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Comment by hnarn | Hacker News Reader

That may well be so, but my conviction is that we need to substantially reduce carbon emissions across the board, and if that's true I don't think replacing gasoline cars with coal powered electricity plants makes a lot of sense, unless maybe the CO2 is captured and stored, but at that point you might as well go nuclear (which I am a proponent of, as the only realistic alternative at this point).

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Internal combustion engines pollute the air where I'm living. Moving pollution away from residential areas is a worthwhile task in itself. That makes a lot of sense to me.

I live in a densely populated country. Even a relatively minor accident at a nuclear facility would trigger a huge evacuation (I've seen the disaster control plans), causing major economic harm. Also my country does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly. Nuclear does not look like the sane option here.

An electrical car produces almost as much fine dust particles as an internal combustion engine. Thus in that respect they are as poluting. The CO2 and NOx combustion engines produces are not that dangerous to our health. Soot, mainly produced by heavy diesel engines, is also a dangerous form of polution, but most trucks should have filters for those by now.

> An electrical car produces almost as much fine dust particles as an internal combustion engine.

This is utter nonsense. Electric vehicles have no direct emissions, including no direct emissions of fine dust. You are confusing this with emissions during production. My point is about emissions at the location of a car's use.

> The CO2 and NOx combustion engines produces are not that dangerous to our health.

If this was true, there would have been no diesel scandal at all. However, car exhaust is indeed very dangerous to your health, especially if you live next to heavy traffic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_eff...

> Soot, mainly produced by heavy diesel engines, is also a dangerous form of polution, but most trucks should have filters for those by now.

They should, but reality is different

- https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/abgasskandal-manipuliert...

- https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2017/wp29/WP.2...

> Electric vehicles have no direct emissions, including no direct emissions of fine dust.

QUOTE

Traffic related particles can be distinguished into: exhaust traffic related particles, which are emitted as a result of incomplete fuel combustion and lubricant volatilization during the combustion procedure, and nonexhaust traffic related particles, which are either generated from non-exhaust traffic related sources such as brake, tyre, clutch and road surface wear or already exist in the environment as deposited material and become resuspended due to traffic induced turbulence.

It is estimated that exhaust and non-exhaust sources contribute almost equally to total traffic-related PM10 emissions. However, as exhaust emissions control become stricter, relative contributions of non-exhaust sources to traffic related emissions will increasingly become more significant.

END QUOTE

Source: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JR...

> It is estimated that exhaust and non-exhaust sources contribute almost equally to total traffic-related PM10 emissions. However, as exhaust emissions control become stricter, relative contributions of non-exhaust sources to traffic related emissions will increasingly become more significant.

So if this "estimate" (i.e. conjecture) is on point, EV produce less than half of the emissions of an ICE car currently (EV have 0 exhaust emissions) and will continue to produce much less even when ICE are somewhat improved (and manufacturers stop defrauding customers). Let's not forget that EV also brake less than ICE cars.

> This is utter nonsense. Electric vehicles have no direct emissions, including no direct emissions of fine dust.

Have you ever changed a tire on Tesla because it was worn down? Where do you think the rubber in the old tire went when it was worn down? Emitted into the environment, that’s where.

The GP is obviously wrong about EVs emitting no fine dust, see my sibling comment, but we're talking about fine dust, i.e. PM10 dust.

The study my comment links to notes that only 0.1-10% (depending on conditions) of tire wear meets that criteria, the rest are all more coarse particles.

Have you measure the gas you burnt between changing those tires. You burnt and put in the air hundreds of times the weight of those tires in gases.

You’re saying the petrol emissions are worse than other emissions. But the comment I was replying to said there were no other emissions at all.

fjfaase, your statement "An electrical car produces almost as much fine dust particles as an internal combustion engine" is very surprising and not at all what I would expect.

Can you cite any sources for that or explain it a bit more?

Aside from particulate matter in exhaust, regenerative braking doesn't produce dust like friction braking does, thus I'd expect electric cars to produce much less dust than ICE vehicles.

Rubber tyres on asphalt produce a fair bit of very fine particulate matter, and are currently ubiquitous in vehicles - I imagine this is what fjfaase was referring to.

That said, the contribution is tiny - on the order of 2.5% of total roadside PM10.

https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/atmosphere/atmosphere-10-0...

>Also my country does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly.

I don’t think you realize how little there is to deal with. It could easily be exported to a competent country.

It’s shocking how people are willing to effectively endorse burning fossil fuels for base load to destroy the environment over the next 50 years because of something that might be a problem in a few thousand years.

> unless

So you’d agree with doing them in parallel?

Do you think car manufacturers should wait to make electric cars until all power plants have a timeline to convert? Or that power plants should wait until all car manufacturers are switching? Or that they should both act without waiting for the other?

Germany's grid is not powered solely by coal but a decent mix of sources with various carbon intensities.

A typical EV in Germany has a carbon footprint of a vehicle burning anywhere in the range of 2-5l/100km(including manufacturing).

EVs in Germany are consistently less carbon intensive than ICE cars - especially in the city.

The "average" EV in Germany uses cleaner electricity than the grid, because there are > 0 EV drivers who charge their cars with their own PV setup.

Even with the current mix in the electric grid, electric cars produce quite a bit less CO2 than any combustion engined car and get cleaner as more coal power plants are decommissioned. It is happening perhaps to slow, but it is happening. In 2019 electricity generation from coal was quite a bit down compared to 2018 due to CO2 certificates finally having an effect.

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