Electric cars produce less brake dust pollution than combustion-engine cars

On paper, yes, but did that ever happen? Sorry for being sarcastic, but where I live the frugal hybrid is exceptionally rare and the "same big engine, but driving a much heavier car" hybrid is omnipresent. The kind of people who might buy the frugal one buy second or third hand while almost all buyers of factory new pick the "same big engine" option, and those are the ones who decide what's available on the second hand market.

And, you can make much lighter and lower range electric cars without all those heavy batteries, and boost the range with diesel when needed. Very attractive in principle. Most cars are not using their full range all the time, for a lot of people a 50 mile range car would be more than enough 98% of the time, but that remaining 2% means that people end up buying 200 mile range cars instead.

But then, do you end up removing enough battery weight to offset the weight of a whole ICE?

This is less a hybrid thing and more a new transmission thing. It, of course, isn't free. The efficiency of a CVT is a good 10-20 percent lower than previous transmissions. That said, currently, the win from keeping the engine at either the max power or the max efficiency speed is substantial.

There are some really good videos out there going over how newer CVTs work. Looks like some people are working on ones that are teeth driven, to reduce the loss from being free belt driven. Borderline magical stuff, all told. (Obviously, not magic magic. But very very impressive designs.)

Do all Toyotas do that? I'm pretty sure that my dad's Corolla will rev the engine when I press the gas if the engine is already running.

I'm also surprised for the first few minutes when I drive it how little "engine braking" it has (my habit is from riding a big motorbike).

The whole "pas pedal" becomes faster/slower (one pedal driving) is coming to an end. Its being banned as default in the world's largest EV market (and largest EV export country).

The EU2200i can sustain 15 amps. That charges most EVs at something like a few miles of range per hour. The biggest one that’s small enough for a frunk is the 3200i, which still only sustains 21.7 amps - plus, that’s from an L5-30R socket, so you’d need an adapter for the EV, and a custom chip to limit charging current below that, since the ones I’ve seen for that socket assume they can pull 24 amps.

Re: maintenance, small engines typically are pretty needy. That one wants an oil change, spark plug gap adjustment, and spark arrestor cleaning every 100 hours of use. The latter two are only usage-based, but the oil is time-based as well (6 months) since it oxidizes, and suffers from fuel dilution. Then there’s the fuel: god help you if you put ethanol gas into a small engine and let it sit for any period of time. It’s often difficult to find E0 fuel, and while there are external fuel tanks for generators that can hold quite a bit, they also tend to vent vapor in the heat (as does any tank, including a car’s), which is unpleasant when it’s in your frunk.

Finally, engines of all kinds really don’t like being left sitting for months on end unless prepared to do so. Generally you want to run them monthly, getting them up to operating temperature, putting a load on them for a bit to fully exercise all components.

I say all this because I have an EU2200i and dearly love it, but am also painfully aware of its limitations and needs. I got it when I lived in Texas because the power outages were getting to be absurd, and my house wasn’t plumbed for natural gas, so a whole-house was out of the question. The 2200i was plenty to power two fridges, a deep freezer, TV, fans, and my server rack. I got really good at quickly running extension cords (which is a whole other discussion on ensuring proper amperage ratings and calculating voltage drop, something most people ignore).

For a Honda 2.2kW to aid with range anxiety, you'd have to split range anxiety into two categories and I think it only addresses the second/lesser of the two.

Assume the car gets 4 miles per kWh delivered and the charging cycle is 90% efficient (measured from generator output). The 2.2kW generator can add 8 miles/hour of generator runtime (2.2 kW * 0.9 * 4 miles/kWh).

For range anxiety of the form "we're driving to a destination pretty far away and I'm not sure we can get there", that's not very helpful. For range anxiety of "I'm driving to a destination that's over half my range and then going to spend a full day [or overnight] there, but I'm not sure there will be working chargers available there", charging 8 mph times 8-10 hours is very helpful.

Worrying about being stuck in the boondocks without a charger is addressed by an 8 mph on-board charger, but I think that's the less common form of range anxiety.

The Chevy Volt range extender was 75kW; the i3's was 26.6kW. 2.2kW is literally an order of magnitude too small to replace those.

