> Particulates issued from tailpipes can aggravate asthma and heart disease and increase the risk of lung cancer and heart attack. Globally, they are a leading risk factor for premature death.
Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. The study is about PM2.5[0]. which will chiefly be tires and brake pads. Modern gasoline engines are relatively clean, outside of CO2, though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff.
It's true that brake dust is the primary PM2.5 emission from vehicles in an urban environment. However the PM2.5 component from tail pipes are still very significant, higher than the contribution from tires.
Absolutely. Nearly eliminates. Even non-plugin hybrids have greatly reduced.
There was a "study" going around claiming otherwise, which sampled air captured by passing vehicles with a trash bag on a busy road, claiming EVs did not reduce brake dust, but even my brief summary here makes it extremely obvious how flawed this "measurement" is.
For those of us unclear why collecting air from passing cars to measure particulates is obviously flawed, could you elaborate?
EVs unfortunately do increase tire particulate, as well. Fairly significantly. It's not obvious to me that the decrease in brake dust isn't made up by the increase in tire dust.
The removal of the tailpipe emissions is really where EVs shine from a pollution standpoint. If you turn on your car in your garage, you don't die anymore.
EV brake pads don't hardly wear down, so they obviously can't have nearly the same amount of brake dust, yet the "study" showed they did. I'm guessing there's brake dust on the ground being kicked up.
> EVs unfortunately do increase tire particulate, Fairly significantly
In the USA, mass of EV is not significantly different than the alternative choice. EVs do not have increased tire particulate. If in Europe extremely lightweight tiny cars are actually a likely substitution for nicer, heavier EVs, then it seems reasonable that tire wear will increase proportionally. There's a lot riding on that "if" though.
It's not just the fact that EVs are heavier than the non-EV version of the same car, it's also that the regenerative braking means that the tires are dissapating energy that otherwise would have gone to the brake pads or to air resistance. Tires wear way faster on an EV, their lifespan in miles is generally much shorter.
> it's also that the regenerative braking means that the tires are dissapating energy that otherwise would have gone to the brake pads or to air resistance
This does not seem correct...
- Air resistance slows the car without putting anything extra through the tyres (the friction is between car and air rather than between tyre and road)
- Regenerative braking channels energy into the battery, and also heat, that would otherwise be dissipated by heating and ablating the brake pads and discs, but regardless or whether it's brakes or the the motor acting as a dynamo that puts resistance on the rolling of the wheels, for a given amount of braking you will have the same forces between the tyres and the road and the same tyre wear.
So I'd expect it's only any additional weight that contributes to increase tyre particulates from electric care. Perhaps a tiny contribution from lower air resistance (on average at least) for electric cars, as there's often quite an effort to reduce the drag coefficient for range reasons, but I wouldn't expect this to be substantial as air resistance is not huge part of braking.
Regenerative braking needs something to act against in order to slow the car down. Whether the thing on the car side is an electric motor generating voltage or a brake caliper generating heat, the effect of both is to create resistance to the axle turning. This slows the car via tire-road friction.
EVs tend to use regenerative braking, thus applying road-tire friction, much more often than an ICE vehicle uses brakes. In an EV if you are going tobfast and let off the accelerator, the regen braking slows you. With tires. In an ICE car, you will coast along and slowly slow down, mainly due to air resistance, unless you actively press the brake.
If regen braking only happened when then EV driver pushes the brake pedal with their foot, your expectations would be correct and weight would be the only differentiator. But the single pedal driving design decision means the tires wear more.
But if the car decelerates harder when you let off the gas than you expect (compared to an ICE), maybe you'll give it a bit more "gas", so that, in the end, your deceleration is roughly the same in both types of cars?
I haven't noticed EVs oscillating between full acceleration and hard braking when out and about. They seem to be driven pretty much the same as any other car.
If I'm not mistaken, this means that tyre wear should be roughly equivalent (for an equivalent vehichle weight). So EVs still have the benefit of reducing brake pad wear.
The oscillation you mention does exist, it's just small enough that it's tough to pick out visually watching the car. But it can be felt within the vehicle, and the small oscillations are certainly enough to wear tires more than the ICE alternative.
If you have any friends with motion sickness, ask them if it feels different to be a passenger in an EV.
Alternately go to a tire shop and ask whether EVs wear tires faster.
All this isn't to say EVs aren't better than ICE vehicles. They are, in many ways. It's just that tire wear isn't one of them.
> Alternately go to a tire shop and ask whether EVs wear tires faster.
I'm convinced they do, many people noted this. But I always thought it was mainly because the cars are heavier than what most people are used to, and they also have much better acceleration.
Firstly, the motors absorb half the energy. The other half goes to the tires. It would be great and efficient if the motors could.absorb it all but unfortunately physics doesn't work that way.
Secondly, if you've ridden in an EV, you would know that the drivers/cruise control often apply regent braking in situations where an ICE vehicle would have simply coasted to a stop. Hence more wear.
With the ICE car, if you want to go 55, you might accelerate to 57 and then coast down to 55 without using brakes.
With an EV you might accelerate to 57 and then brake to 55 when you let off the accelerator.
Tire wear is a function of how often you use your tires to slow down the car. With an ICE car that's every time you hit your brakes. With an EV that's both brakes and regen. An EV's time spent braking or regenning is more than the time an ICE car spends braking.
Someone could design an EV that behaves the way you describe, but aggressive regen sells better, so no one does.
