[hollerith]

>you get a lot less air pollution

I know what you meant, but according to a comment here once, European city streets actually have worse air pollution than US ones because Europe went hard for diesel engines (to reduce CO2 emissions) for its cars, and diesel produces a lot of very small carbon particles, which turned out to be more harmful than most people suspected back when the diesel decision was made.

[twiss]

Amsterdam has banned most diesel vehicles [1], so at least this is not universally true (anymore).

[1]: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/traffic-transport/low-emission-z...

[CalRobert]

Indeed, and I’m worried about the same old mistakes being made with EV’s. They produce lots of tyre particulates thanks to being so heavy, which then get in to our brains.

Of course, Volkswagen lying about their diesels and killing people in the aggregate didn’t help.

What we need is car-free or low-car cities, not just different cars.

[bryanlarsen]

Due to it being a common anti-EV talking point, tire longevity has been a strong selling point for EV tires. Longer lasting tires produce less particulates, so this natural pressure should also produce fewer particulates.

Popular EV's aren't significantly heavier than ICE vehicles. A Tesla model 3 and a BMW model 3 are both about 3500 pounds. Range is a huge selling feature for EV's and weight has a significant impact on range, so there is strong evolutionary pressure to lighten EV's. Crappy EV's like the Hummer are heavy; but popular EV's like Tesla's and Hyundai's have weight comparable to normal cars so that they can have impressive ranges without too many expensive and heavy batteries.

EV's increased tire wire is due to their massive torque at low range. If you want your tires to last, just don't drive like a hooligan. We got 70,000 km out of our first set of EV tires.

Tire particulates are an "all cars a bad" issue. EV's are not significantly worse than petrol vehicles vis a vis tire particulates. Their lack of exhaust particulates means that an EV produces about ~half the total number of particulates.

[CalRobert]

Well this was interesting to me, thanks for sharing. Looking at https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/do-no-harm it looks dependent on what you're optimizing for (and not driving like a hooligan helps, hard acceleration and braking wears tires more).

Even so, I still find that the fewer cars there are, the easier it is for me (and my kids) to walk and bike places safely, helping us be healthier (and not reliant on drugs like Ozempic) which was the real point of my comment.

[bryanlarsen]

That is a very strange article. The Model 3 and Niro are not comparable cars, the Model 3 is much larger and much more powerful.