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Comment by metafunctor | Hacker News Reader

Many electric cars use the motors for regenerative braking instead of the actual breaks. I also have no sources at hand, but I believe brake dust is greatly reduced with electric cars.

Tire wear, well, from what I can tell electric cars seem to chew through tires more quickly due to the weight of the vehicles and the high torque. No sources at hand for this, either…

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Even in a PHEV that effect is very noticable. I have a Volvo XC60 T8, 2.2 tonne SUV, and 10k miles in the brake pads are like new. When I had the car serviced recently all pads measured the same thickness as new pads - I'm 100% convinced it's because I just use regenerative breaking all the time, extremely rarely engaging actual brakes. In a car this heavy the pads should be at least half gone after 10k miles, but since they are rarely used they just don't wear out.

>>Tire wear, well, from what I can tell electric cars seem to chew through tires more quickly due to the weight of the vehicles and the high torque.

I think part of it is the incidental result of most electric cars being both very high torque and very high horsepower. Any 400bhp+ car is going to chew threw tyres quickly, and that's what a lot of the big expensive EVs are. I'd like to see if something like the the Leaf or ID3 use tyres anywhere near as quickly - I suspect very much not.

Not as quickly as the Teslas, but my 21K mile LEAF is due for front tires soon. That’s significantly sooner than OE tires on a typical competitive car.

The value priced EVs typically come with narrow low rolling resistance tires that have the kind of friction coefficient that tends to get online comment sections whipped into a frenzy of pearl clutching about safety when poor people buy them for their 20yo ICE cars. It's hard to make a 1 for 1 comparison with the luxury EVs that use soft wide tires to take advantage of all that torque.

Nitpick: Most EVs are pretty low horsepower. You just don't care because you have ~100% of it available at any RPM.

> electric cars seem to chew through tires more quickly due to the weight of the vehicles and the high torque. No sources at hand for this, either…

A Nissan LEAF weighs about the same as a Honda CR-V. Smaller EVs weigh less.

A large-battery EV will weigh more. The Tesla Model S, for example. But not all EVs have large batteries.

As for living near roadways in general, it has an unhealthy effect on "30%-45% of the North American urban population" according to the American Lung Association. [1]

[1] https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/who-is-at-risk/highw...

Despite the screeching of many an online commenter ICE vehicles can make similar torque in normal driving situations. Most new cars can roast the tires through the first several gears if the traction control will let you.

I think the difference is that EVs make no extra noise when you step on it so people feel more free to use more of the acceleration capability of the vehicle.

The other difference is that for most modern ice, you get plenty of torque, but only a quarter second after you asked for it due to turbo lag. With an EV, the torque is instant.

Sure, “torque” wasn't appropriate terminology.

EVs, as a rule of thumb, accelerate more quickly, because it's so easy. Just press the pedal. No noise, no fuss, no revving the engine, it just goes.

Acceleration is pretty much the equivalent of tire wear. That's what I was thinking about.

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