Electric Cars Are Not the Answer To Air Pollution, Says Top UK Adviser (theguardian.com) 296
Cars must be driven out of cities to tackle the UK's air pollution crisis, not just replaced with electric vehicles, according to the UK government's top adviser. From a report: Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit. Toxic air causes 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK, and the environment secretary, Michael Gove, recently announced that the sale of new diesel and petrol cars will be banned from 2040, with only electric vehicles available after that. But faced with rising anger from some motorists, the plan made the use of charges to deter dirty diesel cars from polluted areas a measure of last resort only. Kelly's intervention heightens the government's dilemma between protecting public health and avoiding politically difficult charges or bans on urban motorists. "The government's plan does not go nearly far enough," said Kelly, professor of environmental health at King's College London and chair of the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, official expert advisers to the government. "Our cities need fewer cars, not just cleaner cars."
Not THE answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not THE answer (Score:5, Interesting)
At least with EVs, we can figure out what to use for electricity. If there is a new fusion development, it can be used and immediately change the CO2 profile across large areas. Similar if thorium reactors, or even Gen IV reactors become the norm. With IC engines, we have to replace them individually.
The trick is that we can keep improving. There is no single magic bullet, but if we replace a coal base plant with solar + energy storage, it helps things a little bit. Similar with adding wind capacity, instead of having to add a biomass plant.
Re:Not THE answer (Score:4, Insightful)
The other thing with EVs (and hybrids) is that they don't generate as much brake dust as regular cars, because they use regenerative braking much of the time.
In addition, the thing about brake dust sounds ridiculous to me. Modern brake pads don't even have asbestos in them, and the total volume is rather small (go look at some yourself, I'm sure the guy in Autozone will be happy to show you some). Those pads last a minimum of 30k miles, probably at least 50k up to 100k. Considering how much air your engine is ingesting and expelling during that much time, that volume of brake dust is minuscule. Same with tires. The problem with cars is the exhaust emissions; brake dust probably isn't healthy to breathe in in large quantities, but that's a far far lower concern than engine emissions, so much lower it's really laughable to consider it while we still have hundreds of millions of cars burning gas and diesel and spewing out noxious emissions from that.
We can certainly use better public transit, and I've been harping on SkyTran for years now but everyone tells me I'm crazy and that we need to stick with cars. Honestly, at this point I'm just hoping for a planet-killer asteroid to put us all out of our misery because we're clearly too stupid as a species to live.
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Someone did a study of the dust from tyres, and the amounts that EVs put out was quite high. The added weight of the EVs from the batteries resulted in greater dust from the tyres.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... [sciencedirect.com]
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It is more than you think. I have disc brakes on all of my bicycles and I service them myself. There is always a lot of brake dust mixed with grease on the brake calipers and on the lower parts of the fork.
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Brake dust and tire dust is particulate matter, not gas. Particulate matter doesn't stay in the atmosphere, it settles to the ground quickly.
Do you have any scientific basis to say that brake dust is actually a serious pollutant anywhere near the NOx and other such emissions from burning gas and diesel?
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Thorium and fusion will still be hurdled by opposition set up by the anti-nuclear crowd.
The main hurdle for nukes is not protesters, but cheap shale gas and the falling cost of wind power. Even a totally safe reactor is not going to be built if it makes no economic sense.
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Even with a coal or natural gas plant, it is still more efficient to use EVs. With one large plant and may EVs, the creators of the plant can get a relatively high efficiency, such as 45%. Gasoline engines are closer to 20% efficient, and it is easier to scrub pollutants from one large exhaust than a million small exhausts.
There is a fault in this logic. Efficiency does not necessarily equate to pollution if you are comparing different sources. So one needs to be careful. For example (these are just numbers to make a point, not real numbers) If 1MWH of coal productions produces 10 times the pollution that 1MWH of gas being does, then EVs being overall 40% more efficient doesn't result in less pollution. Less energy, yes, but less pollution? I don't know the real numbers so I'm not saying EVs pollute more, I am simply pointing
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Looks like we need to address that COWS [independent.co.uk] are the largest source of pollution out there, not cars.
