Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tons of tire fragments. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food. Researchers in South China recently found tire-derived chemicals in most human urine samples.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Not only that, but electric cars are substantially heavier than their ICE-powered equivalents, meaning both tires and roads wear out more quickly. Plus, there’s a ton of pollution and other environmental damage caused by battery production that at least partly offsets the lack of tailpipe emissions.
As loathe as I am to admit, because I’m a car enthusiast and I enjoy driving, cars cannot be the default mode of transportation everywhere indefinitely; they will always need to exist, but should mostly be for small centres with no capacity to implement transit infrastructure and last mile type of things.
The battery production pollution is an issue, however one thing to keep in mind is that once the minerals are out of the ground they can be recycled, unlike drilling for oil. When looked at on a long timeline the battery for an electric vehicle is a lot cleaner than everything needed to power an ICE vehicle.
That said, there’s always room for improvement and we should never get complacent. But we don’t avoid innovation just because it isn’t perfect.
Is that true about the tires though? Electric car tires are designed to be substantially tougher because of the increase in weight, do they actually shed more material?
You have answered your own question. They are built to be tougher, by using more material.
They still shed a proportional amount of material for the vehicle weight.
Not only that but if they get damaged due to trauma prior to end-of-life (such as a puncture of pothole damage) that is a lot more material that is going to landfill (or tyre “recycling” in countries that have it).
You can’t really engineer away the need for friction, and if there’s friction there is going to be wear.
If EV tires were much better than normal tires with the same grip levels and somehow magically less wear, all tires would adopt that technology.
Not that I’m a materials scientist, but EV tires don’t seem much different than other “economy” tires, other than a higher load rating.
There is actually a lot of small details that make EV tires different than regular tires. Nothing that helps with particle emissions, though:
https://youtu.be/8pM9o2Ifcro
All the EVs I see sold around where I live (Norway) come with the same eco tires as ICE cars. The heavier ones like a Tesla Model X just comes with the same tires rated for higher load. (And the extra foam inside for sound dampening, but that’s an option for most tires) The Model X also happens to be delivered with the same tire they put on the very much not EV Ford Explorer.
I know nothing about the tires on the Teslas or the non EV ford explorer, or even what tires are fitted in Norway. But the Hyundai Ioniq 5 I bought in Denmark last year came fitted with Michelin Primacy 4 tires, which are indeed EV tires.
What makes it EV and not just an eco tire? On Michelins website (Norwegian one) and various tire shop websites it just, an eco tire.
The staggered tread pattern, the stiffer rubber, the profile of the tire, and the sound dampening foam inside the tire. There’s nothing stopping you from mounting these on regular ICE cars though.
Here’s a video explaining more about EV tires:
https://youtu.be/8pM9o2Ifcro
There’s no such thing as an “electric car tire.” They just use standard passenger vehicle tires rated for the appropriate weight class.
“Tougher” just means they handle more weight by holding higher air pressure, so they’ll have more layers of steel, kevlar, canvas, etc. The materials that makes contact with the road still wear the same.
There is in fact such a thing as an “electric car tire”.
Fundamentally you are correct that they are in essence just tires rated for the weight class, but there’s more to it than just that.
Electric car tires are usually made with a stiffer rubber than comparable combustion cars, this is mostly to handle the additional weight, but they also stagger the tread pattern, and some have foam inside them, both to improve the noise and acoustics of them. Something that wasn’t a problem when there were a noisy combustion engine running. But in an electric car you don’t have the engine noise, and therefore hear a lot more of the wheel noise.
None of this help with the particle emissions, but there is in fact such a thing as an electric car tire.
Engineering Explained has a great video if you are curious: https://youtu.be/8pM9o2Ifcro
They use the same materials, they’re usually just thicker. If you get one of those heavy boat luxury cars you’ll put the same tires on them. They shed material at a faster rate, but they have more material to compensate.
This should be the definition of ‘letting perfect be the enemy of good’ Please stop using false oil lobby talking points to attack the transition to electric cars. Electric cars are an order of magnitude better for the environment than petrol/diesel, stop fighting big oils battle for them. Now let’s talk about how we can reduce road journeys through public transport, and reduce environmental impact of tires.
It’s not just tailpipe emissions, though - there’s an entire supply chain of extraction, shipping, refining, delivery that’s needed to get fuel to your local gas station.
The fossil fuel industry always wants to compare the total environmental damage of an EV with just what comes out of the tailpipe of an internal combustion vehicle. Don’t fall for it.