How to make an EV tire that won’t pollute the environment
How to make an EV tire that won’t pollute the environment
EV tires are a source of pollution.
Yeah, make them out of metal, that rolls on metal roads. And those metal tires can carry a ton more weight, so put a lot of people in them who are going the same way.
Oh right, we already have those.
Noooo, you don’t get it, bro. Just one more lane, please. I promise, it will be better than last time. One more lane, that’s all we need. I’m begging you, please.
I’m on my knees here. One more lane, just one more! This time it will be different, I swear. We won’t have traffic jams, I promise! Just one more lane and we’ll be free.
Come on, man, think of the children. Just one more lane. I’m begging you. For the love of liberty, just one more lane!
Adam, is that you? 😉
Hah!
¿Por qué no los dos?
Any economical ways to run farms on rail? A lot of the roads where I have lived were just built and paid for by famers to move equipment between pay dirt and make their way to town occasionally
Do we? Sounds too futuristic. Not as futuristic as linking these megacars together.
Did tech bros just reinvent the concept of trains?
Though “those” are wildly inaccessible and/or unrealistic in parts of the world.
Edit: I was trying to say “unrealistic to use for most people today,” I wasn’t trying to brush off public transportation as something we shouldn’t do at all
Hot take: tire particulates are a conservative anti-EV talking point. "My V8 mustang weighs less than an EV, therefore its better on pollution than a EV because tire particulates". Totally disregarding the impact of tailpipe emissions.
I think it's just reminding people that EVs aren't a panacea to all our issues with transportation, and they actually exacerbates at least one of those issues. This is while we know there are better solutions for >90% of our personal transportation with public transportation, bicycling, walking, micro-mobility, etc. Moving one or two people around with a multi-tonne machine is insanely inefficient!
Exacerbate = the rare minerals issue?
One person I know claimed to have run calculations, and found that the tire dust alone was putting out more pollution than the tires and tailpipe of the average gas car. Idk where they got their numbers or how that could work out, since the average gas car in America is a large truck.
It could be true. Catalytic converters do a pretty good job of filtering out most pollutants. They also increase CO2 emissions in a variety of direct and indirect ways. Everything else is lower, though.
The way to make EV tires pollute less is to not chase 600+ mile range. Keep them around 300-400 miles, and use further battery improvements to reduce weight. There's no reason EVs have to be heavier forever. With better charging infrastructure, 400 miles is more than enough.
The way to fix everything else wrong with them is to not make cars the default mode of transportation.
It seems pretty obvious, but also, it would be nice to see improvements in this area.
What kind of backhanded EV misinformation bullshit is this?
Electric, gas, petrol, hydrogen, diesel, cooking oil or vodka; what you put in your car to make it go makes no difference to the tires or the wear.
From the article:
In an EV era, tires are becoming the greatest emitters of particulate matter
The point being that electric drops tailpipe emissions to zero, making tires the next target for reducing emissions.
That sentence and headline are completely wrong though. Tires already are one of the greatest emitters of particulate matter even with ICE cars in mind, because this is a general car issue and cannot really be directly resolved. An improvement would be less weight. If cars were smaller and consequently lighter, then they'd pollute less. But unfortunately we are still going the opposite direction and cars are still getting fatter and fatter, just like the people driving them.
It does. EVs are much heavier due to battery weight and have more power and torque. Which all results in more tire wear.
2023 top 5 vehicles sold in USA and weight:
1 - Ford F-150 4069-5697lbs
2 - Chevrolet Silverado 4400-6947lbs
3 - Ram pickup 4765-6440lbs
4 - Toyota RAV4 3370lbs
5 - Tesla Model Y 4416lbs
Looks like the only electric on the list is below the average weight. We don’t have these conversations about the trucks.
This is false. They aren't really that much heavier, 1k lb or so. It's not the weight that tears up tires it's the instant and 100% torque when you hit the accelerator. If you go easy on the launches your tires will last longer.
Hey man, it's got nothing to do with them being heavier, it IS about how that weight is distributed differently. You've mispoken and now everyone is latched on to something that isn't true about something that is true.
EV tires are made from different compounds then truck and car tires which causes them to wear ~20% faster.