Hmm..so, if we give up our pets, and quit eating meat...we'll all save the planet?
We might have a less polluted planet, but it sure doesn't sound much like a fun life.
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Hmm..so, if we give up our pets, and quit eating meat...we'll all save the planet?
We might have a less polluted planet, but it sure doesn't sound much like a fun life.
Well, people probably should give up their pets. It's pretty sad how many humans are suffering for lack of attention because people are foregoing human contact to spend time with their little poopsikins, bred for servitude.
We really don't have to give up meat, but we do have to give up unsustainable meat. There is plenty of sustainable meat out there, though. For example, while cows are responsible for basically all the emissions from meat, the world's most popular meat is actually goat. Goats eat things wh
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Pigs and chickens can be raised on scraps and don't require special facilities, so they can be raised with virtually zero impact.
Have you ever been around a pig farm? If you have, "virtually zero impact" is not something that you would claim.
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Have you ever been around a pig farm? If you have, "virtually zero impact" is not something that you would claim.
I said they can be, I didn't say that the way most of our pork is raised is low impact. However, there are ways to mitigate the impact even of that kind of animal husbandry. For example, the shit can be pumped into bags instead of just ponds. The bags produce methane, and tapping it and burning it for energy (or ideally, feeding it into a fuel cell) is much cleaner than simply letting it ripen in a pond. It also "cooks" it into compost much faster, and turns it from biohazardous waste into valuable soil. Th
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Yeah....riiiight.
Me? I'd rather stick as close to what natures provides as far as foodstuffs.
I like to eat my veggies/fruit from the ground, and my meat that eats veggies and such from the ground.
Nature had it right in the first place, IMHO.
Re: Not THE answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Your standards for "evidence" is the problem. CO2 levels are at record highs, average global temperature is at record highs, and the vast majority of scientists have validated this fact in decades of peer reviewed research. If there was a solid scientific case that CO2 was not a real problem, there is no shortage of financial rewards awaiting that research. The problem is not a lack of evidence. It's denial based on ideological rejection of proposed mitigations. Rather than trying to wish it away, come up w
Re: Not THE answer (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll be happy to listen to what you have to say
No you won't. There is ample amount of evidence and has been for years and what could get posted here makes no difference. You choose to ignore it then start arguments that will go nowhere.
Troll elsewhere.
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But we want one simple solution to the problem.
Cars are not even the #1 polluter power plants and factories are. However Cars are a purchase that we can choose to make. So if you get an electric car you get the feel good, that you are environmental friendly. Vs that Jerk with the Pickup truck.
However the problem is far more complex. That guy with the Pickup truck may be actually doing a lot of travel with a lot of moving of a load, so per pound he may be more fuel efficient.
I remember an advertisement for
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You're even being generous to this idiotic complaint.
UK: Electric cars don't solve the problem because we still have brake and tire dust!"
Me: Great! Easy problem, we ban all cars. Ok how do we get around?
UK: Buses!
Me: Ummm, ok, do busses have tires or brakes? Yes? Try again.
UK: Subways!
Me: And Subways don't have brake pads?
UK: Boats?
Me: Great, we'll just dig and install canals everywhere.
EVs don't solve the problem but *every* means of transportation on land has brake pads except for maglev vehicles. And
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According to a new study from the University of Surrey, Londonâ(TM)s Tube riders experience worse air than those who travel by car. In the worst cases, particulate levels in the subway system can be as much as eight times higher than those experienced by drivers. The pollution caused by motor vehicles may be a menace to health, but when it comes to exposure and potential health effects, it seems youâ(TM)re worse off underground.
e.g. https://www.citylab.com/transp... [citylab.com]
Re: Not THE answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Not THE answer (Score:5, Insightful)
The article isn't even complaining about CO2 or global warming... it's talking about real pollution.
