[otikik]

When everyone uses "their freedom"[1] every workday at the same time, suddenly no one (including those how choose the bus) has "their freedom".

I have an asthmatic child and I live in a big city, so yeah, on my list, somewhat curtailing your right to pollute around goes after my right to not have to bring him to ER with a crisis at 3 in the morning. That is a problem electric cars won't fix, by the way, they'll just move it around.

I can do most of my groceries by going downstairs and walking. I can get to the city center in 40 minutes using public transportation. During that time I can look up stuff on my phone without endangering anyone's life, I don't have to worry about finding a parking spot, and I don't have to worry about a bunch of expenses that a car brings. I think your car (and car-centric urban development) is making you less free than me.

[1] Related: Molecules of Freedom https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/29/energy-depa...

[johnday]

> That is a problem electric cars won't fix, by the way, they'll just move it around.

"Moving it around" here generally means moving it to electricity generation sites - ie places where people don't live. That's a huge benefit already.

And moreover it's much easier to de-pollute electricity generation infrastructure than to de-pollute fossil fuel cars.

I'm no kind of electric car fan. I'd much rather see cars die off wholesale, leaving only well-invested public transport and personal transport for the less able. I don't own a car of any sort and plan never to live more than s 15 minute walk from my place of work. But electric cars are still a huge positive step for urban environments.

[simonsarris]

Just fyi the majority of particulate matter emitted by cars comes from brakes and tires, not gasoline (diesel changes the equation somewhat)

So electric cars still have a lot of particulate emissions, thought less so in environments where they have lots of opportunity for regenerative braking.

[johnday]

That's really interesting. Could you cite that for me? I had a quick look around but didn't see anything super reliable.

[simonsarris]

Sure. There's: http://www.soliftec.com/NonExhaust%20PMs.pdf (2016)

Study highlights:

A positive relationship exists between vehicle weight and non-exhaust emissions.

Electric vehicles are 24% heavier than their conventional counterparts.

Electric vehicle PM emissions are comparable to those of conventional vehicles.

Non-exhaust sources account for 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 from traffic.

Future policy should focus on reducing vehicle weight

Part of this is that we already spent a lot of deliberate effort on reducing emissions from engines. As the study notes:

> Before the introduction of air quality standards, exhaust emissions used to be a major source of PM, especially for diesel cars (Miguel et al., 1998). Since then, PM emission standards for vehicle exhausts have become increasingly strict and now all new diesel passenger cars are fitted with a diesel particulate filter (DPF). Bergmann et al. (2009) found that DPFs are very effective at reducing PM emissions, lowering the emitted mass of PM by 99.3%

[dsfyu404ed]

>When everyone uses "their freedom"[1] every workday at the same time, suddenly no one (including those how choose the bus) has "their freedom".

So go early/late. I used to exclusively ride the train and subway before I moved out of the city and I assure you rush hour congestion is not limited to cars.

>I can do most of my groceries by going downstairs and walking. I can get to the city center in 40 minutes using public transportation. During that time I can look up stuff on my phone without endangering anyone's life, I don't have to worry about finding a parking spot, and I don't have to worry about a bunch of expenses that a car brings. I think your car (and car-centric urban development) is making you less free than me.

Good for you. Observation indicates that that there are no shortage of people who find cars worth the trade-offs. The better public transit is the fewer a proportion of the population they will be but as long as we have roads we'll have cars. Subways and trams didn't eliminate carriages and I don't see why things would be different today.

>That is a problem electric cars won't fix, by the way, they'll just move it around.

The solution to pollution is dilution!

Electric cars would be a massive improvement.