It seems that there has been fundamental mistakes and overstatements in the amount of particles from brakes in much of the secondary research in the last decades.
Details: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00792
Details: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00792
Or to put it another way, the difference between a small car and a large SUV is far greater than the difference between an electric car and a gasoline car.
This whole meme comes from junk science (https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/pollution-tyre-wear-...)
> we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles. Compared with regulated exhaust emission limits of 4.5 milligrams per kilometer, the completely unregulated tyre wear emission is higher by a factor of over 1,000.
They took plastic shedded by a gas car on non-EV tires, and compared it by weight to safety limits for gaseous emissions. This makes as much sense as saying that a lump of coal has 1,000 times more carbon than the safety limits for carbon monoxide.
I really can't place your comment, you simply start talking about something completely unrelated to what I was talking about.
The BMW 3 Series has a curb weight ranging from 3,536 to 4,180 pounds
My EV6 (pretty heavy car) manual explicitly says "you should probably do some hard breaking from moderate speed to prevent corrosion on the brake discs".
Because 90+% of the time when you press the brake pedal the friction brakes aren't being used at all, it's all regen.
We shouldn’t be singling out EVs if we suddenly care about tire wear… it’s pretty ridiculous.
The other common issue with EV’s is many don’t integrate the batteries casing as a structural element. Skipping the lead acid battery would also be useful, but that’s a different issue.
If we want to reduce particulate pollution, we’d have regulations to govern acceleration on EVs, make tire monitoring more annoying, and have manufacturers certify tires and make compliance required during state emissions inspections, and get aggressive about the motor carrier overweight enforcement.
If Tesla or other EVs have a problem here, it’s that they are putting inappropriate tires on the cars.
Instead the topic is almost exclusively brought up as an attack without any real world studies supporting the ideas presented. Because actual studies show EV’s improve air quality over ICE engines.
But I do think tires are a significant environmental problem, especially in urban areas and when combined with diesel soot. We’re also poisoning soil by allowing shredded tires to be used as mulch, which is gross in many levels. Shredded tires are also used as aggregate for roads, so road wear also contributes to particulate pollution from tires.
A lot of EVs even have smart “blended” brake pedals that preferentially apply regen braking when you press the pedal. Only in particularly hard stops will the friction brakes get used.
An easy way to test/observe this is simply to check for wear on the brake pads of EVs compared to combustion vehicles of similar mileage.
Tires, on the other hand, do tend to wear out quicker in an EV. Partly due to weight and also due to higher performance/acceleration compared to combustion models.
But I know at least one EV maker that has a manually selected mode that guides you through driving with the brakes engaged for surface treatment, as rust buildup will be the main issue.
A BYD Dolphin, roughly sized like a VW Polo, is some 400kg heavier than the polo. A Polestar 2 is roughly 500 kg heavier than equivalent sized cars. In other words, something like 33% heavier.
BYD Dolphin weight 1600kg, length 4290mm.
VW Polo weight 1580kg, length 3971 mm.
https://www.automobiledimension.com/model/byd/dolphin
https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/cars/volkswagen-po...
VW Polo Mk6 is 1751mm wide, 1461mm tall, 4067mm long and has an unloaded curb weight of 1105 kg. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Polo_Mk6
The BYD Dolphin 2025 60kWh is 1770mm wide, 1570mm tall, 4290mm long, and has an unloaded curb weight of 1658 kg. https://bydautomotive.com.au/brochures/BYD-DOLPHIN-2025.pdf.
The VW Golf Mk8 might be a better comparison with an unloaded curb weight of 1255 kg, which reduces the gap from 543kg to 403kg.
(Note that for the gasoline and diesel cars, lighter trims give longer range, whereas it is opposite for electric cars, and that a fully loaded 45L tank of a polo weighs less than 40kg, especially if gasoline)
2025 BYD Dolphin, length 4290mm height 1570mm, curb weight 1506kg - 1658 kg
2025 VW Golf, length 4282 mm height 1483 mm, gasoline empty weight 1307 kg - 1492 kg
https://www.volkswagen.de/de/modelle/golf.html/__ui/technisc...
The BYD is taller to offset the battery, making the size misleading. However, the golf is not particularly a particularly good or space efficient car - others will do better at similar or lower weight.
250kg seems like a fair minimum weight increase, roughly 20%. The larger the car, the larger the gap though, as the rocket equation catches up - see a Skoda Octavia vs. a Polestar 2.
EVs are still way more efficient, but that doesn't mean we should turn our blind eye to making an already bad tire problem worse.
EVs are just a better tech in that regard, and buyers are not buying a Dolphin or golf based on torque or max HP. They're compacts in the same space. Someone looking at a dolphin would more likely be looking at the lighter eco motors.
