I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear, given the same tires on each vehicle. From this, I would expect car makers to use larger, thicker, heavier tires on heavier vehicles in order to compensate.
Thus I think we shouldn’t accept claims about the replacement lifecycle of tires without knowing these details of their construction. If an electric car is twice the mass of an older ICE car then the fourth power rule would predict a 16-fold increase in road wear. I would then expect the tires on the EV to have 16 times more rubber in order to last the same duration, unless they’re made of some newer compounds which are more durable.
IMO this would be a suspect assumption to make w/o data to back it up. You've got two dissimilar materials interacting (in very different modes). E.g. rolling a metal ball bearing on a wood surface would obviously cause the wood to degrade far more than the ball bearing, (and even a wooden ball rolling on a wood surface would wear substantially less due to the mode difference).
(If I had to guess the road has a higher wear as the surface has a tensile stress around the contact patch of the tyre, causing most of the damage, but this is just armchair engineering at this stage).
given the same tires on each vehicle
I don’t endorse the broader statement which would imply the same wear regardless of tire material. That claim is clearly false.
If it were acceleration and deceleration I’d have expected the effect to be less localised, as breaking and accelerating happens over a much longer distance.
But, I have no actual idea. It’s just probably not friction…
Ideally, it'd be great if insurance companies made a big push to get some kind of standardised "black box" that drivers could fit. As well as providing extra stats, I think they'd be great for detecting illnesses. A simple driving ability stat could be produced from the typical acceleration/braking timings - smoother is better as it shows good anticipation by the driver. If their stat starts decreasing more than expected due to aging etc. then the driver could be alerted that they should consult a doctor as it could cognitive decline, eye problems etc.
For some rough numbers under normal/factory configurations to consider:
- A semi truck converts around 0.9 milliliters of tire to dust per kilometer.
- A Tesla Model Y clocks in at 0.3 ml/km
- A Honda Fit clocks in at 0.1 ml/km
Even with an overestimate of semis being responsible for 10% of total miles driven in the US, if everyone drove a Model Y then passenger cars would be responsible for 3x more tire dust than semis, and if everyone drove a Honda Fit then you'd be down to 1x.
Are there bigger concerns out there? Probably. Is the solution to bias toward ICE instead of EV? Probably not. It's not worth burying our heads in the sand when making those decisions though.
But you could just... not have such a heavy foot.
If you look at comparably sized cars the Model 3 is about the same. It's roughly the same size and weight as a BMW 3 series. And they're both around the size and weight of the average new car.
It's small electric cars that typically weigh more, because making the car smaller isn't the main way to make the battery smaller; reducing the range is. So then nobody really makes a small full electric car with a short range, because that market is served by plug-in hybrids that solve the range problem with a gas engine while still allowing you to do a few dozen miles a day as an electric car.
Maybe they all don't but some do.
e.g. https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-unexpected-problem-with-evs-t...
Apart from the increased weight and torque
The torque is real, though, but I think this is what the earlier commenter was getting at regarding bad choices made by Tesla: there is no reason "chill mode" isn't the default, which makes a Tesla drive more like an ICE vehicle. Most other EVs I've driven don't go full torque by default, so seem to have made a better choice there.
In personal experience, I went about ~45k miles on 4 new tires in my Model S before I replaced them. A bit sooner than I would have in my Prius but not much.
I also don't take off from a green light as if I were in a drag race, which probably helps.
Yes which is due to the flexibility of EVs. The problem then is that customers are going to prefer buying vehicles with greater torque and manufacturers have little incentive to not provide EVs with high torque.
A lot of it is based on driver behaviour as it's quite feasible for ICE vehicles to be driven to burn rubber or make donuts.
disclaimer: I drive an electric car but would sell it in a heartbeat if I could use transit or bikes to safely and efficiently get to work, the grocery, and the doctor.
You could have software limiters, but you'd need regulatory mandates for that. Actually, I support that. 3+ ton trucks with a sub 4s 0-60 shouldn't be street legal. Or they should at least require a special license and liability insurance.
And EV cars tend to be heavier then comparable combustion cars.
https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-car-weight/
Model 3 Curb Weight: 3,552–4,048 lb
Model X 5,248 lbs
Model Y 4,209 - 4,363 lbs
So what’s your point?
That EV cars exist that are less heavy than the average car?
That’s not why I said, I said comparable combustion cars are less heavy than their EV counterpart.
Let’s look at some comparisons since that is your point:
> Starting with the Tesla Model 3 weighing in at between 1777Kg and 1840Kg
> A comparable ICE car the BMW 3 series 1570Kg - 1965Kg
> And another ICE car the Mercedes C class 1665Kg - 2190Kg
> And finally another EV the Ford Mustang Mach-E 1993Kg - 2218Kg
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-perception-of-Tesla-cars-b...
So there’s not much in it. EVs do tend to be 10-15% heavier for the same model in EV vs ICE but the point is brought up constantly as if they are twice as heavy, or at least significantly heavier. In reality picking a model 3 would for your next car would bring the average weight of US new cars down which I think is interesting, no?
The new tyres that are coming out like Pirelli P Zero, promise a longer life span, but that remains to be seen.