I suppose the same should apply to hybrid cars, which outnumber pure EVs significantly [1]. The effect comes from converting the kinetic energy back to the battery charge via generation instead of wasting it via friction, which is the whole point of hybrids.
Part of the point, not the whole point. Regenerative breaking is absolutely a win; but there can also be a significant benefit from allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot" rather than moving around a larger range.
Another part of the point is that you can pack a much smaller and more efficient ICE and then substitute the missing power and torque from electric motors when needed. Most cars are not used at max power all the time. You need max power only at short times when accelerating. With pure ICE there is the tradeoff - a bigger engine will get you more max power / max torque but is going to be less fuel efficient because of internal friction.
The "gas pedal" becomes a "I want to go faster/slower" pedal, its position has zero impact on the RPM.
As an anecdote: A security company I know only buys Toyota Hybrids for their guards just because of that. They have a habit of driving cars like they stole them and normal ICE cars break down from that kind of abuse. Hybrids won't let you abuse them, they pick the RPM and you deal with it.
(They also swap the passenger seat for a plastic box because the guards threw heavy crap like safety boxes on it, wearing down the seat in months)
Have the powertrain be all-electric, and have a battery pack, but for those with range anxiety have a small generator as an option that would go in the frunk (front truck). A (proverbial) small Honda EU2200i would be less maintenance than a traditional engine.
Afaik that’s pure series hybrid and that’s almost non-existent in cars (outside of range extenders, not that there are that many of those).
There are a handful but most hybrids are either parallel or series-parallel. I assume because the power range is so low that the conversion losses are way too noticeable compared to a mechanical drivetrain.
Most hybrids on the road are parallel and have a mechanical connection to wheels and vary rpm as needed, although the CVT implementations may hold rpm due to gear ratios like any CVT hybrid or not.
A direct mechanical connection is more efficient at highway cruise speeds than a mechanical->electric->mechanical conversion.
The main win a gasoline hybrid has is in running the Atkinson cycle gaining efficiency while losing torque which the electric motor makes up. This brings the gasoline engine up into diesel efficiency territory.
This is also why you don't really diesel hybrids, the engine is already very efficient but it is more expensive and heavier and hybrid adds more expense and weight.
Diesel engines with all their turbochargers, EGR, SCR, DPF etc equipment, work pretty well as part of a hybrid system. All that stuff works much better in steady-state operation. Diesel hybrid buses and trucks are much smoother and cleaner than non-hybrid.
There do exist serial hybrids where the engine produces electricity while maintaining the ideal RPM, and then is connected to a battery+electric motors.
However in practice the vast majority of hybrids do not use this approach and have motors that vary RPM with road speed (depending of gearing of course).
The common case of maintaining ideal RPM is the CVT, which most folks dislike, so much so that some models have a switch to pick how many fake gears you have to break up the boring drone of a constant RPM engine.
BTW, the chevy bolt was advertised as a serial hybrid, right up to the day it shipped.
I believe the most common serial hybrid today is an EV with a range extender.
I heard about that long ago but couldn't find more, so IIUC chemically it's easier and more efficient to have a "one mode" combustion engine and let the electric engine deal with the variations, to the point that the reaction produces near no toxic byproducts, is that right ? I was wondering if there was research to keep improving that part. Even though it would help sustain the fossil fuel industry..
> a significant benefit from allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot" rather than moving around a larger range.
I remember buying plans from the Whole Earth News for such a car back around 1980. That was the selling point - keep the ICE running at an optimal point. I've not seen those same plans reproduced online.
In order to do this with a gas engine, it can be done but you need to completely mechanically decouple the gas engine from the drivetrain. The gas engine needs to do one thing and one thing only which is charge the battery. The gas engine has maximum efficiency at about 80% throttle.
> As the level of
electrification of a vehicle rises, the
dependence on regenerative braking
also increases, thus lowering PM
emissions from brake wear. Based
on recent evidence [30], regenerative
braking can reduce, in the worst-
case scenario (i.e. highest usage of
mechanical brakes or equivalently lowest
usage of regenerative braking), brake
wear emissions by 10-48% for hybrid
electric vehicles (HEVs), 66% for plug-in
hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and
83% for battery electric vehicles (BEVs
This makes sense since vehicles with bigger batteries can absorb more energy with regenerative braking.
I remember decades ago where they figured out the horsepower of a high-end porsche to go 0-100-0, and if the acceleration horsepower expended was 500hp, the deceleration horsepower absorbed by the brakes was probably 1000 hp.
I wouldn't be surprised if hybrids could only absorb 10 hp, while bigger cars could absorb 50.
One thought - if any of these manufacturers provided "braking resistors" like diesel-hybrid locomotives use, regenerative energy could be electrically turned into heat, instead of mechanically by wearing the brakes.
I came across a really interesting video yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aubi3cK8Ym0) that touches on brake-dust pollution. It also explains how regenerative (kinetic-energy) charging can cut down on heat pollution, something I hadn’t realized before. That’s actually a big deal for underground metro systems; for instance, the London Tube keeps getting hotter every year.
Yes indeed the London underground does use regenerative braking on many of their lines. The cool thing about a direct rail power system is that the voltage generated from trains that are braking can be fed back into the power rail to instantaneously power other trains on the same line that are accelerating. No need to carry the extra weight of a battery or flywheel. And like you say, it helps keep the tunnels cooler.
The rear brake rotors on my Yaris hybrid are basically always rusty because they get used so little. After some time you just know when to start braking so you only use regen instead of the brakes.
I confirm and that’s an unpleasant surprise. Already had to replace the rear rotors and pads on my Highlander… because of rust. They should add some “brake cleaning” mode to temporarily disable regenerative braking.
It does. My Volvo XC60 T8 PHEV is a 400bhp 2.2 tonne SUV and after over 5 years of ownership the pads are about 20% worn. And I don't drive like a granny either. The car just does most of its braking with the EV motor.
Same here, XC40P8 and the pads are 10% used after 2.5 years.
But I understand the factory tires are a bit stickier to create a quieter ride which may be throwing more rubber dust into the air. High torque launches don't help either. ;-)
> As of the end of June 2025, there were 2,450,462 plug-in cars, with over 1,585,000 battery-electric cars and nearly 865,000 PHEVs, registered in the UK.
> There are more fully electric cars than there are plug-in hybrids on UK roads and the gap has been widening. In 2021, fully electric cars accounted for 60% of all plug-in cars but with the increase in options, range and popularity of fully electric cars, and by May 2025 this has increased to 65%.