TFA is written by someone that doesn't even understand how electric vehicles work. EVs emit very little dust from brake pads, because they use regenerative braking (running the engine backwards to recharge the battery) and use the brake pads for only the last 10% of deceleration. Since energy is proportional to the square of the velocity, this last 10% of velocity is only 1% of the energy. Brake pads on EVs have so little wear that they last the life of the car.
Tire/Tyre wear is a concern because EVs have much higher starting torque. Tesla owner often report accelerated tire wear. But this is something that could be mostly solved in software, by controlling the torque. This would likely be unpopular.
Anyway, I am sceptical about whether "tire dust" is really a significant problem compared to tailpipe emissions. The sounds like silly alarmism to me, and makes me wonder if someone with an ulterior agenda is pushing this FUD.
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I'm still most worried about when we get really fully automated cars - the amount of mileage is going to skyrocket.
It seems to me the opposite is true. Many round-trips to pickup/dropoff something/someone can be replaced with a one-way trip by an automated vehicle. Trip-pooling will be easier, so instead of 5 people in my neighborhood each making a round-trip to the grocery store, a single automated delivery vehicle can make one trip with 5 stops.
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There is an upper limit to the volume of vehicles that a city can handle
That number is going up. The bottleneck is cars queueing at intersections, but existing tech can greatly improve throughput by automating the acceleration and minimizing the distance between cars, so many more cars can pass through an intersection during each light change. China is making big progress on this, including a system to feed traffic light timing information directly to cars so they can brake and accelerate more intelligently. Self-driving cars will also eliminate a lot of street parking, free
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Assuming 4 or 5 brake pads over 7 years (new brake pad every 20k to 40k miles) causes serious pollution? I really doubt it... but if true just get a device to capture brake pad dust and dispose it. No need to eliminate cars.
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Won't electric cars use mostly regenerative braking in cities, making this point moot?
Re: Not THE answer (Score:4, Informative)
Won't electric cars use mostly regenerative braking in cities, making this point moot?
I have been driving a hybrid mini-SUV since 2008 and have 120,000 miles on it. I replaced the disc pads once and they were only 20% worn. (I wouldn't have replaced them at all but I was getting a package service deal.)
I would expect an electric car to have about the same brake wear.
Ok. Get rid of cars... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll just get a little red wagon and have my dogs and cats pull me.
Oh wait...
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Automobiles were touted at the environmental improvement to the horse and carriage. And they were right. However the usage of Gasoline Automobiles have far exceeded the usage of horse so what was a positive environmental trade-off has grown to become a problem, that needs a new solution. And the new solution that we come up with will probably have an other problem down the line that will need an other solution for.
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Hm....nah, that just isn't going to work, just for groceries alone.
Not sure how with a train/bus/streetcar I'm going to manage to get my supplies just for this weekend:
1. 2 large bags of ice and case or two of beer for the ice chest.
2. I whole brisket, about 12lbs for the smoker.
3. A load of logs for the smoker, I lately buy bags from Academy Sports, hickory and mesquite blend...VERY heavy.
And that is just for the fun weekend stuff....that doesn't include my gr
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My wife and I do it. Trader Joe's is about 3 miles from home, and on my bicycle I can fit about 40 pounds of groceries in my backpack. Perishables go day 1 and non-perishables day 2. When I get home this afternoon, I will walk the ~0.6 miles to "down town", grab a beer with the wife and friends, run across the street to the grocery store and pick up heavier things like Ice, throw them in the backpack, and walk home with them.
It does help that TJ's is close to my office, as I only have to go over there on
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You don't need a car for most of that. You need an electric cargo bike. Possibly an enclosed electric cargo bike. You might say, "well isn't that just a 2 wheel electric car?" and you're certainly right from a certain point of view. But the more important point of view is noting that the 50-70 lb (maybe 150-200 for an enclosed one) bike is hauling 2-300 lbs of load (you, ice, wood, beef), rather than 3000+ lbs of car hauling 2-300 lbs of load.
