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In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

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Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#491

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> though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff. Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like motorcycles (small or absent catalytic converters), modified vehicles (catalytic converter removed or diesel reprogrammed to smoke), but not modern gasoline ICE vehicles. The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. PM2.5 is…

Modern diesel engines with DPF and DEF are pretty clean from a particulate and NOx standpoint. Of course there are still older diesels on the road, mainly buses and trucks. In the USA, diesel is so unpopular as a passenger car engine that it's not even worth worrying about.

We would believe that except that car companies are known for lying about diesel emissions.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should have said "a more inconvenient time" where owning an EV kinda revolves around your charging setup/schedule in a way that you don't have to think about with ICE cars. I plug it in when I get home, and when I get in it again the "tank" is always full. I think about the EV a lot less than I do our ICE car, which seems to need gas at the most inconvenient times. You might have an argument for road trips,…

Doesn't constant charging to 100% wreck the battery longevity?

“Full” meaning 80%. With a 300 mile range, that’s plenty for day-to-day.

But to your question: I don’t know, does it still? Seems BMS has gotten a lot better from the early Nissan Leaf days, so I don’t if it yet time to retire that along with “discharge batteries all the way so they don’t get ‘memory’”.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the motors absorb half the energy. The other half goes to the tires. It would be great and efficient if the motors could.absorb it all but unfortunately physics doesn't work that way. Secondly, if you've ridden in an EV, you would know that the drivers/cruise control often apply regent braking in situations where an ICE vehicle would have simply coasted to a stop. Hence more wear.

The tires wear the same amount here because either way, the car decelerates by the same amount at roughly the same rate.

No, it doesn't.

With the ICE car, if you want to go 55, you might accelerate to 57 and then coast down to 55 without using brakes.

With an EV you might accelerate to 57 and then brake to 55 when you let off the accelerator.

Tire wear is a function of how often you use your tires to slow down the car. With an ICE car that's every time you hit your brakes. With an EV that's both brakes and regen. An EV's time spent braking or regenning is more than the time an ICE car spends braking.

Someone could design an EV that behaves the way you describe, but aggressive regen sells better, so no one does.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tires wear the same amount here because either way, the car decelerates by the same amount at roughly the same rate.

No, it doesn't. With the ICE car, if you want to go 55, you might accelerate to 57 and then coast down to 55 without using brakes. With an EV you might accelerate to 57 and then brake to 55 when you let off the accelerator. Tire wear is a function of how often you use your tires to slow down the car. With an ICE car that's every time you hit your brakes. With an EV that's both brakes and regen. An EV's time spent bra…

Coasting wears your tires too. By the same amount.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by a worse time? The advantages are substantial- No oil changes ever again, performance that is on par with high end sports cars, less moving parts which should lead to higher reliability, in my state you don't even need to do an annual inspection. Those types of unexpected appointments are what really aggravate me when they are unexpectedly needed and eat up weekend time. Depending on your commute l…

>What do you mean by a worse time? Inconvenience when taking long trips. When operating beyond your comfortable range you have to strategically plan charging the way shitbox owners have to stop and top up fluids. If it's your only car it's absolutely a degradation in the ~monthly ownership experience though you (in my opinion) make it back not doing oil changes and the like. Even without the tax credit I still think…

So I was actually looking at it yesterday, and the top end ranges of todays EVs are actually the same range as my 2007 Honda Accord. Maybe I am unique, but I have never taken a road trip so long that I needed to get gas midway going one way, maybe this is more common out west. I have done some round trips for sure though that would require a top up on more than a charge.

