Car tires shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment. Urgent action is needed
Car tires shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment. Urgent action is needed
Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tons of tire fragments. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food. Researchers in South China recently found tire-...
Electric cars are not THE solution.
I've been saying this for a while. Not only that, but electric cars are substantially heavier than their ICE-powered equivalents, meaning both tires and roads wear out more quickly. Plus, there's a ton of pollution and other environmental damage caused by battery production that at least partly offsets the lack of tailpipe emissions.
As loathe as I am to admit, because I'm a car enthusiast and I enjoy driving, cars cannot be the default mode of transportation everywhere indefinitely; they will always need to exist, but should mostly be for small centres with no capacity to implement transit infrastructure and last mile type of things.
Plus, there’s a ton of pollution and other environmental damage caused by battery production that at least partly offsets the lack of tailpipe emissions.
The battery production pollution is an issue, however one thing to keep in mind is that once the minerals are out of the ground they can be recycled, unlike drilling for oil. When looked at on a long timeline the battery for an electric vehicle is a lot cleaner than everything needed to power an ICE vehicle.
That said, there's always room for improvement and we should never get complacent. But we don't avoid innovation just because it isn't perfect.
It's not just tailpipe emissions, though - there's an entire supply chain of extraction, shipping, refining, delivery that's needed to get fuel to your local gas station.
The fossil fuel industry always wants to compare the total environmental damage of an EV with just what comes out of the tailpipe of an internal combustion vehicle. Don't fall for it.
This should be the definition of ‘letting perfect be the enemy of good’ Please stop using false oil lobby talking points to attack the transition to electric cars. Electric cars are an order of magnitude better for the environment than petrol/diesel, stop fighting big oils battle for them. Now let’s talk about how we can reduce road journeys through public transport, and reduce environmental impact of tires.
Is that true about the tires though? Electric car tires are designed to be substantially tougher because of the increase in weight, do they actually shed more material?
There's no such thing as an "electric car tire." They just use standard passenger vehicle tires rated for the appropriate weight class.
"Tougher" just means they handle more weight by holding higher air pressure, so they'll have more layers of steel, kevlar, canvas, etc. The materials that makes contact with the road still wear the same.
You can't really engineer away the need for friction, and if there's friction there is going to be wear.
If EV tires were much better than normal tires with the same grip levels and somehow magically less wear, all tires would adopt that technology.
Not that I'm a materials scientist, but EV tires don't seem much different than other "economy" tires, other than a higher load rating.
You have answered your own question. They are built to be tougher, by using more material.
They still shed a proportional amount of material for the vehicle weight.
Not only that but if they get damaged due to trauma prior to end-of-life (such as a puncture of pothole damage) that is a lot more material that is going to landfill (or tyre “recycling” in countries that have it).
They use the same materials, they’re usually just thicker. If you get one of those heavy boat luxury cars you’ll put the same tires on them. They shed material at a faster rate, but they have more material to compensate.
Good thing DOGE and the rest of the Trump fueled Republicans are foaming at the mouth to completely eliminate federal funding for the California high speed rail project. Thank God they're going to save us from affordable transportation for the masses in favor of continuing to murder the planet actively by distributing microplastics into every square millimeter of the Earth.
If we had those flying cars we were promised, this wouldn't be an issue.
I’m looking forward to all the noise pollution. Drones, drones everywhere
Compared to now: car tyre roar everywhere. It might be better to have a drone taxi go straight up and away from people.
Right?! They really over promised the future. I want my money back.
mention of 9/11
Smaller 9/11s would be happening every day if flying cars were common
Also helicopters already exist and they're basically flying cars
What I'm envisioning isn't piloted by the passengers. Set your destination and it navigates following FAA rules and routes over short distances.
It's pretty trivial to detect humans and scan faces. Until things improve r these are going to be single passenger only so not much opportunity for a large payload.
With self driving cars, it's only a matter of time before someone makes a self driving car into a delivery system for a bomb.
Yet another example of how pretty much every problem is, at its heart, a zoning problem:
- Microplastics? Too much driving, because trip origins and destinations are too far apart to be walkable.
- Greenhouse gas emissions from cars? Too much driving because not enough walkability.
- Greenhouse gas emissions from housing? Poor efficiency because too many single-family homes exposed on all sides instead of high-density housing with shared walls.
- Greenhouse gas emissions from concrete production? Using way more of it than we really need to build huge amounts of unnecessary parking (and much wider streets than we'd need for bikes + transit + only delivery vehicles).
- High housing prices? Not enough housing density.
- Obesity? Sedentary lifestyles, i.e., not enough gym of life.
- Racism? Redlining.
- Wealth inequality? (Among other things), protecting rich landowners from market forces by eliminating competition from multifamily developers that would build out the land to its highest and best use.
