EV Tires Causing Increased Pollution

[Pushrods&Capacitors]

My take: EVs will wear tires out faster than an equivalent-sized, yet lighter SUV/sedan. So yeah. However, they Do Not wear out tires faster than an equivalent Weight vehicle unless there is something intrinsically different in the suspension/alignment that predisposes it to do so.

And, I’m not going to get into the literally millions of hi-po summer tires on ICE vehicles of all shapes and sizes where owners are lucky to get 10-20K miles out of a set of 4 before replacement is required. I get about 25K out of my summers on the SS Sedan and I run a square set up and rotate every 6K. Most EVs are running all-season touring or performance tires with less grip and less rolling resistance for EPA range purposes.

To be fair, one of the reasons you get less mileage out of summer tires is less tread depth.

Either way it’s just 1 more bullet point on a long list of “how our cars pollute.”

I think it’s a fair point for the article to point out.

Thoughts like this are why we started reducing the use of plastic straws.

Depends on the tires, my summer Continental ExtremeContact Sports are molded at 9/32”, just like my wife’s Continental ExtremeContact DWS06s all seasons on her 4X. She’s on track for about 45-50K out of them. The track ready extreme summers are usually molded at 6/32” but those aren’t nearly as common out on the road.

And I fully agree, all aspects in the pollution cycle should get attention, and therefore, action.

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[Spacey]

It's funny that you don't care about the report, instead you are trying to discredit it by speculating about who leaked it. That says it all.

You've missed the point. Where did I say I don't care about the report? Some critical thinking is required. What purpose did it serve for the report to be leaked before official publication? Who or what would benefit from this leak? The Daily Mail should comment about the full version of the report and not a leaked version that could change anyway. This thread has gone far beyond the op's original intention about alleged tyre wear and EV's.

 

[intoMME]

damnit...maybe we should all trade in our ponies for actual ponies. Oh, but the methane gas from those also contributes to global warming. Maybe we should all just drive less.

 

[A2Z]

Hmm. Governments interfering in the results of a "leaked" report where the full findings have not yet been published. Would be interesting to know who leaked the report and what financial and personal gain they would get out of it and which organisation is sponsoring them. Let me guess, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil etc.

Isn't that article 10 years old?

I think the point certain of the quoted scientists were trying to make was that taking any one year out of context would not fairly reflect that the overwhelming trend had been an increase in global temperatures. For example, if I am training hard over several years to run marathons, my times will reflect an upward trend in performance. That does not mean I will have run each marathon faster than the one before and, if I ran a super-fast marathon several years back, starting with that marathon to measure my progress would make my overall progress look flat -- which would be misleading.

Again, however, that article is 10 years old and we have long since blown past 1998 temps -- NASA graph below -- which seems to confirm the accuracy of the scientists who were saying that taking 1998 out of context was misleading.

 

[ZoNiE]

The tire thing is BS. Our MME weighs less than our 2009 Adrenalin with a 13MPG V8. They both do the same duty. Driving us around. The MME didn't replace a focus or some other little shitbox. I'd bet many MME drivers came from a heavy vehicle. A Prius still weighs in at 3K and the average Camry at 3.3k so the MME is only about 25% heavier but puts out much less other pollution. Plus, the Natural gas power plants many cities use are also cleaner than cars.

 

[Mach1E]

The tire thing is BS. Our MME weighs less than our 2009 Adrenalin with a 13MPG V8. They both do the same duty. Driving us around. The MME didn't replace a focus or some other little shitbox. I'd bet many MME drivers came from a heavy vehicle. A Prius still weighs in at 3K and the average Camry at 3.3k so the MME is only about 25% heavier but puts out much less other pollution. Plus, the Natural gas power plants many cities use are also cleaner than cars.

But it weighs more than the equivalent ICE crossover- like a Ford Escape.

It’s not BS, it’s just pointing out an overlooked point- more weight equals more tire wear equals more pollution.

Not BS, just math.

Now do the pros outweigh the cons? I would say Yes. But that doesn’t mean the cons are BS.

FWIW, my Mach E weighs 1200 lbs more than the v8 13 mpg car it replaced.

 

[Davison]

That's a nonsense, clickbait article.

First, every passenger tire out there has about 9/32" of wear on them before they're replaced. That's about 3600 cm^3 of material that will be used up for my CR-1 tires (89.9" in circumference, 8.9" wide, and 9/32" depth). That's about 2 kg. This is the same amount that will be used up by any other car with the same tires. The only difference is timeframe. Let's pretend like my tires are worn 20% more quickly, as the article states. For a 5-year period, I would use one extra set of tires, so that's 4 tires, 3600 cm^3 extra material per tire, or about 8 kg of material. That's the mass of material that's "extra" for an EV compared with an ICE when focusing on the tires.

Nah, you know what, let's go ahead and count the entire four tires and all their mass (about 73 kg each, so 292 kg for all four). Let's even get real wild and say that extra set of tires is burned, not recycled. That will emit about 2.9 kg of pollution per kg of tire. Let's round it up to 3 kg and round those four tires' mass up to 300 kg total. That gives us 900 kg of pollution, but let's round that up, again, to 1000 kg so it's a nice, round number. We really want to give the FUD a chance here.

I drive about 20,000 miles in a year, or about 100,000 miles in a 5-year period.

In that same timeframe, an ICE SUV with 25 mpg will have used 4,000 gallons of gasoline. A gallon of gas burned releases about 8.8 kg of pollution. Those 4,000 gallons of gasoline burned emit about 35,000 kg of pollution. This is rounded down--I'm trying to give the ICE the benefit of the doubt.

