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Another way electric cars clean the air: study says brake dust reduced by 83%
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoI'm glad that they address the increased tyre wear pollution. I'm not entirely(!) convinced that EVs only have slightly increased wear as there seems to be plenty of reports of EVs going through tyres a lot quicker though estimates do seem to vary from about 30% to 50% more wear. (Also great that the report mentions the importance of walking/cycling for city transport)
- slau 1y agoDo you know where the increased tyre wear comes from? I run a PHEV, and if anything, my tyre wear has improved. This being said, I’ve noticed that many a “big EV” driver will take off from red lights like they’re driving a dragster.
- jabl 1y ago> This being said, I’ve noticed that many a “big EV” driver will take off from red lights like they’re driving a dragster. That would be my guess. Occasionally looking at specs from EV's coming on market, they seem to have very powerful engines, and of course the torque curve of electric motors is fantastic. So if you have such a car, and a heavy foot, I can well imagine you going through tires at a decent clip.
- gmac 1y agoExtra weight because of the battery, I think. Our EV is light for its size, but still 50% heavier than our previous ICE, of a similar size (Renault Scenic e-tech, 1.8 tonnes vs SEAT Leon ST, 1.2 tonnes). Though the additional acceleration probably does also make a difference.
- m101 1y agoIncreased tire wear comes from the weight of the car and cornering. The tires need to do significantly more work in accelerating (the centrifugal kind) a car around corners at equal speed.
- gambiting 1y agoSo obviously and logically speaking, an ICE car of equivalent weight should have the same tyre wear, and we know that's not true - there are some very heavy ICEs around which still manage to do 50k miles on a single set of tyres without any issue. EVs have instant torque from 0rpm and people use it and that's the main reason. Case in point - we have a Volkswagen e-Up, it barely weighs 1000kg, it's pretty much one of the lightest cars on the road. And yet it goes through its front tyres like nothing, and that's despite very modest power output of only 80bhp. But I do accelerate hard as it's so easy to do - so it's reflected in the tyre wear.
- flakeoil 1y agoThat should be easy to fix though with a bit of software.
- m101 1y agoI agree there are effects of increased linear acceleration, however I disagree with you because of: On many roads you accelerate and brake less often than you go around corners. These two things are equivalent on tire wear given the forces involved: 1 corner at 50kmh with 50m radius. Accelerating linearly at 0.39g (7 second 0-100kmh) to 77kmh from 0.
- gambiting 1y agoI don't think that's neccessarily a disagreement? Both things can be true - if you mostly drive on roads with fast corners, the heavier car will wear out its tyres faster. If you drive on roads with lots of start/stop traffic but not many "at speed" corners then the one that consistently accelerates harder will wear out its tyres quicker.
- kube-system 1y agoAll else equal, the higher rate of BEV tire wear is primarily a function of their greater weight relative to comparable vehicles.
- gambiting 1y ago>>All else equal That's equivalent to those high school physics exercises that say "assume zero friction and no gravity". Everything else isn't equal with EVs because they make accelerating from standstill so effortless without any obvious downside that people do it back to back like it's nothing, while in an ICE you'd have to drive like a madman dumping the clutch every time just to get the same torque at the start. If you had two cars accelerating at the same rate then sure, the heavier one would wear out its tyres faster - but that's just not how people drive EVs(broadly speaking).
- kube-system 1y agoThere are EVs that aren't overpowered luxury cars. They also burn through tires faster. Also, if you compare two gasoline cars of different weights, the heavier one burns through tires quicker.
- gambiting 1y agoThat's exactly what I'm saying though. I have an EV that's only 1000kg and 80bhp and it goes through tyres like butter.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoIt'll be the extra weight and greater torque.
- Ekaros 1y agoI think most reasonable explanation is likely very much increased torque and rather poor traction control leading to common slipping. Which directly wears tires. Hybrid vehicles generally have less torque so they have less this type of wear. Unless driven purposefully aggressively. Clear solution would be to limit acceleration of vehicles and mandate traction control that limits this type of wear.
- pjc50 1y agoI'm surprised EVs don't all have traction control since there's already got to be a computerized control loop for motor drive at that power level. And slipping is an obvious problem when max torque is at zero RPM.
