That’s not cleaning, it’s polluting less
My thoughts exactly. The title is almost comically misleading. But I was impressed when I saw that they dedicated an entire section of their article to actually explain that shifting to other modes of transport is several times more effective than fleet electrification.
Isn’t there often increased tire wear particles, though? EDIT: Haha, I guess they mention that although that’s somewhat true it’s not as bad as brake dust.
i think that comes from being heavier but I’m not 100% sure.
Which is something that can be fixed by simply making smaller vehicles
What do you mean? I need my 5 ton off-road monster truck to get the kids to school and pick up some groceries!
Plug-in hybrids are ideal. They get the cleanliness and efficiency of regen breaking, the efficiency of an electric motor, with the much smaller footprint of a battery 15% the weight of an ev battery. They effectively suppress range anxiety while still heavily incentivizing electricity use instead of gasoline. And when they do run on gasoline in exceptional circumstances, they are running more efficiently than conventional gas cars.
Except the circumstances in which they run on gasoline are not that exceptional: https://theicct.org/publication/real-world-phev-use-jun22/ And the lower weight of the battery is partially offset by needing an additional drive train, a transmission with multiple gears (purely electric cars usually have fixed transmission) and other smaller parts required for the combustion engine. These also increase the required maintenance a lot (e.g. requiring oil changes).
Here in Germany you get a used PHEV (2 years old) with unused and wrapped charging cable. They were never charged and never drove electric. Why? Because our politicians thought exactly like you that PHEVs are awesome, so they allowed financial benefits for them. They are not awesome. You have two power trains, are carrying an unused gasoline engine when driving electric and an unused battery pack when driving with gasoline. You do need oil changes (which you don’t need with BEVs) and other parts of the engine need replacement. And to top it off, PHEVs are mostly huge cars. In my opinion, PHEVs combine the worst parts of both technologies.
A lot of these arguments are not logical.
Yes you can have large PHEVs, but the trend for bigger stupider cars is independent of power source. You can get a PHEV Renault Clio and it’s 20% lighter than the smaller electric Renault 5. And uses 80% less precious minerals because you have a smaller battery.
The gas engine needs maintenance of course, but you do use it much less than the electric motor, requiring much less maintenance than a normal car.
The fact that people buy PHEVs for the tax incentives and use them as gas vehicles is stupid and annoying, but that’s not a fault in the technology itself.
So good rarely having to use the brakes with my nussan leaf.
Be careful though. I also barely used the brakes with my Renault Zoe. Until the complete braking system had to be replaced due to not being used. Make a hard brake once in a while (and while it’s safe for you and other drivers around you).
tires might need rethought though
Okay here‘s my business idea: Tires but metal! Those metal wheels then drive on metal bars to transport groups of pods. Think of a network of rails that passengers can use to easily travel from one place to another. It‘s a closed system that barely interrupts other types of traffic and can even drastically reduce conjunctions by being very space efficient. All electric and much safer than cars too! Did I mention they can go much faster than cars on longer routes? You can even enjoy entertainment or get some work done while you travel!
I’m not sure if you’re referring to trains/trams or genuinely suggesting that there could be a rail-based system for individual traffic (i.e., people use individual pods without restrictions on start/stop location or time). The latter seems genuinely utopian to me if it can be made to work.
It‘s trains. I‘m talking about an electrified rail network that we absolutely need to make the switch to a mostly green economy. I don‘t think we can ever do it if we keep clinging to car infrastructure.
