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Electric Cars Are Not the Answer To Air Pollution, Says Top UK Adviser (theguardian.com)
Cars must be driven out of cities to tackle the UK's air pollution crisis, not just replaced with electric vehicles, according to the UK government's top adviser. From a report: Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit. Toxic air causes 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK, and the environment secretary, Michael Gove, recently announced that the sale of new diesel and petrol cars will be banned from 2040, with only electric vehicles available after that. But faced with rising anger from some motorists, the plan made the use of charges to deter dirty diesel cars from polluted areas a measure of last resort only. Kelly's intervention heightens the government's dilemma between protecting public health and avoiding politically difficult charges or bans on urban motorists. "The government's plan does not go nearly far enough," said Kelly, professor of environmental health at King's College London and chair of the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, official expert advisers to the government. "Our cities need fewer cars, not just cleaner cars."
This is no single answer. Not EVs, Not solar and wind, not nuclear, no single answer. They can all help tremendously if approached properly. When one considers socioeconomic challenges, we need a lot more answers than we currently have in our toolbox, and we can't afford to eliminate any of the ones we have.
I'll just get a little red wagon and have my dogs and cats pull me.
Oh wait...
So the fight of gas vs electric is trying to find new ground. Interesting. Some points
a) regenerative braking does not put wear on brake shoes
b) smart cars can drive better to reduce tire wear
Sure, tire-dust is still there, but braking is done regeneratively in any sane electrical car design and conventional, particle-generating brakes are only there for emergencies.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Remove all the air, that way it cannot become polluted.
#DeleteFacebook
How the hell do they expect people who live outside of the cities to get to work in the cities? Or those who live in them to travel outside of them? This is absurd.
If that is a major problem we need to eliminate everything with moving parts.
Well, actually, it is usually not more than 50% of braking. Varies by speed, but for 2wd cars it stays pretty low because the car is designed to brake in a balanced way to maximize control of the vehicle.
In the future, of course, it might be that all cars have a small auxiliary generator for braking. If they're actually worried about tire dust, that would happen, but of course they're actually just saying stupid shit like that as a way to try to justify continuing to use IC engines.
Generating fuel from solar and the CO2 out of the atmosphere would create a true carbon neutral fuel that would benefit the environment, use existing infrastructure, and still allow fun light automobiles with no range anxiety. EV's just push the pollution to the country side where coal and gas are burnt.
Exactly what I was thinking. EV's must wear through brake disks fairly slowly.
As an EV owner this statement is false. EV's use the engine to regenerate electricity to the battery 99% of the time instead of using the brakes!
Cars are driven out of cities all the time.
See subject line above.
Or did this guy mean that he wants to force people to not use cars in the city? Maybe he needs to be driven off campus.
Don't all current cars have the same problems with particulate emissions from tire and brake dust? Its not like Prof Kelly is suggesting that electric cars raise this amount, they probably do a better job of controlling it with less random speeding and braking that humans are wont to do.
Its just another case of someone who had to make some speech during his 15 minutes in the spotlight, and decided to quibble to show off his knowledge instead of just giving strong support to a good initiative. If there was some magical way to get rid of these emissions, he would've complained about something else like the pollution caused at the point of electricity generation etc.
Of course, news outlets will seize such comments to indicate how this solution isn't good enough, and then probably other vested interests will cry about how its a great economic impact without much gain blah blah. If it results in the plan getting shelved or pared down, the same prof will then give interviews about how lamentable it was and not realize his own role in the media confusing the public.
Yes, of course the ideal condition is to have zero cars on the road for no pollution at all. But this is clearly not realistic. As for reducing the number of cars, he doesn't have any solutions to it other than standard snippets like 'we should improve public transport'. Public transport can progress orthogonally with emissions control, and is only tangentially related to improving technology for private vehicles.
When and article starts off shading the truth you know it's propaganda. Electric cars generally have regenerative braking, thus most of the kinetic enegy, not all, is not generating particles from brakes. Likewise the cars are, generally, lighter than the average car (not necessarily lighter than every small car but lighter than average). So again they are dramatically reducing the particulate emissions. BY significant I mean in a way greater than any possible measures on gasoline cars could. For hybrids, their optimized engines provide low torque and more efficient fuel burns leading to less of the emissions typical of a gasoline engine under stress during acceleration.
Finally, the old argument that Electrics were just moving their emissions to coal fired power plants is going away with more and more solar and wind energy, they are the way to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Eventually, these cars will become more integrated into the grid-- acting as batteries-- in some projected scenarios and thus serve as distributed surge load batteries making the grid more efficient and reducing the need for spun up coal plants to handle surge loads.
So the article could hardly have a more misleading headline.