> With an EV you might accelerate to 57 and then brake to 55 when you let off the accelerator.
No one with more than a few miles of one-pedal driving would do this; it’d be highly unpleasant.
What actually happens is you remap your pedal inputs: all the way off is braking, somewhere in the middle is coasting. Your brain will do it automatically and OPD is far more pleasant than two-pedal driving after a trivial learning curve.
I agree that OPD is better. I disagree that it's easy to coast with OPD.
What actually happens is you wind up decelerating for curves, accelerating on straights more, and otherwise having better control of the car. Holding the pedal in a location where power is neither going to or coming from the motor is very difficult; usually you want power going to the motor anyway to overcome air resistance.
Also, consider that most EVs will automatically regeneratively brake when going downhill with cruise control on. The last ICE car I owned just coasted and would speed up on large downhills with cruise on.
Of the three EVs, all different manufacturers, that we've owned in the last decade, zero have coasting as an easy option. You have to either switch off OPD entirely, or else literally shift the car into neutral.
And yes, you are right, if you do that you can coast and then your tire wear will be no worse than an ICE vehicle.
Yeah, you're not shifting into neutral on your ICE car to coast from 57 to 55 either, you're just releasing the accelerator. You've still got the motor engaged, so you're doing mild engine braking on the ICE even if it's vernacularly called coasting.
If you lack the middle-school-level understanding of physics to understand why, I'm not going to be able to give it to you in an internet comment.
Think hard about why braking and coasting would wear the tires differently. Here's a hint. Where does the energy go? What is doing the work to stop the car in each scenario?
I recall a discussion on HN explaining that while true, this might be offset by the higher average weight of EVs, leading to more dust from the tires and the road. Again, no easy solution unfortunately, just trade offs.
And to add info, an F-150 will change brake pads 3-7 times over 200k miles, while a Model Y will still be on the original set with nearly no sign of wear.
but compare the wear of the tires, and weigh tires vs brakes by the amount of "total pollution delivered to the environment", i.e. 20% more wear of something that is 2x as polluting is 40% more pollution. I don't know the numbers or the answer, I'm just saying it's not as simple as your statement makes it out to be.
Why are you just making up numbers then saying "it's not as simple"? Try educating yourself a little first instead of just jumping to conclusions which reinforce your existing biases.
> 20% more wear of something that is 2x as polluting is 40% more pollution
If an equivalent car wore down its tires 20% slower, and those tire particles contributed 2x the intensity of pollution than other types of wear-based pollution, than the increase in produced pollution from that source seems like it would be ~16%, not 40%.
If one car drives 100 km and produces 2 units of pollution per km, that would be 200 units. Another car wearing 20% more would produce 240 units, or roughly ~16% more.
IME they only wear out maybe 15-20% faster than you'd think. On the other hand, over the span of 40,000 miles, a tire loses a LOT more rubber by weight/volume than a brake pad loses pad material. No idea what the PM2.5 breakdown is though.
The difference is that only about 1% of the worn rubber ends up in the air whereas most of the brake pad ends up in the air. Most of the worn rubber stays on the road. Where it will get washed away by the rain to end up as microplastics in the water.
Specialized EV tires are also optimized for drag and noise, wear is just a factor. Anecdotally speaking I'm at over 80k km on a set of EV tires with at least 20k more to go. The issue has more to do with driving style and engine power than any other factors.
100%. Tire technology is a real thing. Tires have advanced a ton in the last 10 years. But driving style is the biggest thing. Some people can only get 10k miles out of a set of tires, while others with the same car and tires get over 40k.
But they do care about tire wear a lot, they know the acceptable wear life for the class. A couple years ago I bought a set of Pirelli tires that were ~50% off because they were an older version; hoping I’d get some benefit. Unfortunately they had half the life and were a bit worse in every way than the newer tires I had before and after.
Some tires are going to wear fast no matter what. I had some Pirelli PZero summer tires that I could never get more than 15k out of regardless of how I drove. The tire compound was very soft and sticky.
If you have something like really high performance tires, I recommend just using them. The grip is always there and you are always paying for it. As long as you aren't losing traction constantly, the difference is negligible in my experience.
Additional weight (which is minor; of best-selling vehicles, F-150 curb weight is 4000-5600 lbs, Tesla Model Y is 4400-4600 lbs) does not meaningfully increase brake wear because the brakes don't get used.
I’m guessing not as much as standard transmissions, which largely eliminate the need for breaking while also reducing fuel usage. Yet there are almost no new cars with standard transmission. If only people cared a bit more.
An electric car can use its engines to bring a vehicle to a complete stop. It can also use the motor to hold the car in place, even on a fairly steep incline. You can't do either with a standard transmission ICE vehicle.
There are people with electric cars that have their brakes rust out because they're never used. A standard piece of advice to EV owners is "make sure to use your brakes at least once a month".
the engine cannot brake to a complete stop, so break pads are always in use. At low RPMs, the engine is going to stall (manual) or switch to neutral (automatic).
> though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff.
Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like motorcycles (small or absent catalytic converters), modified vehicles (catalytic converter removed or diesel reprogrammed to smoke), but not modern gasoline ICE vehicles.
The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me.
PM2.5 is also a broad category of particulates that come from many sources. The PM2.5 levels in the air depend on many sources, with wind being a major factor in changing PM2.5 levels. It’s hard to draw conclusions when a number depends on the weather and a lot of other inputs.
Not only that, in France for example the liter of Diesel fuel was always 10 to 15 euro cents cheaper at the petrol station due to how regular gasoline and diesel fuel was taxed.
