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wizzwizz4today at 2:40 PM2 repliesview on HN

Electric cars tend to be heavier than ICE cars. This means their tyres wear out faster, which is plastic dust being thrown up in the air. (We're still not sure of the health impacts of microplastics, but we do know they accumulate in various organs, including the brain.) They also throw up road dust, and we know that rock dust is really bad to breathe in. Air pollution is still present. Compared to ICE cars fitted with catalytic converters, electric cars are probably better, but just because you can't smell their emissions doesn't mean they aren't still reducing the air quality.

They're also still tonnes of metal hurtling along the streets of a city shared by pedestrians, which is inherently dangerous. (Less so than a bus, but there are also more cars than buses: you'd have to check the statistics to see how that evens out.) As for actually damaging the road (producing road dust, potholes, etc, requiring a resurface that off-gases for weeks afterwards): cars damage the road more than bikes, though that's not significant compared to lorries, since the wear is something ludicrous like the fourth power of the weight-per-axle.


Replies

alamortsubitetoday at 6:47 PM

The noise pollution is also comparable. Over 30 kph it's mostly wind and rolling resistance.

LaGrangetoday at 3:08 PM

We don’t really know if eating microplastics is particularly bad, but we do know breathing any pm2.5 and below dust is.

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