I hate this car-centric society, but let’s be real cars aren’t going anywhere. Moving away from fossil fuels is a good thing. Not sure why we’re criticizing progress here.
It’s because on the modern internet, everyone is all-or-nothing when it comes to their chosen issue. Nuance has become unacceptable.
This community in particular can get a little out of touch at times. In North America in particular, even if every level of government agreed to begin working towards a car free society immediately, we’d still be facing a decades long construction campaign as entire towns and cities would have to be restructured. In the meantime, a shift to electric vehicles is something that can drastically help the global warming issue, and can be implemented in less than a decade.
In reality, we should be shifting to electric cars in the sort term, while we work towards eliminating the need for them in the long term.
Also, I’m convinced that the brake dust/tire wear particulates talking point is the result of oil industry astroturfing. The brake dust thing especially is actually better on electric cars, since regenerative braking reduces the amount of brake wear.
Higher weight and higher torque means tires wear faster on EVs. That’s physics, and the theory is backed up by real world evidence.
The flatter torque curve (peak torque on electric cars is usually very comparable to ICE) is irrelevant, unless you are a shitty driver who treats the gas pedal like a two position switch.
If you were really concerned about higher vehicle weight, trucks are much worse so let’s start there
Trucks are typically carrying tons of goods (except those awful LTL cases where the 50’ trailer is carrying one pallet)
Cars (mostly SUVs these days) are usually just carrying 80kg of spongy meat.
Those are not even the same levels of utility
EVs are about 20% heavier than the equivalent gas powered car and offer the same utility.
Full sized pickup trucks are 50-100% heavier than cars, are the most common vehicle in most of the US, and is “ usually just carrying 80kg of spongy meat.”. They are usually exactly the same levels of utility, plus don’t have any environmental benefits
Yeah, it also applies there. It’s just a fact - heavier vehicles have more tire wear.
Things can be both true and irrelevant. Astroturfing highlights irrelevant things to the point of relevance so they get in the way.
Like Trump’s"feud" with Rosie O’Donnell. It exists, but means literally nothing and is just there to distract from actual conversation.
I feel it’s fairly relevant with the interest in microplastics lately.
The average difference between EV and a gas car is around 300 to 400 kg. With an average weight of a small car being around 1500-1700 kg, and an electric variant of the same car being 1800-2000 kg, the difference is basically nothing. It’s, like, two large dudes. And that’s smaller car, the difference in big SUVs becomes almost negligible. It’s so nothing, especially compared to all the particles EVs don’t emit, the only reason we keep talking about is astroturfed bullshit from the conservative car manufacturers. It’s from the same playbook as wanting to get rid of wind turbines because sometimes they kill birds.
400kg makes a huge difference. Road damage increases proportional to the fourth power of axle load, which is like 2x in your example.
huge
For the smallest car on the market it’s around 20%. It rapidly gets smaller the bigger the vehicle is. Exchanging lack of tailpipe emissions for less than 20% increase in road damage is nobrainer.
Uno reverse : I really dont think these are all or nothing criticisms. If anything, you’re engaging in that. Just because we criticize the proposed progress doesn’t mean we oppose it. You have no room for nuance in your criticism of our criticism!
Its because EVs are being marketed as a green solution, not a stepping stone. If a car must exist it might as well be electric but we should be asking how do we reduce the cars that exist and their frequency of use. Building electrified transit and keeping ICE cars would as a whole be more beneficial than just converting all cars to EVs.
Building electrified transit and keeping ICE cars would as a whole be more beneficial than just converting all cars to EVs.
This choice you’ve presented is extremely misleading. The build out of electrified public transportation and the shift from ICE to EV cars are not in any way related choices. If the government chooses to build more public transportation, that has no effect on whether or not EVs replace ICE cars.
The government building transit would effect the number of people who need to rely on a car.
Which is good, but still has nothing to do with what the remaining cars are powered by. There’s no reason why it has to be “transit+ICE” instead of “transit+EV”.