(That stat does exclude non-pluggable-hybrids, but those are kind of pointless stalling of the transition off petrol)
Your source doesn't consider non-plug-in hybrids also known as HEVs because zapmap are a company that sell charging services. The number of HEVs in the UK is about twice the the number of PHEVs so the total number of hybrids is still higher than the total number of BEVs. In 2024, 6% of vehicles on the road were hybrid compared with 3.7% fully electric.
To some extent, but not really. Effectiveness of regenerative braking depends on having an extremely large battery that can sink enough current to stop the car. An EV can do that, hybrids at best help the brakes out some. You just can't charge the battery fast enough doing anything but a very slow rolling stop. My model Y can effect a very reasonable stop in traffic without touching the brake pedal except to hold the car at the end.
> Effectiveness of regenerative braking depends on having an extremely large battery that can sink enough current to stop the car. An EV can do that, hybrids at best help the brakes out some. You just can't charge the battery fast enough doing anything but a very slow rolling stop.
This seems a bit exaggerated. Staying regenerative-only does require sticking to about half or so of how fast I could stop, but so far that seems to work fine unless a light turns right in front of me or traffic acts up. Usually it says it gets high 90's or 100%, and it didn't go below 50% even when a stoplight did turn at exactly the wrong time. (2022 Ford Escape non-plug-in hybrid, recently bought used.)
> You just can't charge the battery fast enough doing anything but a very slow rolling stop.
And it's not a problem when you get used to regenerative-only braking distances, which are surprisingly long at highway speeds.
It only becomes a problem when idiots thinking "the shorter the distance between first and last car, the smaller the traffic" start cutting you off when you leave enough distance for regenerative braking.
We finally gave up our Prius after 12 years, and we never changed the brakes once. The brakes were just peeking into the yellow on its last service upgrade. I was really impressed with how well the "normal" hybrid could take advantage of regenerative breaking, honestly.
> My model Y can effect a very reasonable stop in traffic without touching the brake pedal except to hold the car at the end.
My manual car could do this 20 years ago. My fully ICE motorcycle can do it today.
I know engine braking is cool but it’s not some amazing new thing only EVs can do. Altho granted it only produces heat and noise in petrol vehicles. But it also makes your heart sing so that’s nice
In normal driving hybrid regen is more than enough to do the job. Just look at the front wheels of any Prius. There are reasons all the Uber drivers choose the Prius.
If your Model Y is like my Model 3, then it seamlessly switches to friction breaking below 20 kph. That said, I'm at 110,000 km and the brakes look like new.
You can just waste energy on eddy currents, and then use the car's cooling system to conduct away the heat. After all, dynamic brakes on locomotives just dissipate the generated electricity using resistors.
I test drove an EV and the regenerative braking was difficult to get used to. You have to constantly ride the gas pedal. I would buy an EV if it weren't for this feature.
On both my Volvo PHEVs I often look at the brake discs and find them rusty from the amount of regen braking. it almost completely eliminates conventional braking unless it's for collision avoidance.
Surprisingly you can get nearly same effect in automatics. I put around 60k miles on my first automatic (after120k+ on my first two cars, manual transmissions) and when i got my brakes checked at 63k they noted my brakes were still "brand new". I do gamify reading traffic to try and brake as little as possible (to help pass time etc), but was still surprised how far this takes you given i do plenty of stop and go traffic driving. This was a v6 sedan so lighter than an suv / truck. I expected it to not work in automatics but it does to at least some extent. I swapped for an EV before taking it the usual distance and curious if anyones pushed further and how far.
Many hybrids are not driven to max regenerative breaking. You need to drive and look ahead to make good use of the regeneration. Short distance breaking is still fast and using the discs.
Well there are new classes of idiots I see pretty frequently - a typical tesla driver going 90 in 120 region of highway without any reason, presumably saving last bits of battery (that has at least some rationale, if they do it due to ie fear then they should not be driving or having license).
Over say 50km part of highway, maybe 2000 cars need to overtake such almost stationary object (to regular traffic which generally moves exactly at the speed limit). Fine if you have 3+ lanes, but most highways in Europe have 2 only. Then you have all the trucks, buses and rest of traffic trying to overtake via that 1 free lane, which in heavier (but still cca smooth) traffic will create a massive moving traffic jam immediately.
If I didn't see this every other day (and for some reasons its 90% tesla drivers where I live and rest is caravans) I wouldn't believe it to be so common, but it is. Summer now makes it even worse with all holiday drivers.
The kids will find a way to be flagrantly annoying. Always has been always will be. Taking their fart can exhausts will be a minor bump in the road. It's not like EVs don't come factory equipped with tons of power to drive the kind of audio systems that people like you also hate.
And thus higher tire particle pollution. And it's not slightly, EVs are on average 10-15% heavier than similar ICE vehicles. We've now found that a lot of the various small particle pollution (e.g. in bodies of water) come from tires.
So, while still drastically better than ICEs, they still have externalities (pollution, time wasted in traffic, vehicle accidents) and there should still be efforts to try to reduce the number of cars on the roads instead of just replacing them 1:1 and calling it a day.
I'm sure you feel the same way about cutting down on cell phones right? How about we just let people keep their cars (preferably EVs), but feel free to go live in a dense cell block and eat bug juice if that is what floats your boat.
It will be very interesting to see the data for the same car that has many powertrain versions for example the Lexus UX with the UX 200 (ICE), UX 300h (hybrid) and UX 300e (EV) to test which one the best and the worst in term of brake dust residue.
My hypotheses is that for brake dust residue the best is hybrid, 2nd will be ICE and the 3rd will be EV. This is due to the fact that the EV version has at least several hundreds kg extra weight (about 400 kg extra), that makes the brake dust residue comparable to ICE if not worst based on the approximately 30% extra vehicle weight for the battery. The hybrid however only has approximately 5% more weight or extra 80 kg different compared to the ICE version.
I think buyer demographics are gonna play hugely into it. Some makes and models are highly popular among the drivers who are on the low side of the bell curve and basically never hit the brake when not stopping because they're almost never coming upon slower traffic. Some makes and models are highly popular on the other side of the peak of the bell curve where the drivers are always hitting the brake way more than the median or average. An ICE Tacoma may very well use way less brake than a EV Altima because the venn-diagram of people who drive like a bat out of hell and the people who buy Tacomas is approximately two circles.
> that makes the brake dust residue comparable to ICE if not worst based on the approximately 30% extra vehicle weight for the battery.
Did you miss pretty much all data on EV brakes, notably that they get used so little they’ll rust to slick and manufacturers have to implement de-rusting cycles to ensure they can actually do something? Your hypothesis is nonsensical on its face. Calling it a hypothesis is insulting. Even to flat earthers.
