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by milesskorpen 187 days ago
EVs help with air pollution & congestion, but a huge part of the AQI impact of cars is tires, and I don't think there's a solution for that yet short of "fewer cars"
5 comments

I thought the tire wear particulates being a huge source of particulate air emissions was an overestimate due to misunderstanding and misquotation of primary literature by secondary literature used by regulatory agencies.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00792

1/6 is a lot lower (good!) but is that sufficient to say they're not a large source of particulate air emissions?
Well, scanning an article on it for Manhattan, the fraction of "road dust" PM2.5 looks like somewhere around 2-5% depending on time of year, which is a bit below contributions by sea salt.

From my limited reading, what fraction of road dust is from tire tread is unclear. The models trying to estimate it give anywhere numbers from 4 to 48%, but may be incorrect due to the citation problem above. Experiments seem to show 4-9%, but they have trouble excluding resuspended dust.

I'd also point out that if we're worried about air quality in NYC between modes of transport, then one should look at subways since PM2.5 in stations/tubes is many times that of the street and far exceeds EPA limits.

How do EVs help with congestion? They take up the same amount of space as an ICE car.
EV shuttles will come in lots of capacities. Vans, buses. But you won't need to worry about schedules or preset routes because it's all dynamic.

Wherever there would be the most congestion is precisely where the app will give you the biggest discount to switch from your private vehicle into a bus, then switch back into another private vehicle for the last 5 minutes of your trip.

None of what you are saying has anything to do with being an EV vehicle.
Derp. Quite right. For some reason I was thinking about self-driving instead...
They can go into cheap, boring tunnels (little ventilation requirements)
They can't (fire safety requirements make all tunnels expensive)
I was thinking autonomy, but you're right for EV alone.
electric bicycles have significantly less tire waste.
Braking dust is worse than tires, and EVs don't use brake pads nearly as much because they rely on regenerative braking.
How do EVs help with congestion