I was surprised though that ranges, at least on the top end and very expensive EVs, are now comparable to ICE cars. This will continue to improve and hopefully alleviate any form of range anxiety in the future, especially as chargers just become more ubiquitous. I feel people really fail to realize they can just essentially top up each night and start out with a full "tank." I don't know, it all just feels very overblown with today's EVs.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What do you mean by a worse time? Inconvenience when taking long trips. When operating beyond your comfortable range you have to strategically plan charging the way shitbox owners have to stop and top up fluids. If it's your only car it's absolutely a degradation in the ~monthly ownership experience though you (in my opinion) make it back not doing oil changes and the like. Even without the tax credit I still think…

So I was actually looking at it yesterday, and the top end ranges of todays EVs are actually the same range as my 2007 Honda Accord. Maybe I am unique, but I have never taken a road trip so long that I needed to get gas midway going one way, maybe this is more common out west. I have done some round trips for sure though that would require a top up on more than a charge. I was surprised though that ranges, at least o…

It's not the overall range that gets you. It's when all the chargers in the work parking lot are taken and you need to go somewhere that doesn't have chargers after work and it's also winter that results in an inconvenient stop or cutting it uncomfortably close. It's absolutely surmountable but it requires planning you didn't have to do before.

IMO what you save by not going to the gas station is a wash if you have to habitually charge more than just at home. You're replacing one habit with another.

I still think they're worth it since you basically never get hit with an exorbitant repair bill for the engine/trans.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#497

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> when you decommission historical arteries There are no highway arteries running through the congestion zone. Building one would require hundreds of billions of dollars of eminent domain. Manhattan has a $1tn GDP [1], on par with Switzerlad [2]. Its economy is larger than all but 6 states (between Pennsylvaia and Ohio) [3]. More than all of New Jersey. If it crossed the pond it would be the fifth-largest member of t…

Didn't advocate for "more highways" -- I totally get it. More offering that maybe these problems shouldn't be viewed as a purely zero-sum game, where cities get all the benefit at the expense of the larger region due to a form of geographic tyranny. (Or at least, perhaps we shouldn't pretend that externalities don't exist through studies that largely look at quality-of-life factors in the hub.) You can see some of th…

NYC has a big dick to swing, and it should swing it for the benefit of its residents even at the expense of everyone else, why would residents vote for anything else

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's also that the regenerative braking means that the tires are dissapating energy that otherwise would have gone to the brake pads or to air resistance This does not seem correct... - Air resistance slows the car without putting anything extra through the tyres (the friction is between car and air rather than between tyre and road) - Regenerative braking channels energy into the battery, and also heat, that would…

Regenerative braking needs something to act against in order to slow the car down. Whether the thing on the car side is an electric motor generating voltage or a brake caliper generating heat, the effect of both is to create resistance to the axle turning. This slows the car via tire-road friction. EVs tend to use regenerative braking, thus applying road-tire friction, much more often than an ICE vehicle uses brakes.…

But if the car decelerates harder when you let off the gas than you expect (compared to an ICE), maybe you'll give it a bit more "gas", so that, in the end, your deceleration is roughly the same in both types of cars?

I haven't noticed EVs oscillating between full acceleration and hard braking when out and about. They seem to be driven pretty much the same as any other car.

If I'm not mistaken, this means that tyre wear should be roughly equivalent (for an equivalent vehichle weight). So EVs still have the benefit of reducing brake pad wear.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do EVs fare in this regard? Brakes are used significantly less, but the additional weight from the batteries chews through tires faster.

EV's produce 38% less tire & brake dust than ICE vehicles. https://electrek.co/2025/05/27/another-way-electric-cars-cle... non-exhaust emissions on an ICE vehicle are roughly 1/3 brake dust, 1/3 tire dust and 1/3 road dust. EV's have almost no impact on road dust, 83% lest brake dust and 20% more tire dust.

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Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do EVs fare in this regard? Brakes are used significantly less, but the additional weight from the batteries chews through tires faster.

EV's produce 38% less tire & brake dust than ICE vehicles. https://electrek.co/2025/05/27/another-way-electric-cars-cle... non-exhaust emissions on an ICE vehicle are roughly 1/3 brake dust, 1/3 tire dust and 1/3 road dust. EV's have almost no impact on road dust, 83% lest brake dust and 20% more tire dust.

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