Much better at what ? Do you have decent data for what it takes (CO2, child labour , cost of supply chain, ...) to make your Lithium based battery VS melting an ICE ? Same question for recycling ?
Comparing only the lifecycles of products doesn't make any sense if you don't put in perspective creation & destruction and this is where the massive lie is, no EV constructor has ever been transparent about this because it's overall just way dirtier by no way cleaner !
Extracting rare metals from Africa, sending to China for transformation into batteries and back to US/EU for putting into an EV (that we cannot properly recycle yet) just cannot be cleaner than melting an ICE with processes that are 100+ years old and that can be done locally without the use of ships to make 3 roundabouts on earth.
For DIY EV conversions (I built some cars) you usually hook up the "regenerate braking" to the brakelight switch.
So as soon as you tap the brake pedal just a little, you start regenerating and see the amps flow back into the battery (I have a little display on my dashboard). Only when you press the pedal further, do you start engaging the friction brakes.
I have no statistics on brake pad differences because we didn't build enough cars/didn't cover enough mileage to measure, but it is obvious that you would cut down on brake pad usage.
Everything I know about EVs and the tech behind it I share on: youtube.com/@foxev-content
With a manual car, it was common to downshift and use the engine to decelerate. I’m wondering if electric vehicles might actually cause a return to a third pedal to re-add some of the fine tuned controls that a manual transmission allowed. Maybe the “downshift” could engage the regen brake specifically.
I did this with manual, and my EV does this with a single pedal control. Letting off of the pedal will engage regenerative breaking to the extent that you let off the pedal, it does not engage the brakes. I find that in a lot of city driving I don't need the brakes, but they do work fine when I need them. I really like this functionality. The car can also creep along at 1-2 Mph when necessary - so I don't need brakes to deal with slow traffic. (With a manual, first gear would sometimes suffice for this.)
So the premise in the title of the article does not surprise me, but I thought that the primary pollution complaint about electric vehicles was tire pollution and not brake dust.
Some EVs have that. Anecdotally, once you get used to "one pedal driving" having that sort of control (via extra input mechanisms like steering wheel pedals) is just plain annoying.
My Bolt has a hand paddle behind the steering wheel that engages regenerative brakes (and only the regenerative brakes). I make use of it extensively. When in "single pedal" (where the accelerator acts as a speed selector, i.e., the car brakes when you step off the 'gas'), it's a lot more aggressive than just lifting my foot off the pedal, and when in "simulate an automatic transmission" 2 pedal mode, I find the paddle is easier than figuring out exactly where the threshold is on my brake pedal between regen and friction brakes.
The bolt EUV has a paddle on the wheel above the turn signal stalk that is used to invoke regen braking in normal drive mode, and when used in one-pedal drive mode adds an extra bit of regen without having to use the brake pedal. It also doubles to cancel cruise control. It's in the perfect location too. And it feels very well blended, precise, constant, and smooth.
Every other EV should have this. I often get EV rental Hyundais, which have 4 levels of iPedal - 3 regen levels and "max" aka one-pedal drive. They're managed by paddle shifters on the wheel. They don't default back to one pedal and any extra re-gen is still managed by the brake pedal.
Cool idea. Perhaps a better idea would be to borrow from the brake balance adjustment in race cars, wherein an adjuster dial/knob allows the driver to alter the balance between the front vs rear brakes when the brakes are applied (very useful in wet vs dry conditions, high-speed vs low-speed sections, etc.). So, instead of adjusting the F-R brake balance, the dial could adjust the regen-vs-mechanical braking, up to the limit of the batteries to accept power input.
Another way of further reducing brake dust might be to have a higher regen setting that dumps excess power to a heat sink and cooling system, up to its limit before engaging the mechanical brake pads/discs.
Some vehicles repurpose shift paddles as a way to trigger regen braking. But they're pretty gimmicky and not really useful for driving. If you want to use regen in a vehicle that supports it, the brake pedal does that. And when regen is not enough, the hydraulic brakes are also used. But a "sometimes brake" pedal that only support regen sounds like a bad idea. Vehicle controls as essential as braking need to be consistant in how they respond to input behavior.
Was it that common? Where I’m from that’s “winter driving mode” because it’s safer on slippery surfaces, but rarely anyone would do that in the summer time.
My EV is set on max regen mode though, and I sometimes drive without pressing the brakes, as there’s a paddle I can use to use regen for all my braking needs bar an emergency. It even has a name - single pedal driving.
I used to do that with a vintage 70's sportscar… later learned that it was pretty bad for the long-term life of the transmission so had to train myself out of it.
'common'? When I was a young'n, I was taught that that was basically an emergency procedure to use if the brakes failed, to force the car to slow down. I can't imagine wanting to do that routinely.
What are you doing to your tires that they only last 10k miles? I think that might be a driver error issue, because my EV (a heavier sedan) basically never needed tire replacement barring me running over a screw or something.
Just normal driving, it wasn’t quite so bad on our previous car which was a Nissan Leaf (with 30kWh battery) but our current Kia Niro just has a lot bigger batter (64kWh) and it is a lot heavier I suppose, the tyres just don’t seem to last as long. I’m pretty sure I’m using summer tyres all year round (I live in the UK) this was recommended by the dealer
I can roach a set of economy tires in 20k but I slide through four ramps a day if there's no traffic. I can see someone in something modern that has 3x the power, 1.5 the weight and takes a way softer lower profile tire roaching them in less.
Lower profile rims also beat up tires way harder if you drive hard because the lack of sidewall flex lets you put more force to the ground which has to go through the tread of the tire to get there.
Modern tires for modern cars also bias toward soft and high wearing because there's pretty much no other way to keep higher end vehicles stuck to the ground with the power to weight they're making these days.
The article says that even including tire and road wear, EVs generate 38% less particulate pollution than ICE cars before considering the lack of tailpipe emissions.
But tires are black, and black carbon has additional climate effects — even once the aerosol lands, it can still have effects like black carbon on snow.
Switch tire brand and type or get some advice. Whatever you are currently getting isn't the right tire for your car, obviously. You should be seeing much longer lives for your tires. Even with an EV. So, something is off.
And tires of course aren't created equally. There are many different types of tires and they are optimized for different circumstances. If you mismatch your tires to e.g. weather conditions, you are going to have issues. Not just with EVs, but with any car.
I'm not sure I can agree with this. I have 2 EVs, and the tire looks almost brand new after like 10k miles. I think the driving habits matter more than whether the car is EV or not.
I own one EV, at 40k miles, and have had to change the tires only once so far, and even that was more because of damage to one that required replacement than due to excessive tire wear.
I can vouch for the very low brake pad usage as well.