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EVs have instant torque delivery, which can put more strain on the tires during acceleration. Therefore, they need EV tires that can handle the increased force and extra weight.
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Electric vehicles have heavy battery packs, affecting the overall weight distribution. This can impact tire wear, so EV tires are designed to carry and distribute the extra weight effectively.
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EV tires are engineered to have lower rolling resistance. These tires reduce the energy required to move the vehicle, resulting in better range and longer battery life.
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Most EVs use regenerative braking systems, which recover energy during braking. EV tires offer better traction and grip, enhancing the effectiveness of regenerative braking.
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Electric vehicles are generally quieter than traditional ICE vehicles. To complement this characteristic, EV tires are built to reduce road noise and vibrations, providing a quieter and more comfortable ride
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You're getting down voted but you're right. I don't think people realize that most tires are now made from synthetic rubber, AKA plastic.
Also someone tried to disprove you by posting a list with ICE trucks being as heavy as EV cars. Like what? Of course trucks are heavier. EV Trucks are even heavier than that and an EV subcompact will be much heavier than an ICE compact. Also everyone is talking about how trucks and SUVs are getting heavier and bigger. So not sure what they mean by "we never talk about this with trucks!"
It’s dumb, but I think the author was trying to say, “we have an emissions solution for the motor, and now it’s worth exploring where else we need to address emissions for motor vehicles.”
Now how about using iron tires on iron road? And using public transport?
Fuck yeah, public transit - Right in my veins, lets go.
But for right now, there is ZERO public transit infrastructure where I live, which is only about 20-30 minutes to a medium-sized city's downtown. And when I say ZERO, I mean ZERO. We don't even have busses here. No trains. NOTHING. We don't even have sidewalks on most roads - if you want to walk, you're literally walking in the road. I used to ride a bike to work a long time ago - I can't even count the number of times I've had shit thrown at me by shitbag rednecks as they zoomed past in their lifted pickup trucks.
The local governments' answer to all this is "If you don't have a car, fuck you." Cars are literally the only option. If you don't have a car or a driver's license, you better find somebody who does and give them gas money, or consign yourself to paying for Uber/Lyft anytime you want to go anywhere. It's straight-up dangerous to travel any other way around here.
I hope it will get better for you.
a fancy new startup will start calling them decentralised pods for personal transportation. Promise to be revolutionary.
Preforms worse than all know forms of transport so farPromise to be revolutionary.
Revolution:
Preforms worse than all know forms of transport so far
Pretty low bar
Although I agree that using cars on pointless journeys is a waste and not good for the planet, but using public transport isn’t always an option.
If I’m travelling 6 miles in to town then I’m taking the tram, but it really isn’t feasible when travelling 40 miles to work and back 3 times a week. Sure there are trains, but I would have to get up an hour earlier, set off an hour earlier, wait 50 minutes for the train home, and get home two hours later. As I would also have to take the tram 40 minutes to the train station and walk 20 mins before that.
I have a car that I use for work. Outside of that I’m walking or taking public transport.
wait 50 minutes for the train home
Same was in Moscow until Moscow Central Ring was opened and people said "wait, so trains can arrive at 2 minutes interval? Why suburban trains doesn't do same?". And that is how D1-D4 were born with 5m peak hours interval instead of few hours of lunch break.
If I’m travelling 6 miles in to town then I’m taking the tram, but it really isn’t feasible when travelling 40 miles to work and back 3 times a week.
"My city is fucking designed wrong so the public transport sucks" isn't really the rebuttal you think it is. Obviously, the real problem there is your city is fucking designed wrong and the vast majority of people shouldn't have to be living 40 miles away from work to begin with!
I support public transport but I really don’t know how to convince people. I live in North America.
So this big breakthrough in tire technology is . . . making them harder and reducing their grip?
EV are much heavier than petrol cars, maybe the offset weight will help regain some grip? Normal tires wear out so fast on EVs.
That extra weight will also mean that more force is required to accelerate and change directions.
The nimbleness of a vehicle can be expressed as the ratio:
(Tire Contact Area * Tire Stickiness) / Vehicle Mass
Increasing the vehicle's mass while making the tires harder will lead to longer breaking distances and will cause a vehicle to understeer at lower speeds.
