I think it's absolutely crazy that our society is OK with car drivers polluting the air with carcinogenic particles. I hope more cities around the world implement similar bans soon.
Of course we can just ignore that which is not at all crazy...
Edit: I'm certainly not using this as argument to not ban ICE vehicles in city centers. However switching to EVs is not a good longterm solution. e.g. there won't be any incentives for massively increasing investment into public transport because everyone can just drive a "clean" EV.
*I'm not saying that brake and tire wear is that much higher for EVs, rather that if we only look at ICE vehicles tires/breaks are as big a source of PM 2.5 as the engine itself.
Of course, cars are generally too big, too heavy, and too fast. Addressing those issues would benefit everyone, regardless of fuel source.
There are a lot of people who are driving an EV with several hundred miles of range to work less than 20 miles away. That extra order of magnitude of battery capacity is a lot of extra weight. Imagine I’d you could instead rent a battery trailer for those occasional long trips?
I think e-bikes are the way to go, tho perhaps we can define a new and smaller class of vehicles with cabins and/or inherent stability for those unable to ride.
All cars need to get smaller again, EVs should have automatic charging when parked and when waiting in traffic jams.
EVs are not the solution but they are a stop gap.
The smaller and lighter vehicles you all are trying to invent, already exist in the hundreds of millions! And have existed for almost as long as cars. They are cheap to buy, cheap to ride, release very little exhaust, doesn't need decaying batteries or rare-earth minerals to make, won't run over your kids and won't make traffic jams.
Also they can get you to where you're going faster than any EV or SUV.
They're called motorcycles.
Edit: Not to mention that electric motorcycles are great rides.
As for the tire emissions, you are likely quoting the worst case scenario that was devised by emissionsanalytics. The reality is, that was a worst case scenario, if you actually saw tire wear that was significantly more polluting than traditional cars you would have tires that go bald in a very short period of time.
For example, the Micheline Pilot Sport all seasons that come on the Tesla Model 3 are rated for 45k miles, but typically get around 35-40k miles depending on driving habits. That is only 13-26% more tread loss depending on driving style. So how is it possible the tires are losing significantly more tread (and as a consequence, polluting more) but also lasting a long time?
Sorry, I probably phrased it in a confusing way, I was comparing the ratio between tire/brake and ICE PM 2.5 emissions for normal cars not saying that EVs are that much worse (the part about weight is just speculation).
You might want to cross that off your list of things to complain about when talking about EVs.
Car companies can tune the EVs to damp torque spikes, but there's no way around the fundamental fact that hard acceleration uses up tires. EVs accelerate hard, but they don't have to. That just happens to be a major selling point for most of them.
AWD works in their favor here though, since it's distributing the torque across four wheels, and traction control on EVs can be incredibly effective.
I'd be surprised if people in Model 3 Performances went through tires at nearly the rate that I do in similarly powerful ICE cars (~8-10k for driven wheels).
The USA has a weird cultural obsession with being able to break certain laws. We need to rethink that. If we aren't enforcing laws, then we need to get rid of them, if we don't want to get rid of them, then we need to enforce them.
EVs use primarily regen for braking, so they contribute almost no brake wear. And that isn't even a problem.
It matters what is emitted. Tire wear particles are relatively large, and don't stay in the air.
Anti-EV disinformation uses the trick of counting pollution by weight, which completely discounts gaseous emissions, which is the real pollution that people breathe in.
This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Another (expensive) solution would be carbon ceramic brakes. These used to be for "race cars" but people found that they are too expensive to replace if you track the car, so people use iron brakes on the track, and carbon ceramics on the street. Carbon ceramics will last 100k+ miles under normal street use and they keep the wheels free of brake dust.