That's why before EVs started to show up on the market en masse if you walked into a dealership they would always recommend that you pick the diesel engine if you wanted to save money of fuel costs.
That was actually the reason why the Yellow vest protests started in 2018 when the French government announced that the taxation gap between diesel and regular gasoline was going to disappear gradually.
Small edit to add to the context:
By that point, when the protests started in 2018, the governments(right and left) of France and the many French automakers had been pushing diesel engines as THE solution to alleviate rising fuel costs and so justifiably, the protesters thought that someone had just pulled the rug from underneath them.
Also this measure was in direct contradiction to Macron's campaign promise which was that he was going to reduce the tax burden or at least not increase it on the middle class, especially the rural middle-class that basically cannot get a job without having a car as public transport is almost non-existent in rural France.
That and many other things which I won't get into since it is not relevant for this discussion really riled people up.
In Canada, diesel fuel is priced around mid-grade gasoline (89). So it's slightly more expensive than regular, but slightly cheaper than premium (91/93).
Based on this, I've always thought of diesel as "more expensive", like you better get 15% more power/miles out of it if it's going to cost more! However, I suspect that most people purchasing diesel vehicles have as their other choice a car that would slurp premium, so for those buyers perhaps diesel is still a discount, even in Canada.
Can you source that? Diesel is only 13% more energy dense than gasoline [1] so the difference between the two fuels isn't huge.
I suspect that modern (last five years) turbocharged gasoline engines are probably approaching diesel thermal efficiency, but I don't think that it's correct to say that they generally surpass it. The gasoline Ford EcoBoost is 33% thermally efficient while a BMW N47 turbo-diesel is 42% thermally efficient, as an example [2].
Yes, but measuring miles per volume of fuel and setting increasing targets was a big focus of reducing petroleum dependency since the 70s.
The focus has more recently shifted to reducing overall emissions of CO2 and other harmful gases and particulates, which makes diesel much less appealing.
Modern diesel engines with DPF and DEF are pretty clean from a particulate and NOx standpoint. Of course there are still older diesels on the road, mainly buses and trucks. In the USA, diesel is so unpopular as a passenger car engine that it's not even worth worrying about.
I don't think you can just say diesel is less popular in the US without bringing up the emissions scandals. It genuinely seems to me like companies can't deliver clean emissions and efficiency gains at the same time for it.
The scandals don't matter. The number of people in the USA who buy diesel passenger cars rounds off to "nobody." There's just no point in even bothering. Supposing you could make an ultra-low emission diesel (without cheating), you'd still sell almost none.
To add to what others said: diesels always had a reputation of reliability. The cast-iron TDI 1.9 is legendary but even Italian cars fitted with the JTD line would just work and not require maintenance. I recall making light of a friend who was driving an Alfa Romeo until he mentioned that actually it's been more reliable than anything else he's driven - at least in terms of powertrain issues.
The love for diesel came from a catastrophic misunderstanding and the resulting belief that CO2 must be reduced at all costs. Diesel engines of the past produced slightly less CO2 per km than petrol engines in exchange for much worse overall emissions. The fact that they were slightly more efficient in terms of fuel consumption helped with the sales pitch, too.
Nobody was even thinking about CO2 when the policies that got Europe where they are were enacted.
Europe began embracing diesels 40yr ago when they were noisy and stinky and they did it because they taxed the crap out of fuel so people rightfully prioritized buying vehicles that got better fuel economy.
I don't know about mainland Europe, but in the UK it really was exclusively about CO2 emissions per distance travelled, to the extent that Vehicle Excise Duty (the annual tax you pay on a car) was defined in terms of g/km of CO2 emitted. This happened in 2001 and wasn't changed until the wake of the emissions cheating scandals [1].
Interesting. If not to reduce CO2 emissions, what was the rationale presented to the voters for having high taxes on fuel 40 yr ago?
In the US, Federal lawmakers would be voted out of office (even now after the science of climate change has settled) if they imposed taxes on fuels anywhere near as high as European lawmakers do.
>Interesting. If not to reduce CO2 emissions, what was the rationale presented to the voters for having high taxes on fuel 40 yr ago?
Energy security. They didn't have north sea oil back then. Buying from Russia or the ME was fraught with political peril. And of course the .gov is never gonna pass up a chance to increase revenue.
It's unfortunate that so much rhetoric around environmentalism is based on faulty claims. It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general.
The latest one is AI data center water use- the extreme numbers like 5 liters of water per ChatGPT image just makes me feel sad that we can't have a civil discussion based on the facts. Everything is so polarized.
My point was that misinformation makes it impossible or nearly impossible to evaluate "is this environmental or not".
Best effort is not enough to guarantee a good outcome- for example, this car is diesel and has lower emissions, therefore I will buy it and I will be reducing my own emissions turns out to not be true all the time.
Just like congestion pricing might or might not actually affect pollution in the way that it's claimed. The obvious point being that the city loves the new revenue, no matter what the level of impact it actually has.
I'm actually in favor of congestion pricing in principle (whether or not pm2.5 is reduced or not). I'm just sad that often times it's impossible to figure out what's true.
>It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general.
What does that even mean?
Honestly whatever it means it sounds like you would be the kind of person that would fall for the firehose of falsehood rather than look for the truth behind the actual claims.