I'll just get a little red wagon and have my dogs and cats pull me.
Oh wait...
No, take the bus, streetcar, & train.
The answer for large cities has always been to make them more transit-centric and pedestrian-centric and less car-centric. Build a lot of public transit infrastructure, and incentivize people to use them, while dis-incentivizing the use of personal cars. Whether petroleum-fueled cars or EVs, it doesn't matter, this is still the case, because it's not just about air pollution, climate change, peak oil/gas, or dependence on fossil fuel exporting dictators, but also about traffic congestion and efficiency, personal health, safety, and just general livability.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't switch over all cars to EVs. We should. However EVs should not be used as an excuse to stop investing in public transit and re-designing cities to make them far less car-centric. Large cities built around the car have been, and are, a disaster in many ways.
This. Data point: My Prius (Not pure electric, but uses regenerative braking) is still on its first set of brake pads at 130,000 miles or so.
If cars themselves no longer directly pollute (gross generalization), you can shift the focus to energy production, storage, and distribution with negligible operational impact to the consumer.
Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit.
Sigh. Another example of perfect being the enemy of good. No solution is going to be without some drawbacks. Electric cars are CLEARLY an improvement over internal combustion engines if for no other reason than the fact that they can be powered without fossil fuels. No they don't solve everything but that's not an excuse to not move forward. We're going to be using cars for the foreseeable future so we may as well make whatever improvements we can to them. EVs and hybrids are an improvement. Let's take that step and then take the next one when we are able.
"Our cities need fewer cars, not just cleaner cars."
That's fine but probably not going to happen without some VERY substantial investments in public transit.
Good thing we have a government who ignore the advice they're given when it suits them, and an environment secretary who's said publicly that we've had enough of hearing from experts.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Based on what I've been reading Tesla currently only puts regenerative brakes in the rear. Since most of your brake loading is on the front wheels, I doubt this reduces pad wear by very much. I've also read they come equipped with Brembo brakes which require higher end pads that usually last longer with better performance. The science says optimally a 4-wheel braking system can only recover 40% of the energy anyway so you'll always need a mechanical system that will wear.
^--- anecdotal evidence; not to be taken seriously
Red paint reflects hottest part of suns rays, increases global warming.
The problem is not cars but excessive congestion... There are too many people travelling to the same place at the same time. You have too many businesses condensed into a small space, which pushes up the price of any nearby residential property and forces employees to live further away.
Banning cars will just cause massive inconvenience to people. Public transport is also over congested and only getting worse, and make it impossible to carry much with you among other things. Public transport is also often dangerous at night, or not running at all. Similarly walking alone at night is also often highly dangerous.
Instead of making it difficult for people who have no choice but to travel...
Why not decrease the need for people to travel in the first place? Less/shorter journeys made, lower pollutants emitted.
Encourage remote working.
Encourage businesses to change their working hours, so people are not travelling at peak times (honestly 9-5 is stupid, we have lights - we're not working in fields where daylight is required to work and we often deal with foreign clients/suppliers who keep different hours anyway).
Encourage businesses to set up in different areas, so that their employees can actually find affordable housing within easy reach.
Such measures would actually make people's lives BETTER, and therefore are likely to be popular... Making it even more difficult or expensive to travel will only make people's lives WORSE. People don't want to waste hours of every day travelling.
I would walk to work if i could, but the only employers for my profession have their offices in the central business districts of large cities - i can't find or afford a reasonable property within walking distance.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Lets use horses to pull carts that carry people! The horses are natures animals and we'll get extra fertilizer out of the whole deal for gardens so people can grow their own veggies and things! We can call it "The Horse and Cart"! Eh? Eh? Sounds like a great idea!
Other sources of pollution that people do not often mention, in relation to practically all (here, 'all' shall be taken to mean 6 or 7 9s worth) cars currently on the road. This does not exclude vehicles which are poorly maintained/malfunctioing:
Brake dust (all)
Tire dust/smoke (all)
Various greases, lubes, and hydraulic fluids (all)
Various consumables that are often discarded improperly, such as oil and batteries (anything with an ICE, but probably others too)
And for vehicles not possessing a sealed A/C system (excluding e.g. some electrics/hybrids, or basically anything with an electric A/C):
Freon and lubricants
If we can get to the point where these are the prime contributor to lifetime car pollution (vs. manufacturing and energy supply), then we'll be doing pretty damn good. If anyone has an argument that any of the things above could not possibly be an air pollutant, directly or indirectly, I'm all ears.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Seems easy enough to plop a vacuum around a brakes. Make tires that produce less dust or somehow try and capture it.
We can't capture the CO2 on a moving vehicle very well.