As electric cars take over, there's going to be some interesting
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Well, be that as it may...it would be inhuman to suggest I now have to forgo my low slow smoked BBQ.
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According to earlier /. report, dogs and cats are causing climate change.
Not my dogs. They are rather large and do eat a lot. But I offset that by feeding them humans. That way no pollution is created by farming meat for them, and they help decrease the population as well as removing a source of energy use and CO2 production. I guess it may be a drag on the economy though. I suppose I could offset that by importing people from other countries, but then it would increase the CO2 production to get them here.
Regenerative braking (Score:2, Insightful)
So the fight of gas vs electric is trying to find new ground. Interesting. Some points
a) regenerative braking does not put wear on brake shoes
b) smart cars can drive better to reduce tire wear
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Do you expect informed opinion from someone after the lobbyists have paid them to express a contrary opinion? Seriously?
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It's not just the brakes. He also mentioned something caled "tyres", whatever those are.
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They're what you put on hubs to make wheels in Britain.
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There is also the fact that an EV uses zero energy (well, except for the climate control system, radio, and electronics) when stopped. An IC vehicle still burns fuel. This in itself is a major fuel saver.
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There is also the fact that an EV uses zero energy (well, except for the climate control system, radio, and electronics) when stopped. An IC vehicle still burns fuel. This in itself is a major fuel saver.
Maybe 5%, probably less, in typical driving cycles. But many gas cars these days have "start-stop" technology, where they actually stop the engine when the car is stopped at a light. Also, hybrids like the Prius don't run the engine when stopped.
I think it'd be really interesting to see a study that exami
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Maybe 5%, probably less, in typical driving cycles.
You don't do a lot of driving in major cities, do you?
=Smidge=
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It's also worth pointing out that the biggest concern with tyre particles comes from inhalation. Thankfully, tyre particles are much heavier than air, so they tend to fall to the ground almost immediately (i.e. within a few dozen yards). While you can measure their presence on the ground near major roads, particles on the ground are of essentially no concern from what I understand, though I'll admit I may be mistaken, so if someone has contradictory information, I'd welcome the correction.
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I'll second this. The brake pads on my Fit EV never showed significant wear.
This probably depends a bit on the aggressiveness of the regen system (some cars have more than others) and what mode the driver uses - some drivers prefer the feeling of an automatic transmission, i.e. coasting rather than braking when you take your foot off the accelerator.
With the Fit EV, you typically would only use the friction brakes at 1 or 2 mph, which I doubt generates significant brake dust.
My Subaru STi, on the other hand
Apparently has never heard of regenerative braking (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, tire-dust is still there, but braking is done regeneratively in any sane electrical car design and conventional, particle-generating brakes are only there for emergencies.
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Well, actually, it is usually not more than 50% of braking. Varies by speed, but for 2wd cars it stays pretty low because the car is designed to brake in a balanced way to maximize control of the vehicle.
In the future, of course, it might be that all cars have a small auxiliary generator for braking. If they're actually worried about tire dust, that would happen, but of course they're actually just saying stupid shit like that as a way to try to justify continuing to use IC engines.
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Based on what I've been reading Tesla currently only puts regenerative brakes in the rear. Since most of your brake loading is on the front wheels, I doubt this reduces pad wear by very much. I've also read they come equipped with Brembo brakes which require higher end pads that usually last longer with better performance. The science says optimally a 4-wheel braking system can only recover 40% of the energy anyway so you'll always need a mechanical system that will wear.
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You must read wiered science books.
Regenerative braking can recover close to 100% of the energy.
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Regenerative braking can recover close to 100% of the energy.
That depends on how you define close. You can get about 95% out of the motor (best case) and then you can get maybe 90% of that into the battery (best case) but you are often not dealing with the best case.
It's still more than significant, and there's no good reason not to do it. And soon basically every car is going to be a mild hybrid, and will have regen.
Re:Apparently has never heard of regenerative brak (Score:5, Interesting)
"can" and "does" are two different things.