For 99.9% of issues, we rely on trust to make up our minds. We assume people are mostly not lying. If a group of people are found to lie, then yes, maybe “look for the truth behind the actual claims” is worth it, but more likely shooting them out of the discourse and into the metaphorical sun is the right response. If you walk around lying, you don’t get to complain that people aren’t doing research on your claims.
Sure, but how does that relate to environmentalists? The people lying were the car industry, but somehow the OP questions environmentalism. Why are they not questioning the car industry?
This is something I see a lot in science skepticism.
Someone incorrectly conveys a simple science concept, and people blame the scientist, not the communicator.
Like, News says "New revolutionary battery" and people roll their eyes and say "Oh but this will never make it to prod" and decide that scientists are liars and conveniently ignore that lithium battery density has like doubled over the past 20 years or so.
The person who was wrong was the unaware journalist taking a PR person's claims at face value, and having no context to smell test such a claim, and having no time or interest to treat the claim with skepticism anyway because "Batteries slightly improve" never sold newspapers.
Why? There are massive incentives for people to lie in a great many cases, especially where profits exist. Car manufactures, as we know, gladly lie and fake evidence. Even when there are massive fines involved, the fines are generally less than what they make in profit from the lies.
What's even better is you can play both sides to confuse the issue. Create 3rd party groups on the other side of your claims and have them make up the stupidest claims "Just looking at a car will give you cancer". Flood the zone with false information, bullshit asymmetry. Lobby the shit out of politicians so they don't care about the issues, only the money it brings in.
The confused regulars in the middle are so propagandized to they no longer know up from down and billionaires laugh all the way to the bank.
>The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me.
It's expressly incentivized by their tax system.
Imagine the year is 1988 and you're some snooty jerk in Europe about to buy a Mercedes. Why on earth would you go with the noisy, smelly diesel option if not to save A TON of money over the life of the vehicle?
When I was at the military they told us that in case of war the government would start appropriating diesel cars, since those are compatible with the fuel the military uses and that there were ancient incentives to buy this type of car to make sure there were enough of them.
I believe the popularity of diesel car in Europe is actually a tax-related hack.
The idea is that diesel is the "work" fuel, for shipping, construction, etc... While gasoline is the "consumer" fuel, for personal use, motorsports, etc... Make the former expensive and it will affect the entire economy, everything will become more expensive and less competitive. Making gasoline more expensive will not have the same impact.
So, put high taxes on gasoline. The result was an increase in popularity of diesel cars, that cost less to run because of taxes.
Now, the situation is changing. Diesel, at least the one that is legal to use on the road is taxed at a level closer to gasoline. Diesel cars are also becoming less and less welcome with regards to low emission zones and green taxes, so many people are going back to gasoline.
Yes, in France as I pointed out in my other comment, the diesel fuel was always cheaper than regular gasoline. The re-alignment of the tax was (amongst other things) what sparked the massive yellow vest protests in France in 2018.
"relatively clean" means 85% of PM2.5 is from non-exhaust sources, and 15% is from exhaust after catalytic conversion. In New York EV and ICE are pretty much on par when it comes to this category of pollution, as the additional weight increases non exhaust sources.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...
It is different in Africa, where catalytic converters are harvested for precious metals and cars are driven without them.
That source is Europe, not New York. It claims EV's are 24% heavier than ICE vehicles. That might be true in Europe but definitely not the case in the US where the average ICE vehicle is a 6000 pound truck and the average EV is a 4000 pound Tesla.
It also assumes they're using the same tires. EV owners put on EV tires, which are formulated to have a lower rolling resistance, quieter and last longer. All 3 of those correlate with lower dust.
New York City has a more European balance of cars versus light trucks than most of the USA. Not easy to park a modern American pickup in any bourough except maybe Staten Island. Source: lived there
The subject here is New York City where I would expect people are less like to drive the heavy ICE vehicles (unless they are doing some that needs such a large vehicle).
But a 6000 pound truck doesn't get replaced with an EV sedan. Or vice versa. As things move to EV I don't know why the proportion of car body types (whatever you call this) wouldn't stay the same.
Yes, but that 24% increase in Europe is partly due to increase in vehicle size. Vehicle size is increasing over time in Europe, and the average EV is newer.
Also, cars designed as pure EV's are a lot lighter than EV's built on an ICE chassis.
A Telsa 3 is about 2% heavier than a BMW 3 whereas a Ford Lightning is 20% heavier than the comparable F-150.
the 24% increase has nothing to do with car size over time in europa.
Table 2 in the paper lists which cars where compared, and that 24% numbers is an average from comparing models where manufacturers offer EV and ICE variants.
Similar to with tire wear what's important to emissions is the amount of force that has to be applied to decelerate and how often it occurs. At highway speeds it's far less of an issue, but in slow speed urban environments with lots of stop start driving and high vehicle densities it's a real problem.
My only experience is BMW EV, but my i4 aggressively prioritizes regeneration over using the brakes. It even has an energy meter that shows negative/positive energy flow. The positive flow is blue until the actual brakes engage where it changes to black. And this is in two pedal mode, one pedal driving is even more aggressive about regen.
I would not doubt I use my breaks 1/20th of the amount that our X5 or Silverado use theirs.
I have an Equinox EV and the brakes do not get used often. They did a great job with blending kinetic regeneration with friction activation, but you can still feel the difference when it kicks in.
They are active in reverse, to ensure that they are used and so that any rust gets cleared from the rotors. They also activate if you slam on the brakes or if the battery is at 100% charge and the kinetic energy can not be used.