It's also not just about global warming. Oil and its production has all kinds of issues from war to shortages.
so according to them, one vehicle that has brakes or tires makes it unsafe to breath the air.
One vehicle in how large a space? with "no safe limit", one car in the world violates the limit.
If you were to eliminate every car, every bus, and every train, you would still have push-carts that would produce tire dust.
And I'll bet that you could measure the particles that wear off of people's shoes, that's the same type of particulates you get from tires, so if there is no safe limit, you can't have people wearing shoes either.
This attitude shows that he is not able to evaluate risk at all, and has no business making policy where any policy is a balance of risk vs cost.
Public transportation also produce huge amount of particles, even you bicycle produce particles. Take the tube, huge amount of particles in a confined space...
It would be better to produce real figures than something the looks like pure opinion.
Because nobody in official capacity wants to admit the country has been behind in generating electricity. A cornerstone of Green ideology is the idea that the generation of power can be capped because all future needs can be supplied by making our existing usage more efficient, while at the same time implementing nonsensical legal hacks like converting the giant coal plant at Drax to burning wood pellets shipped in from the American south.
Converting cars to run on electricity eliminates the need for a separate infrastructure to distribute oil and its refined products. It converts that need into an incremental need for power generation, where non-carbon sources are available.
So, they finally get the govt to require all cars to be electric (after 2040), so they shift focus. Now they want to get rid of cars all together? What will they do with their free time after they succeed at that?
That will do it! And no one will die. Puhlease.
Caution: Contents under pressure
If we got rid of all man-made vehicles and went back to riding horses, people would complain about horse manure.
If the whole world went back to just walking everywhere, someone would complain about 'worn out discarded shoe pollution', I'm sure.
Then of course there are the extremists who believe that the best thing the human race can do for the planet is die and let it all 'go back to nature' -- but of course you don't see them committing suicide, by way of providing the proper example, do you?
No matter what you do someone is going to complain. Humans are NEVER happy, or at least not for long. We ALWAYS find something to complain about.
The fact of the matter is that we're sooner or later are going to run out of things to use for fuel for internal combustion engines, or at least it'll get so expensive as to not be practical anymore. Furthermore the exhaust from them isn't terribly healthy to start with. They've had a great run, it's brought us far, but we're going to have to move away from them. Our technology has advanced to the point where fully electric vehicles are an excellent replacement for them, and they'll just get better. Even the high-performance types can't complain, you can easily build electric vehicles that are just as powerful (more so in some ways) than ICE powered vehicles. Much easier to maintain overall (fewer moving parts). Bonus points: centralized power generation for recharging them. However, unless there is some dramatic breakthrough in physics that gives us antigravity devices, we'll need tires on the ground, and they're going to wear, and mechanical brakes to bring EVs to a final stop. Small price to pay for all the benefits of EVs. Also, who knows? Materials science just keeps getting better, too. More durable tires and brake linings, that don't shed anything considered as 'polluting'? Look at all the things we have now that 50 years ago were thought to be impossible. This 'Top UK Advisor' needs to stop being a complainer.
Seriously, even if "tyres" and "brakes" produce fine particles of pollution, it's still a lot better than having a couple million cars pouring toxic fumes out on top of those fine particles.
So yes, it IS a solution. There's no "pollution free" alternative, unless you want to go back to horse pulled carriages, but even that was causing pollution with horse shit!
We may as well all stop breathing if we don't want any pollution right?!
Automobiles were touted at the environmental improvement to the horse and carriage. And they were right. However the usage of Gasoline Automobiles have far exceeded the usage of horse so what was a positive environmental trade-off has grown to become a problem, that needs a new solution. And the new solution that we come up with will probably have an other problem down the line that will need an other solution for.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This. Data point: My Prius (Not pure electric, but uses regenerative braking) is still on its first set of brake pads at 130,000 miles or so.
And this is what your brakes look like. You know you need to flush your brake fluid every 3 years regardless of use. Brake fluid absorbs water with lowers the boiling point of the fluid and can lead to internal corrosion.
Hm....nah, that just isn't going to work, just for groceries alone.
Not sure how with a train/bus/streetcar I'm going to manage to get my supplies just for this weekend:
1. 2 large bags of ice and case or two of beer for the ice chest.
2. I whole brisket, about 12lbs for the smoker.
3. A load of logs for the smoker, I lately buy bags from Academy Sports, hickory and mesquite blend...VERY heavy.
And that is just for the fun weekend stuff....that doesn't include my grocery shopping I do weekly...and hit different stores to get the best deals on things.
And on top of that, since it isn't door-to-door, it sure will be fun trying to get all that stuff on multiple trips during rain storms during summer with high heat and humidity.