Take the example of the Nissan Leaf. It can recover approximately 80% of the energy under regenerative braking, but, it has a hard limit of 30kW of regenerative braking. If you brake sufficiently hard that it puts out more than 30kW, then the car is going to use the conventional brakes as well as regeneration.
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Regenerative braking can recover close to 100% of the energy.
True. But even if some of the energy is lost as heat, none of it creates any brake dust.
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You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Regenerative braking is just using the car's motor in reverse to generate electricity. A normal Tesla's motor is in the rear, driving the rear wheels. The newest "P90D" dual-motor Teslas and Model Xs have motors driving all 4 wheels.
High-end brake pads usually generate *more* dust, not less. That's how they perform better.
The science says optimally a 4-wheel braking system can only recover 40% of the energy
Where the hell did you read this garbage? T
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Theoretically friction doesn't exist. Why do people use perfect, simple models to describe the real world? Even Tesla admits directly that the rear regenerative braking has a safety mechanism to regulate the amount of braking because it causes the rear end to become unstable. Yes, I'm sure in a sealed factory box with no wind or load you can get 100% return. On a road, in weather, with humans at the wheel... yeah the 40% number actually seems pretty high.
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The science says optimally a 4-wheel braking system can only recover 40% of the energy anyway so you'll always need a mechanical system that will wear.
The efficiency of the regenerative braking is irrelevant for whether or not you'll need mechanical systems. The need comes from the possibility that you may need to brake faster than the regenerative braking system is capable of slowing the car down.
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Based on what I've been reading Tesla currently only puts regenerative brakes in the rear. Since most of your brake loading is on the front wheels, I doubt this reduces pad wear by very much.
Your doubt is misplaced.
EV drivers tend to use nothing but regeneration for the vast majority of braking. This requires driving a little less aggressively and "coasting" most of the way to the stoplight, engaging the brake pads only at the end. Yes, this means that most braking is done only with the rear wheels (on a single-motor Tesla), but we're talking about normal, gentle braking. Aggressive braking is where you need to make sure the braking force is appropriately distributed, and that works the same
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This. Data point: My Prius (Not pure electric, but uses regenerative braking) is still on its first set of brake pads at 130,000 miles or so.
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This. Data point: My Prius (Not pure electric, but uses regenerative braking) is still on its first set of brake pads at 130,000 miles or so.
And this is what your brakes look like. You know you need to flush your brake fluid every 3 years regardless of use. Brake fluid absorbs water with lowers the boiling point of the fluid and can lead to internal corrosion.
It's too bad you don't know anything about cars, or you'd know that you don't have to change the pads in order to bleed the brakes. Unless they've gotten rusty, there's no reason to change brake pads before you get below the minimum thickness.
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I don't even know how to respond to this level of misinformation, other than to say you pretty much prove that a little knowledge is dangerous. And you have very little knowledge. I'm guessing that someone told you that brake fluid is hygroscopic and you went off reservation from there inventing that little fantasy?
FYI, that picture is a picture of some damn idiot who let his brake rotor be ground away by gross neglect. That vehicle would be making a dead-raising squealing sound just driving around and w
Easy answer (Score:5, Funny)
Remove all the air, that way it cannot become polluted.
Brake and tire dust? (Score:2)
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If that is a major problem we need to eliminate everything with moving parts.
Not all things are made out of the same things. Not all kinds of dust are created equal.
You can't make asbestos brake pads in the USA, but you can still buy them. They still make them in Canada, let alone overseas.
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The kind usually used to make brake pads (where they still do that) isn't the kind that causes asbestosis.
The Canadian ones are probably safe. I wouldn't bet on the Chinese ones.
Progress is never good enough for some people (Score:2)
Don't all current cars have the same problems with particulate emissions from tire and brake dust? Its not like Prof Kelly is suggesting that electric cars raise this amount, they probably do a better job of controlling it with less random speeding and braking that humans are wont to do.