See also, this video: The Housing Crisis is the Everything Crisis. He almost gets it, but fails to connect that very last dot, which is that the housing crisis is itself caused by bad, density-restricting zoning!
<sarcasm> but if more people were walking, they would all be run over by tiny men in Dodge Ram250s</sarcasm>
We just need to swap all roads out with big orange hot wheels tracks. I don't know if it'd solve the problem but at least it's a suggestion and it'd be sick as hell.
Omg can you imagine? Instead of traffic lights we’d have boosters throwing us into loop de loops 😍
Can I yell vrrrrrrrooooommmmmmmm on the loops?
Better than what people are yelling on the road these days, at least.
Does anyone know of another efficient mode of transportation that has near-zero surface friction?
Because that would be a gamechanger
There are some vehicles that go on iron wheels, on a special kind of iron road that are very efficient. Only bad parts are costly initial investment and difficulties to scale up if the existing network gets overloaded (such as the Swedish rail system who has been over "maximum" capacity for a long time which has put needed maintenance on hold at many places)
Maglev?
Hovercrafts have been around for ages. I'm not sure that the random driver would love using one though.
I somehow doubt they would have less particles from friction. They usually use a cushion which touches the ground.
The imagination of a busy intersection with common people driving hovercrafts is funny, though. Or imagine driving on slopes.
Well the was this idea of propelling trains through a vacuum tube system.
Unfortunately it's being developed by a shithead and misappropriated by the car industry to hamper railway development in the us
Hyperloop theoretically, practically who knows.
The solution is fewer and lighter vehicles. Everyone purchasing oversized EVs is the exact opposite of the solution.
Mass Transit (trains and light rail) Pushbikes, e-bikes, Subcompact, and micro/Kei cars are the answer.
Let’s bring back post world war 2 motorbikes, affordable, reliable, unbeatable.
Polluting, inefficient, unsafe, noisy.
If you go to South East Asian countries where the main form of transport is post WW2 motorbikes, you will notice that they aren’t the safest or most comfortable places to live.
If you have a western budget, however, you can transcend the day-to-day hazards and live in a resort for a pittance.
Kyburz Plus
- Gross weight ~10% of a typical electric car, so probably ~10% tyre dust too.
- Top speed 30km/h preferably on bikeways.
- If its surface is designed to yield in a crash, safer to be hit by than a bare biker on a bare bike.
- Takes less space than a biker because a 4-wheeler can be steered more accurately than a naturally unstable bike needing wobble margins.
- Banned in many places through lawfare: https://xfwnofqagsnmdxuf.quora.com/Lawfare-against-tiny-cars-velomobiles
I had one of these when I was 3, it was chock full of microplastics
Love it.
There is no alternative suggested. The purpose of this movement is to tax heavy EVs. I think that makes it distraction.
The smaller the EV the more range per kwh, and so smaller batteries are needed which makes them more affordable. It is not unreasonable to tax heavy vehicles, but the punch line that motivates this piece is "EV's bad". They could have recommended micromobility for example.
imho we should tax any vehicle that puts an inordinate strain on the roads. ultra-heavy EV's like cybertrucks and hummers are ridiculous and inefficient, and the purchases knew it when they bought them.
but also the cummins diesel powered pavement princess my colleague drives BY THEMSELVES TO THEIR OFFICE JOB day after day, I think that should have to pay an excise tax.
work vehicles certainly deserve cutouts, but they need to be work appropriate vehicles, not just jacked up asshole haulers.
work vehicles certainly deserve cutouts
That thinking is what got us SUVs. Work vehicles earn income, and so probably don't need cutouts.
Electric cars are not THE solution.
This is why I raised the topic of airless tires a while back. They're not the solution, but they last longer than traditional tires. Initially they were rated to last a lifetime, but that's not profitable so they put an end to that.
That does not address the issue at all. The problem is that tires wear, and the particles of tire rubber that are shed are the microplastics.
I ride motorcycles and tires have always been a major issue with riders because of cost. Bike tires wear out fast even though it's a lighter vehicle and tends to put on less mileage.
The main culprit that most industry insiders have suggested is that motorcycle tires are purposely designed to not last as long because its so easy to market crappy tires to the vast majority of riders. All you need is have marketing campaign of racers and racing tires and then stamp the name on a tire and sell it to young guys who want to ride as fast as possible ... they'll pay hundreds year after year for tires that only last one season but supposedly give them great performance.
I ride moderately on a 1998 BMW K1200, a fast sport touring bike and I put on moderate mileage every summer ... I'm not a long distance rider ... yet I have to change my tires just about every year.
Fortnine, a Youtube channel dedicated to motorcycle riding did a great description of this ....
The giveaway is that you could put a small car tire on a motorcycle and it would last ten times longer ... whereas you place a motorcycle tire on a motorcycle tire and it will last for a far shorter time.
