Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

keck.usc.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 661 posts

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#371

Post by otikik »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #316
otikik wrote: post #293

They are still a luxury item, only affordable by a few. Although to be fair new ICE cars are also a luxury item. Most people can only buy used ICE cars these days

That used to be true; it no longer is. In the EU, some of the cheapest cars on the marker in 2026 are now electric. There are a few nice options in the 15K-20K Euro segment. These are the opposite of luxury cars. There are a quite a few new more joining the half dozen or so that were for sale last year. The trend here is that EVs are becoming the cheapest option. A few cars from Stellantis that are available in ICE a…

> a few nice options in the 15K-20K Euro segment

You are making my point. Most folk can’t afford that for transportation. 10k is already a stretch.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#372

Post by ako »

itsprobablyok wrote: post #363
dijit wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest with you, the free market does work when incentives are aligned. If you get maximum profit from the maximum social good, people will do that (or find a way to cheat); but as it stands, theres money to be made in not doing this and the consumer won’t care too much if its 9 years or 10 years that their car lasts, so its not hurting sales to not fix this (even if fixed perfectly, it would take 10 years to p…

> The anti-EV propaganda already works pretty well Is that why EV sales have absolutely sky rocketed?

That’s because of the government subsidies.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#373

Post by wizzwizz4 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #240
eldaisfish wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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??

Funnily enough, I mostly hear about it from hyper-individualistic types. It's probably a facet of some American conservative-traditionalist belief cluster invented in the last 40 years, but it's hard to say for sure, because the people who say this tend to be bad at introspection, so can't answer my questions about it (even when they're curiously cooperating with my investigation).

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#374

Post by mittensc »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #333
decimalenough wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single survey that I'm aware has concluded that by any measure EVs are more environmentally friendly than ICEs. The only caveat is that the "startup" footprint of an EV is higher (because batteries), but the ongoing cost is far lower, even with polluting electricity sources like coal, because it's still way more efficient to burn coal in a proper power plant than it is to ship around gasoline and burn it badly…

[flagged]

I'm an expert in the field and I can say EVs are much less pollutant then ICE cars.

Do give your best shot to debunk that.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#375

Post by jabl »

tcfhgj wrote: post #347
zdragnar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The health consequences of inhaling exhaust particulates are far more harmful than the equivalent CO2 contribution to greenhouse effect warming unfortunately. All in all, a well tuned ICE is better for everyone than a poorly tuned one, if you had to pick between the two.

> The health consequences of inhaling exhaust particulates are far more harmful than the equivalent CO2 contribution to greenhouse effect warming unfortunately Short term for the individual definitely, but long term for all individuals affected?

At least soot from ships is an issue in high latitudes, as it turns out that the soot reduces the albedo of the ice and it thus has an outsized global warming impact.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#376

Post by lima »

dijit wrote: post #256

The real scandal isn’t just battery degradation… it’s that manufacturers have zero incentive to solve it. Your car becoming worthless after a decade suits them down to the ground. Battery swapping changes the game entirely. Imagine a national network of exchange stations (co-located with existing petrol infrastructure, you can use the overhead canopy for solar). Standard pack sizes scaled by vehicle class: compact ca…

Battery swapping is a dead technology, it is simply not economical. It is too expensive, much harder to scale and incompatible with cell-to-chassis designs. Industry barely managed to agree on a charging connector!

Meanwhile, battery longevity is essentially a solved problem. Manufacturers do have an incentive to improve it due to customer demand, and modern NMC chemistry, cooling and BMS have improved significantly to the point where they're expected to maintain 70-85% capacity after 10 years[1], far from worthless. At this point, components like the motor likely fail before the battery does.

Given the much lower failure rate of everything else in an EV, TCO is dramatically better than ICE cars even with degradation[3].

Manufacturers like Mercedes even guarantee 70% health after 8 years (a worst-case estimate).

There is a significant commercial incentive for aftermarket battery repair shops. EVClinic[2] is very successful and a glimpse into the future.

[1]: https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/

[2]: https://evclinic.eu/

[3]: https://evclinic.eu/2025/12/31/diesel-mythology-vs-ev-realit...

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#377

Post by perlgeek »

wolfi1 wrote: post #234

I 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

There are three main sources of air pollution from cars:

1) Byproducts from combustion (like soot and nitrogen oxides). Only ICE produce these, EVs don't

2) Break abrasion. EVs tend to do better, because they can do most of their breaking through the motor and recuperate a part of the energy

2) Tire abrasion. EVs tend to do worse here, because they tend to be heavier.

So yes, EVs aren't a panacea, but overall on the topic of air pollution, they score much better than ICEs.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#378

Post by ErroneousBosh »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #3

No 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…

We're still burning massive amounts of fossil fuels as waste products from refining oil to make plastics and chemical feedstocks. A huge amount of that is propane that just gets flared off.

We could have been running cars on that for decades, but getting people to make their dirty polluting inefficient old petrol cars run on fuel that emits carbon dioxide and water with no HC, CO, SOx, NOx, or particulates was nowhere near as profitable as selling them lots of debt to buy cleaner greener diesels.

And we're burning the fuel they'd run on anyway.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#379

Post by ErroneousBosh »

adrianN wrote: post #66
MBCook wrote: post #28

Earlier 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.

You could run them on propane, which doesn't need the catastrophic converters - they make no difference at all if there's no CO or HC in the exhaust stream.

You've got the added bonus that you don't need to strip-mine huge chunks of Africa for precious metals, too.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#380

Post by ErroneousBosh »

jodrellblank wrote: post #285
dzhiurgis wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get stuck behind from time to time that just REEK is amazing It’s crazy. How do we even allow selling cars without HEPA filters.

We love privatising the benefits and socialising the harms of everything. If the exhaust had to go through the cabin so the driver got the worst of it, car exhaust would be the cleanest air on the planet within months and/or alternatives to cars would rocket. But as long as it’s other peoples health affected, meh.

> If the exhaust had to go through the cabin so the driver got the worst of it, car exhaust would be the cleanest air on the planet within months and/or alternatives to cars would rocket.

This is why forklift trucks and Zambonis run on propane instead of petrol or diesel. If you burn gas, you get no carbon monoxide or unburnt fuel because it runs ever so slightly lean and all the fuel is burnt.

This means keeping the air clear is just a case of getting rid of carbon dioxide and water, so you can open some vents (warehouses have great big vents, big enough for trucks to drive in and out...) and let the place air out. You won't die if you breathe it, unlike the CO and unburnt fuel from petrol and diesel engines.

It's a simple and inexpensive conversion, too.

Post reply on HN