> The big sources of pollution that your average ice car emits now are from the tires and to a lesser extent the brakes.
I'm not sure in what sense these are the "big" sources, but it's not by mass. An ICE car emits like 30kg of carbon per 100 miles while an entire car tire weighs only 12kg.
> At the end of the day the pattern of everyone taking a 5000lb vehicle that you replace every couple years to go anywhere at all is the thing that isn't sustainable, not as much the particular energy source for that vehicle.
Of course, most people don't replace their vehicle every couple of years, which suggests that we can decouple the "replace every couple of years" from the "vehicle" bit. In other words, driving (even when citing the weight of the vehicle, as though it has any bearing on the sustainability) is plenty sustainable, but what isn't sustainable is the same thing that plagues every aspect of American (and to a lesser degree, "western") life: consumerism, throw-away culture, importing cheap plastic garbage from China/etc, etc. Nothing special about driving in this regard.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1135856_bigger-batterie...
Not trying to make a case against electric cars, but just wanted to explain that it's not just the 12kg of your tires that are the issue.
> The big sources of pollution that your average ice car emits now are from the tires and to a lesser extent the brakes.
I find it totally plausible that EVs emit more tire particles than ICE (although less for brakes, since most EVs have regenerative brakes to my knowledge, and I wouldn't expect those to emit much).
Big in impact. Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide is naturally occurring within human's lungs and is well tolerated in relatively large amounts. You emit a kilogram of your own carbon dioxide through your lungs this way every day. A kilogram of tire material in your lungs would be a much larger impact on your health.
Carbon dioxide is likewise, by weight, not a very bad pollutant compared to some of the other gasses that were released by cars before catalysts. CO2 is not great to emit, for sure, but it's quite mild compared to NOx, CO, raw hydrocarbons, etc.
An entier 18 gallon gas tank weighs ~113 pounds and it can take you ~500 miles.
>30kg of carbon per 100 miles
Also, note that there is 113 pounds of fuel per 500 miles of travel.
So take 113 * 0.2 * 0.85 / 0.27 and you get 71 lbs of CO2 per 100mi of travel.
This 'fly ash' and 'bottom ash' are both so toxic that regulations don't allow putting them in landfill.
So instead we mix them in with concrete and asphalt in roads. I'm sure it sounded like a good plan to whoever was going to have to pay to deal with the toxic waste otherwise...
Nonsense. EVs and hybrids leverage regeneration for nearly all of their lifetime braking energy use. Its commonplace for EV brake pads to last the life of the vehicle today. Exceptions exist, but those are for particularly hard-braking drivers. Our Prius ran 200k miles on the factory brakes, for example.