Much heavier than petrol cars if they’re not on a bespoke EV platform or designed poorly. Slightly heavier than petrol cars if they’re designed properly.
Eg a Model 3 and a Toyota Camry are the same weight and almost identical dimensions.
It’s weird to me the weight thing keeps coming up when discussing EVs but not the petrol cars which have been growing bigger and heavier for years.
And now to make lighter EVs that don't wear on the road so much.
And now to make lighter EVs that don’t wear on the road so much.
Tesla Model 3 Long Range (as an example) weighs in at 4,034 lbs, while the Ford F150 is 4,391 to 5,863 lbs.
Shouldn't we start with the majority of ICE vehicles which already weigh the same or more than EVs?
Just because a Ford truck weighs a lot doesn't mean we shouldn't address EV tire wear.
Do a lot of people own trucks that shouldn't because they don't use them as trucks? Yes. I'd argue that's a completely different argument.
This isn't an EV only issue, but it is highlighted for EVs because they go through tires faster than equivalent sized (not weight) vehicles.
In the end I would hope all vehicles would be equipped with tires that don't kill aquatic life!
Done:
Pls don't make them soy-based or some human food based, rodents and other small critters with teeth will gnaw at them like what happens with engine hoses...
Make tires out of ground up bureaucrats, they're organic and biodegradable, and there's an endless supply of them.
First of all, biodegradable doesn't mean what you think it means. For example, PLA plastic is biodegradable - good luck trying to compost it at home.
Second, source material doesn't mean that the end result will be biodegradable as well. You will need to polymerise them and you'll end up with the same plastic and rubber as if you'd use oil. PLA is an example again! It's made from lactic acid, which you can and do eat. You can also eat pure PLA, but again - it's not compostable.
It's going to be all about the price.
My hybrid recommends "eco" style tires to get the best gas mileage. Those were $100 more, per tire, than the standard low-profiles. At the time, I commuted about 110 miles/day, so tires typically only lasted me about a year before they were either officially worn out or too worn to be safe to drive in winter.
I only noticed about a 1-2 MPG loss with the "standard" tires versus the "eco" ones that came with it. Over the course of a year, I doubt that 1-2 MPG added up to the $400 difference.
So, these cleaner tires are a good thing, assuming they're not more expensive than current-style tires. Depending on use-case, 35% longer life (if that holds true) may be able to tempt price-conscious buyers.
All that said, I could definitely see these becoming the "factory" tires for new EVs, though.
Yeah, that closing point is likely gonna be screwed by economies of scale. You need more adoption for the price to fall and with the price high you won't see that large adoption. So, I suspect we won't see those prices until many more EVs are on the road.
Price is definitely important, but so is traction. If stopping distance increases because eco materials grip less, that would be a concern.
My criteria are performance results, wear rating, and price.
I wouldn't think stopping distance would be noticeably impacted by less rolling resistance. My original "eco" tires stopped the same as the standard ones. They're "eco" because they have less rolling resistance and are slightly lighter.
Plus, with ABS, you're not likely to lock the wheels up such that the decreased resistance would be significant.
On slick roads would be my only concern, but a good and season appropriate tread should mitigate that.
Please do the rest of the math and put a number on the actual comparison.
28,600mi/yr (wow, BTW) - 110mi x 260 working days a year
What were the actual mpg's and costs for the eco and regular tires?
And how heavy is your hybrid?
It’s going to be all about the price.
EV or not, price the pollution into the cost of buying the tire. Then the economics of a non-polluting tire would be the primary driver for adoption because they would be cheaper than polluting tires.
Thus preventing those who can't afford it from getting to work.
Is this an ad?
yes
go back to wooden cart wheels
Iron
I'd like to see recycable bike tires, too! Bike tires suffer similar problems. And my bikes go through tires fairly quick.
Schwalbe at least takes old tires back to recycle them. I can hand mine in at my bike shop. Maybe other brands have something similar.
Bike tires suffer similar problems.
But at a much smaller scale, since the tires are made out of so much less material each.
And my bikes go through tires fairly quick.
Quit doing whip skid stops all the time, ya hoodlum!