- Ekaros 1y agoOne reason could be to get those low 0-100 rates. When actually from 0 to low speed part of that really isn't important in most scenarios. 60 or 80 to 100 sure. But 0 to 20 not so much.
- MagicMoonlight 1y agoPlease stop it with the tyre nonsense. The world is burning. Hundreds of millions people are going to die. We have a solution… and you won’t let us use it because it increases the rubber levels in people who lick tyres. As if that matters. So what if there are more rubber particles in their mouths? We can eliminate vehicle pollution!
- yourusername 1y agoRubber particles from tires are one of the main sources of microplastics.
- llampx 1y agoThe tires that are "disposed of" in the third world and then burnt?
- sfn42 1y agoI think the point of the person you replied to is that this stuff is comparably unimportant. Micro plastics are as far as I know not even known to be particularly harmful. It's more of a "this is probably bad" type of thing. And I'm not really sure what we're supposed to do about it, we already have huge plastic islands floating around. On the other hand, carbon emissions are known to cause global warming which will literally be the end of the world if we don't fix it fast. From what I've read it may already be too late, we may already be on course for runaway climate change that we may not be able to fix. To me that's a much more pressing matter.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoHowever the 6PPD used in tyres appears to be very toxic to some marine life and the tyre pollution gets washed off from the roads into rivers etc. It's the toxicity that's the issue. Poisoning the oceans does not seem like a good strategy for the human race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6PPD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6PPD
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- tlb 1y agoThe original Tesla Model S went through a set of tires every 15k miles, not because of anything inherent to EVs, but because they came standard with super-soft Michelin Pilot Sport tires which give slightly higher grip than high-mileage tires. You can put harder compound tires on that last 50 or 75k miles.
- jashmatthews 1y agoYeah the older Pilot Sport tyres wore out quickly. I had PS4 before and now PS5 and they are wearing at something like half to a third as fast? Very happy. Only slightly less grip in cold weather.
- epistasis 1y agoBrake dust is such nasty stuff, yet we place schools and homes right next to the rivers of pollution that we call highways. I'm hopeful that we will legalize the building of less car-dependent housing, but until then at least EVs will help.
- andrepd 1y agoExactly. EVs are a band-aid, but the true cure is simply viable alternatives to driving.
- SequoiaHope 1y agoYep. I’m finally in a place to bike to work and elsewhere and it’s remarkable how much I can get done without a car. But the infrastructure sucks and there’s so much room for improvement.
- lostlogin 1y agoLooking forward to your commute is so great. Have you treated yourself to a nice bike?
- SequoiaHope 1y agoI have a few nice bikes but I did recently get a 30 year old titanium mountain bike frame and I’ve turned it in to a city and dirt gravel bike. It’s super fun!
- andrepd 1y agoMoving to a place where I can bike anywhere safely has been one of the best changes to my quality of life. It's really not even complicated to do the bare minimum: whenever there are 2 or more lanes, fence one off with concrete dividers to make a bike lane. Whenever there's just 1, pave it with stones and add bumps, and cars and bikes can co-exist. Bang, I just made your city safer, healthier, and the car traffic quicker. You're welcome.
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- ChiefNotAClue 1y agoTo those wondering about tire wear: "Despite the slightly higher levels of tire wear from EVs, brake dust was found to be more unhealthy, as brake dust is much more likely to become airborne (>40%) than tire wear is (1-5%). So EVs create a lot less of the worse thing, and a little more of the less-bad thing."
- verisimi 1y agoSo it's even more good news. Yet another way EVs are better.
- HenryBemis 1y agoIt's not you, it's definitely me. I cannot tell if there is irony or a 'straight-faced' comment that you wrote. Either way, like always, time will tell. We (humans) almost never 'get it right the first time'. And perhaps EVs have been around for quite a while now, it's still 'a while'. So I wouldn't be surprised if the lobby for "7PPD" (or whatever replacement) convinces us that "7PDD" is the best and even makes fish taste better, only to find out that it causes terminal cancer (see smoking, sugar, etc.)
- jvm___ 1y agoIs tire wear worse for aquatic life than brake dust?
- cyberax 1y agoTire wear right now is worse, because tires contain an anti-oxidant that gets oxidized into a compound that is highly toxic to aquatic life. The work is underway to standardize on a replacement. This time with even more tests.