> "Even when summing up emissions from tires, brakes, and road wear, BEVs produce 38% less particulate pollution than gas-powered cars before even considering their lack of tailpipe emissions."
When you can see interleave that’s a good reason to change your tyres. My stock tyres on a model Y lasted 11,000km - but my daily drive is a tortured ribbon of tarmac with nothing but corners.
I think there might be something peculiar about the driving or environment. I have put 50,000 miles on my EV over the course of a few years and only changed the tires twice in that time. The car is MOT-tested every year so I have precise measurements of tread.
I am firmly in the camp that problems like these have less to do with being an EV and more to do with one of the following:
1) Aggressive driving which is easier to do in a number of EVs due to instant torque.
2) tire compound, a lot of oem tires are soft
3) something wrong with the cars drivetrain or suspension.
10k is comically low, my model y oem tires lasted to 30k before tread depth passed the safety threshold. I also keep it in chill mode.
There is something seriously wrong with your tires if that's actually the case. I drive a pretty heavy EV myself (an AWD ID.4) and your wear is ludicrous.
I wonder if you got unlucky with tires. Seems some mfgs are playing with new recipes and eco friendly ingredients causing the tires to dramatically miss their stated lifetime. My last tires were Michelin Defender somethings from Costco and they lasted about half the expected mileage even with regular rotation and proper inflation.
That’s very likely due to the tyres having less tread depth - a common trick with EV tyres to reduce rolling resistance. Michelins are the main culprit.
Of course the tyre companies love that little trick as they can pretend they are being green while selling more tyres.
Mine did more than 25,000, just get better tyres. The basic premise is that EVs are heavier and have more torque than average cars, but it's a 20% difference in real life, so your tyres may last 20% less.
I know road damage is far higher (fourth power of weight) so maybe wear on tires is also worse than linear?
heavier vehicles are also worse in many other ways (e.g. less safe for pedestrians, require more space for parking,...) and we really should be encouraging smaller vehicles.
If the steam engine were to stop faster then it would put more wear on the tires. Imagine if it were floating through space. You hit the brakes. Did it help?
The tires are doing the stopping. As you said the engine is the part that doesn't matter. But if it increases the stopping power, it's doing that by increasing the load on the tires.
In four years of plug-in hybrid ownership, and maybe 50k miles, I haven’t even had to replace pads, and the car wasn’t new when I bought it. I even commented on the longevity at the dealership the last time I took it for a service, and they said they see it a lot with hybrids. The regen braking really does make a huge difference.
Is 50k a lot? I drove my ford fiesta 120k without changing the pads. I'm certain the motor helps, but assuming it's a relatively lightweight vehicle I don't think you should be changing pads that much unless you're an aggressive driver
Although I’d call it spirited rather than aggressive. I’m not out to intimidate people or drive dangerously: but when I have the space and time I enjoy throwing a car around.
From what I've heard there's a countervailing effect for EVs, though - they end up generating more particulate pollution from tire wear because of greater vehicle weight and greater torque.
The number that I've seen bandied about is ~20% greater tire wear.
> They are looking at lightweight EVs at lower speeds. But Americans drive heavier EVs at highway speeds. The rotors & pads are huge.
Perhaps other EV drivers can chime in but, if anything, I think I use my friction brakes less at highway speeds where, in general, you're not really supposed to do a lot of braking. I'd say, overall and regardless of speed, my friction brakes are really used only to bring the car to a complete stop or for emergency braking to avoid a potential accident.
Not sure about that. If you accelerate a 2t vehicle to 60mph and then decelerate it back to 0mph then they would stress the tyres in the same way, no matter if you do EV & regen, EV no-regen or ICE, right? (I am keeping the weight constant).
Prompted by your comment I had a look at vehicle weights and two facts stood out
- ALL new cars are getting heavier EVERY YEAR because we keep adding more stuff (average car weight, and average SUV weight trend upwards from 2016 to 2023)
- The average electric car is heavier than a petrol equivalent but is lighter than an SUV
Weight certainly a problem, but the focus on EVs for weight is generally blown out of proportion.
If all of us renters were forced to convert to electric there’d never be an open charger in any city again for the next five years, because no landlord will voluntarily afford that cost, and no municipal region can pass a ballot measure to afford that cost. California’s impending ban of combustion car sales hinges wholly on a magical DC-charging network that doesn’t exist in U.S. cities yet (i.e. at parking meters), only at U.S. personal dwellings.
I would love to switch to electric but at current charging times and absolutely horrendously incompetent grid deployments, there’s no way all of the thousand people in my building could, much less the million other renters in the city. (And certainly transit can’t cope with us either, given the continued homeowner hostility to paying taxes for such things.)
What city has charging available for an average of greater than one spot per five hundred multifamily-housing residents? What parking garages anywhere in the U.S. have 25 or more electric vehicle chargers per 100 daytime and/or overnight and/or reserved parking spots, in order to diffuse the grid cost through trickle charging? What funding model is proposed to ensure that’s built whether corporate garage owners like it or not? How will states who depend on fuel tax to keep roads in repair avoid cutting off city services to suburban outregions when their asphalt budgets crater?
Technology has downstream effects, and it’s not as simple as “buy a Prius” when you consider U.S. non-homeowners. (I assume the prospect for India electric conversions would be much worse, too.) “Ban combustion vehicles” is a lofty goal, but until the charging grid problem is solved, it’s an unattainable one.
Level 1 charging overnight on a standard 120V outlet, while not ideal, is surprisingly adequate. Granted, many people rely on street parking or otherwise don't have a parking spot that is right beside their dwelling, but for rented houses or complexes with private garages/parking areas the size of the lift isn't necessarily "get upgraded service and a bunch of 240V EVSE put in".
> If all of us renters were forced to convert to electric there’d never be an open charger in any city again for the next five years, because no landlord will voluntarily afford that cost, and no municipal region can pass a ballot measure to afford that cost.
Landlords can charge tenants over the price of electricity.
> What city has charging available for an average of greater than one spot per five hundred multifamily-housing residents?
Also a problem in the UK, not just for renters, not for anyone who does not have off street parking.
There are smaller and more practical changes that would have huge benefits. More public transport, pedestrianised areas, encouraging people to drive smaller cars (lots of ways to do that - e.g. reserve some parking for small cars, tax vehicles on weight) would all have huge benefits.
Demand induces supply. Probably don't ban it _all at once_, but a gradual phasing out will give plenty of time for chargers to get built. They won't be _free_, but they will be available.
Other countries have figured this out. Norway in particular. Working transportation models exist and this country has the funds to make it happen. However because of American Exceptionalism, we have very limited options.
I’ve got an EV in a flat with a terrace in London. There’s 4 22kw charging car parks within a few min walk, and a lot more further, plus a few more expensive fast chargers. Works well.
