fine. And yet BAAQMD is willing to ban the sales of gas fired water heaters in a few years, never mind all the existing buildings with tankless heaters in a place where a heat pump retrofit is impractical. And also never mind that we already have gas fired water heaters with quite low NOx emissions and essentially zero particulate emissions.

fooblaster 4y ago
I think it might be fair to point out that particulate emissions from vehicle exhaust is likely low because of the regulation, not that they were regulating the wrong thing. On an unrelated note, how did they come up with these numbers for percentage contribution? It seems quite difficult to attribute cause outside of a controlled laboratory setting.

hokkos 4y ago

2000x by mass maybe, but not airborne particules, so this number is irrelevant to the discussion of clean air

fooblaster 4y ago

Can you post some literature on this, as it just doesn't pass the smell test for me? At the rate I drove my old car I would have burned 1200 gallons of fuel before changing the tires on the vehicle. I find the gap here pretty hard to overcome. Alternately, is the issue about road wear particulate as a result of tire contact? That seems more plausible to me.

6510 4y ago
google is your friend I suppose? Not literature but the first hit https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre... which links to https://www.emissionsanalytics.com https://www.emissionsanalytics.com which has a page on tires https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/tyre-emissions https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/tyre-emissions that points at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a9400b37e3c3a8c47522029/t/6401654ea9f21d70a4dc9040/1677813072073/BTAS-website-presentation.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a9400b37e3c3a8c47522...
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  Just curious, why are you, jeffbee, and several other commenters being so hostile here to anyone who asks any questions?
  - 6510 4y ago
    No hostility intended.

xiphias2 4y ago

This is the most stupid thing I have read, and it makes me angry, becuase it's just the anti-electric car movement. As a person heavily affected with asthma, I get very sick whenever ICE vehicles are going nearbly, or somebody smokes a cigarette, or starts burning their furniture. I never felt sick from car tyres of electric cars. Maybe the people who are not affected shouldn't try to guess, when many of as as we are getting older feel the difference and it affects our life.

jeffbee 4y ago
[flagged]

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

EVs are not necessarily heavier than equivalent ICE cars. They are supposed to become lighter at roughly the same time they become cheaper up front, 2024-25. But, I'm all for taxing cars for their externalities so I welcome these ridiculous anti-EV talking points. We might end up with clean EVs that are taxed by weight which is a double win.