By freshidea @Adobe Stock
Lies, Lies, Dirty Lies
“Zero emissions vehicles” are called that because they don’t have tail pipes. That explanation, however, is deceptive, writes the WSJ.
Generating the electricity that powers those cars creates particulate pollution, and of course electric cars still use tires, which are made from petroleum.
Electric cars weigh far more than gasoline-powered ones, so their tires degrade faster, as electric car buyers are learning. The same analytics firm cited earlier compared two cars—a plug-in electric and a hybrid. The electric car weighed about one-third more than the hybrid and emitted roughly one-quarter more particulate matter because of tire wear. Total direct emissions went up, not down, when the electric car was driven.
Get Federal Approval
California is attempting to meet its plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
To get federal approval, California claims it “needs” this ban to prevent harm to public health from particulate matter—airborne particles like dust, dirt and soot. But banning gasoline cars would do little to reduce particulate emissions, and it could even increase them.
New Gasoline Autos Very Clean
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, cars emit only about 1% of all direct fine particulate matter in California, and most of those emissions come from older models. The newer gasoline cars that California wants to ban will often have particulate filters that reduce emissions to below one 1/1,000th of a gram per mile driven.
Tailpipes have been the primary source of particular emissions from autos, but today most vehicle-related particulate matter comes from tire wear.
Cars are heavy, and as their tires rub against the road, they degrade and release tiny, often toxic particles. According to measurements by an emission-analytics firm, in gasoline cars equipped with a particle filter, airborne tire-wear emissions are more than 400 times as great as direct exhaust particulate emissions.
Electric cars are 15% to 30% heavier because batteries store far less energy per pound than liquid fuels. While weight differences between electric and gasoline cars have remained roughly constant over the past decade, the only reasonable prediction of trends is for electric cars to get heavier as manufacturers increase battery size to boost range.
Authors Michael Buschbacher and Taylor Myers recommend that the state of California and the EPA answer questions under oath, especially with EPA administrator Michael Regan calling particular pollution “one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution”?
Don’t hold your breath expecting scientific integrity, advises Messrs. Bushbacher and Myers.
The EPA’s own emissions model falsely “applies the same tire wear emission rate for all vehicle fuel types (gasoline, diesel, flex-fuel, CNG or electric),” completely ignoring the differences in weight.
To solve the problem, what would happen if tires were made stiffer? Now your cool EV will ride like a John Deere.
