Comment by Slow_Hand
5 days ago
I have a tangential question. Do you find that snow banks near roads are appreciably less black and disgusting now that there are fewer ICE vehicles on the road?
Growing up in America I have memories of our roadside snowbanks becoming black and saturated by vehicle exhaust and it always felt so gross to me. The back half of winter was characterized by blackened, salt-saturated puddles and banks. I wonder if the prevalence of EVs has made things less dirty in the winter.
> The back half of winter was characterized by blackened, salt-saturated puddles and banks. I wonder if the prevalence of EVs has made things less dirty in the winter.
The dominant cause of that is probably brake and tire particulate matter, not car exhaust. And EVs make tire pollution go up (because they're heavier) and brake pollution... I'm not sure if the weight effect there is counteracted by the decreased amount of friction brake use (as opposed to resistance braking).
On my Polestar 2, I was surprised how in actual use, friction braking was basically zero - to the point where when you start a trip the brakes are used for a few seconds to make sure they're still working (and scrub them a bit.) In actual driving - without trying particularly on my part - it's just always regen.
As others have said most of that was probably not pollution related to being an ICE vehicle, but if even part of it was the environmental performance of ICEs is magnitudes better over the last 25 years when it comes to unburned hydrocarbons and particulates, which WOULD reduce visible pollution way more than modest EV adoption. CO2 reduction? not so much with bigger vehicles offsetting gains here...
Even modern ICE cars produce lots of particulates and air pollution.
Recent studies have shown significant reductions in mortality starting at 5-10% EV market share.
isn't that at least partially caused by the rubber tire particles?
Could be! I don't know enough to say what the ratio of exhaust to tire particulate is on the average road.
In either case it's a good physical representation of how much particulate we are exposed to every day. Maybe having it trapped in dirty snowbanks is better than having it getting kicked up into the air during a dryer season.
Road particles, brakes and tires dominate that massively.
https://www.eiturbanmobility.eu/press-corner/nees-are-the-ma...
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If it's particulates from tires then heavier EVs are probably making that worse not better (partially offset by regenerative braking, but only partially).
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