BMW tried that with the i3, it wasn't particularly popular. An engine, fuel system and a generator are all relatively complex additions compared to just putting the same cost and vehicle space into more batteries, and the public charging networks are definitely up to the task by now (having been EV-only for almost 5 years now).

The newer London black cabs do that

> The LEVC TX is powered by a full-electric hybrid drivetrain. It drives in full-electric mode all the time, but is recharged by an 81-horsepower (60 kW; 82 PS) Volvo-sourced 1.5-litre turbocharged three-cylinder petrol engine.

Diesel REX vans would be a MASSIVE hit if a company would just decide to start making them.

The #1 reason for (european) companies not buying full EV vans is range, they need to drive a LOT during the day.

REX would solve that with minimal emissions. And depending on the battery size, they could drive on full EV in city centres and only allow the REX to charge the battery during longer drives.

The BMW i3 REX is a fantastic car, if you can find one, buy it.

Range anxiety seems to go away after your first week of EV driving.

One 120V 2.2kW generator isn’t going do much at all. It’s really actually 1.8kW which is 15A at 120V.

You’d need to tow around a 7.2kW 240V for 30A at 240V (more likely a 14.4kW generator for 240V 60A).

Using the small Honda inverter generator (which is amazing for plenty of stuff!) is akin to covering your car in solar panels to get range extension, the math just doesn’t work out.

Maybe because people don't want to have oil changes, emission checks, exhaust gas etc. on their EV. If they really need a long range, they will probably just buy a combustion engine car.

Aha! https://store.motherearthnews.com/products/hybrid-car-bluepr...

No, the entire point of a series-parallel hybrid is that it can offer the advantage of a series hybrid.

The Toyota Prius powerchain has two motor generators, and can take part of the ICE power from one and transfer it electrically to the other, remapping the engine RPM into more efficient power bands at the same time. It has a mode that can do this even when no power is being used from the battery.

It’s kind of a best of both worlds. They can avoid the extra weight of a full series hybrid, because they don’t need a motor generator pair that handles the full engine power.

Actually, power bands remapping is essential for the Prius to operate.

There is no clutch, there is no neutral gear, there is no torque converter. The ICE is always connected directly to the wheels with a fixed gear ratio on a planetary gear set. (Which improves transmission efficiency over a automatic/CVT gearbox, and actually reduces maintenance costs)

One of the motor-generators is on the 3rd input of the planetary gear. For the ICE to idle (during warm up, or when you have the heater on), the motor-generator much be spinning backwards at the exact same speed so that the wheels stay stationary.

Power band remapping can also be used for reversing when the battery is empty.

Current Honda hybrids are like that. The only time the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is directly connected to the drive train is when the speed gets to above around 60MPH. The rest of the time the ICE is used to power a generator which then sends power to the electric motor and/or the battery pack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLUIExAnNcE has more info.

That's something I wish there had been more focus on, instead of focusing on massive heavy batteries, develop the hybrids further.

But series-parallel has the very same advantage - can keep the RPM in sweet spot.

They also use the electric motor(s) for braking, but instead of going into a battery it goes into a bank of resistors.

It has to be the same segment, which is a bit of a pain to manage. The amount of power being fed in is getting close to megawatts.

There’s been a few suggestions that drum brakes should make a come back, for EVs.

They’re enclosed so they don’t get dirty, the inner face of drum will rust less than discs, fade is not an issue thanks to regen braking, and before they get too hot and fade drums will brake harder than disks (thanks to a higher pad surface area). And they’re enclosed so they also keep the brake dust inside the drum, making it easier to dispose of safely.

Drums are heavier tho.

Many of the cars with regenerative braking already do apply the brakes once in a while to prevent them from rusting.

Also forget about that bit:

> They should add some “brake cleaning” mode to temporarily disable regenerative braking.

Some manufacturers do that (iirc tesla calls it burninshing, others will switch regen off completely if you switch to neutral or something).

I've read that Audi and Porsche will use regular brakes once or twice at the start of every drive instead of regen, I assume using electronic control to imitate the current state of regen braking.

> They should add some “brake cleaning” mode

Also known as breaking. You could just do that once in a while.

