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I think this is missing out on the big issue - tyre pollution which contains really nasty chemicals that inevitably get washed into rivers and waterways. Also,
by ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
I think this is missing out on the big issue - tyre pollution which contains really nasty chemicals that inevitably get washed into rivers and waterways.
Also, car-shaped EVs often use regenerative braking which will reduce the amount of brake dust pollution, but with their increased weight and powerful torque, they produce a lot more tyre pollution than ICE vehicles.
https://earth.org/tyre-pollution/ https://earth.org/tyre-pollution/
- shkkmo 2y agoThis study is looking at the health effects, not particle count per mile of car use. A similar study looking at tire dust would also be interesting.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoYes, the quantity and hazardous nature of different forms of pollution does need to be taken into account. Unfortunately, tyre pollution seems to be more hazardous and produced in greater quantities: https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical... https://www.theengineer.co.uk/media/mgmeqm3b/tyre-wear-particles-are-toxic-for-us-and-the-environment-0223-2.pdf https://www.theengineer.co.uk/media/mgmeqm3b/tyre-wear-parti...
- shkkmo 2y ago> Unfortunately, tyre pollution seems to be more hazardous and produced in greater quantities None of your linked studies even come close to supporting this claim. I don't doubt that tire particulates have negative health impacts on humans, but we don't really know which is worse yet.
- gnz11 2y agoThe Guardian did a piece on this two years ago: 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...
- shkkmo 2y agoThat is still talking about particulate counts, not health effects (the article does one study linking a particular constituent to salmon health effects.)
- xhkkffbf 2y agoI think the key is to make a class of light-weight EVs with smaller, lighter batteries for life around town. Most of us rarely drive more than a few dozen miles a day. But then there are those weekend trips.
- Ericson2314 2y agoThose are called e-bikes
- t-3 2y agoE-bikes are unusable at this time of year. It needs to stand stably on it's own to not kill me the instant some ice appears (so, four wheels) and have an enclosed cabin to stop frostbite.
- krn1p4n1c 2y agoI’ve biked to work in -15C. Get studded tires.
- ghaff 2y agoThe vast majority of the population is simply not going to do that if they bike at all.
- Ericson2314 2y agoSee what happens in other countries. Are they just tougher?
- ravetcofx 2y agoDress warm, studded tires. People are so averse to any non ideal weather for cycling. Texas, Arizona and Nevada people say it's too hot, West coasters say too much rain, other places say snow and ice. All excuses that can be solved by better personal preparation mixed with safer better maintained cycling infrastructure. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
- foobazgt 2y agoThis is fake news. The backing study for this claim did all sorts of wonky unrealistic testing to come to this conclusion. If you own an EV, you viscerally know it's BS given that you're the one paying for the actual tire replacements on your real-world driven vehicle.
- bfgeek 2y agoTo add to this, (from what I remember reading the study at the time) it was basically racing a car around a track (think lots of tyre squealing around corners), and found that the tyre wear was very high. I haven't seen a study which actually simulates somewhat "normal" driving (presumably because the wear is so low driving like that it's difficult to measure). Also didn't factor in a bunch of different stuff - tyres are effected by lots of things; compound, temperature, pressure, surface abrasion, etc. There might be an effect! But this study was very bad.
- chongli 2y agoA normal driving test was (famously [1]) done to measure the effect of axle load (vehicle weight per axle) on road wear. This is where we got the “fourth power law” of road wear. I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear, given the same tires on each vehicle. From this, I would expect car makers to use larger, thicker, heavier tires on heavier vehicles in order to compensate. Thus I think we shouldn’t accept claims about the replacement lifecycle of tires without knowing these details of their construction. If an electric car is twice the mass of an older ICE car then the fourth power rule would predict a 16-fold increase in road wear. I would then expect the tires on the EV to have 16 times more rubber in order to last the same duration, unless they’re made of some newer compounds which are more durable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test
- bfgeek 2y ago> I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear IMO this would be a suspect assumption to make w/o data to back it up. You've got two dissimilar materials interacting (in very different modes). E.g. rolling a metal ball bearing on a wood surface would obviously cause the wood to degrade far more than the ball bearing, (and even a wooden ball rolling on a wood surface would wear substantially less due to the mode difference). (If I had to guess the road has a higher wear as the surface has a tensile stress around the contact patch of the tyre, causing most of the damage, but this is just armchair engineering at this stage).
- bluescrn 2y agoInteresting that nobody every talked about tyre/brake dust until it became clear that cars aren't going away as we phase out fossil fuels, they're just going electric. Is this a serious environmental concern compared to the climate/emissions issue, or just the 'r/fuckcars mentality'? Meanwhile, here in the UK, one of the more interesting alternatives - personal light EVs (ebikes/scooters) are being utterly demonized, and are never likely to be legal on the roads beyond the very limited 250W/15mph pedelec class of e-bikes. Wouldn't be surprised if even that is banned before long, too.
- marcosdumay 2y agoThe exhaust used to be really nasty until just a little while ago. Nobody was focusing on the less harmful emissions. Now we mostly fixed it, so it's time to look at the other stuff.
- nayuki 2y ago> The exhaust used to be really nasty Specifically: Leaded gasoline (with tetraethyllead), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), carbon monoxide (CO), unburned hydrocarbons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_oxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_oxide , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx
- marcosdumay 2y agoDon't forget about the solid particles.
- homebrewer 2y ago> Now we mostly fixed it Only in developed countries. The age of a typical car in my region is over 15 years. Basically, most of what you bought in 2005-2010, drove for a decade or more, and then sold for scrap eventually ends up in countries like mine. Moreover, most people take catalytic converters off their cars and sell them for $80-100 for platinum recycling. I think most "developing" countries have the same problem. So the world at large hasn't really solved it and won't solve it any time soon.
- cryptonector 2y agoBoth are mentioned. Did you read TFA?
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoFrom: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
- isx726552 2y agoThis is why a move to natural latex rubber tires is necessary. Companies have experimented with them[1][2] but a world-wide switchover should be in the works. [1] https://www.continental-tires.com/about/sustainability/activities-and-initiatives/design-and-sourcing/taraxagum/ https://www.continental-tires.com/about/sustainability/activ... [2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/04/eco-friendly-tires-bridgestone-goes-green-in-new-tire-test/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/04/eco-friendly-tires-brid...
- everdrive 2y agoIt's hard to imagine supply scaling with demand, or the tires providing as much grip and safety. I'm supportive, but I see no world where this is adopted.
- isx726552 2y agoHere is a comment thread on HN from a while back with more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37727040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37727040 It really doesn’t sound all that infeasible, just would require some investment to build momentum.
- light_hue_1 2y agoThis also solves nothing. Just switching the rubber supply from one plant to another. And recycling some old tires in the process. The heavy metals and other particles that pollute from tires are all still there.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago"Natural" isn't really the main thing. Whether you make something synthetically or extract it from a plant doesn't tell you if it's toxic or not. There are plenty of non-toxic synthetic substances and toxic plants. And synthetic things are usually cheaper to make. What we need is less toxic synthetics.
- blackoil 2y ago"natural latex rubber" Worldwide switch-over will destroy forest ecosystems in Malaysia, Indonesia and Africa and more to replace it with Rubber tree plantations.
- santoshalper 2y agoYeah, but you know it's not going to the get the coverage it deserves, since it's not a problem in the US, where we use tires instead.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoIt doesn't matter how you colour the issue
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoIt's also ignoring the apparent purpose of the study: It appears to have been designed to make the case for removing copper from brake pads. Only one type of copper-containing brake pads was actually worse than exhaust, and that is also the type with the worst braking performance. Even the other types of pads they tested also contained copper and the copper was the main source of the pollution. But there are already brake pads with low or no copper in them.
- mschuster91 2y ago> I think this is missing out on the big issue These are two distinct issues. Tyre pollution is threatening the wastewater but at least in urban areas where the most pollution occurs thanks to stop'n'go can be counteracted by expanding water treatment (we have to do so anyway to get rid of pharmaceuticals). Brake dust however is a massive threat for anyone living near a highly congested road.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoWater treatment is a bit late for the river environments as the rain washes pollutants into them.
- mschuster91 2y agoDunno about how the US does it, but in Germany, urban areas have the road wastewater go into the sewers so it passes treatment plants. In rural areas tire dust isn't as much of a problem because cars there keep their speed - it's acceleration and deceleration that produce tire dust.
- porphyra 2y agoThe Tesla Model 3 Long Range weighs 1823 kg. The BMW M340i xDrive weighs about 1818 kg. Seeing as these two cars are similar in size, capacity, and performance (0-60 mph in 4.2 s), it is nice to see that the electric option weighs about the same as an ICE car of similar specs.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoThey reduce it relative to an automatic ice car but not a manual one. On a manual car you can engine brake and achieve similar brake pad savings.