I have about 12,000 miles on the car over the last year and the rotors and pads look the same as when I got them. The first annual inspection showed no measurable wear.
I've rented a Chevy Bolt before and in the normal drive mode (D) the brakes almost always get used in addition to light regen. In the single-peddle mode (P) regen is prioritized a lot more but passengers complained about not liking the feel versus standard braking.
But the tires are individually controlled - less slippage - and the brakes are regenerative. As a bonus, NYC is pretty much best-case scenario for the latter.
Not all tire wear is when skidding out. A car tire's contact patch is several inches wide (especially on trucks/SUVs where extra-wide tires are often used to give a more premium look), so any time that wheel is turning a corner, there's a portion of it at the outside and inside that's rotating at a different speed than the pavement beneath it is moving.
There's also the regular deformation of wheel just in the course of regular rotation, which is where the majority of highway wear dust comes from.
With extea weight and tire size, evs will have more slippage. It isnt about the entire tire slipping against the ground. It is about tread patterns slipping as the tire rolls at any speed, especially in corners where car tires cannot ever avoid slipping.
The instant torque also comes with better control over it, though. I don't doubt it's a thing, but I do doubt it outweighs all the other environmental benefits.
It’s the forces that accelerate the wear. Significant wheel speed is a rare occurrence in normal driving, but acceleration, cornering, and braking forces are ever present.
My Polestar 2 (shared design from Volvo's EVs) only uses brakes once it's hit its regen limit, this changes based on battery capacity and temperature but in the real world it means coming to a near complete stop from 50-60mph. The constant rust on the brakes are evident to that.
And you gotta have soft tires to harness that EV torque people expect. Not like the old days where they put hard stiff tires on Priuses to wring out every MPG.
TLDR regenerative braking reduces this significantly, nut getting the raw numbers is always fraught with today's horrific AI-addled search engines.
Also seems like a wonderful opportunity for the materials science people to print money coming up with better brake materials here. And if anyone here who can say "clean coal" with a straight face disagrees, point and laugh at them.
Folks in the comments will say "not really" for EVs because of better control and lower speeds, but if you've ever driven in Manhattan, you'd know it's often light-to-light drag racing at times which with an EV and a heavy foot will undo a lot of the regen braking via stress on the tires.
Why does everyone immediately pivot to EVs on this subject, instead of (looks around) gargantuan SUVs and trucks everywhere, due to peculiarities of US policies regulating SUVs more leniently than cars on fuel efficiency?
I say this as someone who owns an electric scooter and whose next car will be an EV—the sales pitch for EVs right now is basically pay more (especially now that the tax credit is gone) to have a worse time and maybe eventually claw some of it back over the lifetime of the car in fuel savings. The environmental impact is the pro in the pro con list. So if that doesn't pan out, or doesn't pan out enough it's going to be a tough sell.
Just the cost to get my garage outfitted with a charging port is about to be in the thousands because it requires me to replace the entire breaker panel. Now this is a me problem because that panel is ancient but it does add to the total cost of "doing this" and going EV.
What do you mean by a worse time? The advantages are substantial- No oil changes ever again, performance that is on par with high end sports cars, less moving parts which should lead to higher reliability, in my state you don't even need to do an annual inspection. Those types of unexpected appointments are what really aggravate me when they are unexpectedly needed and eat up weekend time.
Depending on your commute length, you may be able to just use your regular plug to top up over night. Infra upgrades to support the future are unfortunate, but it should be a one and done kind of thing. It was probably time to update the panel and get 200 Amp service- you will recoup a portion of that if you ever sell the house.
The best part is batteries get signficantly (for some values of signficant) cheaper and better each year. Gen 1 Nissan Leaf owners can now actually replace their batteries for about 1/5th the initial pack cost and increase their range.
When operating beyond your comfortable range you have to strategically plan charging the way shitbox owners have to stop and top up fluids. If it's your only car it's absolutely a degradation in the ~monthly ownership experience though you (in my opinion) make it back not doing oil changes and the like.
Even without the tax credit I still think that EVs are a great buy for most though. Charging shenanigans is simple and a "known known" whereas ICE maintenance is far more unclear at the time of purchase
So I was actually looking at it yesterday, and the top end ranges of todays EVs are actually the same range as my 2007 Honda Accord. Maybe I am unique, but I have never taken a road trip so long that I needed to get gas midway going one way, maybe this is more common out west. I have done some round trips for sure though that would require a top up on more than a charge.
I was surprised though that ranges, at least on the top end and very expensive EVs, are now comparable to ICE cars. This will continue to improve and hopefully alleviate any form of range anxiety in the future, especially as chargers just become more ubiquitous. I feel people really fail to realize they can just essentially top up each night and start out with a full "tank." I don't know, it all just feels very overblown with today's EVs.
It's not the overall range that gets you. It's when all the chargers in the work parking lot are taken and you need to go somewhere that doesn't have chargers after work and it's also winter that results in an inconvenient stop or cutting it uncomfortably close. It's absolutely surmountable but it requires planning you didn't have to do before.
IMO what you save by not going to the gas station is a wash if you have to habitually charge more than just at home. You're replacing one habit with another.
I still think they're worth it since you basically never get hit with an exorbitant repair bill for the engine/trans.
> Just the cost to get my garage outfitted with a charging port is about to be in the thousands because it requires me to replace the entire breaker panel. Now this is a me problem because that panel is ancient but it does add to the total cost of "doing this" and going EV.