I wonder which vehicles that is - is that predominantly the non-pluggable Prius?

What car brand is it? I've read that Audi and Porsche do that.

Also is it only pedal braking? Or does it "fake" things out if you use one-pedal driving?

Always sketches me out using regen for a serious grade decent while laden or towing. I have a sneaking suspicion that one day it's gonna error out and disable itself because too much power and I'll be down to just normal brakes.

I love my bolt, but I wish it allowed you to choose a less aggressive setting when using the steering wheel paddle. My old leaf had that option.

I've been driving a Chevy Bolt for over 8 years now, and I regularly use the regen paddle. I drive in "L" mode, which engages partial regen when the accelerator is released. When I need more slowing, I pull the paddle, and that increases the aggressiveness of the regen. I only press the brake for quick stops, or to hold the car once it has stopped.

I also use the built in "hilltop reserve" feature, which limits charging to 90%. This ensures that there is always regen resistance, and therefore a consistent experience.

Can't speak to if it's common, but it was how I was taught and drove in California... so there was rarely any winter conditions to speak of.

I preferred downshifting VS braking, personally

It's gentle on the transmission and clutch if you rev match on the downshifts.

See the Ioniq 5 N. But those sounds are piped inside... not blasted to the neighbors...

Exactly. What people really hate are loud young people from lower class than them backgrounds. Civics with stupid exhausts are just an example implementation of that. They'll just find something else to hate if you remove that implementation.

Are you saying it's not ok to drive 90km/h in a zone where 120km/h is allowed?

80km/h is the usual maximum allowed speed for trucks, at least in Germany, so no idea how a car driving 90km/h is such a big problem. That's not a "stationary object" at all, far from it. You are even allowed to drive vehicles with a minimum speed of 60km/h on the Autobahn.

If a car driving 90km/h is the cause for a traffic jam there are definitely other factors at play. Not just in zones with a limit of 120km/h but everywhere even without limits.

> going 90 in 120 region of highway without any reason, presumably saving last bits of battery (that has at least some rationale, if they do it due to ie fear then they should not be driving or having license).

Was very concerned until I realized you were talking about kilometers and not miles.

Otherwise, I'd hope the average driver would firce themselves to drive slower than 120mph out of some sense of fear, or at least a sense of self-preservation.

> 90 in 120 region of highway

so just like any truck.

if you think it's a problem, you're the problem. sorry.

You see this on the 400 series in Ontario, Canada and it's not just Tesla drivers. Some people don't want to go that fast(speed kills) and others cannot. It's a non issue if they stay right as expected.

I think it's a hilarious example in how buyer demographics effect things. Every Tesla is a potential rocket ship if the driver wants it to be yet they're rarely if ever not driven circles around by laden work vans.

it'd tell you what speed to travel at if you want to get to where you want to go lol, chances are they're low and just trying to get to their destination

It's hard to share a cell phone. If there are opportunities to make them more environmentally friendly (longevity, production processes, better batteries, etc.) we should absolutely try to do those things.

EVs are better than ICE cars, but shared-use buses/trains/etc. are often even better. We can do more than one thing.

> feel free to go live in a dense cell block and eat bug juice if that is what floats your boat.

That this is considered a valid response to someone suggesting we need more mass transit is a sign that our discourse has fallen off a cliff. You can and should do better.

> I'm sure you feel the same way about cutting down on cell phones right

How many people die in cell phone accidents yearly where you live? How many have reduced lifespans due to the pollution of cell phones? And how many hours can be saved per year per human with good cell phone sharing? I would guess the number is 0 for all of those, but quite a bit higher for cars alternative transportation options.

If you feel personally offended by the mere idea that there might be alternatives to cars, and that at the scale of a human settlement, they're often better, you need to take a step back and consider why you identify yourself with cars so much. And if that doesn't help, consider that more people having alternatives means less cars on the roads, so more space for you to vroom vroom around and less people bothering you on the road!

> Ships are actually much more fuel efficient than trucks, by weight/volume.

