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Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

washingtonpost.com

331–340 of 595 posts

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not inherently heavier. They're only heavier if you put a long-range battery in them, even then it's not by very much, and even that may not persist as higher energy density batteries are developed. 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.

It's true they are not that much heavier in terms of pure numbers. But road wear is a proportional to the difference in axle weight to the fourth power.

But this also means that almost all of the wear is from trucks.

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.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#333
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those cars, as has been explained to you, don’t do nearly as many trips per year. Mobility in families is actually higher, since each individual has sturdy legs, and highly likely, a bike after they’re about 5 years old. Kids often travel to school, after school events etc on foot, bike or public transport, not dependent as in many car-centric places on parents and their cars. Grandma is as likely to bike over fo…

85% of travels in Netherlands happens using car https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/TRAN_HV_MS_PS...

While disappointingly high, that figure ignores walking and cycling. There is no need to misrepresent the data to make your point.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#334
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be incredible if somebody invented a light car, that would transport one or two people and some groceries. Maybe with two wheels instead of four to take up less space. Hmmm why has nobody invented this?

While bicycles are quite convenient for commuting, I am not sure if there is a way for transporting groceries for an entire week for multiple people. Is there such a way? The only solution I see is doing groceries every day.

It's a bit futuristic, but I heard the Italian company Givi has some great solutions for transporting cargo on two wheelers:

https://www.givi.it

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But they are heavier. Not saying it offsets the effect but it's just not straight forward to assume either way.

It doesn't matter though? Less braking material used equals less particles emitted. So if we accept that brakes on EVs last longer (and are otherwise similar in size), then they pollute less.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#337

Airparif is an NGO run by environmentalists and funded by the EU, not sure how independent they are?

Who, exactly, would you like to monitor air quality and who, exactly, do you think should be funding it?

Someone without bias, obviously.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#338
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stupid idea because you’d have to make fasteners and high voltage interfaces that can survive an order of magnitude more cycles than they have to for a fixed pack. It would also be significantly more difficult to use the pack as a stressed member of the car structure. It’s better to just have less batteries and use them more efficiently through weight savings.

Do you realize that one of the reasons for the swappable batteries on various Thinkpads is so that you can hot swap batteries without powering down or rebooting? I've never had an issue with the connectors for the batteries of the ThinkPad, and being able to swap in a spare fully charged battery has been very helpful many times when out doing field working all day long. What is an issue are the little plastic tabs on…

I could be wrong but the currents and voltages for EVs are rather bit more dangerous and taxing than that typically found used in laptops.

Which I think the person you replied was partially attempting to point out.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one example. He required bridges be built too low for buses to pass, limiting access to parks and beaches to those who owned cars… https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...

Here's the sub-heading from the article you linked to: "The story: Robert Moses ordered engineers to build the Southern State Parkway’s bridges extra-low, to prevent poor people in buses from using the highway. The truth? It’s a little more complex"

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Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#340
post #31

Cars in cities, let alone designing cities around cars, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern life.

At least in the US people absolutely fucking love their cars. They will lie about how much they hate them but ask them to actually change their behavior and you get nothing but a litany of excuses.

I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. Save for a few petrolheads and train enthusiasts, people use whatever happens to be the most convenient method to get around. In North America, most cities prioritise infrastructure for private cars to such an extent that any other mode is almost useless

Since private cars scale badly, you want to encourage people to take other modes, but in order to change behaviour, the alternatives need to be attractive - cycle layouts that are safe, buses and trains that are frequent and reliable, city layouts that don't involve a long drive to buy food. You can't convince people out of taking the rational choice. You have to build it

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