One would also expect that EVs wouldn't emit that many particles from brakes since the brakes typically wear much more slowly than with ICE cars.
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.