Ships are indeed more efficient if you look at it on per mile comparison but distances are much bigger. Shipping things from one side of the planet to the other is not something too efficient imo. It's just makes sense if you look at economics and differences in price of labor, regulations and so on but these do have externalities that eventually cancel out the benefits.

I'm saying it's inefficient because of a combination of many things not only shipping. Also add to this the fact that your electricity in the US cames from fossil fuel and you'll see how clean your EV is !

MIT : https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-defini...

Quote : This intensive battery manufacturing means that building a new EV can produce around 80% more emissions than building a comparable gas-powered car

Show me anything else if you have ; just don't troll dude...

Some tyre compounds wear a lot faster than others (though often with better grip). I wonder if that's contributing.

The other thing is poor alignment (especially toe settings) which cause the tyres to fight each other constantly. It can be a very small difference, almost imperceptible but still accelerate the wear.

10k miles is very short for a tyre.

Often you can tell a lot from the tyre temperature after a drive: if they're getting very warm, it can indicate problems, e.g. if one axle has much warmer tyres than the other (hard to give an objective standard on that, though, so many factors)

Either you're lying about your driving habits, or there's something wrong with your car.

I've got a Model 3 Performance which came with the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires which are only warrantied for 30,000 miles. I had them for 5 years and 35,000 miles and they STILL had plenty of tread left. I had to replace them anyways because I hit a nasty pothole that caused the tread to separate.

I heard Kia Niro has the front wheel drive issue and the tires wear on the front very fast. So you should swap front wheels and rear wheels every year to get best wear result. I drive very poorly and fast, but usually mid-range tires last for at least 30k miles on different cars.

Are you driving fast(er than with a ICE vehicle) in corners? Since EVs have a very low center of mass, drivers tend to take corners a lot faster than they would in ICE vehicles which is very hard on the tires.

A friend got hit by this as well and since readjusting his driving style (read: not flying through corners for the fun of it) he gets more (but still not equal) miles on his EV's tires before he needs new ones.

I have the Hyundai Kona, which I'm pretty sure is just their version of the Nero (same 64kWh battery at least). I'm on my original tires after 44k miles.

The additional battery weight would be something under 250kg (having handled a few Leaf battery packs), and wikipedia says the Niro EV is about 1700kg

Perhaps do an advanced driving class? Assuming no mechanical issues the next place to look is your driving. 10k is way too low, something is not right.

I'm sorry but I've got two EVs and I'm not seeing anything like what you're reporting. On my first set of tires for a model S I got 60k miles which is longer than I usually like to run tires but they were still in good shape. My driving pattern is about 80% grandpa-mode and 20% speeding to loud music.

I assure you. If your EV tires are only lasting 10K miles you have one of the following cases:

- You are driving VERY aggressively

- Your car has an alignment issue or some sort of torque vectoring problem

- Your tires are absolute shit

On that topic, Norwegians have been reporting that the piles of snow at the sides of their roads are noticeable cleaner since EV adoption took off.

Guess what comes out of petrol and diesel exhaust? Guess what color brake dust is. I guarantee the EV is going to be a lot cleaner.

It's not like brake dust is white...

Sure, but your personal experience could very easily be on the higher end of the distribution. You simply CANT confirm something like that based on personal experience. Either your personal experience lines up with some statistical fact or it doesn’t, either way, without the proper statistical context it’s borderline useless.

That or just slow down. I swear 90% of the people that complain of tire wear drive oblivious and are flooring it after every stop. Even a Kia Beri which what the parent has, has more kick than a ICE.

> Perhaps other EV drivers can chime in but, if anything, I think I use my friction brakes less at highway speeds where, in general, you're not really supposed to do a lot of braking. I'd say, overall and regardless of speed, my friction brakes are really used only to bring the car to a complete stop or for emergency braking to avoid a potential accident.

Some people are very responsible with money - they have an emergency fund, contribute to their retirement fund, and don't carry a credit card balance.

Other people (who have a choice) spend to 0 every month, don't save, and have maxed out credit cards.

In the same way, some people drive very safely; they keep a responsible distance between them and the driver in front of them, and don't tend to speed much. I think this style of driving would naturally lead to what you say - less use of friction breaks in general, and especially at highway speeds.