My point is that we should be making the most impactful changes we can to fight climate change and environmental destruction, which means subsidies, government investments, and tax breaks are better spent on transit, density, or active transport than on EV infrastructure/incentives
And the most impactful change I can make is purchasing an EV.
Since I already vote for officials who support all of those issues there is no impactful change because the alignment is already there.
There are locally impactful actions that I can participate in but none that will have the same impact as my personal choices.
The most impactful choices I could make are all illegal. The majority of them being some form of demestic terrorism.
Even here in a walkable town with good transit, I still need a car so an EV is what I can do.
Building electrified transit and keeping ICE cars would as a whole be more beneficial than just converting all cars to EVs.
I highly, highly doubt it. I lived in the country with pretty good transit, but exclusively ICE cars. It was not good, not at all. Better than cars only, still not good. Good transit doesn’t eliminate cars, unfortunately, and always breathing car emissions is bad, very, very, very bad.
The only solution is to do both. Right now I live in the city with very good public transport, but still sprawling car infrastructure, the only difference is, there is a robust car emission rules, so most cars around are EVs or hybrids. It’s so, so, so much better than the first variation, it’s not even close.
I would prefer city getting rid of most of the car-centric infrastructure still, but now I have a chance to see this day, and not die of a lung cancer at a ripe age of 55
Thank you for saying that
Yup, which is why the policies to ban the sale of new gas powered vehicle is a good thing.
My 2 favorite cities that is lived in were San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro. Apart from both of them being gorgeous and fun, one of the best things was that I did not need a car.
Moving away from fossil fuels is a good thing.
That depends on where the electricity comes from. Instead of ‘EV’ we should really be calling these things Natural Gas cars.
The grid could be powered by 100% coal and an EV would still be better than an ICE car. The efficiency difference between car motors and power plants is staggering.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the CO2 gasoline equivalent for coal-generated EV is just 29mpg; i.e. no better than a decent ICE.
People can only think in binary terms.
Electric vehicles
- eliminate tailpipe emissions
- cut brake dust emissions in half
- pollute less as we transition to renewable energy
- let us work toward elimination the huge polluting industries for gasoline refining and distribution
- let us shrink the huge polluting industries of oil extraction and refining
- are a huge step toward slowing the growth of climate change.
While I completely agree transit, and walkable cities are much better, EVs are not nothing. More importantly, given the amount of time to build transit and walkable cities, EVs get us many of the advantages NOW
Yeah, this comic is putting perfect in the way of good.
Not to mention, there are people who do need vehicles, the trades being one example.
They still kill animals and people, so… Toot the horn elsewhere.
While those are great improvements over fossil fuel based cars, they also exasperate existing issues.
Almost all of these EVs are in the SUV category. These vehicles take up more space on the road and parking lots. This results in less capacity for our road systems causing traffic engineers to incorrectly add more and more lanes to roads. Additionally combined with parking minimums, more and more land is developed into parking lots, which in term increases pollution and increases the heat island effect.
The increased weight and instant torque both causes increased tire dust (as another commenter mentioned) as well as accelerated wear to the roads. The high power figures results in inattentive selfish drivers being able to reach high speeds quickly adding risk for pedestrians.
I understand that the SUV craze existed before EVs were popular however as EVs are normalized it’ll only further enforce people buying oversized dangerous sub-4s 0-60 bricks.
Ah, well if an improvement isn’t perfect, we should definitely reject it and continue using the worst possible version until a perfect one is created
You forgot your /s.
Car culture evangelist in fuckcars community missing the point as always.
The point is that EVs are not a good solution to the problem with cars - they are just a better car. This individualizes what is a collective problem.
My city is adding six new lanes for cars in the coming years, meanwhile there are already intersections that a person has to jog to get across in time. Cars have their use, but it’s far far far less than people realise.
Valorizing EVs leads to perpetuating car centric designs, which is a negative across many dimensions - not only ecologically.