This is true in other tiers too, e.g. a performance tier gasoline car might be 250-350 HP, while the same tier EV might start at 450-550hp just because they can.
The difference within a tier, simply based on the fact you're replacing at best a lightweight 100kg engine with 400-500kg worth of battery, can't be as small as you suggest.
With larger EVs, the battery weight is much greater, increasing the impact. Rocket equation and all.
In this context, what is the air speed velocity of an unloaded dolphin? Especially compared to an unladen swallow?
It’s moronic. But that’s how it works and why cars are getting bigger and bigger.
It's pretty energy intensive to separate crude oil into it's various parts.
And what was the cost to build out and constantly repair the refinery?
The problem you have with your talking points is that solar and wind both have decades of service in them whereas fossil fuels are single use product. Further, once the infrastructure is created large portions of it can be reused when solar and wind hit their end of life. You only need new lines and roads for new installations.
All energy collection will have some environmental impact. It just so happens that fossil fuels have an outsized impact for the energy they create.
I'm not an absolutist about crude oil. It'll likely have a place in society for a long time.
With that said, it's a matter of degree and where it should be deployed.
If, for example, burning 1 gallon of gas sets up a power generation which produces the equivalent of 20 gallons of gas without emissions, that's a worthy trade off.
As it turns out, that's roughly the energy trade-off for new solar/wind installations assuming a pure fossil fuel grid.
What you are saying isn't a gotcha. The entire cycle of CO2 released for fossil fuel use is not comparable to the CO2 released installing renewables. That some is released is meaningless.
But also ... almost a century of brake dust because nobody is going through and vacuuming the tunnels.
[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-informa...
Makes sense, it's just going to be heat anyways. I wonder how often that happens vs the energy getting dumped into the line.
Example: a report on the cost-benefit of using bicycles, that comes out with a fantastic positive number for introducing a cycle lane. Except the number depends on a monetary estimate of the benefits to society for health improvements. I'm sure the health improvements exist, and it wouldn't surprise me that the health benefits to society were well estimated. The problem is that by cherry-picking benefits you can simply ignore all monetary benefits of cars (no benefits for cars were mentioned as I recall).
I've seen it in other articles which talk sacharrinely about the benefit of some green tech. But ignoring real costs and certainly not being balanced. The ultra-idealistic greenies are not helping their cause when rubbish is repeated.
https://economics.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/economics/resour...
" Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Economics Acadia University, 2013" biased and poorly balanced.
As far as can be determined, no cost-benefit analyses of bicycle facilities have been carried out for locations in Canada.
The daily benefits from one person switching from car travel to bicycle travel for commuting are estimated to be $2.14.
Plus the internal+external "health ben." added up to be about equal to vehicle ownership costs.
See the "analysis" bias?
Perhaps an Acadia University Honours in Economics is toilet paper.
Rubber-stamp a multi-billion dollar highway widening project that won't reduce traffic*, no problem, doesn't deserve any comment. Bike lane? Scrutiny with a fine-tooth comb, subject it to years of studies, complain about the cost, complain about why anyone would want a bike lane - they must be up to something! The slider is jammed 98% over towards 'cars' and still the car drivers are like "Won't someone PLEASE think about the cars?!".
"No benefits for cars were mentioned as I recall" - seriously, you think everyone might have forgotten that cars exist in the twenty seconds between when they last saw one, or heard one, or had to wait to cross a road, or used one, or heard someone talk about one, or saw an advert for one? A study on bike benefits didn't say that cars were great, do you want a study on wheelchair accessibility to talk about the benefits of being able bodied?
> "I'm sure the health improvements exist, and it wouldn't surprise me that the health benefits to society were well estimated"
"Worldwide, we estimate that physical inactivity causes 6% (ranging from 3·2% in southeast Asia to 7·8% in the eastern Mediterranean region) of the burden of disease from coronary heart disease, 7% (3·9–9·6) of type 2 diabetes, 10% (5·6–14·1) of breast cancer, and 10% (5·7–13·8) of colon cancer. Inactivity causes 9% (range 5·1–12·5) of premature mortality, or more than 5·3 million of the 57 million deaths that occurred worldwide in 2008. If inactivity were not eliminated, but decreased instead by 10% or 25%, more than 533 000 and more than 1·3 million deaths, respectively, could be averted every year." - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
*roads are wider than they used to be; if adding lanes reduced traffic, there wouldn't be any traffic these days.
> complain about the cost
Bike lanes in my country are mostly paid for by taxes on cars and petrol. The costs/benefits are often justified by cherry-picked benefits (e.g. reduced car congestion, or reduced pollution). The congestion arguments anecdotally appear to be lies: low usage priority cycle lanes seem to cause extra congestion (through phasing of lights and islands and other traffic controlling features).