And other people are constantly speeding, and tailgate the person in front of them when their path is blocked. For the people who drive this way, the greater acceleration of EVs just lets them drive that much more recklessly. Which ends up necessitating even more usage of friction brakes.

I'm one of the chill EV drivers too. but imagine the distribution over vehicles that are 30-75% heavier, and the range of drivers from chill to agro (leaning toward agro), and you can see the benefits and costs start to cancel out.

I still expect EVs to be a net improvement on brake dust. just not as massive as the study. maybe about 1/2 - 1/3 of the study's results

Same here. Got an EV before we got the proper 7KW charger installed in our house. We had an outdoor socket that the gardeners use for whatever and just have a "granny charger" hooked up to that which I think charges at perhaps 2KW (10A on a 240v UK plug).

We use perhaps 5% battery of our VW ID.3 on a typical day (school run, shops, visiting friends or whatever) so we just do an over-night top-up back to 80% maybe once a week when we get down to ~50%. Working surprisingly well - I am not sure I can be bothered to get the proper charger installed (which is annoying as I have already bought it and the cable for about £800 and its just sitting in my shed!)

None of the apartments I've lived at had a 120V outlet near my parking spot that I could use.

I'll second this. We got a Chevy Bolt a couple of years ago, and I assumed we'd need to install a 240 V EVSE, but it turns out that regular 120 V 12 A charging is totally fine for us. I think there's been one time in the 2.5 years we've had it when we had to go to a nearby fast charger because the battery was getting low.

Of course if you're commuting 2 hours every day, things will be different. But for us, it's been great.

Yeah I’m charging an EV (with a huge battery) at home on 120v and it’s fine 9 out of 10 days.

Certainly that's a factor — but, with quantity 300 parking spaces, it's not exactly the main attraction. Very approximately:

Assuming a 120V / 20A = 2400W circuit (more or less standard in a garage):

100 parking spots = 200A / 24000W; 300 parking spots = 600A / 72000W.

So a distribution line can carry 72kW readily enough — that seems to be about where they are anyways — but if it's carrying that load, it cannot carry any other load, which means that each high-capacity parking garage will need a dedicated line from the nearest substation is.

Then, that parking garage will need to distribute that current to 300 parking spot chargers. Even at 120V/20A, that's 300 new circuit taps; 300 wires, initially. You can use three-phase to reduce that to 100 wires @ 120/20A or equivalent each, which is a lot. Or you can reduce that to 3 wires @ 120V/200A or equivalent, at which point you now have the safety considerations of an outdoor distribution wire in a small enclosed fire-prone space, and you're facing the christmas light problem of "one blown bulb" versus one third of your garage.

Then you need to confront "the chargers need to support burst-mode" so that people can push a button to get a temporary fast-charge ignoring all other concerns — but also "the chargers need to default to trickle-mode", while also considering that trickle-mode should run faster when fewer cars are plugged in (or else tenants will take offense that the chargers aren't using provisioned and available capacity), and that Time-of-Day concerns should cap trickle-mode during peak so that the grid doesn't fail. And that electric vehicles are foreseen as a component of localized grid storage, so garages might need to support backfeeding from cars.

And this all has to be coordinated across three hundred chargers and who knows how many feeder circuits, between one three-phase and three-hundred one-phase, assuming that 72kW (120V/600A) is provisioned to trickle-charge the entire garage each evening at 15A per car max (have to leave some headroom for the burst needs, for momentary overdraw before a charger fuses out a defective vehicle, etc).

This is all doable, but it is logistically expensive, and I would estimate that cost at perhaps tens of millions of dollars at that scale. Doing this for my old 12-apartment complex would merely require 2.4kW of new power delivery, taps, and distribution under the pavement (there's no room for overhead poles to be introduced), without sinking the property into the riverbed it's built on, and without breaking the local emergency services grid that it's drawing from when the creek next door floods every few years.