You likely don't need to replace the panel, as load management options exist. Wallbox, in particular, has an option where you can add a modbus doo-dad (carlo gavazzi energy management module) to your panel and it will monitor the overall usage and drop the EVSE current to keep it at a safe level.
It's more expensive than if you had a modern panel, but less expensive than replacing the panel itself.
Another option is just stick to a smaller circuit.
80% of 15A x 120V = 1.4 kW
80% of 20A x 240V = 3.8 kW
Just going from a standard 15A outlet to a 20A/240V nearly triples the amount of power, and many homes that would need a new panel for a 50A charger have room for one more 20A circuit. Cars typically spend 8-16 hrs per day stationary in their own driveway, so 3.8 kW translates into tons of range.
While 40A or 50A is nice to have, it's far from necessary.
How many amps is your current service? I have 200A service where I live, but the house is 100% electric -- water heater, range, heat pump, washer, dryer, etc. All electric. There's even a little medallion on the front of the house about it: https://i.imgur.com/BrHj1XQ.jpeg The 70s were weird.
And when you say that your panel is old, just how old are we talking?
You likely don't need to install a special charger or breaker panel. A regular 120V wall outlet will give probably give you 30+ miles of range just charging overnight. If your commute is longer, you might want a better charger, but don't let someone upsell you on a high-speed charger if your average daily travel is under 30mi and 90%ile under 100mi.
Watch out for electricians who try to rip off new EV owners. Make sure you get a few estimates. When we added a charger, bids were $2000, $2000, and $500.
My EV is the best most fun car I've ever owned. I had a V8 Mercedes E430 and my EV is faster and more fun to drive. You have it backwards. Having and ICE car is accepting a worse time in exchange for government subsidies on Oil.
Says the person who has never owned an EV. Fifteen years of EV ownership, I’m never going back. Environmental factors aside, an EV is the overall better vehicle. You can keep your rattling ICE vehicles that need special fluid from specific vendors.
I guess I should have said "a more inconvenient time" where owning an EV kinda revolves around your charging setup/schedule in a way that you don't have to think about with ICE cars. I know some people swear by them being more fun to drive but that's the last thing on my list of requirements for a car. I will say I think you're giving ICE cars a bad rap, my little Honda Fit that will be replaced by the EV is at 150k miles with nothing other than like three oil changes (yes i know) and a new set of tires.
I guess I should have said "a more inconvenient time" where owning an EV kinda revolves around your charging setup/schedule in a way that you don't have to think about with ICE cars.
I plug it in when I get home, and when I get in it again the "tank" is always full. I think about the EV a lot less than I do our ICE car, which seems to need gas at the most inconvenient times. You might have an argument for road trips, but even that's almost a no-brainer these days. Sure, I can't just get off at some random exit in the Utah desert and expect to find a charger, but my experience says this whole "charging on a road trip" is way overblown, as if even the slightest bit of look-ahead planning is just too much for people to handle.
“Full” meaning 80%. With a 300 mile range, that’s plenty for day-to-day.
But to your question: I don’t know, does it still? Seems BMS has gotten a lot better from the early Nissan Leaf days, so I don’t if it yet time to retire that along with “discharge batteries all the way so they don’t get ‘memory’”.
One of the biggest bonuses for me is never needing to go to a gas station. So much more pleasant to charge at home overnight, or at charge stations if I’m on a road trip. I can’t imagine buying an ICE car ever again.
I see this argument almost exclusively from the fuckcars crowd, because their existing environmental arguments against ICE vehicles don't apply to EVs.
If you're claiming that the oil and gas lobby is facilitating their criticism of any automobile, I hope you're right because that would be hilarious.
> Friends of the Earth U.S. was founded in California in 1969 by environmentalist David Brower after he left the Sierra Club. The organization was launched with the help of Donald Aitken, Jerry Mander and a $200,000 donation from the personal funds of Robert O. Anderson. One of its first major campaigns was the protest of nuclear power, particularly in California.
> Robert Orville Anderson (April 12, 1917 – December 2, 2007) was an American businessman, art collector, and philanthropist who founded [the United States' sixth-largest oil company] Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO).
Consumers like SUVs. They are convenient, easy to get in and out of, flexible for hauling large items, many can pull trailers, offer good visibility for the driver, and do well in the snow.
They are also heavily subsidized by the US government in the form of relaxed regulations. The profit margins are higher which is why car companies push them. In their current ICE form they also benefit from massive government subsidies of the Oil companies. If you took those away it is unlikely that the convenience would be worth the additional cost.
>They are also heavily subsidized by the US government in the form of relaxed regulations. The profit margins are higher which...
Look in the mirror, that's who's responsible for this.
You people levied regulations. You levied them in half baked ways that resulted in the demise of sedans and station wagons. And now you complain that SUVs are "subsidized". Get out of here with that nonsense and take your stupid regulations with you so the rest of us can have diversity of vehicle choice back.
None of this stuff is a subsidy, construing "exempt from the screwing some other product category gets" is just a lie.
I take a less libertarian view on this. It because trucks and truck-like vehicles are under-regulated. The result being excess pollution and pedestrian fatalities. We need to remove the loop hole.
They can, the main difference being they ride lower (like a sedan) and tend to have less headroom in the cargo area so might not be quite as good at transporting "stuff."
I had a Ford Focus wagon for quite some time, loved it. Cheap to buy, cheap to own, nothing exciting but very dependable and useful. With a small 4-cylinder engine it could not tow (at least not much) and rust eventually claimed it. Still ran like new with over 200K miles.
