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It’s great to bring this problem up. But the focus on EVs is a distraction. > EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more from their tires due to their higher weig
by audunw 3y ago
It’s great to bring this problem up. But the focus on EVs is a distraction.
> EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more from their tires due to their higher weight and high torque compared to traditional internal combustion engine-powered vehicles.
It’s covered in this panel discussion on Fully Charged: https://youtu.be/LeHakmL6eEc?si=ebBAn8RSDhmmLfHI https://youtu.be/LeHakmL6eEc?si=ebBAn8RSDhmmLfHI
Fleet operators don’t see any significant difference in tire wear. EVs have higher torque but that doesn’t matter unless to drive like a mad-man. EVs also allow you to drive very smoothly with no sudden jerk in torque.
Cars have been getting heavier long before EVs came around. One of the problems is that EVs are all new. Too many of them are bigger than they need to be. But that also goes for new ICE vehicle models.
I’m not too worried about the weight of EVs long term. Batteries are expensive. Increases in energy density, increase in vehicle efficiency and decrease in weight tends to have very significant effect on the amount of batteries you need to cover a certain range, which has huge impact on the price.
What we need to focus on is infrastructure for walking, biking and public transportation. An E-bike has made it just possible for me to bike to work in a reasonable time. So I drive our EV less and less to work.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago> What we need to focus on is infrastructure for walking, biking and public transportation. And better tires.
- dragontamer 3y ago> EVs have higher torque but that doesn’t matter unless to drive like a mad-man Its not torque that matters. Its simply friction and normal force. And that's directly caused by weight. Tire Wear is something like (weight^4), so small increases in weight will have huge increases to wear-and-tear. --------- I think the real issue is that 3000lbs to 4500lbs, while a significant increase in tire wear, is still small compared to the big 5000lb to 8000lb vehicles that people use in practice. I'm sure a 4500lb EV is bad, but I'd expect a 6000 lb SUV or Truck to be worse (and a 8000lb electric-SUV to be the absolute worst). But beyond just consumer cars are semi-trucks, which almost certainly are the top tire-wear vehicles on the roads. I'd expect almost all of the plastic from "tire wear" to come from a semi-truck (again, weight to the power of 4), given their grossly increased weight. > walking, biking and public transportation Semi-trucks are replaced by trains. Not by walking and biking. I mean, I want more walkable paths and all. But this _particular_ problem is solved with freight trains. Last-mile is difficult. Do we want 100-people in a neighborhood driving 100x cars to a store? Or would we rather have 1x large truck deliver a (heavier) package to 100x different people? We're screwed in both cases, and rail can't save us. But trains don't use rubber and trains wheels / rails are made from steel. I'm sure some particles fly off as iron (or iron-oxide/rust), but surely much less than rubber given how much stronger steel wheels / steel tracks are.
- undersuit 3y ago>Do we want 100-people in a neighborhood driving 100x cars to a store? Or would we rather have 1x large truck deliver a (heavier) package to 100x different people? Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck?
- beedeebeedee 3y ago> Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck? Single-use zoning. Most people in the US live in areas where you can't walk to a store.
- doubled112 3y agoThe nearest store is a 45 minute walk (one way) from my townhouse. I'm not in the US, but Canada. Driving drops that to 8 minutes. The sprawl is real and I just don't always have 1.5 hours to dedicate to grabbing bread.
- mzmzmzm 3y agoThis kind of gets at the root of the problem. Take away cars, and the whole North American built environment is just not worth as much as the pyramid scheme of real estate we have in place of social safety nets.
- ryukafalz 3y ago> The nearest store is a 45 minute walk (one way) from my townhouse. I'm not in the US, but Canada. Driving drops that to 8 minutes. Assuming an average adult walking speed of 3 mph, I'm guessing that's somewhere in the ballpark of 2.25 miles? So something like 11 minutes at an average cycling speed of 12 mph, yeah? The distances here don't feel insurmountable.
- doubled112 3y agoIt isn't the distance that is insurmountable by bike, no. Alone it would be fine, I know what I'm doing. If I add my children to the mix, it is a little sketchy due to what I'd consider tricky spots. There are no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no curbs, a squeeze over a bridge where two cars won't fit around the corner simultaneously, and a couple of roundabouts that drivers just don't understand (one normal, one mini). I can't quite trust them to do the right things. The drivers or my children in this instance.
- Synaesthesia 3y agoThe important point is there are far greener alternatives than EV's. EV's cost a lot of resources to build, which means a lot of environmental destruction and carbon output. Plus as we see they still contribute to this tyre dust problem. They are not the holy grail. Rail, public transport, e-bikes and better city design is.