Try and fairly point out that the numbers are juggled and you'll get skewered by cyclist ideologues. Read my sister comment where I reference the thesis that was the basis for my original comment.
I have an acquaintance working in our council on improving bike lanes.
I'm not against bikes. I'm against badly biased reports : towards/against both cyclists or cars.
Balanced discussion seems so difficult.
Here's a somewhat biased look at the economics of cycling:
Governments get money in, and they spend money. There's no real sense in which "bike lanes are paid for by petrol taxes", nobody can prove it either way by measuring anything - that's a matter of where they write the numbers in a spreadsheet - it's not the same money, as long as all of it balances. It's an arbitrary accounting choice and you're choosing to raise it as a talking point because it makes car drivers mad, not because it has real world consequences.
> "The costs/benefits are often justified by cherry-picked benefits (e.g. reduced car congestion, or reduced pollution)."
The fact that you default to "the current level of car pollution with tens of millions of cars everywhere is the default" is a bias. That you think "reducing pollution" is cherry picking is a car-bias. That people have to argue for being able to breathe without getting lung cancer as a "nice to have" against a default of cars-for-everything is a massive bias.
> "The congestion arguments anecdotally appear to be lies: low usage priority cycle lanes seem to cause extra congestion (through phasing of lights and islands and other traffic controlling features)."
Public transport (which I will include bike lanes, pavements, sidewalks, L-trains) need to go from where people are, to where people want to go. It's a very car-biased talking point that a city put a bike lane from nowhere to nowhere, and look! The cars are inconvenienced and hardly anybody is using the bikelane, so bike lanes must be the problem, get rid of it. You can't just slap a bike lane in London, decide nobody is using it, and get rid of it. You need enough bike lanes that people can get from where they are, to where they want to go, safely - feeling safe, well lit, clear of mud and snow and muggers and not along a main road - and enough of those safe journeys for long enough that people can change their behaviour. Several rounds of New Year's Resolutions to get fit, months of seeing family and coworkers gradually cycling, increasing numbers of cyclists (or walkers) normalising it, seeing "normal people like me" bringing a bike to work or to the shops not just lycra clad idealists - for large numbers of people to move from car to (foot/bike/bus/tram). Amsterdam started changing towards encouraging cycling in the 1970s and it didn't get a reputation as a bike city for decades. Cars have a hundred and twenty years of being entrenched, multiple generations of people who think cycling is for children and the roads are too dangerous to cycle (they are!) which needs pushing back against.
> "Try and fairly point out that the numbers are juggled and you'll get skewered by cyclist ideologues."
I don't know if you can justify "existing without breathing car exhaust" in economic terms. I don't think one should have to. I don't think one should justify bike lanes in terms of reducing traffic congestion - moving people around effectively needs city planning overviews, zoning changes, joined up public transport where the schedules line up, until it overall becomes convenient to move around without driving. Bike lanes and cycling can be part of it, but you can't justify one bike lane or project in terms of reducing congestion. If one demands that bike lanes be justified in the framework of "good for car drivers" and then rejects the numbers because they've been juggled to fit in terms of "good for car drivers" when that really isn't the point at all, that's not balanced or unbiased.
> "I'm not against bikes. I'm against badly biased reports : towards/against both cyclists or cars."
It's just convenient that dismissing badly biased reports towards bikes means nothing changes, and dismissing badly biased reports in favour of cars means nothing changes, and that continues car dominance, which is nice.
Even starting the sentence "I'm not against bikes" is a bias. Cars parked up and down both sides of every side-road. Solid slow moving car traffic for multiple hours in the morning and evening every weekday. Billions spent on multi-lane motorways moving massive cars with a single person in them. Young drivers revving the bollocks off their engines at midnight, motorbike riders with exhaust volume increasers, pollution, road accidents, burden of cost on car owners, and you start with "I'm not against bikes". It's the millionaire saying "I'm not against helping the homeless, I just don't like the way they're asking for help. I'm just being unbiased and fair".
> "Balanced discussion seems so difficult."
It isn't a balanced world, it's a car-dependent, car-dominated, world, deliberately, by car advertising, governments subsidising car manufacturing, car company lobbying, car company bribing, and capitalism framing everything in terms of profit and having nothing in terms of community, quality of life, wellbeing, welfare, health. It's not an accident that the available land has been dedicated to cars, and that makes cars very convenient. It isn't because cars are inherently convenient it's that we have spent unthinkable amounts of effort carving through hills, flattening rocks, stabilising mud, to make cars convenient. Because cars are expensive so it's good for car companies if lots of people buy them. One can't take an unbiased "fair" position, one must make choices - one can't sit on the fence between "it's important that people can get to home/social/work/shops in many ways" and "it's fine if cars are the only way and if that's a problem for some, tough".