Because when you're talking about particulates in the air, one of the main local environmental harms from cars, EVs aren't the 100% clean people expect them to be.
EVs are heavier than equivalent-sized ICE vehicles, but they do enjoy regenerative braking. The answer is to make smaller-sized cars but the auto industry has been pushing the farmer cosplay for decades because the profit margins are a lot higher on a $75k truck or SUV than $30k sedan.
It's a tough area, honestly, and will be until public charging is better. You need a bigger battery to get the range that people need (want?) to be able to reach the next charging station. Realistically, though, most people don't really venture far from home but they don't like the idea that they can't venture far from home without finding a place to charge.
EV charging availability has drastically improved over the last few years, so maybe there is hope for smaller EVs.
The Chevy Suburban has been one of the largest vehicles on the market since 1934. [1]
If you wanted an EV to match the Suburban it would probably be that Cadillac Escalade IQ in terms of size, comfort, and towing capacity -- that's got a curb weight of 9,100 pounds which is 1.5x heavier than the Suburban.
I'd think the BMW 3 Series has a similar vibe to the Model 3 and that has a base curb weight of 3536 which is about 10% less than the Model 3.
[1] it's the oldest nameplate that's been made continuously
Tires yes, brakes no. Friction brakes are barely used on EVs outside of specific scenarios. Mine will engage in three situations:
1. The brake pedal is pressed hard
2. The battery is 100% charged and the energy from braking can not be used
3. I am backing up
For #3, the only reason why the brakes are used when backing up is to ensure that they are used even the tiniest amount and to clear any rust from the rotors.
Tire wear is probably a thing - although I suspect the per-wheel control allows them to better respond to slips and sudden acceleration. I've noticed test driving a Tesla that it accelerates rapidly much more smoothly with no tire slippage than a combustion car.
Brake wear is likely nulled out by regenerative braking. And you're probably not driving highway speeds through Manhattan, either.
Tire, yes. But not brakes. With an EV most of the kinetic energy is converted back to electricity thanks to regenerative braking instead of being turned into heat through friction.
Overall the EV emit fewer airborne particles even without counting the exhaust.
Why does everyone immediately pivot to SUVs on this subject, instead of (looks around) gargantuan Tesla Model Ys that weigh as much as a Ford Bronco and EV trucks everywhere, due to peculiarities of US consumer habits and the demand for huge vehicles to pick up groceries?
huh well TIL, thank you. My definitions of Sports Utility Vehicle are outdated. They have almost no clearance, and the suspension is not tuned for anything more than small washboards.
non-exhaust emissions on an ICE vehicle are roughly 1/3 brake dust, 1/3 tire dust and 1/3 road dust. EV's have almost no impact on road dust, 83% lest brake dust and 20% more tire dust.
Tire wear on EVs has more to do with the weight of your right foot than the curb weight of the vehicle.
The high torque of EVs results in frequent wheel slippage for those eager to pull away from traffic lights quickly. Just like with high BHP ICE vehincles, smooth and gentle acceleration/deceleration will result in long tire life.
>Fewer cars in general is the win from congestion pricing, though.
And lower VMTs (vehicle miles traveled) is also a win for the planet, it's probably the best weapon the average person has access to in the fight against climate change. Transit usage begets transit usage; more fares paid to the agency enables better frequencies and more routes, leading to more people opting to take transit instead of driving... In a well-run system, it's a positive feedback loop (and the inverse, where people stop taking transit, can also lead to a death spiral, as happened across America in the mid-20th century).
If you substitute with “don’t travel far [or at all]”, it’s a big savings. If you substitute flying 1000 miles on an airliner with “drive 1000 miles instead”, or flying US to Europe with a cruise ship trip to Europe, you’ve probably made it worse; in that regards, it’s less the mode of travel and more the total distance in these trades.
The observation that stuck with me is how much of my county's total carbon emissions are due to air travel which begins/ends at our regional airports (~3%), vs what percentage of the population flies in a given year.
The distribution of air-travel emissions, to me, seem pretty gross when juxtaposed with the number of people who are doing this travel. The incentives for business travel, in particular, seem misaligned.
I don't think you can just look at the "number of people who are doing this travel", as those same planes are also carrying air cargo and US mail. Not everyone flies, but almost everyone in the county receives mail, cargo, or benefits from same. (It would be easier to replace cargo than passenger transport with a more efficient and comparable total trip time mode of transport if such was available.)
The reason you get asked whether your USPS parcel contains hazardous substances X, Y, and Z and why the fines for violations are so stiff is partly because of passenger airline safety concerns.
Rail transit in the north east is the best in the US. But it is terrible in many ways. As someone who lives in an area that would be marginal for rail even in the great rail countries of Europe of Asia I really need the north east to develop great rail - only by bringing great rail to places where it is easy can we possibly get it good enough that it would be worth bringing to me. Instead I just get examples of why we shouldn't bother with transit at all here: when all we can see is the stupid things New York is constantly doing to transit (where the density is so high they can get by with it) there isn't an example I can point to of that would be worth doing here.
A bit worse on tires because they are heavier (for comparable vehicle size, but obviously not if you compare a small EV with a ICE truck), and much better on brakes because of regenerative braking. Overall they are better.
>Yes, they're banned, but nobody is checking aftermarket brake pads..
