81–90 of 188 posts
Brake 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.
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Yeah, electric cars just are not practical for day-to-day use. They are toys for rich children. We should focus on producing actually clean and usable cars - using natural gas, not gasoline.
Never going to a petrol station and charging at home a couple of times per week. Cheaper too.
The only way it’s worse is Very long trips.
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I 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.
I'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.
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How 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.
Some 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…
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Some 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…
Have 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.
Now I have a RWD Model 3 with an LFP pack (SR+/"base model"), and have to use the brakes much more than with the old car (that had an NMC pack and almost never limited regen). Over two years in, brakes seem good as new, hopefully they stay this way.
Works 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.
The brake dust from low-noise train brakes smells so incredibly nasty (burning ABS, pretty much) but the operators and OEMs claim it’s >. 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 comin…
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Cars are a 20th century fix for the lack of easily available, comfortable, and fast public transportation. It's a shame the USA got stuck in the mid-20th century on that front.
I look forward to seeing public transportation that begins a few feet from my front door and arrives a few feet from my destination, without changing vehicles partway through, for arbitrary destinations.
I'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)
To 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."
Some comments here are looking for a 100% perfect solution, which doesn't exist. Transportation is polluting. Sorry but even public transportation is polluting, even if it is more efficient when its above a certain utilization. Where I live, some buses are EV and it is a joy to ride them compared to diesel ones.
With an EV there is less local pollution, less noise pollution, more dynamic response when needed and no need for wasteful oil "changes" where the old, dirty, useless oil doesn't just magically disappear.