And if sunday, I want to take some of my long guns out to the rifle range about 40 min away, I"m guessing public transportation wouldn't be too terribly thrilled about my being on there with 2-3 rifles and pistols and ammo.
The 2 examples here are NOT outliers...I do stuff like this regularly....or tow boats to go fishing, etc.
Public transport for routine US living, outside of the few extremely urban closed packed cities is just not practical for regular active families.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You must read wiered science books.
Regenerative braking can recover close to 100% of the energy.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Regenerative braking is just using the car's motor in reverse to generate electricity. A normal Tesla's motor is in the rear, driving the rear wheels. The newest "P90D" dual-motor Teslas and Model Xs have motors driving all 4 wheels.
High-end brake pads usually generate *more* dust, not less. That's how they perform better.
The science says optimally a 4-wheel braking system can only recover 40% of the energy
Where the hell did you read this garbage? Theoretically, you can recover 100%; it doesn't happen in reality because of many different factors (like being able to store that much energy somewhere quickly, losses in the electronics, etc.).
Maybe you should read some better sources.
Regenerative braking can recover close to 100% of the energy.
That depends on how you define close. You can get about 95% out of the motor (best case) and then you can get maybe 90% of that into the battery (best case) but you are often not dealing with the best case.
It's still more than significant, and there's no good reason not to do it. And soon basically every car is going to be a mild hybrid, and will have regen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This. Data point: My Prius (Not pure electric, but uses regenerative braking) is still on its first set of brake pads at 130,000 miles or so.
And this is what your brakes look like. You know you need to flush your brake fluid every 3 years regardless of use. Brake fluid absorbs water with lowers the boiling point of the fluid and can lead to internal corrosion.
It's too bad you don't know anything about cars, or you'd know that you don't have to change the pads in order to bleed the brakes. Unless they've gotten rusty, there's no reason to change brake pads before you get below the minimum thickness.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'll just get a little red wagon and have my dogs and cats pull me.
Oh, shit...
FTFY
Let's get some usable numbers here then. What percentage of the pollution in the air is actually caused by brakes and tires?
I wonder what pollution he thinks regenerative brakes cause, especially since that system is very common in electric vehicles.
As to the tires, what does he suggest, we all start driving on our rims?
Until we get some relevant numbers that show tires and brakes really are a huge problem, I'm just slapping him into the unreasonable and alarmist hype corner.
My wife and I do it. Trader Joe's is about 3 miles from home, and on my bicycle I can fit about 40 pounds of groceries in my backpack. Perishables go day 1 and non-perishables day 2. When I get home this afternoon, I will walk the ~0.6 miles to "down town", grab a beer with the wife and friends, run across the street to the grocery store and pick up heavier things like Ice, throw them in the backpack, and walk home with them.
It does help that TJ's is close to my office, as I only have to go over there one trip and can keep things in the office for staging home.
It isn't that hard, and this is in suburban Los Angeles area. To make it work you need walkable and bikeable communities.
It doesn't mean you can't drive yourself places either; it just means that you need to focus on using other means when practical, and not just taking the easy way out.
The science says optimally a 4-wheel braking system can only recover 40% of the energy anyway so you'll always need a mechanical system that will wear.
The efficiency of the regenerative braking is irrelevant for whether or not you'll need mechanical systems. The need comes from the possibility that you may need to brake faster than the regenerative braking system is capable of slowing the car down.
Since they can produce allergic reactions. So humans are not the answer to air pollution.
I can't help thinking that somewhere someone has gotten this dude's talk wrong. And, yes, maybe the dude is the one getting it wrong, but I suspect it's slightly more likely to be the reporters.
Regenerative braking happens when you take your foot off the accelerator. So the idea is to slow the car by "coasting" with the alternator slowing you, instead of applying the brake pedal to use traditional brakes. Yes, there are cases where you'll need to brake traditionally, but the idea is for it to happen much less.
I'm using brakes to only slow from around 10mph to complete stop. Everything else is regenerative. That's typically more than 90% of energy.
Brake dust? Seriously? If you're not using regenerative braking (which, granted, should have some kind of mechanical backup) on your EV, you're doing it wrong.
If I wear through 2 pounds of brake pads over 50,000 miles, and maybe (completely guessing here) 3 times that on the tires, I'm putting less than 10 pounds of crap on the road/in the air. That's really worst case.
During that time, I'm burning through 8,000 pounds of gas in my 50 MPG car. Since we're not interested in CO or NOx, I guess, how much fine-carbon particulate matter would that produce?
This is a mote vs. beam issue and not even worth thinking about. Such statements give excuses not to push to get cars all-electric. So this supposed expert is not helping his stated cause but hurting it. He's either an idiot or in someone's pay.