- djaychela 3y agoThis argument about EV resource use for construction is fossil fuel industry FUD. The difference is outweighed within a year or two of driving versus an ICE vehicle.
- swores 3y agoIt can be simultaneously true that EVs are absolutely a big improvement over ICE vehicles, and that switching all vehicles to EVs doesn't solve 100% of the problems - therefore it's good to both continue pushing to move to EVs, and to push for alternatives as suggested by GP.
- lb1lf 3y agoBatteries are still heavy. For instance, the VW id.3 (small-ish EV) has a curb weight 250-450kg (550-1,000lbs) more than my wife's gasoline VW Passat, a quite spacious estate wagon.
- robertlagrant 3y agoI doubt an ID3 weighs only half a ton. Probably at least three times that?
- lb1lf 3y agoIt is close to two tons, I was (clumsily, it appears, but English is my third language, so please bear with me) trying to state that an id.3 compact is 250-450kg (depending on configuration) heavier than a gasoline-powered estate.
- robertlagrant 3y agoAaaah - gotcha.
- jazzyjackson 3y ago>> more than
- chiefalchemist 3y ago> Cars have been getting heavier long before EVs came around. One of the problems is that EVs are all new. Too many of them are bigger than they need to be. But that also goes for new ICE vehicle models. I’m not too worried about the weight of EVs long term. Given the rate of climate change / ecological damage, what definition are we using for "long term"? That aside, you've might have buried the lede. The switch over to EVs should represent an opportunity to revisit and evolve what personal transportation could look like and should look like[1]. Instead we've taking the same *old* bigger, stronger, faster paradigm and replacing petrol with a plug. Humans' role in the bigger broader picture isn't changing. It's the starus quo with a solar panel. There's a better than fair chance we're going to regret squandering this opportunity. [1] Similar happened with the pandemic...an opportunity to revist and rethink was quickly swept aside for back to the status quo. ASAP please. That's great for the status quo but certain a concern for the long term.
- ilyt 3y ago> Fleet operators don’t see any significant difference in tire wear. EVs have higher torque but that doesn’t matter unless to drive like a mad-man. EVs also allow you to drive very smoothly with no sudden jerk in torque. Time-to-replace-tyre is insignicant. If tyre manufacturer is tasked with making EV tyre with same durability as normal tyre they will just make rubber and grooves thicker. Also technically heavier car on wider tyre might use them up at similar rate than lighter car on skinnier tyre (as load-per-cm2 would be similar) but obviously produce more dust. > Cars have been getting heavier long before EVs came around. One of the problems is that EVs are all new. Too many of them are bigger than they need to be. But that also goes for new ICE vehicle models. It took ~20-30 years for average ICE car to get ~30% heavier. EVs add another ~30-50% on top of that increase. For any comparable ICE, EV will be heavier.
- mzmzmzm 3y agoI think your final point is key. Apart from curb weight, the reason to emphasize EVs might be just to remind people that they're not a panacea for the environmental collapse we're speeding towards. Instead of inventivizing car-free and car-light living, policymakers would rather not distrupt anything, simply swapping EVs for ICE vehicles in the same miserable sprawl. Yale's findings underline that this can't happen.
- demondemidi 3y ago> What we need to focus on is infrastructure for walking, biking and public transportation And busses, light rail, intercity trains. But America associates one-car-per-person with all kinds of twisted politics and self-esteem anxiety. We need a psyops program to wean people off cars, and it will take a decade or more. Just look at the anger in any HN thread that is critical of cars, it runs deep.
- danny_codes 3y ago> We need a psyops program to wean people off cars, and it will take a decade or more. Just look at the anger in any HN thread that is critical of cars, it runs deep. That 10 billion of car ad spend per year adds up.
- coryrc 3y agoBe willing to enforce civility in public. In Japan 7-year-old kids can ride the subway; here we have junkies burning fentanyl, vagrants with pitbulls, and "showtime". Gee, why wouldn't I want public transit to be an inseparable part of my life?
- demondemidi 3y agoYou are conflating two vastly different issues as part of pro-car propaganda. There is a drug epidemic AND there is a homeless crisis. Those have nothing to do with investing in public transportation. Your agenda is showing, lay off the NewsMax, my friend.
- coryrc 3y agoNo, I lived this. I want to live where I can bicycle entirely (and mostly did, because transit is often dirty). I'm working toward spending a few years in Japan and later the Netherlands. But only because we can't have nice things in the USA. I'm not going to live where junkies own all public spaces and kids get stuck on needles and die.