Motorcycle tires are designed to not last as long .... fast riders can argue that better tires do not last as long and I agree with them ... but for moderate riders or just Sunday riders with low mileage, there is no need to have motorcycle tires last for such a short period of time. It's all meant to sell as many tires as possible for no reason other than to make someone money.
For those who didn't read the article or aren't following EU politics, Euro 7, passed in April, explicitly addresses the need for reining in pollution from brakes and tires. Some more information here:
The position adopted by the European Parliament improves the European Commission's proposal by extending the scope of tyre abrasion limits to all tyres and not just those fitted on Euro 7 vehicles. It also directly links Euro 7 to the work that is being done in the UNECE World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP. 29), which will set global rules regarding a test method and limits for tyre abrasion.
There's a new Euro standard "major version" every 5.8 years on average, so here's hoping that my outdoor furniture will soon not become completely blackened within a year after the last cleaning.
It has nothing to do with being "not profitable"; they couldn't find a way to engineer the tires to not be unstable at speeds above 45mph. They sell airless tires commercially today, but it's mostly for farm equipment that moves slowly.
whatever happened to the green tire technologies that get announced by the big mfg and then never come to market.. like the mushroom based materials
Usually stuff like that is just a distraction so companies can do greenwashing while delaying the implementation of real solutions. I’m going to guess that’s the case but, I haven’t really looked into it.
fuckcars
Ban tires!
The American auto industry
Lobbyists
Conservatives
The existence of hundreds of thousands of miles of asphalt paid for by the American taxpayer
Oh, right. Well, I'll just wave my finger once a year and... die, eventually.
The other day I was wondering how miraculous tires are - fucking balloons lifting the heaviest vehicles on land.
Who ever said electric cars were the solution?
Helping one problem and not helping them all means it's better to do nothing according to a lot of people. If you are anti cars that's one thing, but to specifically aim it at EVs is clearly just targeted propaganda as always.
Yes we put 100 years of research into gas powered cars, 15 years of research (or less by most companies) and the weight isn't the same yet so they want to toss all advantages of moving to them.
Look at things like the Telos Truck. 4,400 pounds, 4 doors, small and can fit a 8'x4' sheet of plywood if needed in the bed.
Length of a mini Cooper, so it fits in smaller parking spots, weighs less than the average ICE truck, costs less than the average ICE truck and will have less impact on tires people worry about here, while not shipping oil across oceans and causing cancer to the people in the vicinity.
A lot of people think that. The solution to car pollution is less cars and more forms of transport. It's trains. I like trains.
Binary view is a poor one. EVs have a lot of benefits and also some drawbacks. As everything in the world, they are not perfect. The trick is that they have much more benefits than drawbacks.
We need a clever solution to this problem, because our govts are unlikely to solve this through new infrastructure or policy changes.
I’ve been reading about this topic for a while now, and I always thought the tech these guys invented was worth further investment: https://smarttirecompany.com/
Less rubber is good but we really need a rubber replacement that is biodegradable.
Nickel alloys are expensive and require some nasty mining so shape memory tires are a stopgap solution at best.
Material sciences is a difficult field. People spend years researching one small area just to shelve their research as not viable, too cost prohibitive, or impractical for large scale manufacturing.
I haven't seen any research into durable biodegradable materials that could hold the weight of vehicles unfortunately, so I think investment will be hard to come by. Though I don't disagree with the premise that something that can degrade over time, but also not harm the environment would be an ideal solution to the problem. I imagine if such a thing were created it would be able to be applied to many other industries, not just transportation.
Is it technically micro plastics? Vulcanized rubber particulates?
There is a significant problem with media-reporting and scientific-studies being vetted for accuracy and peer-reviews.
Plastics are organic polymerized compounds usually I think that fall under Alkyl, isoprenes, monomers ?
Rubbers are organic polymerized compounds usually under elastomers / neoprenes / butadienes ?
We NEED more nuance and not fearmongering,scaremongering and FUD about the man-made pollutants.
Rubber pollution is a thing and plastics pollution is also a thing. How do we deal with each of them may require DIFFERENT strategies and NOT CRAZY-SHIT.
Its not only rubber for car tires. There's a lot of extras to add longevity, and change performance in certain conditions.
Plastic is mostly made from hydrocarbon chains. So are rubber polymers it seems.
Not sure if it matters if the plastic is from a tree or pumped from a really old tree.
We need miracle battery technology. And we need miracle wheel technology.
How can you not own a car while living in a city with >1m population, are you mad? /s
Cool and absolutely nothing will change.
Oh I know maybe we can start making tires out of paper instead!
If we make them out of asbestos (nature's perfect material) then it will eliminate microplastics and help to reduce car usership dramatically over the long term.
Ohh almost as if everyones been saying how electric cars arent the solution...