Its just another case of someone who had to make some speech during his 15 minutes in the spotlight, and decided to quibble to show off his knowledge instead of just giving strong support to a good initiative. If there was s
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Yes, of course the ideal condition is to have zero cars on the road for no pollution at all. But this is clearly not realistic.
It could be done with PRT, and in such a way as to preserve the existing automobile industry (and thus its jobs.) You'd start in the big cities, and work your way outward. Then you can get the vehicles off of roads and onto rails, which means far less dust, and the dust is more benign.
Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:5, Insightful)
Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit.
Sigh. Another example of perfect being the enemy of good. No solution is going to be without some drawbacks. Electric cars are CLEARLY an improvement over internal combustion engines if for no other reason than the fact that they can be powered without fossil fuels. No they don't solve everything but that's not an excuse to not move forward. We're going to be using cars for the foreseeable future so we may as well make whatever improvements we can to them. EVs and hybrids are an improvement. Let's take that step and then take the next one when we are able.
"Our cities need fewer cars, not just cleaner cars."
That's fine but probably not going to happen without some VERY substantial investments in public transit.
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As long as it's funds allocated to efficient ride-sharing cars rather than old-school, fixed route busses.
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Or cities could simply stop forcing developers to build more parking than the market really wants, and let people figure out on their own how to get around. As parking lots are repurposed for buildings, it will make cities more walkable and bikeable, driving up demand for transit, housing near jobs and shopping, and driving down demand for cars, while
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Ending socialist (nay, fascist [wikipedia.org]) policies like minimum parking requirements
I'd rather have that than the socialist policy of an upper limit on parking. This was rather popular with a number of councils here for a while. I remember working in an office in an industrial estate with zero public transport or options for biking unless you're Froome, yet the council insisted on allowing only 70% of the reasonable amount of parking these offices required. So some people came in crazy early, and the latecomers parked on sidewalks, in parks, or they used the parking lot of a nearby chur
Re:Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:4)
Top Advisor? (Score:2)
Cars out? (Score:2)
The problem is not cars but excessive congestion... There are too many people travelling to the same place at the same time. You have too many businesses condensed into a small space, which pushes up the price of any nearby residential property and forces employees to live further away.
Banning cars will just cause massive inconvenience to people. Public transport is also over congested and only getting worse, and make it impossible to carry much with you among other things. Public transport is also often da
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Encourage businesses to change their working hours, so people are not travelling at peak times (honestly 9-5 is stupid, we have lights - we're not working in fields where daylight is required to work and we often deal with foreign clients/suppliers who keep different hours anyway).
So convenient for day care / schools and family life. You work from say, 4pm to midnight and your wife from 8am to 4pm. You never see each other and you never see your kids.
A more realistic option is flexible work hours.
Encourage businesses to set up in different areas, so that their employees can actually find affordable housing within easy reach.
It already exists. It's called rural areas. The only problem with that is finding two jobs in the same location is often not possible. Short of that, having all businesses in the center and people community from the outside is not that bad. This way you can live anywhere on the ring and find
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Err...actually that might help drive DOWN the currently high divorce rate.
If they don't see each other as much, they can't annoy each other as much.
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The problem is not cars but excessive congestion... There are too many people travelling to the same place at the same time. You have too many businesses condensed into a small space, which pushes up the price of any nearby residential property and forces employees to live further away.
This is total BS, sorry. Everyone traveling to the same place at the same time is a good thing for public transit; the problem is they don't, which is why public transit generally doesn't work that well. People are coming a
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However, if you could squeeze everyone together more, this would alleviate much of the problem
Please no. Separate people and avoid unnecessary contact. It'll reduce our health care costs due to less infection.
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Some other issues (Score:2)
Brake dust (all)
Tire dust/smoke (all)
Various greases, lubes, and hydraulic fluids (all)
Various consumables that are often discarded improperly, such as oil and batteries (anything with an ICE, but probably others too)
And for vehicles not possessing a sealed
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Well, everything you mention is merely just part of earth itself. So it's all from a technical standpoint, natural.
Man is simply repackaging and moving the material from one place on earth to another.