- chneu 1y agoI wonder if this will be like lead in av-gas. Lol.
- merek 1y ago> It turns out that BEVs (battery electric vehicles) reduce the amount of brake dust by 83%, according to a new analysis by EIT Urban Mobility (a body of the European Union) and Transport for London. The study looked primarily at London, Milan and Barcelona. > The primary reason for this is the use of regenerative braking, meaning that electric vehicles can slow down without rubbing friction brakes. Other vehicles that use regenerative braking reduced brake emissions too, with Hybrids reducing them by 10-48%, and PHEVs by 66%. Technically not cleaning the air as the title says, but still a major improvement.
- jbverschoor 1y agoCars clean the air because the AC filters capture particles
- aziaziazi 1y agoI clean the air because my lungs capture car particles.
- silon42 1y agoThat's why I have an e-bike, so I breathe less when cycling/commuting into the city.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- aziaziazi 1y agoThere was a study [0] in Paris that demonstrates a signifiant positive benefit/risk ration of bicycling even in polluted air: the effect on physical and psychic health benefits largely outweighs (sometimes to x30) the risk of accidents and pollution disease. [0] (2012, french) https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefices-et-les-risques-de-la-pratique-du-velo.html https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefic...
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- m101 1y ago[flagged]
- LeoPanthera 1y agoI'm 99% sure this is a troll, but I hate to see misinformation go uncorrected. If this isn't a troll, you've been misled by fossil fuel industry propaganda, and I'm sorry. While EVs can be heavier, they often achieve high safety ratings due to their low center of gravity and robust battery protection. Advanced safety features are standard. Studies suggest that EV charging, especially when managed, can help stabilize or even lower electricity rates for everyone by improving grid utilization. Many new technologies, including EVs, receive initial support to foster adoption and scale production, similar to past support for other industries. While EV manufacturing has an upfront carbon footprint, their lifetime CO2 emissions are typically lower than gasoline cars, even with current energy grids. This advantage grows significantly as more renewables are added. Hybrids are a good step, but full EVs generally offer a greater reduction in emissions over their lifespan. Charging infrastructure is rapidly expanding and improving in reliability. Typical daily driving is well within the range of modern EVs, and charging to 80% is often a time-saving measure for DC fast charging and helps prolong battery health, not a fundamental range flaw. Preconditioning optimizes battery performance but the energy used is a small fraction of overall capacity. Efficient hybrids have their place, but EVs represent a significant step forward in reducing transportation emissions and improving urban air quality.
- m101 1y agoIt is not a troll. I was talking about safety for the drivers in the car that collide with the EV. They are less safe with EVs on the road. When we have marginal electricity pricing, and electric cars necessarily being marginal demand, then they will ramp pricing a lot for all users, not just those driving electric cars. This far outweighs the benefit of grid balancing services (which this green revolution has created the need for). I think you are not informed on the cost of renewables and therefore co2 cost. Just look at interconnection fees in the US. They have until recently got off for free on being added to the grid, but there was always a cost they imposed on the grid they didn't pay for. Now they have to pay high fees, and therefore high co2 costs to upgrade grid infrastructure. My experience, in the UK and Europe, with ev infrastructure has been pretty terrible, especially when compared to just filling up with petrol. The cost advantage is also disappearing fast especially at public charging electricity rates. Efficiency above 80% is clearly worse than below 80%. I drove 30k miles in a Tesla on road trips and saw that consistently. I forgot to mention that once I lost 3% battery in waiting in the heat and air conditioning at a border crossing one time. That glass ceiling is not a good idea in hot climates.
- _7acn 1y ago[flagged]
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoTo what?
- Pavilion2095 1y ago> As it has become more and more untenable for anti-EV propagandists to deny the air quality benefits of EVs, a common refrain from them has become “but tailpipe emissions aren’t everything, what about brakes and tires, huh?!” What is this website? Tell me about the story, don't argue with imaginary haters and trolls. The writing is so poor there.
- Schiendelman 1y agoThere are plenty of these sorts of comments here on this post.
- Pavilion2095 1y agoSo that nonsense didn't even help? Great.