I have an electric Leaf and I've never, ever, used a "fast" charger. I've been plugging it in my 10A garden socket and it's perfect for overnight charging, it goes from 10% to 80% from dusk until dawn.
Annoyingly, I've already invested in a 11kW charger (with 22kW infrastructure) which I've never used!
That's a good point! I hadn't thought about that. The benefit of EVs seem highest in the city,[1] but the charging infrastructure isn't there in urban areas.
[1] My wife, being from the west coast, used to walk around NYC in flip flops, and would come home with her feet black from brake dust and soot and god knows what else.
It's really not as big of deal anymore. My co-worker got an electric car and has his own house with a garage and never ended up installing a wall box. He simply charges at work or while buying groceries.
I never have to wait in line or had issues with supplying power while charging my electric vehicle in my bedroom. The problem is thinking gas car and electric car are your two options.
I would love to have gone electric (bought a car in September) but I rent and don't have any way to charge at my residence. How do we solve the renters-that-cant-charge-their-cars problem?
Public EV chargers are pretty widespread nowadays. Not as much as gas chargers obviously, but for most people in the country if you don't have a way to charge at home it's not fundamentally that different from not having a gas pump at your house.
Plus, most people can charge at home with an extension cord. It's not particularly fast, but you should be able to get 4-5 miles an hour. In the worst case scenario where you can only charge at home and can only charge for 10 hours overnight, that's still 40 miles of driving which is enough for a lot of commuters. Even if it falls short—again—you can use public chargers.
Lastly, eliminating the sale of ICE cars will be a pretty rapid forcing function on the deployment of EV chargers. Still, I'd be all for locations that ban combustion engines mandating that landlords provide EV charging facilities.
In the UK, in London at least, they're starting to put in more and more ~4-5KW chargers on the electric street lamps/lamp posts.
So far its like 1 or 2 a street (and not all streets either), but hopefully one day it will basically be all of them in every street so you don't need to worry.
So if you need to park overnight on the street anyway, park next to a lamp post that has the socket. Its "slow" charging at 4 to 5 KW, but if you're parked for 8-12 hours (while you are asleep), that is quite a considerable top-up in the 40-50KWh range.
One option may be to ask your work to electrify a parking spot for you? Depending on the type of company there can be big enough subsidies and tax-write-off capital investments in adding more electric parking spaces that they might do it just for that. (It can be fun to use accounting games in your personal favor.) For other types of companies they may see that as a possible "captive audience" revenue source, with nickel and dime-ing electric charge fees on top of existing parking fees to be a a fun game to play with their own employees whose cars are stuck in the same place for many hours at a time because they "must" be in the office.
Either of those two common types of companies you can possibly "win" an easy way to charge your daily commute.
And everyone you ask has a slightly different situation so no generic solution does it. We’ll have to spend some money and retrofit at least where possible. We’ll need free level 2 chargers wherever people congregate. And folks will probably have to adapt their expectation toward mobility in a way. Things change.
You could possibly have come to an arrangement about getting a 50 Amp (think dryer plug) hookup in the garage and provided your own charger. Also depending on your driving patterns a trickle charger in a 20 Amp socket may have worked for you as well. Mine takes about 48 hours for a full charge on the trickle charger.
All our local Tesla drivers park their cars partially blocking the alleyway each evening.
They can't make it into their garages on the narrow road, and there are no curb side plugs in the front (NEC safety rules.) Funny until the Garbage truck rage mashes the horn at 6am... lol =3
I’m in the same situation, but I did go electric. I’m in a bigger city in Europe and the public infrastructure here is adequate and reliable. I rarely have to wait for the car to finish charging, it mostly fits my usage.
Excluding the worst polluters makes a surprisingly big difference, yes.
It’s still been a problem in several places though, because it forced poor people with old cars to either upgrade or stop driving. An equitable alternative would have included a way to get a new car free or at least cheap.
The externalities are all the costs of medical problems and deaths due to pollution, as well as reduced property values due to polluted areas being less desirable. For the former I’d say a ban is appropriate, unless you’re suggesting to somehow literally clean the polluted air and pay for it with a gas automobile tax.
Based on the long history of trying to price in externalities, bans are probably more effective. Just look at how many games are played with carbon "credits", and how little real impact they've had.
Yeah, because that's worked so well in other sectors.
You know how Tesla makes a fuckton of money? Selling their carbon credits to industry so they can pollute. So all the pollution reduction caused by people driving Teslas enables industry to pollute instead of controlling their emissions, reducing energy waste, decarbonizing, etc.
Just don't do as we did in Norway. Sure, we've seen great adoption to electric, but with the insane amount of money spent and subsidies, we've could instead have improved public transit and reduced car dependence.
I don't think banning combustion engines is fighting the right battle, but incentivizing the alternatives (e..g lowering or removing sales tax) is a good idea.
We don't actually want to scrap working cars unless they have reached the end of their life or passed an air quality threshold (UK tests every car over 3 years old, every year, called an MOT). Reduce, reuse, recycle etc.
I live in a city and I don't have a car. There are very few places to charge it, and many of the lamppost charges are seemingly permanently broken. Charging at home is not an option as I would have to park it on the street.
If I needed a car I would definitely go ICE or hybrid, thankfully I don't.
Sure, first we spend a trillion dollars for over capacity electrical distribution grids and generation plants.
B100 is almost carbon neutral, and has the energy density necessary for commercial logistics. Finding responsible manufacturing methods is far more feasible.
EV only make sense with distributed generation like home solar. =3
I can think of many. The list should start with coal power plants (hello, green Germany), then two-stroke engines (both mopeds and leaf blowers / lawn mowers), then diesel engines, especially diesel buses and trucks. None of that is in place.
Modern gasoline and hybrid cars are fine, banning them at this point in time would mean a drop in quality of life for negligible gain.
Realistically this is what's happening in the UK with "low emission zones", the worst of the emitters are banned. Although public buses of course get an exemption until they can manage a changeover.
Well, I like that the people that think like this also probably live I places where you are actually driving a coal powered car.
Like the clowns in Hawaii that have extra subsidies for EVs… their power comes directly from burning crude oil.
I’m an automotive EE, and and the truth about EVs is in a rush to push them out the door, the media and politicians have set the tech back at least a decade by pretending it is something it’s not.
EVs for most people outside of California. Make a great town vehicle or second vehicle.
While I think there is some merit to what you're saying, you're forgetting two major diferences between driving am ICE car and an EV charged on fossil fuel electricity.