Retrofit costs are estimated at $5000-$15000 per single parking spot (new buildings are wired more efficiently so halve that cost for anything built since the Model S came out). California at one point was offering a 30% subsidy on retrofits; so, for my example, 300 spots * $5000-$15000 = ~2-4 million dollars (napkin rounded) for a single apartment complex. At local 1-bedroom housing prices, that's around 1000 rent-months of capital investment with no future gain — and that's the most critical part here. The complex cannot recoup that investment through maintenance and usage fees, because those will have to be paid out in actual maintenance and kilowatt-hours — and tenants, in this economy, cannot afford to subsidize the buildout cost.

So until retrofits are either state-funded or state-mandated, landlords have little to no reason to invest their money into the future of electric cars, because they'll get pennies on the dollar at best from their investment. And, given their tendency to collude via RealPage, no one will be the first to build out a 100% EV charging garage because that will not only long-term devalue their other properties without increasing the short-term value of the one improved, but also will start a race to the bottom that they are already colluding to try and prevent.

Yes, trickle-charging is electrically feasible — it's compelling the profitless capital investment that is not.

That’s just not how it works. There might be electricity there, but only enough to charge one car at a time. Works for my home garage, but would not work for apartment complex.

How many chargers per hundred spots do his work or grocery store have?

Typical car density for my nearest three grocery stores is 25-100 vehicles fluctuating during three or four peak hours. The highest number of chargers at any of those stores is 8, followed by 2 and 0; of those, 8 have been out of service for the past 60 days because someone is playing negotiation hardball with the charging services provider.

When the chargers were working, they were nearly at capacity for the entire day, at current (low) levels of electric car fraction of the population; there's no way they're prepared to cope with a full conversion, at which point the same power density and distribution problem that impacts multifamily parking garages instead (or as well!) affects grocery stores.

Demand induces higher prices which induces supply. So yes this is 100% solvable by normal market forces, but that doesn't change the fact that it would be very expensive for everyone involved.

> Not as much as gas chargers

In the UK at least, there are more EV chargers than gas/petrol stations: https://www.vertumotors.com/news/there-are-more-charging-poi...

Popularity has costs, some are waiting in line for 45 minutes to use a fast charger.

EV is not for everyone, but those Rivian are nice though. =3

There's no garage, and the only driveway-facing outlet is at the front door - opposite where my parking spot is allocated (an extension cord would have to go under/through the landlord's cars.) I have to drive 60km to work every day.

Only laws (accommodate EVs and/or WFH) or spending time sitting at a gas station will help me here. No landlord is interested in accommodating an EV unless it's a net benefit to them (and thus a net negative to me, who already spends 40% income just to have a place to work.)

Your Tesla has an iPad? Or you're saying someone sitting in a car can play on an iPad if they have one?

Everytime I fill my truck up, I’m at the gas station thinking “man, I wish I could just hang out here for two hours!!”

If you own a house, generally you can do things like install charging points (also backup batteries, solar panels, better insulation, all kinds of fun things) that renters can't.

I'm sure there are some homeowners who can't - maybe listed buildings, or these weird HOA rules I hear about from Americans.

I mean even campfires and smoking in public have negative externalities which cause cancer. The marginal cost of each is tiny and probably hard to price, but it has a price. Adding this price would slightly offset the cost but more importantly act as a disincentive for buying a polluting vehicle.

On the other hand China didn't ban petrol but has heavy incentives for electric and is now at about 50% EVs, similarly Norway is at about 90%. Not exactly pricing the externalities but it kind of works. Like in China I think if you want a vehicle you need a permit and can get one straight away for EVs but have to wait 8 years for petrol or something like that.

> Just look at how many games are played with carbon "credits", and how little real impact they've had.

Credits are indeed a scam but they are not a mandatory component of a carbon externality tax.

Isn't that exactly how carbon credits are supposed to work?

(To be clear I quite happen to like EVs)

And those people who would lose money are the EV manufacturers. AFAIK in the US EV manufacturers are barely making money even with gov’t subsidies (baring Tesla). They can’t charge what would be necessary without subsidies because most people simply wouldn’t want or couldn’t afford such a product at that price point.

Ah yes. Sorry I read that comment and replied with mine soon after waking. My brain wasn’t fully on yet :)

exactly!

automatic transmissions engine brake as well. most drivers don't use it, a shame. I can smell the ozone on long descents. if they downshifted their automatic, hardly any braking would be needed would be needed.