All that being said, better car is still better than a worse car. I live near a big road, and it kinda sucks. Back then when all cars were emitting poison from a tailpipe instead of only some doing it, it didn’t just suck, it was a fucking nightmarish hell, dirty, loud, smelly, poisonous dark hell, and some people from my family died prematurely because of that.
I don’t think the community in my city can persuade carbrains to quit caring any time soon. They can convince them to start with being slightly less damaging, for starters.Yes, a better car is a better car. That’s perfectly reasonable harm reduction logic.
I just would rather people not forget that that’s all it is, and know that there are much better communal solutions. Even if they seem utopian, they’re actually very sensible and pragmatic.
Materially speaking, we could start building a better world tomorrow morning. We don’t have to wait for tech to save us.
That’s very true
Electric cars also reduce particulate dust. Because of regenerative braking they need to brake less often and less agressive. There was a study published just kadt week.
But they increase particulate tire dust due to being heavier.
Yes, but it seems from the study that the increase in tire dust is smaller than the refuction in brake dust
Brakes are iron and copper, the latter is an environmental contaminant. But tires pollute zinc and a hundred other petrochemicals. One is causing big problems with fish - 6PPD, but there are likely others causing yet unseen damage. Between the two brake dust seems more manageable in stormwater.
Ooh cool, would love to see that paper.
Here you go: https://www.eiturbanmobility.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/41-EIT-Emissions-Report-5a-Digital-1.pdf
Battery Electric Vehicles reduce brake dust by up to 83%
Yay! Thank you! Adding it to the archive. I keep my car in the level 3 regeneration, so mostly “coast” up to the stop. I’m glad to see such significant reduction. Also because I breath a lot of that dust when I’m cycling, less particulates = better.
Edit: Some key findings from the paper:
Key finding #3.8: As the level of electrification of a vehicle rises, the dependence on regenerative braking also increases, thus lowering PM emissions from brake wear. Based on recent evidence [30], regenerative braking can reduce, in the worst- case scenario (i.e. highest usage of mechanical brakes or equivalently lowest usage of regenerative braking), brake wear emissions by 10-48% for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), 66% for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and 83% for battery electric vehicles (BEVs)
Key finding #3.13: Vehicle weight is directly proportional to tyre wear emissions. For example, a car with a 20% higher mass demonstrated a 20% increase in tyre wear [13]. Electric cars are around 20% heavier than the equivalent conventional cars, so they emit around 20% more tyre wear [40], [42], [43].
Im curious if the additional weight of EVs causes more tire wear and ends up negating any savings from the brake dust. We also have to consider manufacturing and disposal of both vehicles to be truly fair.
The additional weight, yes, as posted by @avidamoeba. Tho’ those are different things, apples to oranges - brake dust and tire dust are not the same. With the power that some EVs have it’s really easy to accelerate rapidly leading to faster tire wear. That is a choice made by the driver. I put my EV in eco mode, and gently accelerate. And try to ride my bike as much as possible, instead of my car. On the bike, I often try to accelerate as fast as possible, for cardiovascular and other health reasons, including just plain having fun!
It doesn’t solve all the problems, so instead, let’s solve none of the problems!
Get an electric car if you want, but you should still support society moving away from needing them in the first place, no?
Imagine a school cafeteria is serving kids the option of 5 hershey’s chocolate bars, or a slice of pizza. You can acknowledge the pizza is better, but you should still be asking where the god damn vegetables are.
That’s pretty much exactly the point I was trying to make. Incremental improvements are better than no improvements.
People shit on electric cars because they aren’t the perfect solution, ignoring the fact that they are better than what we have now.
It took us 150 years to get in to this mess. We aren’t going to fix it completely overnight.
How dare you not install your own commuter train out to your rural property.
A report from the Pew Charitable Trust found that 78 percent of ocean microplastics are from synthetic tire rubber. These toxic particles often end up ingested by marine animals, where they can cause neurological effects, behavioral changes, and abnormal growth.
