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Comment by dhritzkiv | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I can quantify the harm, especially in contrast to the benefits of decarbonization, but large batteries are heavier, and heavier vehicles:

  - increase road wear
  - increase road fatalities due to larger momentum in collisions
  - require more raw materials for the batteries
  - result in more component wear, mainly tires

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Gross Vehicle Weight: Model 3 is 100 pounds lighter than BMW 3 series.

https://www.truecar.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-...

Remarkably close. The Model 3 is light all things considered.

Also is gross vehicle weight the right metric? That's the maximum rated operating weight with cargo, passengers and fuel. Curb weight seems more appropriate for a 1:1 comparison.

Is momentum actually what matters in collisions?

Consider a 9 000 pound car at 50 mph. If you are standing there and that hits you you are going to die or be seriously injured.

Compare to a large freight train hitting you at 1 mph. A bit of Googling suggests that the largest freight train had a mass of around 140 000 000 pounds.

The momentum of that freight train would be more than 300 tims the momentum of the car (and the kinetic energy would be 6 times that of the car). Yet a free standing person hit be that train probably won't be killed or even seriously injured by the collision.

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