Having lived next to a semi-main street through a smallish California coastal city without much rain it is pretty eye opening how much black dirt and junk just coat everything next to the road.
Walk down the street and touch a bush or any plant leaf and get a nice black hand in the process. The plants are covered, parked cars get covered and the inside of my apartment was covered.
It wasn’t until I moved out that I saw the extent of the problem. I only lived there a few years but every surface of my apartment had a coating of the same black dust. I’m now very worried my short time there considerably affected my health.
I once lived in a building between a very busy railway line (mixture of electric and diesel trains, passengers and freight) and an average road (cars and one bus route).
The windows facing the railway would get coated in a black grit. Slightly oily particles, just sticky enough to stick to the glass.
The windows facing the road would get coated in a dark brown slime.
According to the air quality maps of the city, the road is slightly more polluting than the railway, although the railway is carrying 100,000 passengers a day.
> Having lived next to a semi-main street through a smallish California coastal city without much rain it is pretty eye opening how much black dirt and junk just coat everything next to the road.
One day I made the mistake of leaning against the wall in a TTC subway station while in a white shirt. I didn't realize how much oil, brake dust, and other mechanical grime there was until that moment.
I think some research group did measurements of the AQI in the TTC stations and found the average air quality in the winter was actually comparable with the smog in LA or Beijing.
and people still look at me funny when I wear a mask in there
I wonder what platform doors will do: the stations depend on piston effect for ventilation, but walling off the tube from the station might keep it more in the tube?
EVs can be pretty bad for tire wear, not just due to vehicle weight, but the amount of torque available (and consistently available) that leaves most ICE vehicles in the dust.
Emissions standards have been deleted. Finally. I'm convinced they were going to greatly increase the environmental issues. After having improved emissions for decades they had no where else to improve and started building really complex engines with extreme maintenance requirements and very low reliability compared to the late 1990s. Modern trucks are throw aways compared to mid-1990s Ford and late 1990s GM. Nissan went out of business and Toyota isn't much of a player for towing capacity and value. Stellantis products have been a joke for years except for maybe the Charger and Wrangler for a time. Lots of high dollar junk being foisted on consumers right now.
I don't quite understand... you're saying it's a good thing if car manufacturers are allowed to pollute as much as they want in a race to the bottom? You prefer reliability in your vehicles over your children's health?
The comment you replied to mentioned EV tire wear, not brake dust. The heavy weight of EVs due to the batteries is always going to cause more tire pollution.
E.g., Ford F-150 Ford Lightning has a curb weight of up to 6,500 lbs, which compares to the regular F-150's curb weight that ranges from anywhere between 4,021 lbs and 5,014 lbs. The Rivian R1T is 7,148 lbs.
Well yes, but even the Renault Zoe at 3,236lbs is much heavier than the Renault Clio (2,161–2,361lbs) it is based on.
Heavier weight alone however doesn't necessarily cause more tire wear though. The Toyota Prius came with hard-compound tires (good for low fuel consumption and high mileage, not for racing).
FWIW, I took my EV in for a maintenance interval (waste of money BTW - this thing is indestructable), and the mechanic remarked that the brakes looked new. It's 1.5 years old, with factory brakes.
Single-pedal mode does the rest. Not only does this make the car easier to drive, but you can hit a sweet spot where you never really use the brakes.
Also regenerative breaking exerts force which leads to particle emissions from the tires. Breaking earlier and slower also helps when you otherwise would have stayed in the range where you can break regeneratively.
They do. But if you brake too agressively, they switch to friction brakes. It pays off to avoid this: more mileage, marginally lower charging expense, lower cost on brake maintenance and fewer complaints from passengers.
Apparently you need to use the friction brakes now and then so they don’t degrade early, which could be a safety issue. I think as long as you’re using the car frequently it’s incredibly unlikely to be a problem though.
Not sure about all EVs and hybrids, but for Prius the friction brakes were used below a given speed as then regeneration becomes inefficient (as does stopping power). If you pay close attention, you might notice the transition.
Yup. I only use my car infrequently and it sits there with the handbrake on, when I do take it out often the rotors have rusted just slightly, meaning I get a "thunk thunk thunk" until I brake hard a couple times.
I think it's fine, in an EV just give your physical brakes a good test/try out when starting a journey in the car, especially if it has been sat for a while.
"It pays off to avoid this: more mileage, marginally lower charging expense, lower cost on brake maintenance and fewer complaints from passengers."
Regen braking wears the hell out of your battery. That few hundred you saved on brake changes just cost you a tens of thousands of dollars on a premature battery replacement.
It's an added charge cycle on the battery. A guy in San Diego does full EIS and more for EV cells. His data shows multiple shorter recharge cycles wear the battery down faster, no matter what range you try restricting the recharging to. Same data shows that the batteries are better when conditioned harder on their first charge, gaining much better cycle performance and count, at a minimal sacrifice of capacity.
And this exact same thing coincides DIRECTLY with my lithium-powered portable lighting, so I'm pretty up-to-date on very top-level research, because I hire this same person.
His name is Luke. You'll see him all over the globe doing lithium EV research and testing.
A charge cycle is a charge cycle, regardless. The wear and tear that occurs during is cumulative and doesn't just magically disappear when restricted to a certain level of battery depletion.
No experience with EVs, but Toyota hybrids use regenerative braking a lot. They also teach me to accelerate gently. Quite the opposite of Tesla with their "ludicrous mode" encouraging extreme acceleration. But I have no idea how well those brake.
I doubt that this is really the case (brake lights will be connected to brake pedal, regardless of mode).
For motorcycles (not using regenerative braking, but engine braking which is quite effective there) this however is a problem. Every once in a while I woke a sleepy tailgater with that. Fortunately all sleepy tailgaters did wake up in time.
Leaf would've been decent if not battery health issue and crazy charging port. Cleary Nissan doesn't want it so succeed. I nearly bought one as my spare EV for short trips nearby (they can be had for 1.5k NZD here). But minivan is just more useful for short trips, and doesn't break a bank either.
Ionizers make small particles plate-out on surfaces instead of floating in the air. It makes the air itself cleaner to breathe etc, but I suppose it could make surfaces dirtier than they otherwise would be with these especially fine particles. Usually an air purifier with ionizer will have the ionization at the filter outlet, so only the very smallest particles are affected by this process.
But if the ionizer can make particles stick to surfaces, wouldn't that mean it can also make them stick to the lungs? Because, in that case it's not so clear it's a win is it?
The particles affected by the ionizer are already floating in the air that is being inhaled into the lungs. For the sake of this discussion (i.e. disregarding accidental generation of ozone), wouldn't it be better if those particles are taken out of the air, stuck to surfaces, so they're no longer being inhaled?
the particles stick via static electricity, which doesn't work well on wet surfaces like your lungs. the bigger issue is that ionizers can mix with VOCs from cleaning products and generate ozone and formaldehyde as byproducts - i suspect this combination made me really sick at one point because im allergic to formaldehyde
I used to live on a major three lane one direction artery in the city and was right at the intersection so cars constantly braking and idling. So much black dust on everything.
I used to joke someday I was going to be diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and the Doctor would ask me how many packs a day I smoked and I'd tell him none and he wouldn't believe me.
Walk down the street and touch a bush or any plant leaf and get a nice black hand in the process. The plants are covered, parked cars get covered and the inside of my apartment was covered.
It wasn’t until I moved out that I saw the extent of the problem. I only lived there a few years but every surface of my apartment had a coating of the same black dust. I’m now very worried my short time there considerably affected my health.