Meanwhile, British firm Emissions Analytics spent three years studying tires. The group found that a single car’s four tires collectively release 1 trillion “ultrafine” particles for every single kilometer (0.6 miles) driven. These particles, under 100 nanometers in size, are so tiny that they can pass directly through the lungs and into the blood. They can even cross the body’s blood-brain barrier. The Imperial College London has also studied the issue, noting that “There is emerging evidence that tire wear particles and other particulate matter may contribute to a range of negative health impacts including heart, lung, developmental, reproductive, and cancer outcomes.”
Cool beans, I’ve got “Tire Brain”.
This cartoon is almost easy to mistake for satire making fun of the anti-car people.
Y’all have to face the reality that cars are not going away. The roads will outlast every human being that reads these words. People will continue to travel on those roads in vehicles of some kind. EVs are the best option we have yet for making the roads’ usage have less environmental impact.
You do realize those roads are only driveable because of extensive maintaince. If we stopped maintaining a specific road and built tracks instead, many people would choose the tram/train as the road would be too rough to travel at any decent speed after a few years. The infrastructure we build and maintain directly impact the mode people use. And currently many places exclussively build and maintain roads, often not even including the option of a sidewalk.
Yeah that’s pretty funny because I’ve driven on unmaintained roads for decades. In my area we are lucky if they do any maintenance when there are road problems. Sometimes people have to clear trees from the road after storms, and it may be done by the county or a random guy with a chainsaw.
Also I learned to drive on gravel roads, drifting around corners to learn the innate balance of maintaining stability without traction. Even if the paved roads were ground down to gravel, we would still drive on them.
Arent roads useful for more things than cars? Biking on a road that is filled with small rocks is not fun
Streets can also allow kids play if there arent cars on them
ish, but without cars you don’t need a 20 lane highway. and streets can also less lanes,
Definitely don’t need streets to play. A couple paved areas for basketball, skating, etc is nice - but that’s just a park.
i have an electric car and electric bicycle (american; suburb - forced car use). having an electric car is so much better than my old regular one not only because of emissions, but i have solar panels at home. free “gas” and never having to go to a gas station is super underrated.
i bike ~90% of the time, anyways, but its nice to never have to do any of that stuff. the car is 2.5 years old and it has ~7.5k miles on it… most of which was my wife driving my car when hers broke, heh.
Busses and trains cause many of those same issues. What is the message here? Fuck all transportation and just stay at home?
Those issues from trains and busses are less impact per person than a private automobile. Also pretty sure they don’t need to salt train tracks and trains don’t use tires (except a few very rare examples).
Good luck AmeriKa, you are way behind the 1st World and the fucking MAGAts will make it worse.
I was watching How It’s Made recently, and they did asphalt. The components were crushed granite in three different sizes, sand, and some “cement” that is a byproduct of oil refining. And I’m sitting there watching it thinking, “Wow. We’re doing this on purpose.”
Doing what? As far as road surfaces go, asphalt is the most environmentally friendly (other than just having only dirt roads). Concrete emits CO2 as an inherent part of the process, and a brick road would be hilariously expensive, and non-durable. Asphalt also has the distinction of being the most recycled material on the planet. And not just in a “10% get recycled and everything is less” sense. Almost all asphalt ends up being recycled into more asphalt.
Doing what?
We’re in the !fuckcars community. What do you think? We’re building more roads instead of more rails. We’re building wider roads instead of using more buses and bicycles.
Edit: And to be clear, we’re doing all of that by putting industrial waste on top of our land.
Asphalt is at least the most recycled material we use. I guess except water technically speaking.
I’ve started listening to “Everything Electric” podcast and am increasingly getting irritated by the idea that the only solution is everyone getting rid of their ice car and getting an electric one.
I can’t work out thats because it fits my rhetoric/approach (got rid of my car for an electric moped) or if I really believe it.
