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Will electric cars change the health issues related to living near freeways? I know we are a long way away from replacing most of the vehicles with electric.

• jhpankow 10y ago
  As a cyclist my primary concern is diesel trucks with scant emissions controls belching particulate and other combustion byproducts. I see little movement to get these off the road.
  • vvanders 10y ago
    Most trucks on the road should be Tier IV and using DPF + DEF. I think they mandated it as a requirement for all semi trucks a few years back as well. There are people who install "delete-pipes" though, and they should be taken out back and made to inhale what they spew.
    • tekromancr 10y ago
      For anyone else curious, I googled it and it looks like a delete-pipe, (aka muffler delete, cat delete) is basicly a muffler/catalytic converter bypass device. Some do it for performance, some for the noise, some explicitly to "piss off tree-hugging liberals".
    • Klathmon 10y ago
      Good god have you ever see someone "rolling coal"? it's insane. Big lifted trucks spouting thick black smoke from their exhaust that leave behind little ashy flecks.
      • vvanders 10y ago
        Oh yeah, we get plenty of them out here in the rural parts. Friggin stupid. We've got a little '81 tractor that's a 3-cyc 1.4L diesel and if the wind blows the wrong way you definitely don't want to inhale too deeply. I'd love to convert it to Tier IV but there just aren't kits made for it.
  • zardo 10y ago
    1995 and older heavy duty diesels are now banned in California (with some exceptions). 1996-2009 will be banned over 2020-2023.
  • trentmb 10y ago
    I'm now curious how difficult it would be to cycle with a respirator.
    • jhpankow 10y ago
      I've seen one person riding with something that looked like a gas mask. It appeared to have a "bane" like square filter near the mouth. Not just a simple N95 mask.
      • flat6turbo 10y ago
        some people use these for low oxygen training.
• handedness 10y ago
  Perhaps, but it looks like there are significant tradeoffs: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/electric-car-particulate-matter/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/electric-car-particulate-m... Summary: Electric cars are much heavier, and therefore generate more brake dust, tire and road wear (and therefore constituent particulates), etc. Edit: Downvote all you want, guys, but here's the source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101630187X http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016...
  • vlad 10y ago
    Brake regeneration is a large part of the braking force for many EVs when the brake pedal is pressed, so the brake pads in some EV cars are actually smaller than their gas siblings. Brake regeneration also avoids using the brake pedal altogether in many cases because an EV slows down significantly when the gas pedal is released. With electric power, smaller brake pads, and less need to use them, I'm surprised the article believes there is only a 1% reduction in overall particle pollution for EV's vs. gas cars. Plus, a typical EV is a small and modern 0-2 year old car compared to the gas vehicles out there, such as a 7-year-old, inefficient, v8 engine SUV.
    • maxerickson 10y ago
      A big factor is that gasoline engines don't release all that much particulates.
      • vlad 10y ago
        "Electric-powered vehicles, of course, have no exhaust emissions. However, because they’re 24 percent heavier on average, the study found that EVs shed more particulate matter from tires and brakes, and also kick up more particulate matter from road surfaces." If the brake pads are smaller and aren't required to slow down in many cases, the EV should win, especially when the average EV on the street is likely similar in weight compared to an average non-EV vehicle. As far as kicking up existing particulate matter, EV's shouldn't be penalized for kicking up dust on the road which came from others cars, which are almost entirely non-EV cars and 18-wheelers. I bet there are other more significant factors to derive impact on pollution from EVs than brake dust, such as the source of electricity used to charge them. I'll try to look at the study later to see how the 1% difference between road pollution between gas and EV vehicles was calculated.
• sampo 10y ago
  > Will electric cars change the health issues related to living near freeways? Electric cars don't emit chemicals, or the atmospheric fine particles born from the condensation "sticky" hydrocarbon chemicals from the car exhaust fumes. But the fine particles originating from the wear of tires, road surface and brakes will still remain with electric cars. (The utilization of the electric motor in braking could reduce the fine particles originating from brake pad wear, though.)
  • nerfhammer 10y ago
    Also the electricity needed to charge them needs to come from somewhere – some of this will come from burning coal which has significant health risks.
    • true_religion 10y ago
      True, but those risks can be isolated to an area 100 miles away from a major population mass. With fuel burning cars, the risks can't be shuffled outside of the city and the larger your city, the worse it gets.
    • tankerdude 10y ago
      Yes, some is still coming from coal but the energy mix is changing. Coal is now more expensive than natural gas, which is why the coal mines are now shutting down. In addition, even natural gas is going to have to fight the renewable energy sources as the costs will continue to go down for them. So I'd rather have the system's efficiencies improve in a few places instead of the tens of millions of cars that would have to be changed in the long run.
  • mason240 10y ago
    >But the fine particles originating from the wear of tires, road surface and brakes will still remain with electric cars. I've been curious what straws the anti-car people would grasp at once combustion engines are gone.
• maxsilver 10y ago
  Yes, electric cars eliminate the vast majority of the concerns mentioned. (Zero tailpipe emissions, significantly less brake pad emissions, significantly less noise, etc).
  • elchief 10y ago
    The fine particles from tires are really bad for people too though
  • thaumasiotes 10y ago
    > significantly less noise Unless the movement to have electric cars play loud noises at all times "for public safety" gets its way.
    • zardo 10y ago
      The rule was approved last fall. Unless it was caught up in the Trump regulation freeze, it's going into effect in 2019.
• thaumasiotes 10y ago
  It's a point I don't think I've ever seen made, for some reason. In a stylized argument, someone hypes electric cars as eliminating the pollution that comes from gas cars. Then someone points out that the pollution isn't eliminated, it's just moved away from the process of running the car into the process of generating electricity. But regardless of whether there's less or more pollution after switching to electric cars, it seems like a big win for all the pollution to be off at the power plant instead of hanging over LA.