- Schiendelman 1y agoI can't really tell what you're frustrated about, but how can I help? The statement you just made doesn't follow from what I said. Can you communicate completely about what you want?
- stephen_g 1y agoWhen I tried Threads for a bit I was getting almost entirely this kind of content (not just about EVs but these kind of inaccurate concern-trolling bad-takes about renewable energy etc. also) - I think its algorithm was targeting me with it because it was trying to rage-bait me into responding because that's "engagement". Used to see a bit of it on Twitter before it went downhill under Musk and I abandoned it, but its algorithm used to be better at keeping that kind of stuff mostly siloed so mostly people who wanted to see it would.
- Tade0 1y agoAudi had an interesting proposition regarding making electric cars actually clean the air as opposed to just avoiding emissions: https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/press-releases/audi-urban-purifier-the-fine-dust-filter-for-electric-vehicles-14949 https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/press-releases/audi-urba... ICE cars already do that in a way, as they suck a significant amount of air through their intake filters (CADR = displacement x RPM). Audi's filter was supposed to have been more fine-grained to catch brake dust and tire particles, but sufficient legislation never materialized, so the project was shelved.
- nosianu 1y agoThat reminds me of a Louis de Funès movie ("La Zizanie", film de Claude Zidi de 1978) Air cleaning scene: https://youtu.be/lpmxrgrbKDc https://youtu.be/lpmxrgrbKDc (French) (He was responsible for first poisoning the air by burning tires, so that he could demonstrate his machine to the potential Japanese investors) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Zizanie_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Zizanie_(film) This Audi proposal is somewhat similar in my mind. They want to profit from both parts, providing both the problem and the solution. I'm not against it per se.
- Tade0 1y agoYou've reminded me that I was taught French early enough to instinctively follow the rhythm of the language, but today that alone won't suffice if the vocabulary isn't there. I've known Louis de Funès from Les Gendarmes and such classics as La Soupe aux choux or L'aile ou la cuisse. I didn't know the movie you linked, but now I'm thinking I'll pick up French again - if only to hear the whole body if his work in its original language.
- Schiendelman 1y agoWouldn't an electric car with good filtration bringing cabin air in from the outside do this inherently?
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- cyberax 1y agoAnybody who ever driven an EV, would have told that the initial scare about brake dust was pure nonsense. EVs barely use frictional brakes, with regen performing most of the braking action. Frictional brakes only really come into play to slow down from around ~5 mph to a complete stop. And even that can be eliminated by essentially running the motor backwards, at low torque. This mode of braking is sometimes used on train engines as an emergency braking method.
- jabl 1y agoHow does this generally work wrt brakes needing to be used occasionally to not rust shut? Even with an ICE car if you don't drive a lot, and drive in a fuel efficient way (e.g. coasting towards red lights) this can be an issue resulting in an expensive surprise when you need to replace disks long before they are worn out.
- olex 1y agoSome EVs (Teslas are ones I know of) have software that occasionally lightly applies the brakes to keep them clean. Also, on EVs with LFP batteries the brakes do get used a bit more, because a full and/or cold pack usually can only take very limited power from regenerative braking. Depending on the implementation in the vehicle, brakes are either applied automatically to still allow for one-pedal-driving (aka. "brake blending", making the difference unnoticeable to the driver), or throttle-pedal regen is simply capped and the driver has to use the brake pedal when they notice that regen power is not sufficient.
- lnsru 1y agoHave Tesla with badly corroded rear brake discs. Software does clearly not help here. It was very bad at the end of winter. Now it’s getting better in spring. I am curious how does it look in autumn. Trying to use mechanical brakes occasionally. I had same story with corroded rear brakes on BMW. The solution was mechanical handbrake.
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- atoav 1y agoI was living on the 4th floor next to a main road once. I could wipe a thick layer of gray dust from my balcony furniture eevery two days. This surprised me initially, since it was high up and a big garden separated the road and the house. The worst thing was the noise. When I lived there I tuned it out, but when I slept for the first night in my new flat it felt like someone lifted a huge rock from my chest. Cars in cities are a really thing to tolerate from the standpoint of people who bear the cost of them being there, EVs help reducing two of the main issues with cars. Issues like space use remain (housing prices skyrocket while there is a ton of empty space used for storing cars while nobody drives). Who knows, maybe EVs can solve this one too one day.
