3 ms·
I couldn’t find numbers on tire wear, but road wear increases with the fourth power of vehicle mass [1]. I think it’s a fairly safe guess to assume tires wear s
by chongli 3y ago
I couldn’t find numbers on tire wear, but road wear increases with the fourth power of vehicle mass [1]. I think it’s a fairly safe guess to assume tires wear similarly to roads at best.
Unfortunately, vehicles have been getting dramatically heavier [2] before even taking EVs into account. It doesn’t take too many people driving around in 9000 pound Hummer EVs to make a big difference. Using the fourth power law, a single 9000-pounder is going cause the equivalent of 81 3000-pound compact cars worth of road wear.
We may have to introduce some kind of vehicle weight tax!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test
[2] https://www.axios.com/2023/04/28/evs-weight-safety-problems https://www.axios.com/2023/04/28/evs-weight-safety-problems
- rootusrootus 3y agoFortunately, 9000 pound hummers are essentially exotics, and not something that will sell in large numbers. I think a better context would be comparing the most popular EVs on our roads (e.g. Model 3, Y) with the most popular ICEV equivalents (RAV4? Camry?). And for extra data, box trucks and tractor-trailers. Probably we should just tax trucks and skip the expense of trying to tax individual consumers.
- chongli 3y agoPrepare to be depressed [1]. Just at a quick glance, it seems vehicle weight has a very high correlation with popularity. [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-cars-2022/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-car...
- Y_Y 3y agoI always thought it would be interesting to try a "momentum limit" rather than a speed limit. I wonder how fast that would get people to move to lighter vehicles.
- chongli 3y agoThat would only work if each vehicle weight class had its own lane to work with. Otherwise you can’t mix vehicles of widely different speeds on the same road.