But if we have to consider this, then with electric cars come modern tractions control, so less tire spinning and loss of tire mass, autonomous driving, so less wasted movement and fast starts/stops, collision sensors, so more safety for bicyclists, autonomous/flock systems also reduce stop and go traffic, and thus reduce brake/tires wear, and while this isn't what this 'expert' is talking about, there's no engine idling which is a major polluter in stop and go traffic.
There was some buzz that EV's are harder on tires and roads, which has been shown to be biased: https://www.treehugger.com/car...
What is not known to most about the "study", is that is was conducted by a German inventor/small business owner of speciality hydraulic (fluid) hybrid technology patents and consulting company, and a 2nd year Edinburgh college student he hired as a summer intern to assist with the study and use the college's name to lend more legitimacy to the study - so no, it was not conducted by "scientists from the University of Edinburgh" as has been erroneously reported by various media outlets. (you can do your own online research into Peter Achten* and his company "INNAS - Fluid Power Innovation")'
Get the electric vehicles in place, use that as an economic lever (EVs are just plain cheaper) to get older cars and especially trucks off the road, then work on better brake pads and more bicycles.
If you're interested in the particles created by the enormous amount of fuel we burn, see this: http://www.meca.org/resources/...
"can" and "does" are two different things.
Take the example of the Nissan Leaf. It can recover approximately 80% of the energy under regenerative braking, but, it has a hard limit of 30kW of regenerative braking. If you brake sufficiently hard that it puts out more than 30kW, then the car is going to use the conventional brakes as well as regeneration.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I imagine that those burning logs in your smoker are putting way more crap into the atmosphere than your car trip to the grocery store does.
Based on what I've been reading Tesla currently only puts regenerative brakes in the rear. Since most of your brake loading is on the front wheels, I doubt this reduces pad wear by very much.
Your doubt is misplaced.
EV drivers tend to use nothing but regeneration for the vast majority of braking. This requires driving a little less aggressively and "coasting" most of the way to the stoplight, engaging the brake pads only at the end. Yes, this means that most braking is done only with the rear wheels (on a single-motor Tesla), but we're talking about normal, gentle braking. Aggressive braking is where you need to make sure the braking force is appropriately distributed, and that works the same as an ICEV.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Regenerative braking can recover close to 100% of the energy.
True. But even if some of the energy is lost as heat, none of it creates any brake dust.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Efficiency is not the same as pollution, but that is irrelevant. If a certain amount of fuel has to be burned then being more efficient means less burned and less pollution from the burning.
And oil burners are not the same as ICEs. So when you claim a certain ratio you are lying by omission when your figures are not ICEs doing the oil burning.
I don't even know how to respond to this level of misinformation, other than to say you pretty much prove that a little knowledge is dangerous. And you have very little knowledge. I'm guessing that someone told you that brake fluid is hygroscopic and you went off reservation from there inventing that little fantasy?
FYI, that picture is a picture of some damn idiot who let his brake rotor be ground away by gross neglect. That vehicle would be making a dead-raising squealing sound just driving around and would have a massive grinding noise every time the brakes were applied. Pretty sure OPs Prius isn't doing that.
To your other idiot point about flushing brake fluid every three years, nobody does that. Mercedes, Audi, VW and a few of the other euro manufacturers recommend changing the fluid frequently because they already have a baked in clientele that's been Stockholm Syndromed into paying $300 for an oil change so they won't blink at forking over more for fluid flushes at ridiculous intervals. Anything less than every 5 years is overkill.
> Brake fluid absorbs water with lowers the boiling point of the fluid
Yes. Yes it does. That's why it's in a SEALED reservoir. So it doesn't absorb water from the air.
50% for a hybrid perhaps. EVs typically regen-break all the way down to walking speed. I'd estimate far closer to 90-95% regen.
Theoretically friction doesn't exist. Why do people use perfect, simple models to describe the real world? Even Tesla admits directly that the rear regenerative braking has a safety mechanism to regulate the amount of braking because it causes the rear end to become unstable. Yes, I'm sure in a sealed factory box with no wind or load you can get 100% return. On a road, in weather, with humans at the wheel... yeah the 40% number actually seems pretty high.
Regardless - it's STILL a source of pollution - even if it's miniscule - to not mention it is just stupid. Sure - mention that it's .001 of ICE wear, or whatever, but it still exists.
Rubber is inert. And as far as inhalation of those particles, there has never been a reported case of someone suffering any effects from breathing said dust.
