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I am 100% on the side of reducing pollutants — but this was never publicly seen as a major issue and I'm suspicious about the timing. The oil industry is a con

by jbm 1y ago

I am 100% on the side of reducing pollutants — but this was never publicly seen as a major issue and I'm suspicious about the timing. The oil industry is a conglomerate of degenerates spamming boomer logic all the way down to the workers. Their memes propagate throughout society and lead to the other boomer characteristic of rewriting personal and societal history. The finger waggers now are being programmed to pretend they talked about tire particulates and the carheads are being programmed to pretend they never cared about 0-60. This another "We have always been at war with Eastasia", just like they all opposed the Iraq war from day 1 and didn't cancel the Dixie Chicks, et cetra. This may have been discussed in specialist literature somewhere but even when I did ecology courses in university circa 2001ish, I never heard about tire particulates, while I did hear a lot about greenhouse gasses. It's a concern but not a civilization ending concern like climate change. I low key resent these attempts to move goalposts to satisfy the writer's urge for negativity.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
It's pretty clearly a talking point. Consider that a bus has six to ten tires that each weigh around ten times more than a typical car tire. This is presented as the alternative to cars, is it even any different? Not implausible that it could actually be worse, especially if the bus isn't at full occupancy at all times. Meanwhile the weight difference between EVs and petroleum cars is emphasized in the complaints, even though it isn't very large, while the much larger weight difference between any cars and buses is ignored. Because the point isn't to complain about tires, it's to complain about EVs. And if the point actually was to complain about tires then you still wouldn't be talking about EVs, you would be talking about tires and how to make them shed less or construct them out of lower toxicity materials etc.
- hansvm 1y ago
  Last time I did the math, a Tesla Model Y only had 3x less tire emissions than a semi truck per distance traveled. City buses are on-par with a Tesla Model Y if you only care about mL/km tire wear.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    How is that math supposed to work when a city bus weighs almost ten times as much and has more and bigger tires?
    - hansvm 1y ago
      The city bus uses tires with a harder rubber and dimensions such that the pressure at the road is less, plus its normal driving patterns have less wear than typical Tesla use. To make those sorts of calculations easy, you can ignore all the pressure/usage/etc nonsense and just do basic math on tire dimensions (including min/max tread depth and width, not just radius, though I typically ignore siping and whatnot) and typical longevity. Volume lost per mile driven is basic high-school arithmetic, and the only real questions are regarding data quality and whether the self-imposed constraints (e.g., examining real-world wear rather than wear given optimal driving or something) are reasonable.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        > The city bus uses tires with a harder rubber and dimensions such that the pressure at the road is less Harder rubber seems like it could make a difference, but then you could also put tires with harder rubber on a car. You can get a heavier vehicle to have the same pressure at the road by using more and bigger tires, but then the problem is that the tires are bigger and there are more of them. > plus its normal driving patterns have less wear than typical Tesla use. Isn't a city bus constantly starting and stopping, both as a result of city traffic and picking up and dropping off passengers? > To make those sorts of calculations easy, you can ignore all the pressure/usage/etc nonsense and just do basic math on tire dimensions (including min/max tread depth and width, not just radius, though I typically ignore siping and whatnot) and typical longevity. I tried plugging these in and it still comes out as a 6-wheel commercial bus has several times the tire wear as a 4-wheel light truck, rather than being the same. And I expected the difference to be even more, but I guess that goes to show how much the weight argument is motivated reasoning if ~7x the weight is only ~3x the tire wear and then people are complaining about something which is only ~1.2x the weight.
- phillipcarter 1y ago
  The city bus comparison is uneven, but if we consider peak travel times during the week, the density intuitively seems like it works out to less waste. City buses have their numbers and schedule dialed back when you're not in peak hours, and I suspect that it's peak hours where you see the bulk of waste from tires. My city buses in peak travel hours have anywhere from 20 to 75 people on them. Even if we assume that every one of those folks would have carpooled (which rarely happens), we're looking at a lot of cars, and thus tires, on the road.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > The city bus comparison is uneven, but if we consider peak travel times during the week, the density intuitively seems like it works out to less waste. City buses have their numbers and schedule dialed back when you're not in peak hours, and I suspect that it's peak hours where you see the bulk of waste from tires. This is really the problem with buses outside of extremely high density areas. (And extremely high density areas should have subways.) You get off work at 5PM, you want to go to an entertainment venue and then go home at 10PM. You can find a full bus a 5:15PM that will take you there because it's rush hour, but then you can't get home on the bus because there is no bus service after 9PM. Which means you can't take the bus there during rush hour either, because you need your car to be there so you can get home. Or, you can run mostly-empty buses in the darkness hours, but there goes your efficiency.

by jbm 1y ago

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

It's pretty clearly a talking point. Consider that a bus has six to ten tires that each weigh around ten times more than a typical car tire. This is presented as the alternative to cars, is it even any different? Not implausible that it could actually be worse, especially if the bus isn't at full occupancy at all times. Meanwhile the weight difference between EVs and petroleum cars is emphasized in the complaints, even though it isn't very large, while the much larger weight difference between any cars and buses is ignored. Because the point isn't to complain about tires, it's to complain about EVs. And if the point actually was to complain about tires then you still wouldn't be talking about EVs, you would be talking about tires and how to make them shed less or construct them out of lower toxicity materials etc.

hansvm 1y ago
Last time I did the math, a Tesla Model Y only had 3x less tire emissions than a semi truck per distance traveled. City buses are on-par with a Tesla Model Y if you only care about mL/km tire wear.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  How is that math supposed to work when a city bus weighs almost ten times as much and has more and bigger tires?
  - hansvm 1y ago
    The city bus uses tires with a harder rubber and dimensions such that the pressure at the road is less, plus its normal driving patterns have less wear than typical Tesla use. To make those sorts of calculations easy, you can ignore all the pressure/usage/etc nonsense and just do basic math on tire dimensions (including min/max tread depth and width, not just radius, though I typically ignore siping and whatnot) and typical longevity. Volume lost per mile driven is basic high-school arithmetic, and the only real questions are regarding data quality and whether the self-imposed constraints (e.g., examining real-world wear rather than wear given optimal driving or something) are reasonable.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > The city bus uses tires with a harder rubber and dimensions such that the pressure at the road is less Harder rubber seems like it could make a difference, but then you could also put tires with harder rubber on a car. You can get a heavier vehicle to have the same pressure at the road by using more and bigger tires, but then the problem is that the tires are bigger and there are more of them. > plus its normal driving patterns have less wear than typical Tesla use. Isn't a city bus constantly starting and stopping, both as a result of city traffic and picking up and dropping off passengers? > To make those sorts of calculations easy, you can ignore all the pressure/usage/etc nonsense and just do basic math on tire dimensions (including min/max tread depth and width, not just radius, though I typically ignore siping and whatnot) and typical longevity. I tried plugging these in and it still comes out as a 6-wheel commercial bus has several times the tire wear as a 4-wheel light truck, rather than being the same. And I expected the difference to be even more, but I guess that goes to show how much the weight argument is motivated reasoning if ~7x the weight is only ~3x the tire wear and then people are complaining about something which is only ~1.2x the weight.
phillipcarter 1y ago
The city bus comparison is uneven, but if we consider peak travel times during the week, the density intuitively seems like it works out to less waste. City buses have their numbers and schedule dialed back when you're not in peak hours, and I suspect that it's peak hours where you see the bulk of waste from tires. My city buses in peak travel hours have anywhere from 20 to 75 people on them. Even if we assume that every one of those folks would have carpooled (which rarely happens), we're looking at a lot of cars, and thus tires, on the road.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > The city bus comparison is uneven, but if we consider peak travel times during the week, the density intuitively seems like it works out to less waste. City buses have their numbers and schedule dialed back when you're not in peak hours, and I suspect that it's peak hours where you see the bulk of waste from tires. This is really the problem with buses outside of extremely high density areas. (And extremely high density areas should have subways.) You get off work at 5PM, you want to go to an entertainment venue and then go home at 10PM. You can find a full bus a 5:15PM that will take you there because it's rush hour, but then you can't get home on the bus because there is no bus service after 9PM. Which means you can't take the bus there during rush hour either, because you need your car to be there so you can get home. Or, you can run mostly-empty buses in the darkness hours, but there goes your efficiency.