Software in cars and OTA is the stupidest thing in recent years. Like the damn laptop riddled with mediocre software wasn't already frustrating enough, let's fuck up cars too.
To be fair cars as currently designed are a pretty stupid idea to begin with. Let’s just waste energy carrying around 5000lbs of car at ridiculous speeds to move around a 200lb person.
TLDR; From a road wear perspective there is no real difference between a heavy EV and a lightweight smaller ICE.
Edit: Not sure why I get downvoted so heavily. It is just a fact that the weight difference between an EV and comparable ICE has no measurable difference to road wear.
People like the above poster just like to touch on the fourth power law but not how the calculations actually work.
ESAL is part of that calculation. A 5 axel semi has a ESAL of 2.35, a dumptruck ~4, a 3.5ton vehicle .004, a 3ton vehicle .002. When we are talking about the difference in hundreds of pounds between EV and ICE, there is no wear difference.
TLDR paved roads are generally designed to handle large trucks and construction equipment. On such roads passenger vehicles (even heavy electric vehicles) have a negligible impact on pavement life.
The difference in road wear between a 2k lbs. vehicle and an 8k lbs vehicle is too small to matter.
I guess it'll be interesting when we are trying to support electric medium duty or heavier trucks, like WA is trying to do. Guess they'll be subject to Class 7 & 8 weight anyways, because if you try to make a currently-medium-duty truck into an EV it's way over the limit.
I mostly just have doubts about our current revenue model scaling for it (since it's heavily reliant upon gas tax and the truck weight $$ amounts don't match up), and the general lack of lighter EVs in the US. Something will have to change there
I'd be totally happy in the city with a 2-2500 lbs BYD Seagull or whatever. But that vehicle doesn't exist in the US.
This is a terrible argument against cars. You could say the same for a train, let's waste energy carrying around 1,500,000 pounds of train to move around 120,000 pounds of passengers.
Scooters and motorcycles are much more efficient in this regard, but uptake has been very limited in Western countries when compared to the pervasive use in Southeast Asia.
After the deluge of spam calls I receive daily I'm somewhat inclined to opt for the opposite direction. No more phonecalls and just using apps for communication.