Scientists: Electric Vehicles Produce As Many Toxins As Dirty Diesels (dailymail.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: Thanks to ongoing efforts to reduce engine emissions, nowadays only 10% to 15% of particulate emissions from traffic are coming from vehicles' tailpipes. The remainder originates in tire, road surface and brake wear. A study by Victor Timmers and Peter Achten published in Atmospheric Environment has now found that the extra weight of electric vehicles causes non-tailpipe emissions to increase by about as much as the omission of the internal combustion engine saves. Atmospheric particulates have been shown to cause cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory diseases and are widely considered as the most harmful form of air pollution. Achten said, "We found that non-exhaust emissions, from brakes, tires and the road, are far larger than exhaust emissions in all modern cars. These are more toxic than emissions from modern engines so they are likely to be key factors in the extra heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks seen when air pollution levels surge." The study shows that non-exhaust emissions a vehicle produces is directly related to its weight. Scientists found that electric and eco-friendly vehicles weighed around 24 percent more than conventional vehicles, which in turn contributes to more wear on the tires.

Comments

Re:Missing the point

[AmiMoJo]

10 years is a ridiculously low estimate for an automotive battery pack. Nissan Leafs with 150k on them have barely any degradation, and Tesla tested their packs up to 750,000 miles with 14% capacity loss. It's basically a non-issue.

Panasonic rate the cells in the Tesla packs for 900,000 miles to 80% capacity. The tests suggest that is about right. So to EOL the pack in 10 years you should need to do 90,000 miles/year, which is quite unusual (most people do less than 20k/year). Even then, an 80% pack still gets you over 200 miles in a Model S, so it would make more sense to either carry on driving it or reuse the pack in some other application (e.g. PowerWall). You certainly wouldn't want to toss something so valuable and useful away.