The efficiency of delivering energy to your car from an oil well is about 20%. That is, it takes about 4 gallons of gas worth of energy to deliver one gallon of gas to a consumer's car. This means a 25 mpg SUV causes about 5 * 35,000 kg of pollution over 5 years. This includes the energy of pulling oil out of a well, the energy required to transport the oil from the well to the refinery, the energy required to refine the crude into gasoline, and the fuel used to drive the tanker truck from the refinery to the gas station, among other things. But it doesn't include the tires worn down during any of that transport; we'll pretend the transportation vehicles don't wear out tires.

Of course, the EV isn't getting emissions-free energy. The efficiency of electricity delivered to the home is about 65%. That is, of 100 kWh generated, 35 kWh are lost (both before the generation of the electricity and after) and 65 kWh are delivered. This means that an EV driving 20,000 miles in a year, at an average of 2.5 miles/kWh, is using 12,300 kWh of energy. Let's assume all of the electricity is generated by burning natural gas. Natural gas generates 6.7 kWh per kg of natural gas burned, this includes all of the inefficiencies. 12,300 kWh / 6.7 kWh/kg = 1850 or so kg of natural gas burned in a year of driving. Each kg of natural gas burned generates about 2.75 kg of pollution. Let's round that up to 3 and round up the total mass of natural gas up to 1900. 1900*3 = 5700 kg of pollution emitted per year; let's round up again, just to be really hard on the EV, and call it 6,000 kg of pollution. Over 5 years, that's 30,000 kg of pollution caused by the EV.

Let's include the pollution from the battery. One estimate in the literature is that to mine materials, transport them, and to manufacture an 80kWh battery causes between 2400 and 16,000 kg of pollution. Let's double that high number to 32,000 kg, just for the sake of really beating on the EV's emissions.

Final tally, assuming all of the electricity fed to the EV is from burning fossil fuels.
EV: 63,000 kg of pollution over 5 years, including that one-time way-over-estimate cost of 32,000 kg for the battery.
ICE: 175,000 kg of pollution over the same 5 years.

But, yeah, let's worry about 8 kg of extra material caused by the extra weight on tires.

I like your analysis. Could you point me to the sources for 20% efficiency in delivering fuel from well to ICE gas tank? Thanks.

 

[superdave80]

Four tires weigh about 116 lbs. If I did my math correctly, the tires will shed six lbs. after 50k miles. Even if all 116 lbs. were turned into pollution, it doesn't matter.

After 50k miles in a 50 mpg ICE, you will have burned 6,000 lbs of gas, and produced 19,000 lbs. of CO2 from burning that fuel.

This article is completely irrelevant to the real world.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I like your analysis. Could you point me to the sources for 20% efficiency in delivering fuel from well to ICE gas tank? Thanks.

Every year, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory does an analysis of the energy flow in the US. This one is from 2022.

I did mess up in my wording above (but not the math): The ~20% (23% in this image) is from well to wheels, not well to tank. The point still stands. Of the 27.5 quads of energy produced for transportation, the vast majority of which is petroleum (24.6 quads), 21.7 quads are rejected/wasted energy.

 

[Davison]

Every year, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory does an analysis of the energy flow in the US. This one is from 2022.

I did mess up in my wording above (but not the math): The ~20% (23% in this image) is from well to wheels, not well to tank. The point still stands. Of the 27.5 quads of energy produced for transportation, the vast majority of which is petroleum (24.6 quads), 21.7 quads are rejected/wasted energy.

So it would be 17,390 vice 20,000 gallons to deliver the 4000 gallon needed by the ICE SUV over five years and the total estimated emitted pollutants would be 153,032 kg?

 

[Mach1E]

So it would be 17,390 vice 20,000 gallons to deliver the 4000 gallon needed by the ICE SUV over five years and the total estimated emitted pollutants would be 153,032 kg?

If you start doing “total carbon impact” math……… most people don’t like the outcome.

In a book 15 yrs ago “time to eat the dog,” the author calculated the impact of the dog food is about the same as an average SUV.

https://www.google.com/amp/story/s/...21-03-carbon-pawprint-friend-planet-enemy.amp

 

[MellowJohnny]

If you start doing “total carbon impact” math……… most people don’t like the outcome.

In a book 15 yrs ago “time to eat the dog,” the author calculated the impact of the dog food is about the same as an average SUV.

https://www.google.com/amp/story/s/...21-03-carbon-pawprint-friend-planet-enemy.amp

Maybe the book should have been called "Time To Eat The Puppy" - by the time it's grown the CO2 footprint has already been established.

See Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal, 1729

 

[Davison]

If you start doing “total carbon impact” math……… most people don’t like the outcome.

In a book 15 yrs ago “time to eat the dog,” the author calculated the impact of the dog food is about the same as an average SUV.

https://www.google.com/amp/story/s/...21-03-carbon-pawprint-friend-planet-enemy.amp

Yes carbon footprints, carbon footprints! I think the ICE vs. EV impact needs to be understood.

 

[Mach1E]

Maybe the book should have been called "Time To Eat The Puppy" - by the time it's grown the CO2 footprint has already been established.

See Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal, 1729

Maybe? My last puppy was a dog in a year, but lived another 13 past that!

 

[MellowJohnny]

Maybe? My last puppy was a dog in a year, but lived another 13 past that!

That's what I'm saying, can't let them grow past a year...

Talk about a digression

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