Anyone can argue ICE vs EV all night long but there's only 1 metric I care about, in favor of EV: When I am going to take my son to school, he doesn't have to smell the gas and the fumes from the exhaust in the garage.
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Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
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Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#232Hmmm. Do we have to do a study of that? The AQI around LHR was 3 when I went there last year. Then realized all gas cars are banned at the airport.
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Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A lot of Americans take their cat off on purpose for louder noises. Some people remove catalytic converters when they install a performance exhaust. Nobody is doing it for louder noises because the muffler portion is what dampens the sound. Also I wouldn’t say it’s “a lot of Americans”. We have emissions inspections in most major cities and your car won’t pass if you remove the catalytic converter. They can now det…
> Nobody is doing it for louder noises because the muffler portion is what dampens the sound. Cats also act as mufflers, they significantly reduce the sound coming out the exhaust.
I had downvotes on this post until you (and the other car enthusiasts) pointed this out / saw this.
HNs lack of knowledge around cars is sort of frightening.
Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#234I know I will be damned for this comment but nevertheless even EVs produce pollution with regard to tire abrasion. Tire abrasion itself is the main contributor to microplastics
Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#235The problem is battery recycling. It's highly polluted and a huge source of lead and lithium exposure.
Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#236I want the future to focus more on the brakes and tire dust, and the increase in cancers and other problems by people who live near busy roads or highways experience. Nobody studies this, and combustion or battery, everyone is affected by it. Even playgrounds are filled with shredded tires, which borders on biohazard.
The best solution is to build walking or biking environments. This was discussed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43672779 (saving a click) We need to start taxing vehicles based on the damage they are responsible for. The 4th Power Law is a principle in road engineering that states that the damage a vehicle causes to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle load. This means that eve…
That 4th power law works both ways. A 40 ft bus 2 axle bus with 80 passengers will weigh about 40 000 pounds. The axle weight is 20 000, so by the 4th power law the damage is proportional to 2 x 20 000^4 = 3.2 x 10^17.
If instead those 80 passengers each drove alone in a Kia Niro EV it would be about 4 000 pounds each, so an axle weight of 2000, so the damage would be proportional to 160 x 2000^4 = 2.56 x 10^15.
That's 125 times less road damage than the bus!
Another interesting 4th power calculation is EV vs ICE. My car is available as an ICE, a hybrid, or an EV. I've got the EV which weighs more than the ICE.
Based on the 4th power law I should be doing about 40% more damage than I would if I had bought the lighter ICE model.
But wait! With the ICE model I'd need to regularly by gasoline, and that gasoline is delivered by a tanker truck. Tanker trucks, especially when they are traveling between wherever they load and wherever they unload, are very heavy.
I calculated what would happen in a hypothetical city where everyone drove the ICE version and then all switched to the EV version, and how many tanker truck gas deliveries that would eliminate. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was something like if mid sized tankers were used for gas delivery then if they had to drive more than a few miles from wherever they loaded up to wherever they unloaded the elimination of those trips by everyone switching to EV would reduce road damage by more than the damage caused by the EVs being heavier than the ICE cars.
Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#237The problem is battery recycling. It's highly polluted and a huge source of lead and lithium exposure.
How isolated is that compared to air pollution?
Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number of ICE cars I get stuck behind from time to time that just REEK is amazing. I’m in a decently well off area too. Some putting off soot clouds, white smoke, nothing visible but clearly not doing complete combustion. Sometimes I wonder if half the cylinders are even working. I’ve heard one car like that is the equivalent of a surprisingly large number of modern ICE cars is in good shape. I love EVs. I’ve had…
Even modern cars pollute a lot (especially in winter) because you need a certain temperature for the cats to start working. On short city trips it happens frequently that you never reach proper operating temperatures.
Yes, any cyclist daring to drive in winter can easily confirm this. It is so disgusting (and unhealthy) having to stand behind a ICE car on a traffic light and being behind a electric car is such a relief, that thoughts of wishing to ban all ICE cars as soon as possible (at least in cities) come automatically.
Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#239No surprises. No matter how we look at it, EVs are much friendlier and safer to the environment. Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again, but in today's world we are rapidly moving away from it and towards nuclear/hydel/wind methods for generating power. I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to co…
I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon. I cannot and will not own a smart car any more I want to own a smart TV or smart fridge or smart toaster.
Amusingly my Cupra Born in Australia is a “dumb” EV, because Cupra/VW didn’t put a SIM in the car in this country. It’s quite lovely really, though it means I have to go to Cupra for a firmware update.
Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want the car to be able to contact emergency services, but not to otherwise be able to use the cellular network. Is there a good way to sabotage the eSIM, without otherwise breaking the modem? (This would still allow the car to be tracked via IMEI, but I'm not too worried about that: anyone capable of that is also capable of tracking my actual phone, and anyone buying that data will already know what car I own.)
why do you want your car to contact emergency services? the people around you can do that just fine and very reliably. How on earth did we survive as a species before our cars could make automated phone calls?
I don’t give rats shit about species when it’s my safety involved. What even is this type of virtue signalling??