Zero sum game.
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Various consumables that are often discarded improperly, such as oil and batteries (anything with an ICE, but probably others too)
After the automobile chassis itself, car batteries are one of the most aggressively recycled consumer products on the planet. Semi-homeless people (with vehicles, or at least shopping carts) will actually collect them from the side of the road, because you get paid when you turn them in to the recycler.
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Indeed, it always disheartens me to see someone's stash of old batteries festering out in the backyard...same sort people that burn off their old motor oil.
Burn it in a barrel, or mix it with regular unleaded gasoline and burn it in a diesel?
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Never thought of using it to run an old off-road diesel or something... dunno how much that'd affect engine longevity, but I can't imagine it'd be too bad for it.
A bunch of guys do it in the old indirectly-injected International (in Ford) and GM (also in Hummer) diesel pickups. I can't remember what the mix is, though. Someplace 5-20%, which is a pretty big range I know :) Mercedes also used to actually put a recipe for doing this into their diesel manuals for use in emergencies. People tend to use a spin-down centrifugal filter and then a series of normal mesh filters when they do this, and filter the fuel down actually past commercial diesel fuel grade filtration
He HAS to claim that EVs are not the answer (Score:2)
Because nobody in official capacity wants to admit the country has been behind in generating electricity. A cornerstone of Green ideology is the idea that the generation of power can be capped because all future needs can be supplied by making our existing usage more efficient, while at the same time implementing nonsensical legal hacks like converting the giant coal plant at Drax to burning wood pellets shipped in from the American south.
Converting cars to run on electricity eliminates the need for a separ
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A cornerstone of Green ideology is the idea that the generation of power can be capped because all future needs can be supplied by making our existing usage more efficient,
That's not true at all. The idea is that we don't need to produce as much additional generation as projected because we can make our existing usage more efficient, and that we don't need to build more polluting energy production because we can actually build "alternative" production both cheaper and faster.
Yeah, Just eliminate cars.... (Score:2)
That will do it! And no one will die. Puhlease.
Just complain about everything (Score:2)
If the whole world went back to just walking everywhere, someone would complain about 'worn out discarded shoe pollution', I'm sure.
Then of course there are the extremists who believe that the best thing the human race can do for the planet is die and let it all 'go back to nature' -- but of course you don't see them committing suicide, by way of providing the proper example, do you?
No matter
Re: (Score:2)
Biological metabolism is even more inefficient than ICEs, and the production of the fuel used (food) is a primary source of all sorts of pollution. But luddites gotta lud.
No brakes or tires then... (Score:2)
I wonder what pollution he thinks regenerative brakes cause, especially since that system is very common in electric vehicles.
As to the tires, what does he suggest, we all start driving on our rims?
Until we get some relevant numbers that show tires and brakes really are a huge problem, I'm just slapping him into the unreasonable and alarmist hype corner.
This is silly/counter-productive (Score:2)
If I wear through 2 pounds of brake pads over 50,000 miles, and maybe (completely guessing here) 3 times that on the tires, I'm putting less than 10 pounds of crap on the road/in the air. That's really worst case.
During that time, I'm burning through 8,000 pounds of gas in my 50 MPG car. Since we're not interested in CO or NOx, I guess, how much fine-carbon particulate matter would that produce?
This is a mote vs. beam issue and not even worth thinking about. Such statements give excuses not to push to
Back Clouds of Brake Dust (Score:3)
I was just behind a truck creating large clouds of black smoke. The cloud just sat there between buildings with all nearby pedestrians forced to inhale. Now I know this was probably brake dust and tire particles.
Re: (Score:2)
You're not supposed to leave the city, citizen. Just be thankful that we still allow you to turn off your cell phone once in a while.
Re: (Score:2)
The people outside cities who work inside them need to move into the cities.
Of course, the stupid politicians won't do anything to get the cost of housing to reasonable levels, because the wealthy land-owning interests they really serve would be harmed by such measures, so people move far away just so they can afford it.