You don't need a car for most of that. You need an electric cargo bike. Possibly an enclosed electric cargo bike. You might say, "well isn't that just a 2 wheel electric car?" and you're certainly right from a certain point of view. But the more important point of view is noting that the 50-70 lb (maybe 150-200 for an enclosed one) bike is hauling 2-300 lbs of load (you, ice, wood, beef), rather than 3000+ lbs of car hauling 2-300 lbs of load.
As electric cars take over, there's going to be some interesting reclassification going on in the realm of car-"motor"cycle-bike. Hopefully there'll be more sanity too about it. I find it absurd that in many states (including IL) its illegal for anyone under 16 to ride an electric-assist bike (outside of private property). Mind you, e-bikes are limited to 20 mph, which is well within the speed capability of pre-16 year old teens. Also, if we let a 15 year old with permit drive a 3-ton SUV, I think we can probably let them ride a ~50 lb e-bike.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Well, be that as it may...it would be inhuman to suggest I now have to forgo my low slow smoked BBQ.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
When I'm told I now have to worry about brake pad and tire dust, that's when I stop listening and worrying altogether.
Fuck off already.
According to earlier /. report, dogs and cats are causing climate change.
Not my dogs. They are rather large and do eat a lot. But I offset that by feeding them humans. That way no pollution is created by farming meat for them, and they help decrease the population as well as removing a source of energy use and CO2 production. I guess it may be a drag on the economy though. I suppose I could offset that by importing people from other countries, but then it would increase the CO2 production to get them here.
"Toxic air causes 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK"
This is the sort of statistic that I've seen for 40 years in the news that I've never- ever- seen a reporter push back on.
As opposed realistically to...what?
As opposed to the perfectly clean no-brake-dust air of the HORSE era?
The only way those supposed 40k deaths would be avoided would be to breath in this hypothetically utopian air that is perfectly clean - which nobody ever has.
-Styopa
Hover cars look like the only option now.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Public transport for routine US living, outside of the few extremely urban closed packed cities is just not practical for regular active families.
Which is because of the way US cities are designed, which was my point (they are, by and large, a disaster of urban design). However, they can be re-designed, slowly.
However, the rest of your comment is a common but misguided criticism of public transit-orientedness (granted I was not completely clear myself). I did not say "ban all cars" and "no one should have a car". It's not really a problem if everyone in a large city has a car. It's a problem if they are using it constantly. It's a bigger problem if they are FORCED to use it constantly because of the way the city is designed. You doing grocery shopping using you car is not, usually, the problem. The problem is everyone using their cars to commute to work.
Mind you, grocery shopping and all that is possible without personal car ownership. I did it for 4 years living in a midsize European city:
As I said, people going in their cars to get your pounds of logs and whatever and do their once-a-week large shopping excursion are not the problem...that's fine. The problem is people driving themselves to work or to buy a loaf of bread, that is, when this is done en masse.
Everyone knows exhaust fumes are harmless. Electric Cars are just a scam to make us all buy new cars. You know it's true by how all of the science behind exhaust fumes not being harmful is suppressed.
There's just no answer. We're all doomed.
I tend to rant.
For starters there is no one answer.
But I don't want an EV for any of the "environmental" reasons. I want it for the quiet. Every time I see an EV go by, I wish I could drive in silence like that. (I may not be typical.)
At the moment I am drooling over this EV.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
As I posted above, an electric, self-driving car that my wife and I share would be faster and cheaper than mass transit for me. Gas and parking are the two main cost drivers of commuting by car, which is why I take mass transit. A self-driving electric car gets rid of those costs, and kills a lot of the maintenance costs as well. It would likely cost me $1-$2 per round trip to have my electric self-driving car drop me off at work. Mass transit costs way more than that, and adds time to my commute. Now, when everyone is doing this the time might come out the same, but at that point, mass transit is also going to be impacted as well, as we don't have any underground mass transport here.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Public transport is also often dangerous at night
jesus christ then hide under the bed and suck your thumb, the rest of us have things to do
Re: "pollution particles from brake and tyre dust"
Oh yes, and while we're at it, human beings shed dust too, so we must ban them. Dead skin cells, mites, hair, filthy things those human beings!
Next we must ban the cats and dogs, obviously.
And trees! Those trees shed leaves like they just live here! The trees must go.
Grass is intolerable. Do you know that grass will die and not clean up after itself? The grass just stands there dead in the field! Absurd!
In terms of energy efficiency, EVs are only about 30% more efficient than an ICE.
30%*92.5% = 27.8% efficient.
50%*98%*80%*D*92.5% = 36.3% * D, where D = discharge efficiency
So all other things being the same, the energy consumption of an EV on an electrical grid mostly powered by fossil fuel plants is 36.3%/27.8% = 31% less at best. If the discharge efficiency of the battery is 80%, then the EV is just 4% more energy efficient than an ICE. (I'm including this because the last time I posted this, someone who obviously hadn't done the math incorrectly claimed EVs were 4-5x more efficient and his misinformation got modded up.)