- 3y ago
- goalieca 3y ago> Fleet operators don’t see any significant difference in tire wear. Larger vehicles have larger tires. The size of a tire on a Tesla is a lot bigger than on my small sedan. They may both go 150,000km but one surely pollutes more.
- djaychela 3y agoTrue, but you should be comparing like with like here. A similar sized ICE vehicle will have similar sized tyres to the Tesla.
- goalieca 3y agoA similar sized ICE vehicle by weight will be much larger in volume. I compare a Tesla sedan with an actual ICE sedan and not a 3 row minivan.
- Kirby64 3y agoComparing a Tesla sedan to common ICE sedans... Tesla Model 3 uses 235/45R18 tires. The tires that come with the car have a treadwear of 500, so ~50k miles of use. Quite middle of the road in terms of treadwear, and you can get much stickier (and much lower life) tires such as the Pilot Sport 4S. 4 competitors for the sedan in the luxury class: BMW 330i uses 225/45R18 Audi A3 uses 225/40R18 Lexus ES250 uses 235/45R18 Mercedes C300 uses 225/45R18 Tire size seems all nearly identical to me. Some small variance, but broadly extremely close.
- goalieca 3y agoThe tire is actually quite large and it appears the s3 (lowest end tesla) still weighs approx 500 more pounds than the Audi a3 (trims vary a lot it seems). This is probably why the smallest Tesla (the model 3) is using 235 and not 225 like the A3. All things considered, wear is going to increase with load.
- oxfordmale 3y agoFor equivalent sized vehicles, EVs are heavier, simply because current generation batteries still do not match the energy density of fossil fuels. There is even discussions to start using concrete for roads to handle the increased weight of EVs.
- djaychela 3y agoA kia Nero EV is ~200kg heavier than the ice version. That's equivalent to two passengers. The weight delta of large vehicles is far more of an issue than drive train differences.
- maxerickson 3y agoFWIW, chemical batteries won't ever match the energy density of fossil fuels. Of course they don't need to, so it's not really an interesting comparison. The range/mass of the entire drivetrain is probably a reasonable comparison.
- danny_codes 3y agoExactly. Designing transit systems around cars was a colossal mistake. Now that the data are clear, it's time to rebuild. Over the next few decades, we need to tear down existing car infrastructure and replace it with walking/biking/transit. A side benefit (aside from the particulate pollution, energy waste, noise pollution, high death toll, increased inter-destination distance, decreased QOL) is that it'll be like an order of magnitude cheaper. Cars are a rather expensive way to get around. The Netherlands actually considers biking to be +17cents per mile (as in, considered revenue), because of reduced healthcare costs.
- avalys 3y agoTransit systems are designed around cars because people want to use cars. This idea that it was some kind of a massive conspiracy from the auto manufacturers is just bullshit. Yes, cars are expensive. We can afford cars today. No one wants to get poorer and go back to walking.
- qwerpy 3y agoThe car shaming mindset makes sense if you live somewhere like Japan where transit is clean and fast, and you don't have problematic people who assault other riders and do drugs. As a family man living in a large American west coast city, there is no way I would ever give up my car lifestyle.
- notacoward 3y ago> the focus on EVs is a distraction. Indeed. > EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more ... for the same capacity. Isn't it funny how people focus on per-vehicle numbers for one segment? There are more oversized gas-burning pickups and SUVs than electric anything, plus millions of diesel-burning vehicles that are even heavier. But somehow those all get left out of most stories on this topic. Truly a strange coincidence, everyone forgetting the same thing all at once.
- xbmcuser 3y agoYeah this is something that probably will start outside the western world. In poor countries as solar and batteries keep getting cheaper we will start seeing new shapes for vehicles which wont look the same as cars of today. Such vehicles will have a hard time getting cleared for the streets in the developed world because of decades of laws and red tape.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SoftTalker 3y agoSounds like a lot of hand-waving to rationalize a downside of EVs: they are heavy and chew up tires.
- jungturk 3y agoThe downside applies to "heavy vehicles" more generally, which includes most battery-bearing EVs in addition to most pickup trucks and SUVs driven in the US.
- qwytw 3y ago> Too many of them are bigger than they need to be. But that also goes for new ICE vehicle models. That's a very American centric claim. The gap between ICE and EV weight is relatively much higher in many other places where smaller cars are more popular.
- rcpt 3y ago> the focus on EVs is a distraction Tire particles have been a problem since forever but recently its a big concern now that EVs are rapidly dethroning combustion cars. I'm suspicious