- bamboozled 1y agoAnother way to say the same thing: Electric cars still pollute, just a bit less than regular cars.
- raffael_de 1y agoNot sure why you are downvoted given that the phrasing of the title is objectively wrong.
- matt3210 1y agoAre they “cleaning” or just not producing as much dirty? Semantics…
- senectus1 1y agoworth defining tho.
- Animats 1y agoWorks for modern trains, too. I was watching one of the new electric CALTRAIN multiple units pull into a station. The motors did all the braking except for the last few feet of stopping. The friction brakes normally go on below 5 MPH, and are rather noisy for disk brakes. Emergency braking is friction brakes only.
- formerly_proven 1y agoThe brake dust from low-noise train brakes smells so incredibly nasty (burning ABS, pretty much) but the operators and OEMs claim it’s <<safe>>. Bonus points for the Bombardier bi-level coaches, where the AC air intake is right above the wheelsets and takes a healthy gulp of that brake dust and smell and distributes it to the passengers inside (because the smell is just as pungent inside as outside a few seconds after coming to a stop I doubt the filters, if any, are doing much). Frankly I’d not commute with it.
- tlb 1y agoFilters catch particulates, but not gases. Heated ABS releases chemicals like 1,3-Butadiene, a small molecule (4 carbons), gaseous at room temperature, and mildly gasoline-smelling. It's bad for you in high concentrations.
- trklausss 1y agoAs a driver of a diesel car: Sure thing. But driving style is what is behind this result. With electric cars, your "engine" (motor) brakes for you. This is something that already happens in ICEs though: you can just let the car roll, don't drive in a rush etc. However, everyone is in a rush: illegally overtaking, tailgating, honking... The conditions and social behavior on the road push for inefficiencies.
- Schiendelman 1y agoEVs (or many of them) teach you this behavior - because you get regeneration back into the battery, there's a little incentive to taking your foot off the accelerator earlier and letting the car recover energy. There's a reason people are talking about this for electric vehicles and not for anything else.
- trklausss 1y agoYes, but you can do that with an ICE too. I achieve 60mpg//4l/100km with my diesel, also with highway driving. It's doable, but if you let your car roll for a red light, everyone is pissed at you. The main difference is as you say: EVs brake way more when you are not pressing the throttle, before even needing to touch the brakes. It also helps with mileage.
- Schiendelman 1y ago"Can do" isn't really that relevant when you are talking about populations. People can be vegan. They can buy carbon credits. They can live in smaller apartments to reduce their consumption. None of that is relevant, only what they actually do at population scale.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoIt's not even anywhere near the same. How often do you drive an ice car without touching the brakes ever? That's my normal operating in my model Y. The regen is powerful enough that it's equivalent to a fairly strongly pressing the brakes on a normal car. There is no way anyone can drive an ICE car like that normally. Also, regenerative braking isn't an intrinsic aspect of an EV, it is a feature.
- freetonik 1y agoMany people complained when VW "dared" to use drum brakes in the rear of ID.3, but it's a good idea, I think. Drum brakes do not pollute (as much), are cheaper, and easier to maintain. In the front, there are still regular disk brakes, and together with regen (recuperation), the overall use of polluting disk brakes is minimized. I'd be curious to see how much brake dust pollution is produced on average in this setup, compared to a regular ICE car with 4 disk brakes and no regen.
- incomingpain 1y agoI drive completely in '1 pedal mode' which essentially lets regen do the braking for me. I maybe need to use actual brakes once every few days. I would say something as well. The less noise from an EV changes people. They'll not look both ways when crossing a road and just walk out right in front of you.
- teo_zero 1y agoIs there an explanation why BEVs fare better than hybrids in terms of brake dust? They use the same principle, so I expected similar performances. The article gives no clues, only these results: > It turns out that BEVs reduce the amount of brake dust by 83% [...] Other vehicles that use regenerative braking reduced brake emissions too, with Hybrids reducing them by 10-48%, and PHEVs by 66%.
- joeyh 1y agoHybrids have a smaller battery, so C rate limits maximum regen. For example, a prius can regen at 2 kw, while a model 3 can regen at 76+ kw.