On one hand you've got the people who insisted on regulating all of our manufacturing out of the country on environmental and safety grounds. On the other hand you've got the people who want to band asbestos and lead and all manner of other dangerous chemicals in consumer products. Both these people are dressed like Spiderman and they're pointing at each other. <facepalm>
There's quite a bit of materials science work in that direction.
For example, I have Michelin's CrossClimate tires, which are all-weather tires that do better in snow but don't break down as fast as dedicated winter tires do in warm weather.
What material is strong, malleable, dirt fucking cheap, has a high coefficient of friction, easy to work with, amenable to additives, meets all the suspension properties we expect out of a tire, etc, and isn't bad to breathe a lot of the dust of?
Modern tires are works of material science miracle, working with dirt cheap inputs.
Even iron dust from steel on steel friction like with trains is bad for your health.
Because a hard long wearing tire is a low grip tire and the direct tradeoff between safety and the environment is not something either crowd wants to deal with because there's so much overlap.
“Additional weight”? What additional weight? In comparison to America’s best-selling vehicle, the Ford F-150? Where was all this hand-wringing about weight and brake and tire dust ten years ago?
I guess those narratives aren’t going to support themselves.
It always surprises me when people want stop signs in their neighborhood for traffic calming. The last thing I want is all of the noise and pollution of vehicles stopping and starting over and over again; surely various piece of road furniture like bulb-outs, roundabouts, etc, do a better job with fewer drawbacks. Other than cost, of course.
My assumption is that stop signs act somewhat as a way to enforce the lower speed limits in residential areas. There's several stretches without stops in my suburb where I've seen drivers whizzing by very obviously above the 25mph speed limit, which is bad enough on its own but becomes a serious hazard when combined with the massive blind spots that come from curbs on both directions being filled to the brim with parked cars.
A better solution would probably be radar-based speed signs with printed threats of fines, though.
Probably true, but all of those are significantly more involved installations or modifications.
To be clear, I'm all in favor of reworking neighborhood roads to be more friendly to pedestrians, but I think things like signs have a significantly better chance of actually being implemented in most circumstances.
They put one in front of my friend's house. It's a big plastic one almost as big as a speed table. The complainer Karens drive .03mph over it and get honked at or driven around. The trucks and vans, anything driven by an employee or a teenager just speeds right over and a small number of people go for air time. 11/10. Highly entertaining. And this is all in addition to having to listen to every vehicle accelerate after it of course.
There are some early tyre and brake dust collection systems which might help, but that won't do much for the road dust.
I've been wondering whether, theoretically, if self driving cars become widely usable and deployed in cities, will they be able to safely operate with harder tyre compounds and harder road surfaces that shed less but don't grip as well?
If nothing else, less aggressive driving should lead to less shedding.
I am a little confused, why would sloppiness in the media release (the article that uses the word tailpipe), have anything to do with sloppiness in the study, which the above comment clearly highlights is about PM2.5, not specifically tailpipe emissions?
Are Yale's media releases typically done by the people who do the study?
The study doesn't mention tailpipes (afiact). This press release/article does. Don't dismiss scientists because journalists reporting their findings incorrectly.
I won't change my mind about emissions in NYC. NYC is full of modern, western cars.
Two-stroke engines are terrible, classic automobiles are terrible, cars with no emission regulations will tend to be terrible. Cars in NYC will have catalytic converters and other technologies to reduce tailpipe emissions.
The notable source of bad tailpipe emissions in NYC are heavy diesel trucks, which, to my understanding, produce a large proportion of tailpipe particulates (and NOx) in the US, despite being a small fraction of overall vehicles on the road. There are strong correlations with heavy truck traffic and asthma rates.
Unlike many other places in the United States, NYC area’s railroads are almost exclusively passenger rail and there is comparatively very little freight railroad traffic serving NYC and therefore there are way more trucks in NYC. They emit way dirtier emissions. The problem is never the cars; it’s always the trucks.
And oh also the small engines powering street food carts.
Pretty much any new car sold in the US, Canada, Mexico, and most of Europe. "Western" typically refers to "countries rich/developed enough to [in this case] add emissions regulations". It's a luxury that many countries haven't gotten to yet, but is widespread in North America and Europe.
The good news is that I believe Ho Chi Minh City is about to start, so hopefully they'll have much cleaner air in a couple years.
They have different ICE engines. Many two stroke scooters. Emissions are way different from those tailpipes. You’re doing apples to oranges comparisons.
And besides, even if lung cancer and heart attack may be the most common means of premature death, it does not entail that air pollution is the primary cause of them. I thought that smoking and bad dietary/exercise habits were the main factors. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd like to know.
I see from your sources that lung cancer in non-smokers is still one of the top causes of death, and of course air-pollution is a primary cause of that. Good to know.
Quiet zones require crossings to be up to a certain standard. If the people opposed to train noise were serious, they could pressure their local/regional gov to upgrade crossings and establish a quiet zone. This tends to be more successful than trying to prevent the train entirely.
In the house I lived it was not debunked. It was fact. The caltrain blasted it's horn hourly (or more) 24/7 within earshot of my house. I could not sleep with my window open and often slept with ear plugs even with the window closed. I get you might be tempted to spout generic statistics, but I can tell you without a doubt it was ear blistering loud up close, and sleep disturbing even 2 blocks away.
Also for what it's worth you have no idea if it's good or bad faith.
Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. The study is about PM2.5[0]. which will chiefly be tires and brake pads. Modern gasoline engines are relatively clean, outside of CO2, though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s44407-025-00037-2