The reason EVs are cheaper to operate than ICEs is mostly because the coal used to generate electricity costs about 1/10th what gasoline does per MJ.
The EPA MPGe figures only factor in energy efficiency from battery to wheels. That is, what your mileage would be if your batteries magically recharged overnight without plugging into anything. They have to do this because it's the only way they can rate EVs with a single "mileage" number nationwide. Electrical power generation varies depending on where you live, so they can't factor in generation losses into the MPGe figure. But because it's missing the electricity generation losses, it's not directly comparable to ICE MPG like may people seem to think.
Sir, your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
There are just too many people. Now if only we could stop the breeding of all those that do not vote like the liberal lemmings coming up with this stuff, we could be happy. Then cut down the number of people from there.
The goddess Gaia must be purged of the infection of humanity.
You should all just kill yourselves.
Yeah that's the ticket. That would make these luddites happy.
It's much easier to implement regenerative braking on an electric drive system than on a conventional transmission. I expect to see lots of this in second and third generation vehicles looking to optimize range.
Worst thing you can do for your household's carbon footprint is have a child. So minivans should have a 1000% tax on them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
EV's help with NOx emissions (but apparently not brakedust). this thread is not about global warming (or the conspiracy of one). It's about easily measured exhaust and small particle emissions that plague big cities.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I was just behind a truck creating large clouds of black smoke. The cloud just sat there between buildings with all nearby pedestrians forced to inhale. Now I know this was probably brake dust and tire particles.
Don't know if this applies in the US but in the UK, most of the main supermarket chains will deliver shopping ordered online for a small charge. At least one will also let you do the shopping in person then deliver it.
Well, that would do it, however....being that we're low on $$$ available for the infrastructure as it is, I don't see anything major like this and the disruption it would wreck upon peoples' lives....I don't see this happening even a little in my lifetime or the next...
Well, I dunno....my favorite place to shop is Costco. I like to buy in bulk and get the savings from it...it actually cuts down on multiple trips to the store.
I"m busy and don't have time to shop daily.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I don't trust someone at a grocery store to pick out the best looking produce, nor the best looking marbled cuts of meat, etc.
I do not buy much prepackaged food at all....and someone at the store isn't going to buy the best they find, rather, they will pick the stuff that needs to be rotated out of stock the fastest.
I need to shop in person to ensure I get the best possible foods for my money.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Let me guess: you are a member of the NRA and voted for Trump and you probably ironically have a public service job where you suck off the taxpayer money.
It's called a compromise dumbfuck.
You sit down with the likes of ecoterrorists, PETA, and a bunch of others, and keep waiting for that utopic world, die of old age and the world keeps turning.
makes me wonder if someone with an ulterior agenda is pushing this FUD.
The guy is a professional advisor (and professor) about vehicle pollution. His livelihood depends on speaking out about car pollution.
He can't say "it'll all be hunky-dory" because then he's just admitting that his work is now obsolete. This way he creates more doubt and alarm. Gets more TV appearances and performs the role of every successful advisor: keeps his name in the media.
I expect that if all cars were banned, he would "discover" a major source of air pollution due to shoe-leather wear, or farts or exhaling.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
and (if they are doing their job) they will find problems... Mr. (Dr.?) Kelly may be correct or may be an alarmist. In either case he is not necessarily wrong. OTOH the concerns he raises are not the only consideration. He should neither be ignored nor allowed to dominate the conversation. I would be surprised to learn that public transport did not also generate microparticulates. Pedestrians Only!
Any strategy that allows large concentrations of humans will have costs and benefits. Perhaps cities are obsolete and should be abolished.
Some even say that humans should be abolished https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement (Go ahead!, You first!)
Meanwhile its dinnertime, I've got to gas up the truck and drive over to pick up some steaks for the grill (charcoal, naturally!).
This illustrates the point someone else made that autonomous cars may well increase the number of miles driven. (instead of 2 round trips, one for you and one for your wife, if you travel at different times the car would make 3 or 4 round trips - 1 to drop you off at work and return home for your wife, then take her to work, and then a repeat at the end of the day.
As someone who works from home, I wish companies would be more incentivized to have people work from home. Sure, there are lots of jobs that doesn't work for, but lots and lots of office jobs could be done from home, and then the savings is almost 100%.
While my wife is in medicine and really does need to be physically present with her patients, as a software engineer I find working at home much much cheaper (and I think I'm more productive than when I've worked in offices).