First, EV engines are far, far more energy efficient than ICEs. Secondly, fossil fuel power plants are far more efficient at converting fossil fuels to energy than ICEs are (since the energy efficiency of a thermal engine is proportional to its volume).
The result is that the EV car mileage you'll get by burning 1t of oil in an oil power plant is much, much higher than the mileage you'll get from that same 1t of oil in ICE cars. I'm not 100% sure if this holds true for coal based power plants, but those should be getting relatively rarer.
Not to mention, fossil fuel power plants can have much better filters and some CO2/CH4 capture technologies, so the mileage you get per ton of greenhouse gas emissions is even better than the energy per ton of fossil fuels.
> Like the clowns in Hawaii that have extra subsidies for EVs… their power comes directly from burning crude oil.
If all their electricity comes from burning crude oil than they'd get about the same amount of miles in an ICE by refining that oil to gasoline for the cars and an EV by burning the crude oil for electricity, distributing that over the grid to drivers to charge their EVs.
However, about 22% of Hawaii's electricity comes from solar, so the EVs will come out ahead.
Even if we ignore solar and assume the EVs only use electricity from burning crude oil, the crude oil fueled generators should be cleaner than ICE engines, so there would be a significant reduction in total green house gases and particulates.
I don't agree with a ban, but burning crude oil (are you sure about that, it's usually refined at least a little?) can have centralised carbon capture and filtration, whereas cars pretty much just pump it straight out. Luckily they made the smoke invisible so it's ok, almost like it's not even there!
There are more benefits to EV conversion in a community than the use of renewable energy, noise and roadside air quality being pretty big ones. Also... how do you know there aren't Hawaiians charging their EVs using rooftop solar? I hear they're known for being in the sun sometimes.
A well known fact by Brembo, one of the biggest brakes producers in the world, which has been working for years to find new products and new markets, preparing for the time when a lot more EVs will be on the road.
Readit News
[1]: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/how-many-electric...
Part of the point, not the whole point. Regenerative breaking is absolutely a win; but there can also be a significant benefit from allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot" rather than moving around a larger range.
The "gas pedal" becomes a "I want to go faster/slower" pedal, its position has zero impact on the RPM.
As an anecdote: A security company I know only buys Toyota Hybrids for their guards just because of that. They have a habit of driving cars like they stole them and normal ICE cars break down from that kind of abuse. Hybrids won't let you abuse them, they pick the RPM and you deal with it.
(They also swap the passenger seat for a plastic box because the guards threw heavy crap like safety boxes on it, wearing down the seat in months)
Which is why I'm surprised electric cars with range extenders aren't a bigger thing:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_extender
Have the powertrain be all-electric, and have a battery pack, but for those with range anxiety have a small generator as an option that would go in the frunk (front truck). A (proverbial) small Honda EU2200i would be less maintenance than a traditional engine.
There are a handful but most hybrids are either parallel or series-parallel. I assume because the power range is so low that the conversion losses are way too noticeable compared to a mechanical drivetrain.
A direct mechanical connection is more efficient at highway cruise speeds than a mechanical->electric->mechanical conversion.
The main win a gasoline hybrid has is in running the Atkinson cycle gaining efficiency while losing torque which the electric motor makes up. This brings the gasoline engine up into diesel efficiency territory.
This is also why you don't really diesel hybrids, the engine is already very efficient but it is more expensive and heavier and hybrid adds more expense and weight.
However in practice the vast majority of hybrids do not use this approach and have motors that vary RPM with road speed (depending of gearing of course).
The common case of maintaining ideal RPM is the CVT, which most folks dislike, so much so that some models have a switch to pick how many fake gears you have to break up the boring drone of a constant RPM engine.
BTW, the chevy bolt was advertised as a serial hybrid, right up to the day it shipped.
I believe the most common serial hybrid today is an EV with a range extender.
I remember buying plans from the Whole Earth News for such a car back around 1980. That was the selling point - keep the ICE running at an optimal point. I've not seen those same plans reproduced online.
Quote from the actual report:
> As the level of electrification of a vehicle rises, the dependence on regenerative braking also increases, thus lowering PM emissions from brake wear. Based on recent evidence [30], regenerative braking can reduce, in the worst- case scenario (i.e. highest usage of mechanical brakes or equivalently lowest usage of regenerative braking), brake wear emissions by 10-48% for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), 66% for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and 83% for battery electric vehicles (BEVs
I remember decades ago where they figured out the horsepower of a high-end porsche to go 0-100-0, and if the acceleration horsepower expended was 500hp, the deceleration horsepower absorbed by the brakes was probably 1000 hp.
I wouldn't be surprised if hybrids could only absorb 10 hp, while bigger cars could absorb 50.
One thought - if any of these manufacturers provided "braking resistors" like diesel-hybrid locomotives use, regenerative energy could be electrically turned into heat, instead of mechanically by wearing the brakes.
using resistors would be "green".
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But I understand the factory tires are a bit stickier to create a quieter ride which may be throwing more rubber dust into the air. High torque launches don't help either. ;-)
> As of the end of June 2025, there were 2,450,462 plug-in cars, with over 1,585,000 battery-electric cars and nearly 865,000 PHEVs, registered in the UK.
> There are more fully electric cars than there are plug-in hybrids on UK roads and the gap has been widening. In 2021, fully electric cars accounted for 60% of all plug-in cars but with the increase in options, range and popularity of fully electric cars, and by May 2025 this has increased to 65%.
(That stat does exclude non-pluggable-hybrids, but those are kind of pointless stalling of the transition off petrol)
https://www.smmt.co.uk/more-than-a-million-evs-on-uk-roads-a...
This seems a bit exaggerated. Staying regenerative-only does require sticking to about half or so of how fast I could stop, but so far that seems to work fine unless a light turns right in front of me or traffic acts up. Usually it says it gets high 90's or 100%, and it didn't go below 50% even when a stoplight did turn at exactly the wrong time. (2022 Ford Escape non-plug-in hybrid, recently bought used.)
And it's not a problem when you get used to regenerative-only braking distances, which are surprisingly long at highway speeds.
It only becomes a problem when idiots thinking "the shorter the distance between first and last car, the smaller the traffic" start cutting you off when you leave enough distance for regenerative braking.
My manual car could do this 20 years ago. My fully ICE motorcycle can do it today.
I know engine braking is cool but it’s not some amazing new thing only EVs can do. Altho granted it only produces heat and noise in petrol vehicles. But it also makes your heart sing so that’s nice
Hybrid makers just don't really care about that.
Hybrid cars have smaller motors, inverters, and battery packs - and none of those components can absorb 940 horsepower!
A 2nd gen prius battery for example has a max in/out of 30 horsepower.
Zero tailpipe emissions, drastically removed brake dust, slightly higher tire wear (due to weight), but much better overall than ICE.
Over say 50km part of highway, maybe 2000 cars need to overtake such almost stationary object (to regular traffic which generally moves exactly at the speed limit). Fine if you have 3+ lanes, but most highways in Europe have 2 only. Then you have all the trucks, buses and rest of traffic trying to overtake via that 1 free lane, which in heavier (but still cca smooth) traffic will create a massive moving traffic jam immediately.
If I didn't see this every other day (and for some reasons its 90% tesla drivers where I live and rest is caravans) I wouldn't believe it to be so common, but it is. Summer now makes it even worse with all holiday drivers.
And thus higher tire particle pollution. And it's not slightly, EVs are on average 10-15% heavier than similar ICE vehicles. We've now found that a lot of the various small particle pollution (e.g. in bodies of water) come from tires.
So, while still drastically better than ICEs, they still have externalities (pollution, time wasted in traffic, vehicle accidents) and there should still be efforts to try to reduce the number of cars on the roads instead of just replacing them 1:1 and calling it a day.
It will be very interesting to see the data for the same car that has many powertrain versions for example the Lexus UX with the UX 200 (ICE), UX 300h (hybrid) and UX 300e (EV) to test which one the best and the worst in term of brake dust residue.
My hypotheses is that for brake dust residue the best is hybrid, 2nd will be ICE and the 3rd will be EV. This is due to the fact that the EV version has at least several hundreds kg extra weight (about 400 kg extra), that makes the brake dust residue comparable to ICE if not worst based on the approximately 30% extra vehicle weight for the battery. The hybrid however only has approximately 5% more weight or extra 80 kg different compared to the ICE version.
EV versus hybrid I couldn't say, it comes down to exactly how strong the hybrid regen is and how aggressively the owner brakes in comparison.
Why is your hypothesis so different from mine? How much use do you expect the EV brakes to get?
It will regeneratively brake all the way to a stop.
The brake disks are there for emergencies and spirited driving.
You could achieve the same with engine braking with ICE but most don’t bother.
Did you miss pretty much all data on EV brakes, notably that they get used so little they’ll rust to slick and manufacturers have to implement de-rusting cycles to ensure they can actually do something? Your hypothesis is nonsensical on its face. Calling it a hypothesis is insulting. Even to flat earthers.
Extracting rare metals from Africa, sending to China for transformation into batteries and back to US/EU for putting into an EV (that we cannot properly recycle yet) just cannot be cleaner than melting an ICE with processes that are 100+ years old and that can be done locally without the use of ships to make 3 roundabouts on earth.
Yeah established on a truncated view of reality !
Saying it must be inefficient because it includes ship transit instead of trucking "locally" is innumerate.
> just cannot be cleaner...
Someone doesn't!
So as soon as you tap the brake pedal just a little, you start regenerating and see the amps flow back into the battery (I have a little display on my dashboard). Only when you press the pedal further, do you start engaging the friction brakes.
I have no statistics on brake pad differences because we didn't build enough cars/didn't cover enough mileage to measure, but it is obvious that you would cut down on brake pad usage.
Everything I know about EVs and the tech behind it I share on: youtube.com/@foxev-content
So the premise in the title of the article does not surprise me, but I thought that the primary pollution complaint about electric vehicles was tire pollution and not brake dust.
Every other EV should have this. I often get EV rental Hyundais, which have 4 levels of iPedal - 3 regen levels and "max" aka one-pedal drive. They're managed by paddle shifters on the wheel. They don't default back to one pedal and any extra re-gen is still managed by the brake pedal.
I googled to find a link to share in this comment to discover how much love (or superiority complex) the chevy regen paddle has -- https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/regen-paddle-the-superior-...
Another way of further reducing brake dust might be to have a higher regen setting that dumps excess power to a heat sink and cooling system, up to its limit before engaging the mechanical brake pads/discs.
My EV is set on max regen mode though, and I sometimes drive without pressing the brakes, as there’s a paddle I can use to use regen for all my braking needs bar an emergency. It even has a name - single pedal driving.
Lower profile rims also beat up tires way harder if you drive hard because the lack of sidewall flex lets you put more force to the ground which has to go through the tread of the tire to get there.
Modern tires for modern cars also bias toward soft and high wearing because there's pretty much no other way to keep higher end vehicles stuck to the ground with the power to weight they're making these days.
How could you possibly measure that just from your personal experience?
Sounds more like a wild guess that is in contradiction with actual studies.
Simple napkin math by comparing longevity of parts with volume of parts consumed.
And tires of course aren't created equally. There are many different types of tires and they are optimized for different circumstances. If you mismatch your tires to e.g. weather conditions, you are going to have issues. Not just with EVs, but with any car.
I can vouch for the very low brake pad usage as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1kdxm5cKfA
> "Even when summing up emissions from tires, brakes, and road wear, BEVs produce 38% less particulate pollution than gas-powered cars before even considering their lack of tailpipe emissions."
There’s no good reason why you should be changing your tires at 10k miles.
1) Aggressive driving which is easier to do in a number of EVs due to instant torque. 2) tire compound, a lot of oem tires are soft 3) something wrong with the cars drivetrain or suspension.
10k is comically low, my model y oem tires lasted to 30k before tread depth passed the safety threshold. I also keep it in chill mode.
Of course the tyre companies love that little trick as they can pretend they are being green while selling more tyres.
Always check how much tyre you’re buying
I know road damage is far higher (fourth power of weight) so maybe wear on tires is also worse than linear?
heavier vehicles are also worse in many other ways (e.g. less safe for pedestrians, require more space for parking,...) and we really should be encouraging smaller vehicles.
Accelerating and decelerating, in regards to the tire, don't care what is causing the force.
I know I know, people aren't supposed to be taking off from every light at full chat, but, given the capability some people can't help themselves.
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The tires are doing the stopping. As you said the engine is the part that doesn't matter. But if it increases the stopping power, it's doing that by increasing the load on the tires.
- evs have a reputation for fast acceleration, and many drivers use it. More wear.
- evs are heavy due to large batteries trying to match ICE range. More wear.
- evs often come with low friction tires to improve range, they wear faster
The second two issues should gradually go away as battery (and charging) tech improves.
Some of the lowest rolling resistance tires also last 80k+ miles. It's not a tradeoff in the way you're claiming.
https://www.cars.com/articles/do-evs-wear-through-tires-more...
Hi.
Although I’d call it spirited rather than aggressive. I’m not out to intimidate people or drive dangerously: but when I have the space and time I enjoy throwing a car around.
The number that I've seen bandied about is ~20% greater tire wear.
But you do raise a good point at the holistic condition, and assessing a broader population with less than ideal configuration.
They are looking at lightweight EVs at lower speeds. But Americans drive heavier EVs at highway speeds. The rotors & pads are huge.
Perhaps other EV drivers can chime in but, if anything, I think I use my friction brakes less at highway speeds where, in general, you're not really supposed to do a lot of braking. I'd say, overall and regardless of speed, my friction brakes are really used only to bring the car to a complete stop or for emergency braking to avoid a potential accident.
Prompted by your comment I had a look at vehicle weights and two facts stood out
- ALL new cars are getting heavier EVERY YEAR because we keep adding more stuff (average car weight, and average SUV weight trend upwards from 2016 to 2023)
- The average electric car is heavier than a petrol equivalent but is lighter than an SUV
Weight certainly a problem, but the focus on EVs for weight is generally blown out of proportion.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-13588773/Ne...https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/weighty-issue-of-e...
I would love to switch to electric but at current charging times and absolutely horrendously incompetent grid deployments, there’s no way all of the thousand people in my building could, much less the million other renters in the city. (And certainly transit can’t cope with us either, given the continued homeowner hostility to paying taxes for such things.)
What city has charging available for an average of greater than one spot per five hundred multifamily-housing residents? What parking garages anywhere in the U.S. have 25 or more electric vehicle chargers per 100 daytime and/or overnight and/or reserved parking spots, in order to diffuse the grid cost through trickle charging? What funding model is proposed to ensure that’s built whether corporate garage owners like it or not? How will states who depend on fuel tax to keep roads in repair avoid cutting off city services to suburban outregions when their asphalt budgets crater?
Technology has downstream effects, and it’s not as simple as “buy a Prius” when you consider U.S. non-homeowners. (I assume the prospect for India electric conversions would be much worse, too.) “Ban combustion vehicles” is a lofty goal, but until the charging grid problem is solved, it’s an unattainable one.
Landlords can charge tenants over the price of electricity.
> What city has charging available for an average of greater than one spot per five hundred multifamily-housing residents?
Shanghai: https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-WhatsNew/20240508/...
There are smaller and more practical changes that would have huge benefits. More public transport, pedestrianised areas, encouraging people to drive smaller cars (lots of ways to do that - e.g. reserve some parking for small cars, tax vehicles on weight) would all have huge benefits.
Other countries have figured this out. Norway in particular. Working transportation models exist and this country has the funds to make it happen. However because of American Exceptionalism, we have very limited options.
Annoyingly, I've already invested in a 11kW charger (with 22kW infrastructure) which I've never used!
You don't need "magical DC-charging" to go EV.
[1] My wife, being from the west coast, used to walk around NYC in flip flops, and would come home with her feet black from brake dust and soot and god knows what else.
Plus, most people can charge at home with an extension cord. It's not particularly fast, but you should be able to get 4-5 miles an hour. In the worst case scenario where you can only charge at home and can only charge for 10 hours overnight, that's still 40 miles of driving which is enough for a lot of commuters. Even if it falls short—again—you can use public chargers.
Lastly, eliminating the sale of ICE cars will be a pretty rapid forcing function on the deployment of EV chargers. Still, I'd be all for locations that ban combustion engines mandating that landlords provide EV charging facilities.
So far its like 1 or 2 a street (and not all streets either), but hopefully one day it will basically be all of them in every street so you don't need to worry.
So if you need to park overnight on the street anyway, park next to a lamp post that has the socket. Its "slow" charging at 4 to 5 KW, but if you're parked for 8-12 hours (while you are asleep), that is quite a considerable top-up in the 40-50KWh range.
Either of those two common types of companies you can possibly "win" an easy way to charge your daily commute.
They can't make it into their garages on the narrow road, and there are no curb side plugs in the front (NEC safety rules.) Funny until the Garbage truck rage mashes the horn at 6am... lol =3
By solving the renters-think-they-need-to-own-a-car problem.
It’s still been a problem in several places though, because it forced poor people with old cars to either upgrade or stop driving. An equitable alternative would have included a way to get a new car free or at least cheap.
You know how Tesla makes a fuckton of money? Selling their carbon credits to industry so they can pollute. So all the pollution reduction caused by people driving Teslas enables industry to pollute instead of controlling their emissions, reducing energy waste, decarbonizing, etc.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-...
We don't actually want to scrap working cars unless they have reached the end of their life or passed an air quality threshold (UK tests every car over 3 years old, every year, called an MOT). Reduce, reuse, recycle etc.
B100 is almost carbon neutral, and has the energy density necessary for commercial logistics. Finding responsible manufacturing methods is far more feasible.
EV only make sense with distributed generation like home solar. =3
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Make streets narrower. Reduce parking. Return road infrastructure in favor of walkability, green areas, and reducing urban heat islands.
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Modern gasoline and hybrid cars are fine, banning them at this point in time would mean a drop in quality of life for negligible gain.
Hybrid cars might be good enough, but banning pure combustion cars from cities sounds perfectly reasonable to me. No real quality of life impact.
Well, I like that the people that think like this also probably live I places where you are actually driving a coal powered car.
Like the clowns in Hawaii that have extra subsidies for EVs… their power comes directly from burning crude oil.
I’m an automotive EE, and and the truth about EVs is in a rush to push them out the door, the media and politicians have set the tech back at least a decade by pretending it is something it’s not.
EVs for most people outside of California. Make a great town vehicle or second vehicle.
A ban on ICE… wow.
First, EV engines are far, far more energy efficient than ICEs. Secondly, fossil fuel power plants are far more efficient at converting fossil fuels to energy than ICEs are (since the energy efficiency of a thermal engine is proportional to its volume).
The result is that the EV car mileage you'll get by burning 1t of oil in an oil power plant is much, much higher than the mileage you'll get from that same 1t of oil in ICE cars. I'm not 100% sure if this holds true for coal based power plants, but those should be getting relatively rarer.
Not to mention, fossil fuel power plants can have much better filters and some CO2/CH4 capture technologies, so the mileage you get per ton of greenhouse gas emissions is even better than the energy per ton of fossil fuels.
That's still an improvement for both global and local emissions.
If all their electricity comes from burning crude oil than they'd get about the same amount of miles in an ICE by refining that oil to gasoline for the cars and an EV by burning the crude oil for electricity, distributing that over the grid to drivers to charge their EVs.
However, about 22% of Hawaii's electricity comes from solar, so the EVs will come out ahead.
Even if we ignore solar and assume the EVs only use electricity from burning crude oil, the crude oil fueled generators should be cleaner than ICE engines, so there would be a significant reduction in total green house gases and particulates.
We can either do drastic things now, or desperate things later.