When you look at a large city like London or New York or Los Angeles, I wonder what percentage of the commuting work force could realistically work from home? Imagine the LA freeways if 75% of the traffic was eliminated by telecommuting!
That's great, for the cars that are targeted at the right people, or DIY ones, you can configure it. Prius is pretty good at giving control. But not everything even asks. There are lots of control ICs that use a built-in brake table.
Car use is odd when you think about it. It makes sense if you have a load of passengers or stuff, but otherwise you're really just paying for petrol (or electricity) to drag around an inconveniently large volume of metal and plastic (for which you'll need to find storage during the day) for no good reason.
In mild weather scooters / (motor or otherwise) bikes etc are clearly superior, except that all the people in their big empty metal shells make it dangerous... chicken, meet egg... and are not at all useful in the depths of winter or the blasting heat of summer. Surely we can come up with some sort of one-person pod vehicle that would be cheaper, more convenient, just as comfortable and much less road-clogging for our everyday commutes?
electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust
Here we are: the fix is to introduce electric flying cars. Or hovercrafts, at least.
I smell Agenda 21.
Pay (exorbitant) rent for your 200 sq.ft coffin house, pay for your rides (to designated areas (when allowed)), pay (exorbitant) taxes for health care that doesn't help you due to endless bureaucratic red tape, take your mercurial "vaccines" when instructed (no waits here ;-) ), drink your fluoride, abort your pregnancies (particularly if it will be a white male), give up your existing children to the pedophiles and keep your VR headset on so you don't hear the death squads (moslems) coming for you. But most of all, scoff at this post.
OR
Wake up and fight back before it's too late.
We all make them, some of us are good at it and others want bailed out bc they arent
Any idea if a magnetic fluid in an axle could be used to brake? Apply a magnetic field, fluid "solidifies", slowing the vehicle. Remove the magnetic field, the fluid returns to its prior form, and you can drive again...
1st they came for your oil based car because of gas emissions.
Next they came for your electricity based car because of tire particulates.
They will eventually come for you because of skin flakes or some other made up calamity.
Face it, these "environmentalists" want to extinguish us to satisfy their "god".
Well there goes disabled access. Because most public transport (in many cities it would be all PT), footpaths, cycle barriers, roads are not designed to meet most wheelchairs or powerchair users. For that matter folks over 70 with arthritis, hip replacements, muscle degradation find most areas in the car free centers pretty inaccessible. All you get going car free is lack of access for a lot of vulnerable people. It does not stop industry pollution, energy pollution, urban pollution inc. heating and rubbish burnoffs, trucks and tanker logistics, hell even PT which relies heavily on the same fuel, roads and routes as every else. You might as well just openly state you want to discriminate against the physically vulnerable, remove their access to the city, healthcare, and necessities and get off the high horse. Because making cities non accessible is plainly just that. Better yet why not just hand out guns, because living without basic access is a living hell with every moment a waking torture.
Actually even some ICE cars use regenerative breaking to store it in the battery, because modern cars use so much electricity. That saves about 1l on 100km.
BMWs do that, not sure about other brands and what model types.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yep! Anyone slamming their breaks on an EV, other than for emergency breaking, is doing it wrong frankly. I rarely touch my breaks on my Tesla and rely on regen all the time....I can time it and feather the deceleration most of the time to nearly stop at red lights and stop signs with no issue.
> There no seal on that reservoir you stupid fucking dumbass.
http://www.brakeandfrontend.com/wp-content/uploads/Articles/03_01_2009/1016035Picture0_00000053934.jpg
See that little ring in the cap? That's called a gasket. What do you think a gasket does, dumbass? It SEALS things. If gaskets didn't seal things, how many seconds do you think the oil would stay in your engine? Or the radiator fluid in your cooling system?
To sum up. The reservoir has a cap. The cap has a gasket. When the cap and gasket are applied properly and not damaged or worn out, they SEAL the reservoir.
Idiot.
Boo hoo hoo! If you can't handle it "like a real man" hauling your bags/logs (wtf??) or chopping them in place or whatever, then CHANGE YOUR FRIGGIN LIFESTYLE which is killing all of us!!!
And where exactly does Prof. Frank Kelly stand on the Great Hovercraft-Eel Crisis anyways?
Madness.
What the UK didn't admit was that all electric vehicles, on average, cost about half as much for maintenance (fewer moving parts), and also have half the amount of particulate emissions as do gas and diesel vehicles.
Tires are tires. They get worn out the same. Basic physics. Only reason electric cars would burn more rubber would be if they ... wait for it ... accelerated much faster from a standing start.
Yup. They're faster. This is why all the supercars have both electric and gas motors, as the electrics kick in for fast acceleration.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --