Do EVs "Emit" More than Gas Cars??!!
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- Try Rocket Money for free: RocketMoney.co... #rocketmoney #personalfinance Sponsored by Rocket Money
It's wild tracking down where these claims come from. It's also wild that I go on Twitter and get worked up about what people say when the whole platform is designed explicitly to amplify arguments! Anyway, we know cars are adding a ton of microplastics to the environment, but the transition to EVs only increases that negligibly if at all, and we should focus on the problem itself rather than some vague hope that we can somehow force Americans to start riding bikes and taking mass transit as we transition away from gas-powered vehicles!!!
Additional Info:
1. Some people are taking from this that EVs actually "emit slightly more" than gas cars...that is only possibly true if you don't count gaseous emissions, which are the vast majority of emissions by mass.
2. I should have noted that the ocean is BIG so while the majority of microplastics appear to be from cars, we do not know how much impact they will have on ocean life.
3. A aerosol scientist in comments notes that tire particles are going to be WAY BIGGER than tail-pipe particles, and thus tail pipe particles will travel many kilometers while tire particles will mostly travel tens to hundreds of meters.
4. This video is not about mining or lifecycle analysis of EVs but there are lots of good videos about that! Check out "Are EVs really better for the climate?" from "Just have a think" which is a SUPER GOOD CHANNEL that cover lots of green tech stuff extremely well.
For what it's worth, regarding the bus comment earlier in the video, I definitely agree that electric vehicles are better than gas, but that we also need to work on being less car dependant as a country, simply from an energy wasted on transportation standpoint. Right now, the US uses 1/3rd of the world's gasoline, despite being 1/20th of the world's population. It's kinda crazy. And while EVs will help offset that with renewable energy sources, they still can pose a challenge in terms of decarbonizing our economy, since they will be a massive spike in our electricity generation needs.
TLDR, EVs are better, but reducing car dependance is best. And like you said, bikes are pretty cool (paraphrasing)!
I agree,, Just Have a Think is great!
Hi! You can install a browser plugin that hides that AI Overview nonsense. I have a hard time ignoring the misinformation in there if I can see it, so I just make it go away.
@@Descriptor413 Honestly i dont think i can name a country with worse public transport than the US and that includes all the South-East Asian countries and all of Europe.
Regarding point 3), doesn't that just mean how long the particles travel until they no longer remain airborne? Does it not matter as both pollution is ultimately outdoors and becomes part of the overall water cycle the same?
Really enjoyed the video by the way.
My takeaway from all of this is: the smallest car is a bike.
I use a motorcycle. while not a bike im getting closer
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Indeed. Immensely more efficient than a car, in basically any regard, for single-person use.
The little honda moped gets 100+ mpg. Pretty hard to beat the efficiency on that.
And the fullest car is a train (tram/bus).
Weight-to-need efficiency is how we fix CO2 emissions. The business level is such a tangled web of corruption we'll have to address it later, but grass roots, don't own a suburban unless you use a suburban, fully, on a regular basis.
If I drove a semi tractor to work every day, in the event of one day pulling a 40k load, and getting 7mpg, you'd call me crazy.
But so many people want to drive the embodiment of their ego while they drive at the speed limit for 30mins a day, or sit in traffic for 2 hours idling a v8 to death.
Geniunely, as a teacher, I think this style of video is super helpful for students. Seeing real research in real time, note-taking, looking out for potential bias, potential mistakes in research, a little bit of math/graphics/charts, and drawing final conclusions. I think this is a great way to show how to properly research data!
Agreed. I will also add this highlights the complexity often involved in the critical evaluation of a reported claim. The amount of time and effort is not trivial. A lack of experience and skill in this sort of exercise is a further disincentive. Thanks for improving that among your students. The impact is far reaching.
Also a teacher (high school English) and I agree! Filing this one away for future use.
One of my teachers who had some freedom with part of the curriculum literally taught us this kind of stuff, googling, vetting sources etc. Incredibly helpful skill (even though I was convinced I already knew everything at the time).
Really??? The start was a classic example of argument from authority! If the people he used as references sounded like those he thought were going to be reputable he accepted it. that is terrible science where what is actually the argument is important, not who makes it. That you as a teacher don't recognise this is really concerning, where as long as the result fits your narrative, it is acceptable.
The other glaring issue is that he weighted any difference heavily in the favour of EVs, eg EV owners would never drive aggressively even with additional torque on tap. The real question is would the group of EV drivers operate an EV differently to the average non EV driver. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but anytime you see people blatantly waving away differences between groups in some sort of sciency discussion it should be ringing alarm bells.
Agreed... but I actually think it's even BETTER as lesson material.
It's good for them to see an example of "research" in real time, but even better if you watched it as a class, and paused periodically to ask questions like "was that a fair assumption?", or "what other ways could we have approached the same question?", "what are resources we may trust, and why?" Etc.
It would be a great opportunity for discussion, especially since it'll likely breed opposition, and subsequent discourse.
I've been driving an EV for 5 years and I never knew I had so many problems with it until I talked to someone with an emotional support truck.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 You win
Ah trucks. Gender afirming care.
😆 I have to use this!
I've been driving one for about 2 years and love it.
Culture wars are so bizarre
Gender affirmation truck.
Here in Texas, I see people saying that our electric grid can't handle charging all those electric vehicles--and even blaming them for some of the grid failures we've had.
Like... even IF they were significantly stressing the grid--it's not the cars that are the issue here.
Well, likely if the grid is not enhanced at all and no smart charging is promoted it is likely that the grid cannot handle it. It is however possible to improve the grid. Just like it is government policy to create roads without which cars are useless, it can be conceived that it is the government's responsibility to make electric vehicle charging possible by improving the infrastructure. Also, not everyone is going to be switching to EVs at the same time so there is time for the infrastructure to be built, if the Texas state is too lazy to get involved in building infrastructure that's not really the EVs fault.
That's incredible because for a good while tesla would install roof mounted solar panels to help you charge it. So I'm guessing a lot of people dont suck the power grid dry.
"Smallest car is a bike"
Unicycle-man has entered the chat
The only people that can really talk shit on environmental issues are unicycling pro-forest vegetarians.
I'm down for this. Someone make this a doctorate.
Roller skater has entered the chat
And I have actually seen at least one person riding a unicycle through town. It's kinda impressive watching him. There's also plenty of ppl that ride those one tire electric psuedo-skateboards? I've no idea what they're called.
And a couple years ago, there was someone that would ride a Segway through our neighborhood on his way to the university (I live in a university town). Students ride all kinds of strange small vehicles I never saw before I moved here. lol
@@Joshua-gt7pzvegetarians?
Do you not know how many greenhouse Gases the milk production causes?
Everyone has seen a unicycle man, no matter where they live. There's always one. I used to see a man casually riding his unicycle through my university campus.
Adding a comment from a PhD in aerosol science (me) -- most of the particles resulting from the tailpipe, at least by number, and probably by mass, are going to be secondary. That means they take time and chemistry to form into actual particles. I doubt the tyre studies examine these at all (because it's relatively hard). But it's VERY FRUSTRATING to hear so much discussion of particulate emissions and not make this distinction. Particles of a few microns, like from mechanical wear on tires, can travel maybe a few 10's to 100's of meters on the wind. Particles around 0.1 micron can travel DOZENS OF KM on the wind on a very normal day. Even ignoring the fact that they form from gases that also travel long distance. The impact on health and air quality from these two things is a world of difference.
Sorry for the potentially dumb question, but would the particulates weighing ~0.1 microns be worse for the environment as they cover a larger distance and can pollute a much larger distance?
@@Dreg-dd4nq microns aren't weight, they're length. 1 Micron is 1/1000 of a millimeter
Thanks for sharing this, super helpful!
@@Dreg-dd4nq Not a dumb question! Remember pollution depends on concentration. So smaller particles might spread much much further, but that means the same total mass is also less concentrated than if they just spread like 10m from the source. Different environmental impacts are a little outside my expertise.
Yes, and they're a bigger health risk not just as a result of the distance they travel. They (sub micron particles) are also able to travel much more extensively within the body (deeper into the lungs and into the bloodstream.)
I did a Master's thesis on this topic. First of all, really great job for 17 min video, you touched on most important points.
I wanted to add this:
- it's not just the tire emissions, there is also brake wear AND road wear! (asphalt)
- it's not just microplastics, there are also metals and other elements which are proven to increase prevalence of asthma and other diseases for people who leave near highways, especially toll booths (since there is lots of braking). And EZ pass helps with this! There is less asthma since it was widely adopted.
- you're right: the driving style matters a lot.
- and weight of the vehicle matters, too. There is one EV outlier: Tesla Cybertruck. It's twice as heavy as an average EV, so its emissions from tire and brake wear are significantly higher.
- the study mentioned European vehicles produce less emissions than US ones. And the reason is Americans unfortunately LOVE huge and heavy trucks.
All of these emissions (from tires, brakes, road wear and even pipe emissions for gas-powered vehicles) increase with the weight of the vehicle. And EVs are not even the biggest offenders. Most popular trucks in the US such as Ford F1 could weigh more than most EVs (except Cybertruck).
May I ask an honest question? Do you think tire compound formulas are factored in these studies? As I understand it, electric vehicles (and super gas savers like sub compacts) use low rolling resistance tires. I would imagine that would affect the rate at which rubber is shed from the tread.
@@michaelkierum42 The studies I used (sponsored by the US government) did not compare different tires. There are some studies about the new tires, but they are sponsored by the companies producing such tires, so might contain bias. From everything I gather, looks like the low rolling resistance tires mostly aimed at reducing the energy consumption while driving (using less gas for gas cars, which is amazing), but not necessarily increase the longevity of the tires themselves or improve their shed rate.
I found one company (Enso) that claims to produce tires not just with lower rolling resistance, but better longevity and less pollution. They are available in the UK and plan to enter US market in 2027. Hopefully their claims can be independently confirmed. I don't know if it's true or just marketing. And I hope there will be more tires like these from other companies, too. Should be the standard, anyways.
@@MegaKiri11 thank you for your reply. I am a mechanic by trade but my experiences are obviously not under controlled environments. It appears to me that there is just so many variables involved that sorting this whole thing out is difficult. I am totally onboard with EVs and yes, I am also one of those mass transportation advocates guys. but back to the overview with the EV and tires. It appears to me that Low Rolling Resistance tires have shallower tread and I suspect lower total mass (in order to lower the needed energy to accelerate or decelerate the rotating mass). In terms of my Mirage (175/55/r15) traction is sacrificed (not being critical it has sufficient traction for normal driving) compared to wife's Camry tires (215/55/r16) I wonder if the reduced contact patch would reduce the amount of material worn off or if the reduced patch would push the material closer to sheer pressures causing more to wear off. I wish I understood how the compounds for different tires were designed. Like I know what a harder/softer tire will affect handling and traction, but I don't understand the physics behind it you know? softer compound means faster wear (soft tires have much lower rated tread life) or is that just race slicks? I have had a set of 10 ply tires on my F-350 that are wearing like wood. lasting forever it seems they are going to rot before they wear out. And that truck is super heavy (I think its 9500 GVW or something) Gah there needs to be like a class or something exploring all these factors. Also I know Fans of EV might not like my truck but in my defense it's not a daily driver grocery getter, it's my trailer towing workhorse I use as a work truck. At work we do see hybrid/electric vehicles needing tires more often. I guess I think this is due to lower starting tread, possibly softer compound, and there might be a factor of personality driving styles. Sorry for rant. Thank you for your time.
@@michaelkierum42 Thanks for sharing your experience! You are right, there are so many variables. Would love to do a controlled experiment with different kind of tires, different vehicles, etc. But that's a huge undertaking! We are not getting funding for that...
@@michaelkierum42 - One of the worst tires for wear resistance is the 'run-flat' tire that is used on some vehicles that have eliminated spare tires. I have spoken with people who have had these tires and they wear out twice as fast as ordinary tires. Of course the hardness of the rubber compound affects tire wear and the "All Season" tires are usually softer for better traction so they will normally wear faster. Of course the way a person drives has a huge effect on tire wear, fast starts/stops and hard cornering and driving on gravel roads will reduce tire life significantly.
My main issue with electric vehicles is that the focus on them has just completely obfuscated better and more sustainable solutions. Cars are bad for so many other reasons than just emissions like noise pollution, congestion, wasting valuable land on parking lots, expensive maintenance, induced demand, etc. Expanding public transportation and promoting the use of smaller vehicles like bikes or electric bikes deals with both emissions, waste, microplastics and all the other issues that comes with cars, but that's just glossed over if the conversation is just about emissions of cars and not car infrastructure as well. It's kind of like recycling where the focus on recycling has made industries and people waste more plastic than they would have otherwise, and where a better solution is to just limit the use of plastic to prevent waste in the first place.
The car lobby owns the american government. I doubt walkable cities will ever be a significant reality
Yeah, I’d like a walkable city with decent public transit way more than everybody in it having an electric vehicle
Oh, you sweet summer child ...you can't eliminate corporate greed And you can't remove corruption from government.The two are intrinsically connected to the modern world were in the sixth great extinction , and it's probably for the best When the roaches rise they'll probably do better than we have
kmiller2160 hell no. The public transportation infrastructure in a lot of cities are still not sufficient enough to be a proper alternative to cars and 4 wheels vehicules.
Peoples living outside cities sometimes don’t have choice other than using their car to navigate. Heavy/bulky stuff transportation, late hours shifts, old and disabled peoples transportation, etc.
But all those problematics are rarely taken into consideration by leading peoples living in cities.
It’s mainly a social issue imo.
@@MoonWalkerTexsRanger "walkable" doesn't mean "car free". Cars should be used for what they are good at, which is transporting heavy goods you can't carry and to be available in areas where there is no feasible public transit. But currently cars are seen as the main form of transportation, most car trips do not land in the 'what cars are good at' isle and are just to transport people. This is extremely inefficient as car infrastructure is the most expensive, wasteful, space inefficient and unsustainable compared to all other forms of transportation that could do those trips instead, not to speak of all the problems with the cars themselves. The people who decide where all the money goes are also not people who take public transit, public officials are wealthy and therefor use cars all the time. There is a reason why you never see politicians on busses or trains. This leads to there being a heavy bias towards car infrastructure in the budget and planned expansions, the opposite of what you suggest of city leaders not accommodating cars enough. It doesn't help that a lot of politically influential demographics are wealthy suburbanites who also only use cars. There is an imbalance between car infrastructure and public transit, and it weighs heavily on the side of cars.
The worst I’ve heard, from my step-grandfather-in-law: the batteries take up too much room in the back seat, and they roll all over the place!
does he imagine like 50,000 AA Batteries just loosely in the back seats of the car?
The batteries rolling around in the back is crazy but a lot of the earlier evs and plug in hybrids did have really bad cargo space because they put batteries in the back seat area (chevy volt, nissan leaf, toyota prius prime). Thats not really an issue anymore though with the batteries in the floor.
This reminds me of me of the candid camera sketch with the ev1 “ oh you might have to change batteries” opens trunk just a row of D cells
Sounds like how they tested the tire wear. Just loaded up the maximum cargo in AAs.
Damn, I’d love to see the EV that he drove, because it sounds like a fun roller coaster ride.
My folks sure care a lot about coal carbon emissions when they’re talking about EVs, yet they don’t seem to want to shut coal plants down.
It’s similar to how they really care about wind turbines killing birds but think that the millions and millions of critters killed by oil spills and air pollution are just the price of progress.
for real. it's just an excuse because people are afraid of change
NIMBYism at its finest. It's extremely easy to care about the things in your immediate vicinity because you can see and feel them, but when people hear big statistics like "millions of animals are dying" it's easy to just dismiss it as a number because people think it doesn't affect their everyday life. And the unfortunate truth is that, for some people, it genuinely doesn't. It's part of the greater problem of people having different political beliefs because they literally live in different realities (eg. urban vs rural) and it's hard to reconcile that because you don't really have any leverage or commonalities with each other. When you do, people can be pretty bipartisan still, best example I can think of is that the US government is extremely bipartisan when it comes to highways because everyone uses them.
@@ozzi9816 except that highway development is terrible. They are expensive to build and maintain, they require bulldozing valuable land, they result in more cars going into cities resulting in more valuable space being used for parking, they promote an inefficient and unsafe mode of transport and a lifestyle which requires citizens to buy expensive depreciating assets. Proper public transport is the best answer, with smaller highways focused for industrial activity and rural access and extensive bike/pedestrian infrastructure for short distance travel.
The good news is we're shutting them down anyway...the US generated more electricity from wind than coal for the first time ever this year!
@@hankschannel Really? That's great news!
Brake pads in an EV are basically a lifetime part because regen does the vast majority of the stopping. I’ve noticed on my Tesla Model Y, tires are wearing about the same rate as my old Honda Accord, although they are quite a bit bigger tires in height and width so definitely a little bit more rubber particulates there, but all that significant. Not even a 2x over a much smaller lighter car.
New brake pads come with a lifetime replacement guarantee.
I love that you not only do the research, but teach you're viewers how to verify and validate sources. A skill that seems to have been lost on many, hence a huge spike in conspiracy theories. Great job as always! 👍
+
+
Especially the “how is this study done? You’re just saying things” part
Re: tires, people also forgetting that the most popular vehicles in the US are Trucks and SUVs which are also heavy and hard on tires
Why does nobody ever acknowledge this? I always think this whenever conversations about the weight of EVs come up. The average car size (and weight) have been increasing for years but nobody seems to care about that. Only when it comes to EVs do people mention all the problems about heavier cars
jfc. E-subcompacts are heavier than gas subcompacts. E-suvs are heavier than gas SUVs.
People don't like EVs, so they are looking at every reason. Every type of EV is heavier than the same type of gas vehicle, yes. If we REALLY want to focus on tires, then yes, more non-EV subcompacts (or hybrids) should be used.
Yes but then if those people bought an EV then it would be a truck or an suv EV which will be heavier than it’s gas powered counterpart.
@@jeffkadlec8264 scooters and motorcycles, e variants are comparable or lighter than gas equivalents.
E bicycles weigh more than acoustic, but are much more likely to replace a car trip or even altogether replace a car.
Heavier vehicles don't just have increased tire wear, they also have increased wear on roads and bridges.... When we already can't afford to maintain our driving roads and bridges.
Heavier vehicles also produce more noise pollution since the main source of nose pollution even on gas vehicles is rubber hysteresis.
Heavier vehicles are also more hazardous for anyone outside of them.
I just want to add something to the conversation here as I've worked as a mechanic at a tire shop. How fast tires degrade also depend on what pressure you are running at. E.G. a car with a low tire pressure WILL degrade tires faster compared to if you would drive the same car with a higher tire pressure, in general.
A blanket statement like "this car will emit 20% more particles than this car due to something something tire wear" is by nature a VERY generalized statement. Tire wear depends on A LOT of factors such as: Tempreture, tire pressure, tire dimensions, driving style and so much more. Tire wear is a more complex topic than you people might think at first. It can go deep, like with most things. But in general, as the video concludes. If you drive like a maniac, you will wear out your tires faster and emit more microplastics.
Hopefully my comment added some more context to this video. Have a good day : )
electric cars cannot run the same tires as ICE cars because of the increase torque they generate, tire manufacturers make specific tires for them because of this. Hence electric cars generate more particles.
I love how the study itself concludes (although its only briefly touched on in the video) that using EV technologies like Regenerative braking will reduce tire ware.
So the study itself concludes, "This is actually a horrible way to test EV tires"
@@the_charliecp8859Plenty of EV drivers use normal tires that are used mostly for non-EVs.
Even some Teslas come stock with tires that are also used on ICE cars.
EV specific tires can provide some advantages, but are not necessary.
@@the_charliecp8859 sports cars also generate a lot of torque, and they use normal tires. at most they will use sports tires, but not for the wear, for extra grip. the point is if you don't drive agressively the extra torque they can generate is meaningless.
@@danilooliveira6580 sport cars dont weigh 2 tons
So, the fact remains that the real green option is to live somewhere with solid public transport and never use a car again? Cool. The bucket list remains unchanged.
As a teacher, I love you showing your thinking and explaining your research process. I’d love some demos like this for Crashcourse and Crashcourse Kids. Showing kids HOW to think while resources is super important.
Having a media literacy segment that has demos like this would be EVERYTHING. It's one thing to hear 'you should check sources' And another thing entirely to see someone's process of making sense of what they're reading and thinking through it. It's sooooo helpful!
I was thinking this exact thing! I love the lateral reading demo on crash course digital literacy, and I show it to my students every year. I'd love to see more research demos like this -- especially ones that were geared to be followed by younger/teenage minds.
you might be interested in their "Navigating Digital Information" course over on Crash Course
here , the news seems to always talk about the mining of battery elements being the most environmentally unfriendly thing about EVs
This is my question as well.
Do they also mention how extremely environmentally unfriendly the extraction/refining/transport and burning of fossil fuels are? Which is an ongoing thing the entire life of a combustion-engine vehicle, as opposed to something that happens only once to build it.
conveniently they never mention how environmentally unfriendly drilling oil is or how metals are mined to make car frames and panels
It has to do with the slave labor to get the materials. There videos of children digging with just their hands, all day long, go to sleep and do it again, and again, and again. Mothers with babies on their backs. It’s crazy. Allegedly
Oh, it absolutely is. The thing is, how much more destructive is mining and refining those rare earth metals etc, minus whatever recycling is economical once it's "spent", versus the extraction and refinement of gas & oil etc.
Mining is pretty destructive, but pumping oil out of the group is also more destructive than many people realize. It reduces hydrostatic pressure, and contributes to infrastructure and environmental damage like sinkholes and subsidence. Of course, drinking, industrial, and agricultural water is a dramatically bigger source of this problem, and mining contributes too, but it's more complicated that just pollution.
"Hank googles stuff" are some of my favorite videos.
I cannot understate how much joy watching Hank work through things brings me.
The true problem with newer vehicles is that car companies insist on turning the control panel into a touch screen. So now I can't just muscle memory to where the button is, I have to physically look down and take my eyes off the road when I want to adjust anything. The worst offenders are electric vehicles, where they even take the dash panel away and put it on a screen for some reason.
“Why don’t you take the bus?”
=
“I probably don’t live in America. I definitely don’t live in rural America”
+
20 mile drive south to work, 20 mile drive north to town. Only bus round here is a Greyhound.
answer: my country refuses to make public transport a viable transport option for some god forsake reason
I mean, in properly rural America buses wouldn't even make sense, the population density is just too low. You'd basically have to make but stops at every individual house because it's too far to walk between houses, and there's no guarantee everyone wants to get to the same place or travel at the same time. So a lot of the time you'd just have an empty bus driving around, or maybe like 3 passengers if a family gets on.
@@danieljensen2626that’s the point of their comment
I love how he not only tells us about the subject and answers he found, but also shows us how good investigation of a question looks. Questioning every source and asking follow up questions.
Just wanna say, ive worked in a few warehouses as a forklift operator, and i can tell you the amount of black dust over everything from the solid tyres on forklifts is absolutely crazy.
Other sources will be brake dust, dust from motor brushes if the forklift is electric (And has a brushed motor), dead human skin and general dust blown around the building that makes it in through gaps or poorly filtered HVAC and settles in the still air inside. I've been in both clean and dirty warehouses though, and the determining factor seems to be whether cleanliness is prioritised. A warehouse storing steel forgings will be dirty by default because the dirt doesn't affect the items stored there and the parts will be cleaned and machined before use anyway, while a warehouse storing biomedical devices for shipping to customers will be kept very clean because questions will be asked when customers get dirty products.
*sigh* I really don't like all these tests that are purposefully misleading. I want to live in a world where corporate interest is not involved in studies and tests. Where companies want to improve their products to get better real world scores.
If the tires were made of asbestos, they wouldn't be contributing to the microplastics problem.
The only people making the EV tire claim are driving heavier full size trucks. There is just a whole subset of the population that is not worth listening to ever for any reason. They are literally wrong about everything all the time.
I like how Hank ended with, “ya know what better then all the above? A bike!”
No 😾😾😾😾😾.... I hate you
he don't miss
You know what's better than all of the above...? ua-cam.com/users/shorts0dKrUE_O0VE
I've no idea where Hank lives...but if he is singing the praises of bicycles, I can guarantee that it's pretty flat!
@@kersebleptes1317Montana is not flat.
Hank Pleas Please PLEASE keep putting out these videos that shows your process of research and information gathering. In the last few years so many people have talked about bias, research, etc but no one has shown people how to do it. I think what you did here was amazing and I appreciate the format and entertainment I had while learning how to do research.
Agreed!
A logarithmic scale on a bar chart? Are they trying to get a ticket from the data visualization police???
My guess is it was a scale issue that was distracting from thier point/bias.
Logarithmic tranformation of data is used when the data doesnt meet all requirements of the test being conducted (eg. equal variance), and the transformaed data meets the test requirements. So it could be that
A bar graph is the best style for this type of data, a line graph isn't good when the x-axis isn't a continuous variable. And a log-scale is good when the difference between values is quite large as it allows for visualization of the differences between lower values as it avoids 50 and 5 looking like the same number because the upper value is 5,000. At least, assuming the intended audience are people who are used to interpreting logarithmic axes such as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.
@@elisebanks8774 But the point of the chart is A-B numerical comparison, so even then, it should have been scaled back to regular.
@@er00ic Well, here, there's little reason here to avoid 50 and 5 looking the same if the 5 000 is relevant - and if it is not, then there should be a chart without it.
The only reason the differences are being washed out is aggressive legal driving being so much higher than the rest. Which either means it should be the focus of the conclusion of the study in the first place and the other differences actually don't matter, and/or the rest should have another, separate graph, since they can be properly compared without that one category distorting the axes.
Better two visually-accurate charts than one that can be very misleading.
As another example, suppose we are comparing the US total federal spending categories. If we include all the categories, Social Security, Health, Military swamp a lot of minor categories like Science, Environment, Energy, etc. so that those categories are visually indistinguishable - and in the sense of the wider budget, they are! Now, if we did want to distinguish them as a comparison within that subset, the would best be served with their own chart.
I love the way you model finding information, thinking about the source, potential con founders, biases, etc, and analyzing the info you find. This is the way to learn and think about a complex topic, and so many people don’t know how to do it-not because they’re not smart or educated, but because they’ve just never seen someone do it before.
So the worst is a heavy diesel truck driving legally but aggressive, whilst blowing coal.. which is particulate
Diesels have to have their exhausts run back into the intake nowadays. It shortens their life and makes them extremely expensive now. But you don’t see as many coal pushers on the road anymore since these laws were passed.
@@christiantrammell6271 “have to” are strong words....a lot of people just bypass
@@christiantrammell6271 You obvi haven't been to the midwest, it's like a ritual out here for wife beaters to modify the shit out of a brand new diesel pickup and blow coal while flying through town 20 above the speed limit. It became such a problem in my town that the police regularly camp out on the highway just to pull over these trucks
Yeah and knowledge is power as Banks went and set several performance diesel records the community is beginning to realize that you can make more power running clean and have way less maintenance. I drive a TDI golf that gets 55 MPG and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
@@EBAH_FEAR Coal is a nice guy.. must have been an auto correct from rolling coal. or not, who knows?
"Aggressive legal driving" perfectly describes that one guy in my (residential, low to middle class) neighbourhood who owns a porsche, and really wants to go fast. So he'll zoom down the street for about 100m, then slow right down for a roundabout, then zoom for another 100m until he has to stop at a crossing.
most cars are like that. mostly they race the bicycle to the stop sign and endanger lives, all for the thrill of winning the first to the red light race. The bike always travels faster overall to the destination, and is faster to park and use etc etc. But those cars sure can zoom short distances. Gotta justify paying 50$K more than a real vehicle (a bike is a real vehicle, #CarsBlockTraffic)
@@ruslbicycle6006bikes are better than cars in many ways for health and for society and for urbanization, however you lost me when you tried to posit something as asinine as the idea that “bikes travel faster overall”. No. No they don’t. The only time they are faster is when there is gridlock traffic, you should specify that if that’s what you mean because on an open road the bike is useless in terms of speed compared to the car. Bias is a hell of a drug, you’re so obsessed with bikes and emotionally wrapped up in your personal biased agenda that you’re out here saying very stupid and obviously incorrect things while drinking your own kool aid. Not a pretty sight 😂.
@@ruslbicycle6006
I wouldn't say bikes are faster. They can be an incredible time-saver, if you think of them like instantly teleporting places while also having time to go to the gym, and you can save so much money biking -- especially if a household can get by with one less car by biking -- but actually getting places faster? I think you need some pretty specific conditions before that would consistently be the case.
Or, as I like to call this way of driving; Going almost nowhere, really fast.
@@ruslbicycle6006you've gone too far the other way, man. Dont hate cars for the sake of hating them, they have their place just as much as bikes do. People wont take you, or the ideas you present, seriously if you dont.
Here in scotland we have these things called "hills" and they really prevent bicycles from ever becoming the go-to mode of transport, I'd say more people walk than cycle, and maybe it's an american culture thing but that level of aggression to cyclists certainly isnt a thing here.
You can have both cars and bikes, no need to divide people on it with blanket statements
This is actually a great example for how to “do your own research” in looking for credible sources, seeing where they got their data and then thinking critically on what it all says. Great video Hank!
I want to correct what seems to be a misunderstanding from 13:29 forward. The exact quote from the article is: "Half a tonne of battery weight can result in tire emissions that are almost 400 more times greater than real-world tailpipe emissions, everything else being equal." This is *not* saying, as Hank states in the video, that "The particulate emissions from the tires of EVs are 400 times worse than the particulate emissions from the tailpipes of gas-powered cars." Instead, it says that, when measured in units of particulate tailpipe emission equivalents, the *absolute* difference (not the *multiplicative* difference) is 400. Written in equation form: (particulate emissions of EV's tires)/(particulate emissions of tailpipes) - (particulate emissions of gas-powered car's tires)/(particulate emissions of tailpipes) = 400. This is an extremely odd way to do it, and truly gives no scale. As noted in the video, the vast majority of emissions from tailpipes are in the form of gases, not particles. EV's tires could emit 1,000,000 times more particles than tailpipes (or 1,000,000 times the mass, counting only particulate emissions; the article is unclear which is being used based solely on that screenshot, and I couldn't be bothered to check), and gas-powered cars 999,600 times, and that would still satisfy their statement despite only having approximately 1.0004 times the particulate emissions of gas-powered cars. Is that truly the scale of this? I'm not sure, but from what I've seen of the article it could be. There are very few conclusions you could draw from that sentence, even if it is completely accurate.
Hank, this format does a fantastic job at modelling curiosity, and what it's like to dig deeper.
What I _also_ realized it does, however, is modelling trust in experts, and calling it when you've gone... deep enough, if that makes sense? Because there's only so far you can go without, y'know, getting a PhD yourself.
I think it's cool to show the judgment calls you make along the way in order to cross the Sad Gap but not, like, let your life be consumed by a single question.
I dunno - those are my idle thoughts watching this. Thank you for another great one!
++++
Such a good point. You have to trust someone/something at some point; it's about finding the appropriate line.
@DanikaLeighEllis Even if you, yourself, become an expert in something you still have to trust yourself and the people and resources that taught you what you know
i totally agree+++++
From a person who works in a tire shop. The main reason why I EVs go through so many tires is becasue of the wheel alignment. They have a negative camber out of the factory, which is great for handling corners at speed. The downside is it wears the inside edge of the tire faster then the rest of the tire if you just drive normally.
EVs have the same alignment as sports cars like bmw. Id say they go through just as many sets of tires.
I was under the impression it was because an EV accelerates faster and therefore would be going through tires faster. They made kind of a big deal with my tesla model y when I bought it that the alignment was the same as my Toyota. Most of the articles (admittedly anecdotal) I’ve read about it suggest putting the car in “chill” mode so it doesn’t accelerate as quickly and that people do see an increase in how long their tires last when they do this. Now I personally have my tesla in chill mode because the FSD accelerates very quickly and makes my passengers feel sick, but I’m hoping it’s just an added bonus.
I drove an EV as a rental just to see how different it felt than an ICE, and one of the major adjustments I noticed was how differently I would take turns because of the regenerative braking. I could fine tune my speed into the turn without ever switching from accelerator pedal to brake pedal just by easing up. The overall result was definitely taking turns at higher speeds than I usually would.
Thats great info.
Would you say its an optimization issue then? Would it be better for EVs to come off the rack with "regular" tires to avoid the additional wear. Or is there a large enough benefit for using these sport oriented set ups ?
I think they actually dial that camber in for less scrub in a straight line and more range that can be claimed on the sticker.
@@respawn1234 With a ton of battery under the floor, EVs corner very well, which encourages faster cornering...
What we really need are good public transit, walkable neighborhoods, and denser, mixed-use zoning.
What we "need", and what is "accomplishable in the reality we live in" are 2 different things.
@@rdizzy1 What is "accomplishable in the reality we live in" and what "would be cheaper and better for everyone but we believe we cannot do because there is no money to be made for rich people" are two different things also. Plenty of places live in the way the @thedapperdolphin1590 described, so it is definitely accomplishable in our reality.
Preach, my dolphin brother.
@@Jonathantheweirdo Having lived in Brussels, London, DC, and Boston. I have rarely needed a car in my adult life. Shank's mare and public transportation have been my way of life. Now I live in Savannah, GA where there are buses that only run every 20 minutes and often stop running mid-day. I drive now.
@@Jonathantheweirdo No it isn't, you are ignoring who has the power, that is the reality that we live in. You can't ignore all the things standing in the way and call that reality.
I wish people who "do their own research" were this thorough
This is why good science communication and people who actually do the work at looking at the actual research is so important. Journalistic outlets often do a very bad job of communicating what science is actually telling us.
My local news station did something recently about whether putting the lid down when flushing prevented illness. The tests showed that it was effective for bacteria, but not for viruses. Their conclusion was that it was worthless to shut the lid when flushing. I was yelling at the screen, "But you can prevent BACTERIAL illness." Apparently, they didn't hear me.
It gets worse when the science is also written poorly. That study is so messy.
Regarding the ability to charge at home- a few options you should look into in your area:
1) Does your power company offer a lease-to-own charging programme in your area? Here in central florida my power company FPL has a programme where they installed a Level 2 charger in my home for free, and off-peak hours I charge my car for free, and it costs a flat fixed $25/mo. It's a really great deal vs buying an expensive charger yourself, and paying to have a contractor install it.
2) Is your laundry room accessible near the garage? For decently fast charging (overnight top ups) you want a strong 240V connection. Which, is exactly the same thing that your dryer circuit would be setup to use already. If your dryer is reasonably close to your garage, you can actually get a Y-splitter and an extension cord and run your car off your dryer circuit. You'll want to schedule the car to charge when the dryer isn't in use, but this also works totally fine. You'll want to check what kind of plug your dryer uses, some are 3 prong Nema 10-30, some are 4 prong Nema 14-30. But at my old place I was able to use the Tesla mobile charger and the nema adapter for it and charge my car from the power in the pantry room.
Obviously this doesn't help people in apartment or other living situations, but if you are renting at a house or own a home already, there are affordable options for charging an EV that don't require you to spend hundreds or thousands getting new circuits and devices installed.
I dont have the ability to charge my ev at home, but I can charge my car at work for free and even if that would not be possible, here in Germany in my fairly small city most of the grocerystores have ev chargers to get some percent while shopping.
It just makes sense to drive an ev in comparison to a gas vehicle
Main issue for me and many people I know is that we don't own our homes and our landlords refuse to install chargers.
You are a BadAss! :-P
Also running new electric is surprisingly easy. I just added a 240V 50A for an induction stove. Just turn off the breaker and don't touch the live part, follow instructions for the outlet and breaker, buy the correct wire, and it'll be really hard to fuck up.
3) Does a level 1 charger do the job just fine. I’ve had my EV for 1.5 years and I have had no problem. It plugs into a regular outlet.
Hank freaking out about Finnish names being so aesthetically pleasing was a high point of the video tbh
E
Lol I yelled "it's finnish!" Haha. Though unfortunately we have a lot of not so pleasant names as well. I have an uncle Eino and that name never sits right with me.
A room over, I could tell it's Finnish and then sprinted back to my screen like it was a patriotic matter of urgency
@@rachdanaelee this probably isn't worth anything but Eino is kinda similar to one of my favourite dragon pokemon, Deino, so the name is kinda cute
Probably a big reason Tolkien based the elvish language on Finnish
I live in a rural community comprised almost entirely of vacation homes (they were fishing shacks when I was a kid.)
The nearest town is five miles from here, and the nearest bus "station" is 25 miles away. It's a convenient store (think Wawa, but smaller and local) and Trailways has a contract with them to use their parking lot for pickups and dropoffs. I would be THRILLED if we had a regular transit system, but I don't see that day coming in my lifetime. As the daughter of a railmotive engineer, I can't begin to tell you how much it sucks that other countries, particularly China, are lapping us on this one.
What bothers me most about the logarithmic chart is that they started the bars start at 1. The "real world" one at the end looks like its negative because it goes downward.. but its just a small positive number (0.04).
If they had started it at 0.01 (10^-2), it would make more sense visually
well you see, cars take air particles out of the air which = less pollution. more gas car =less pollution
yes i’ve had someone try to explain that to me before… people are stupid
@@pakratmiz4487 the implication being that the pollutant in air is... air particles?!?!
Overall I find that study to be done very poorly. The visuals are muddied by the multiple variables being plotted and the analysis doesn't compare apples to oranges. I would posit that even with the added weight, the impact of tailpipe particulates and gas emissions together is still worse the particulates from ev tyres.
The real moral of the story is it should have been a scatter plot, not a bar chart.
"smaller cars are better, and the smallest car is a bike" is the best slogan ive ever heard
E
I think it's of tremendous value that you demonstrate how to investigate a claim, Hank. Thank you!
this is such a great video to show people "how do i evaluate (verify or falsify) a claim?"
Also something to think about in terms of emissions: EVs have regenerative braking, so they use the motors to convert kinetic energy back into power to be stored in the batteries, slowing the vehicle down to almost a complete stop without using the friction brakes. ICEVs, on the other hand, have to throw all their kinetic energy into the brakes, turning it into friction heat and burning off a layer of brake pads as brake dust - In fact brake drums are coming back for EVs because they use the friction brakes so rarely and drums are markedly more protected from the elements.
Are brake pads still made from asbestos?
@@CorwynGCi sincerely doubt it.
Good point, none of those studies seemed to take brake wear into account. I looked up brake wear emissions and two studies (atmos14030498 & scitotenv 2023 167764) listed 6.5 to 27mg/km and 2.6 to 11.6mg/km. It seems brake particle emissions may be just as bad as tire wear. Notably drum brakes had much lower emissions than disc brakes, and some lighter EVs are moving back to drum brakes.
brakes drums never left, they're more effective at stopping vehicles. they're only less common on small vehicles now because disc brakes do a better job at heat dissipation so you can have smaller (lighter) brakes with less material that won't overheat.
Is using engine breaking a joke to you? Just down shift as you go down hill and let your engine slow down your car, rather then locking up your tires on a patch of ice in the winter when your driving home through 2 feet of snow on a curvy back road back to your house that has no public transit. And kid thieves these days can;t figure out how to use a clutch. Win win.
"Smaller cars are better, and the smallest car is a bike."
I am so going to steal that lmao
I love that Hank Green is teaching people how to think critically while answering a great question. It is something we are greatly lacking today. Love your videos, thank you Hank!
Good arguments against EVs
- Morally the extraction of lithium and other rare metals used in EV production is something you can not support
- The company or CEO producing the EV is something you can not support
- The price is too high
- You're waiting on more promissing new technologies like hydrogen engines
- You rather take public transportation
- You don't need a car
- They look ugly
"99% of people who are driving are normal driving."
I don't think Hank has been to Michigan.
I'm from michigan, and even here I'd say it's 97%
I was going to say he'd never been to Atlanta.
This implies that 99% of people who drive are currently in Michigan, which is a terrifying thought.
Or texas
Or Colorado. My god. In all the states I've lived the drivers in Colorado are by far the most aggressive
I love that we get to watch fact checking in real time. This is a skill more people need to develop, including vetting sources
I think it is something a lot of people CAN do; it's pretty simple. The problem I see is that a lot of info is either:
A. Not easy to find for your average Joe, making the time investment not worth the outcome.
B. Who's to say the people who upload those facts aren't lying?
Pom-pom would like you to know that the only truly environmentally friendly vehicle is a nonfunctioning AMC Gremlin.
That little aggressive driving chart is another plus for our eventual self driving vehicular future.
I did my graduation project for my Bachelors on Tyre wear particles. I'm so happy to see Hank struggling with the Emission Analytics data, because I struggled with this exact same source😂
The sad thing is their report was debunked by many people on (then) Twitter within weeks of it gaining traction, mostly for the same reasons Hank summarised. And yet here we are, years later, and it's still being referenced by other "experts" in their field who should know better. And they could certainly learn a thing or two from this video on how to D[T]OR!
My biggest takeaway from this is that Americans spell tyre with an "i". I don't know how I got so far in life not aware of that.
And I didn't know some people spelled it with a "y"!
I grew up in Wales and moved to America when I was 16, and all throughout high school and university I was discovering little spelling differences. Things like removing the u from colour, favourite, etc are simple and easy to notice, but it wasn't until I was directly informed of this that I became aware Americans use z instead of s (realised/realized, apologise/apologize, etc). Words like tire/tyre or pajamas/pyjamas are extra hard to spot because they aren't even part of a rule, it's just like that.
Don't get me started on math/maths.
@@trianglemoebius I live in the U.S., but I'm enough exposed to British English that I can never remember how to spell realize, apologize, etc.
I'll never understand why brits criticize how we speak, yall don't enunciate anything. Just say "Bottle of Water" so we can all laugh and move on.
@@trianglemoebius It's incredible all the little language differences you discover! I lived in Manchester, England for 2 years a little while ago (i'm from the states - minnesota specifically) and didn't even learn until I visited my old friends last month that you all call a weed whacker a string trimmer! It's like the weirdest, longest scavenger hunt finding all the little vocab and spelling differences
Here we see a prime example of how corporations have fully shifted the blame for pollution from corporations taking responsibility to individual responsibility. The US concept of recycling was created by the oil corporations as a strategy to shift public blame off of them and onto the individual. A large amount of what people think can be recycled cannot be and you are just making more work for people at the recycling plant which is one of the reasons recycling generally isn't cost effective.
People buy what the corporations are selling. Cars are bad for the environment, whether ICE or EV, but when politicians are like "let's add some bike lanes and improve public transportation and change zoning laws so we can build some density" people freak the heck out.
@@matthewcreelman1347 Was about to comment exactly this. People love to say "big companies are responsible!" and then continue to buy/depend on their products. This is an everyone problem, no matter how attractive it is to put the blame on gigantic evil corporations (who definitely still deserve the hate!). Bike lanes and infill density are how we can start solving this problem, but you're right, people freak out for even the tiniest changes.
@@matthewcreelman1347 they took away a car lane and added a bike lane all throughout my town years ago. I have never seen a single bike in the bike lane but I see congested traffic every single day because of the loss of a driving lane that was already here. I'm sure it works somewhere but here a bike lane just increased the CO2 footprint of the town.
@@LPMutagenis the bike lane safe? r there other bikes that that bike lane could reasonably connect to? is ur town dense enough to where biking is reasonable? this is the problem with half hearted infrastructure, which i consider most "bike lanes" to be, especially since many r just glorified death traps/empty space in the usa
@@LPMutagen Less lanes don’t cause more traffic for the same reason more lanes don’t reduce traffic. It’d be just as bad without bikes, only with less support for bikes. Though if it is true that the bike lanes rarely see use I’m assuming they’re not very good, have a lazy design, and have no real protection for bikes there from nearby cars. Everywhere I’ve seen them in the US leads me to believe their governments loathe actual safe bike lanes and the effort it’d take to properly make them and redesign the streets as a whole to safely accommodate them.
My takeaway from this is that Hank is an incredible badass for having a Pom Pom figurine.
Do they ever take into account the amount of energy it takes to find the oil, pump it out of the ground, ship it across the world, refine it, then ship it across America?
Negligible compared to battery production which are terrible energy carriers in the first place. Nothing beats clean hydrocarbons. Besides electricty speeds up entropy more than the gas exchange in the entropic system of the earth. Which is why nature works on gas exchanges and not on electricity on a macro level. Not that some EV idiots are able to understand the depth of it. The amish are smarter than you.
We have oil here
@@TheNapalmFTW "we have oil at home"
Not as much as it takes to get the materials for batteries. Oil mining is pretty efficient.
@@ChrisWijtmans is that potentially a consequence of us having done oil mining for longer though? Could mining for materials for batteries become more efficient as demand increases and we grow more experienced at it?
You had a really good point about the VW with 500kg extra payload was on tires not designed for that weight. When car designers/manufacturers decide what tires to put on a car, the weight of the vehicle, and whether pr not it will be expected to carry extra weight (as might happen in a truck, van, or SUV) is one of the main considerations. All tires are not equal.
I love the 'Hank does research series'.
Car tires cause particulate matter in the air and microplastics as well. Heavy cars, such as EVs, wear their tires faster (but driving aggressively causes more wear), however regenerative braking reduces particulate matter from the brake pads.
I don't get the regenerative braking point. Brake pads press against the inner (metallic?) part of the wheel, not the tires, right?
@@alex.mojakiI think the point is that the original study was biased in that it only measured tyre wear. In a traditional car there are at least three main sources of particulates: the fuel+air combustion emissions; the tyre wear; and the emissions from wearing down of the brake discs.
Since an EV uses regenerative braking to slow down most of the time (even when assisting with aggressive driving) then the main emission is only the tyre particulates. So it's misleading to narrowly restrict what you're measuring and then claim EVs are worse for the environment if you can't back that up by explaining why at least the additional brake dust emissions from fossil cars are not in total worse for the environment.
It should be noted that we can make cars more efficiently and lighter but don't because car company move slowly, want to sandbag evs, and want to share platforms between gas cars and evs.
I have a first model year Bolt and the first think I do after I turn the car on is put it in sport mode. The torque is what makes it a fun car to drive. I purchased this after owning a 2002 Saburo Impreza WRX hatchback.
Many EVs will have wheels and tyres designed to prioritise reduced rolling resistance (reduced compared to an equivalent non ev).
This rolling resistance is the tyre biting into the surface and so it stands to reason that even if an EV is heavier, it isn't necessarily true that it would wear it's tyres faster when driven in the same manner as an equivalent car.
The compound, psi and wheel size will all also contribute to the size of the contact patch and how much of that patch is left on the ground as the tyre rotates.
I'm sure an English teacher would prefer you used more punctuation, commas and such, but well said nonetheless lol.
Reduced rolling resistance may decrease wear while driving in a straight line, but may actually be worse when braking or turning. The reduced rolling resistance tires generally have less grip, which will cause more slip and can increase wear.
@@jevoniscool I think that goes to Hanks point on driving style. If you're driving normally, i.e. not driving at the limit of adhesion as you would on a track, your tyres aren't going to skid to any meaningful degree.
2 things really contribute to the fact that EVs eat through tires significantly faster than ICE cars.
1. EV's tend to be MUCH heavier than their gasoline powered counterparts, leading to increased tire wear
2. The instantaneous torque that electric motors have means it's MUCH easier to break traction and spin the tires. To the point were even an EV with relatively little power like a Chevrolet Bolt (200hp, 266 ft-lbs/361 nm torque) will chirp it's tires if you accelerate quickly from a stop.
The low rolling resistance tires do help reduce wear, but even in the best cases, they still go through tires about 20% faster than ICE cars. It's even worse with EVs that have performance options, as they opt for tires that have much more grip and softer compounds to aid in better acceleration, cornering, and braking. Something like a high powered Lucid or Tesla can easily eat a set of tires in 5-10k miles.
@@McNasty43 did you even watch Hank's video?
That "editing me" transition at 13:40 is WAAAY smooth
Possible human health impact of microplastics: A small study of 304 people who had surgery to remove plaque from one artery showed that almost 60 percent had microplastics in their artery. They could not avoid the possibility that samples might have been contaminated, because there were plastics in the room where the samples were collected, but they tried to avoid contamination. The researchers then looked at the electronic health records of 257 participants for about 34 months after the surgery to see if they had a heart attack or stroke. People who had microplastics particles in their artery were 4.5 times more likely to have a stroke, heart attack, or death from another cause in the around 34 months after the surgery. They also had higher levels of inflammation proteins that rose with more plastic detected. Other studies have shown that microplastic particles are associated with inflammation and inflammation can be a contributing factor to heart disease. The people who had microplastics in their arteries also were more likely to smoke and have other risk factors that increase the risk of heart disease. The researchers assessed some risk factors for the baseline risk of heart disease but not others. This could show a link between microplastics and heart attack but does not show anything for certain
Edit: The link to the study is www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 6th, 2024. I also changed it to write how many people participated in the study instead of writing a small study.
Dang on the smoking. That factor would really throw a wrench in isolating what factor microplastics play in our health. But aside from that, I hope John and Hank see your comment and possibly do a future video on microplastics build up in plaque. That sounds really interesting and something that is going to play a much bigger role in our future.
Thank you for sharing this comment. Really interesting and a lot to think about.
Was this study published? If so, please post a link to it or at least the name of the study and where it was published. Thanks!
Interesting. Probably not a casual mechanism, but I'm wondering about the link between smoking and microplastics. What are the lifestyle factors that lead to microplastics exposure
@@Cyrribrae based on various things I've read and what I've noticed anecdotally I wouldn't be surprised if it was another class related issue. You generally find that poorer people are most affected by pollutants of various kinds whether that comes from the air soil, water or food they eat. It fits with poorer people being more likely to smoke a lot in my experience too but I can't claim to have read any specific studies on that matter.
@@emmao6578 not a bad hypothesis. I could definitely see that being a factor. Good call
This video is a masterclass on internet reaearch. I can't drive due to disability, so I'm not even in the car market, but I watched this out of admiration for the demonstrated inquiry process. My PhD is in classics, but meticulous research makes me happy. Thanks, Hank!
Long post, but this video touches on something I studied in school and I wanted to share my findings. We did a project on this in one of my advanced electives while I was studying mechanical engineering. Data was from early 2021 so maybe things have changed, but the findings were really interesting.
Ultimately, we were looking at CO2 and methane emissions per mile driven. Comparison was a specific model car, I think it was a Toyota, that was offered as gas, hybrid, and full electric. We also looked as hydrogen powered cars.
To find the emissions of each vehicle type, there were a few steps:
1. Figure out what the emissions are to produce the gas/electricity
2. Figure out what the emissions per joule are for each fuel type (how much do they emit to supply a given amount of energy)
3. Figure out the fuel efficiency of each vehicle type.
4. Combine the above 3 into a general efficiency rating.
Most of the important work comes in that first step. If we assume all electricity is 100% green, they win out in a complete landslide. But if we use the current US power grid and its ratio of green to fossil fuel sources, the electric cars (at the time) were actually responsible for emitting slightly more than the gas cars. Hybrid ended up being the best, as it’s more effectively able to use regenerative braking to convert that fossil fuel energy into more electricity. The hydrogen cars were by far the worst choice, as there is an insane methane emission when producing hydrogen fuel, and methane is a significantly stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
Finally, we could see that the trend is moving toward electric being better more and more, but we need more clean energy production before it’s truly better for the environment. If your electricity all comes from fossil fuels, you’ll still be indirectly polluting the air with your full electric.
We need sustainable energy, energy production that can be sustained, when the sun goes down, the wind stops blowing, and the subsidies dry up.
'pollution' is a notoriously subjective term. If carbon is pollution, then we are pollution based life forms. Nearly 98% of all CO2 'emissions' actually come from natural respiration.
Once people learn about and stop being afraid of CO2 it solves all these problems.
@@SteveLomas-k6k
The issue on carbon emissions is balance - CO2 in vs CO2 out. Pretty much all respirational CO2 is net zero since any carbon eaten was captured out at some point, so it's just returning what was taken.*(1) The problem is with carbon going into the atmosphere that hasn't been there since long before humanity existed, much less the modern world. This will shift the balance for a roughly equal timeframe, meaning we will face conditions that we are just not prepared to face - and will cost vastly more than many of the temporary and marginal benefit that resulted in those emissions vs potential alternatives.
(1) Caveat here when the environment from which the food was taken does not resequester the carbon, which is why we count things like deforestation for agriculture as 'carbon emissions' but not the on-going food crop.
> Comparison was a specific model car, I think it was a Toyota, that was offered as gas, hybrid, and full electric.
Toyota only has one full-electric car, and it's only available in China.
@@Yay295 That's not true.. the bZ4X is available in North America. To be fair you might not have heard of it because one, Toyota doesn't really advertise it, and two, it's a mediocre EV by 2010 standards and a really poor one by modern standards.
"the electric cars (at the time) were actually responsible for emitting slightly more than the gas cars."
This is really strange because there had been studies from before 2010 showing that even with the worst electricity in the US (read: basically all coal power) EVs had a per-mile CO2 emissions comparable to a Prius (I have a specific paper in mind but it will take time to find it - if I do I'll edit this post). There is hardly any scenario where BEVs weren't the best performers by that metric, and by 2021 the fraction of the US power grid that's coal powered fell from like 45-50% to about 16%. I have a hard time believing that things somehow got *worse* for EVs between 2010 and 2021.
Edit: Found it, turns out the report was 2012 (not pre 2010). Union of Concerned Scientists, "Start of Charge: Electric Vehicles' Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings across the United States", June 2012, authored by Don Anair and Amine Mahmassani. You'll have to find it in the Wayback Machine though.
The part about methane release from hydrogen is also strange to me. Yes, hydrogen is currently almost all made from methane reformation and the extraction, transportation, and utilization of natural gas releases a substantial amount of it to the atmosphere, I'd still expect CO2 emissions from hydrogen production to be the dominant factor.
Final thought; Did your study account for the energy inputs required to actually produce and deliver the fuel? For both hydrogen and gasoline the energy inputs before either even make it into your vehicle are not negligible.
I feel like Pom Pom would have been an early adopter of EVs if he didn't live in such a great walkable community.
Population Tire does seem to be pretty walkable!
Really great video - I love how you showed us the challenge of the online research rabbit hole. Speaking personally as a stick shift driver, I can wholeheartedly attest that aggressiveness has a HUGE effect on tire wear. I try to be a boring driver, but my tires are far more likely to slip out and shed more particles on the days I'm late to work.
Now, electric vehicles certainly have more torque than my underpowered Kia Soul, but I see two major factors in favor of the EVs burning up *fewer* rubber particles:
Most people who by EVs care more about the environment than driving performance, so they tend to be less aggressive in their driving.
EVs have better traction control than a car like mine. The electric motors can more precisely tune to torque to the wheel to maximize traction, both with acceleration and during regenerative braking. Yes, my car has traction control and anti-lock brakes, but those functions are not going to be as precise as an electric motor equipped with precision speed and torque sensors. So the EV tires likely won't spin out or over-brake nearly as much as my car, even when compared tothe days I'm driving carefully.
Now, the EVs do have that battery weight you pointed out, so maybe that added battery weight would cancel those two effects, but it's like you said - we cannot extrapolate tire wear data from an internal combustion vehicle to tire wear on an EV. The EV drivetrain characteristics are far, far different from those of an IC car. Even my stick shift has very different characteristics from an automatic transmission - and there's no way that an extra 500 or 1,000 pounds will completely outweigh the effects of aggressive versus patient driving styles.
So as an IC owner, I aim to keep my driving under 8,000 miles per year. I don't drive much anyway, and I once calculated that it would take around ten years before the added cost of a hybrid would save me the same value in gasoline. (I was very broke back then.) Other calculations indicate that it takes somewhere in the ballpark of 50,000 and 100,000 miles before the greenhouse gas emissions from an IC car begin to exceed the environmental impacts of building massive EV batteries. In my eyes, a small EV is far better than any IC if you need to do a lot of driving, but limiting driving like I do means that my little Kia getting 27 mpg *might* have less environment over ten years than if I'd bought an EV or a hybrid. And I say *might* because I don't actually know. And that's part of what I like about this video. Hank, you're pointing out all the uncertainties that people need to look at. I get so tired of hearing blanket statements about environmental impacts (usually denial that there's a problem), and then having people use uncertainty as if it's evidence. I wish more people followed your example of allowing uncertainty to remain uncertain.
I’d disagree with your point about EV drivers caring about the environment over performance. Unless you have some stats or something. I definitely don’t, so just anecdotal but I know lots of people who have EV’s. Half our office parking garage is Tesla’s 😂 Everyone I’ve talked to cared most about not paying for gas. I could see wealthier people who buy the higher end EV’s and probably dont care about what they spend on gas, caring about the environment in higher priority.
Obviously I’m just guessing a lot here, but I bet you most the people who buy the cheapest EV’s and probably most Tesla Model 3’s care more about saving money on gas.
Amazing video. I greatly appreciated being show your work method and how you hunted down all those claims and found the source of them. Thank you.
Yes to smaller cars! I wish we had kei cars and trucks in the US.
Yeah that would be great, stuff like the Nissan Sakura EV or just bring back subcompacts like the Honda Fit which is now a hybrid.
You can get them if they are 25 years old.
@@BadOompaloompa79 Or if they're 15 years old in Canada. Lots of old Kei trucks showing up here and there in the last 5 years.
@@jonathonalsop2120 Sadly my state (NY) bans kei cars and trucks all together, no matter how old they are.
Potential Not Just Bikes reference?
Was very confused at the title for a sec
the Pokémon brainrot is coming through strong today 🔥🔥🔥🔥
No you got it right. This is about Hank's Chevy Volteon.
all those zubat that die to make your pokémon slightly faster emit a lot of emmisions
Effort Values > Electric Vehicles
I really appreciate how Hank "shows his work" by outlining the entire independent research that he does to get to the bottom of these kinds of claims. Aside from showing the research process, it also highlights the amount of understanding an individual must have in order to properly do this research in the first place, such as understanding logarithmic scales and why they would be used in this particular study and how not understanding logarithmic charts can give you the wrong impression of what you're reading.
To add extra data, a LOT of people drive fossil SUVs which are VERY heavy, and hence generate more microplastics. Additionally, EVs emit MUCH less microparticles from the brakes because of the regenerative braking, and no particulates from the tailpipe.
11:03 THANK YOU FOR NOTICING AND SAYING THIS. I had literally said to myself a bit earlier, "Oh, so extra weight looks like a pretty significant portion of the standard driving amount." A logarithmic chart there should have WARNING labels on it.
As someone who has been full-EV for the past nearly seven years, and has never been able to charge at home, I can say definitively that the benefits of driving an EV outweigh the inability to charge at home. It's not a deal-breaker in any sense. Sure it'd be more convenient if I could charge at home, but I've been fine. The city where I live invested early in infrastructure and while it's still not brilliant, I've never been stuck for a charger when I needed one.
Same same. EV driver in the UK with no at-home charging capabilities, always been able to get charge when needed.
Yes, but that takes away one of the main benefits of EVs - cost per mile. Public charging in the UK is now more expensive than gasoline and diesel per mile (with equivalent comparson vehicles). Home charging is significantly cheaper especially with reduced overnight tariffs.
@@ajkgordon even cheaper (i.e. free) if you can trickle charge off the rooftop solar whilst you work from home during the day...
Thing about at-home charging in the UK is that loads of our housing stock wasn't built with cars in mind; my house wasn't even built with indoor plumbing! The lack of at-home charging held me back from getting my EV and I wish I hadn't let it! Even if the cost to charge ends up being more expensive per mile than petrol (which it doesnt always) I've got the peace of mind that I'm not burning dinosaur juice to get me about.
@@ajkgordon cost per mile is nothing like the most important part of the equation for me.
Same…I charge at my boyfriend’s house every other week. I’ve got enough range that I don’t need to use the free chargers at work, or the charging stations at every grocery store I visit regularly…but I could.
Love watching someone showing their process. All the satisfaction of following breadcrumbs without any of the work. Thank you Hank!
TLDR:
Short answer is no.
Long answer is no.
Future answer is no.
Heroes do exist!
But didn't the spreadsheet say the opposite? I dont understand.
Yep, the only way you get a "yes" for the answer is by looking at all the emissions and other environmental impacts of evs, like getting the lithium, while ignoring all those things for getting oil. So you have to compare the entire process of making and driving/owning an ev, from start to finish, to just driving a regular car. And even then, it is only slightly worse.
Wait did we watch the same video? The answer at the end was “Maybe a little bit, yes?”
@@CharlieQuartz That's particulate emissions...if you take into account gaseous emissions, EVs emit way less.
Hi Hank! First time long time. I must tell you, in addition to your nice coverage of this interesting topic, I am thrilled to see you demonstrate such good practices for researching information on the internet. It is so good of you to show the people how you vetted your sources, did parallel reading, used critical thinking, read deeply into the methods, and did not trust AI generated info. A masterclass that everyone should be taught! Bravo!
That transition from the editing screen to you in the office was INSANE, dude! What the hell! Incredible filmmaking.
I watched that multiple times! 13:39
Hey Hank future transportation planner here *whips out pocket watch and swings it back and fourth* taaaaakkke the busssss. Taaaaaakkkeeee the buuuussssss
An important 3rd source of particulate matter that wasn’t considered in the study that Hank was reading is brakes. I found a literature review (summary of other studies) that found that the contribution of brakes to particulates is 2-3x higher than tyres. We’ve already established that aggressive driving massively boosts tyre particulates, so if we take it as a given that people should drive calmly, outside of emergency situations almost all EV braking is done via regen through the motor instead of using the friction brakes that cause the particulates. Usually the last bit when coming to a complete stop will be from the friction brakes, but this is a tiny part of the energy dissipation. I don’t have actual data on what % of the braking on a well driven EV is from the brakes but for the sake of argument a generous figure might be 20% (it’s probably lower than this). Taking the smaller end of the contribution of brake dust of 2:1 (67% brakes, 33% tyres), that gives the increase in total particulates from tyre on an EV of 20% * 33% = 7%. The decrease due to regen braking is 80% * 66% = 53%. So the overall saving by switching from ICE to EV is 46% (ignoring any tailpipe emissions). This is extrapolation and not a real result from an actual study designed to test this question specifically, but it’s clear that the saving on brake emissions dwarfs the extra from tyre emissions. EVs are less polluting to local air quality than even a modern gasoline powered car with well functioning tail pipe filters.
Don't modern gasoline cars / "hybrids" also have regen braking? It was my impression that pretty much all new gas cars made nowadays are hybrids.
@@ZeroPlayerGame Hybrid cars also have regen, yes. For specifically particulate emissions, hybrid cars have the lowest because they are lighter than BEVs but also have regen, assuming their filters are working correctly. But this is only valid if you compare equal sized cars. It's very easy for a larger hybrid to weigh more than a modest sized BEV with a medium range.
As for the sales figures, it varies by country, but in the UK last year it was 16% BEV, 20% HEV, 64% pure ICE. So no, most new ICE cars are not hybrids, it's only around a quarter of them.
People will straight up pump lead directly into our drinking water and then be like "woah, gotta watch out for microplastics". We are a silly species.
Lead is obviously much worse, but both are bad.
Ideally, we wouldn't have either in our drinking water.
Yeah, it is silly that some officials will worry about microplastics while doing nothing about existing lead-based water infrastructure. Both are issues that need resolution, but Lead is a much more urgent one.
A few years ago, my wife and I moved to a new town. When we arrived, we got a little card in the mail from a local industrial corp, stating they'd been legally required to inform us they were dumping industrial chemicals dangerous close to the drinking reservoir and we probably shouldn't drink the tap water.
Yanno, they weren't required to stop poisoning the drinking water, just inform us it was going on.
It's not "our species", it's cápítáIísm.
@@caramelldansen2204 I have bad news about the invention of capitalism.
@@PlatinumAltaria This is an odd game of semantics. I don't see the point in it, except to excuse, or "naturalise", the savagery of an economic system.
Also, if you're implying "humans invented cápítáIísm", I would like to argue that it's really not that simple. Nobody sat down and invented it in the same way human people invented the hand loom or the steam engine.
This is like the people that talk about the emissions of the mining equipment needed to create an EV battery and factoring it into the EV's emissions, but never accounting for the emissions of the fuel tankers and semi's delivering fuel to the gas station, the emissions of the equipment pumping oil out of the ground or the emissions at the oil wells themselves like burnt off methane (or unburnt methane). Boundary problems are great, but only if you actually give each an honest bounding box.
Yes they do. That's the whole point.
on the subject of EV downsides: it is very important to remember that EVs are not here to save the planet, they're here to save the auto industry.
and the often extreme obsession with battery size and range.
Its silly that the goverment doesn't encourage bike use through taxes but it does encourage the purchase of EVs through taxes. In fact, EV's actually discourage bike (and motorcycle) use because of the safety of those around EVs. I don't like riding my 2 wheeled transports around heavy, hyperfast EVs, on low rolling resistance tires that cannot stop quickly.
Combine that with the infrastructure challenges that heavier vehicles present due to the fact that weight increases multiple road maintenance to the 4th power, and the fact that we are not encouraging smaller, lighter vehicles like motorcycles is crazy to me. Heck, even factors like density and parking square footage people don't often think about. You can't acheive high density when every target needs two targets worth of parking lot for all the Rivians, and low density living increases infrastructure costs per person dramatically and increases emissions because of the increased travel distances required for even simple errands.
I've been riding a motorcycle for the last 7 years as my main form of transportation, and I recieved no tax break despite the fact that my motorcycle has done far less damage to the roads, consunmed far less gas than the average vehicle, requried the construction of far less square feet of parking, created much less waste oil, and theoretically (I have not looked into it) should have required far less emissions to manufacture due to its smaller size and fewer componants. My reward isn't a 7500 dollar tax credit, my reward was tesla plaids threatening my life. We should be incentivising those who can to ride a bike or a motorcycle to do so, we shouldnt be giving already well to do people a tax credit on their expensive EV that destroys infrasture and is a danger to everyone else in a lighter vehicle.
car dependant suburban infrastructure is also inherently bad for the environment too. greatly worsens the urban heat island effect with all that paved surfaces
Well, motor vehicle excise taxes ought to do that in a modest way. But the difference is probably less than income tax credits.
I just wish there were more bike lanes in my hometown. Would make traveling by bike to my work more possible.
I’m just playing devils advocate and actually agree with your comment.
I’d be really interested to see a break down of the health impact of bike accidents vs car accidents. It would have to be analysed thoroughly and be very open about the data sets used but I think it would be interesting to see the differing costs. Though you could get caught in an endless list of secondary health issues and causal/coincidence dilemmas.
Either way stay safe dude, both tires and all that.
Why would you need or want tax incentive for bicyclist?
A used bike costs almost nothing. A tax incentive for almost nothing is also almost nothing.
I would rather them spend that time and money on building bike lanes instead.
Betteridge's law of headlines definitely applies here.
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." Had heard of it but never knew it had a name.
Even though it is correct here, an actual study has shown that the sentiment isn't really true. iirc the amount of false info was pretty even to non-question headlines. But I do agree that these headlines suck. They are generally misleading and or clickbait, even when the content of the article isn't that wrong @@PatrolBoat-Riverine-Streetgang
@@derAtze I’ve seen “headlines that are a question whose answer is no” far more often _on purpose_ as… yeah, clickbait.
Like this one.
I’m newly employed at a car company as an early intervention specialist and this video was so interesting! 😃❤
New subscriber here. Hank's intelligence, transparency, humility, curiosity, uncertainty, communication skills and a sense of humor are why I'll be back.
I went to a talk at VIU. They did research on how the micro plastics affected the fish. And how when it rained after a long dry spell, the level of some specific types of micro plastics found in tires were deadly to the fish.
“smaller cars are better and the smallest car is a bike…” hahahaha beautifully said sir
As someone who works at a tire shop in the wealthiest area of Minnesota, evs (or at least the rich shmucks that have them around here) definitely go through tires faster, but they also are "supposed to" use specific tires that reduce road noise, since you arent hearing an engine and only thay droaning road noise, and are typically a softer compount with a lower expected tread life. Weve also seen people just get standard vehicle tires often but then the weight cones back into being an issue. Then you add in that all wheel drive cars in general (not just evs) need to replace tires in sets of 4 if the tread difference is too great, and all teslas being awd so far, that is definitely a factor into how often they are replacing as well.
Tldr there are so many more factors at play here
+
@@StichzUndead context please how do they do in winter. They do not survive Canada very well in the winter time
Not all Teslas are awd, I'd hazard to guess most aren't.
Tesla offers RWDs, my good sir. They are the cheaper/lesser trim packages though, so perhaps uncommon among your clientele.
Also having to replace tyres in sets of 4 for awd cars, wasn't that mainly for cars with diffs?
For EVs I'm not aware of any that have just 1 motor powering all 4 wheels, so I'd say changing them in pairs would still be sufficient.
Although I obviously could be wrong on that, maybe some abs systems still don't like it for some reason.
Videos like these are such good examples of how just because "studies show" evidence or produce a certain number for things, doesn't mean its actually true. Its always frustrating to see how hundreds of articles all cite the same study and then you actually look at that study to see it used questionable methods and produced inconclusive results at best.
5:17 While a net is not a microplastic, it would turn into microplastics in the long term
do you know what the time scale for that long term is? Im not familiar with the rate of plastic decay into micro plastics from plastics that are floating in the ocean (genuine)
@@cicilavezzo9544 If you want a paper on it look for "Plastic photodegradation under simulated marine conditions"
@@cicilavezzo9544 Plastics start decaying into microplastics almost immediately, the only question is how long it takes them to be fully destroyed and therefore stop. Plastic bags, for example, can take up to a millennium to fully decompose, but it's not like a video game where they just suddenly turn into "decomposed plastic" at the end of those 1,000 years - all through that time they're slowly breaking down.
@@trianglemoebius it also depends where it is. if its in the ocean it break downs faster due to currents under the sea and then it turns into the garbage island.
@@ThePencilPusheralso salinated water increases the rate of the beeakdown, just a note
Those studies absolutely did not show EVs having worse emissions than gas cars. Especially with their methodology, but even if you accept their premise you'll need to combine all combustion emissions plus tire emissions for the gas vehicles or you won't get the real number.
The press reporting is garbage - it may be technically true for microplastics alone (and within the limits of their methodology which is not that great either), but it's skimming over the CO2/CO/NOx emissions from the ICE that are quite an issue in comparison.
One thing I would really like to see in a similar vein is about the emissions/environmental damage caused by mining for EV specific resources (lithium mines) as compared to gas car resources. Lots of claims get made, and I have no idea what the reality is.
There are hundreds of studies on this. They all generally agree that EVs are a bit higher emissions to manufacture. But a huge amount less emissions to operate.
So the emissions break even point is between 1-3 years of ownership depending on the exact vehicle, how much it is driven and the emissions of the grid electricity that goes into it.
The secret to finding the reports is to look up "lifecycle emissions of vehicles"
So if you almost never drive, keep your old better iCE.
If you drive moderately transition to EV on your next car purchase.
If you drive a lot get an EV now even if your ICE is new. Sell your ICE to someone who rarely drives.
And most importantly, since an EV is not perfect- try to reduce your driving whatever vehicle you own. And make buying decisions that reduce transportation. Reducing consumption is way more powerful than improving consumption.
"Hey, let's do a study that compares apples to oranges!"
Thanks for the rundown, Hank. Much appreciated.
I've heard one of the arguments AGAINST EVs was the emissions (tailpipe/carbon). Because the electricity from the grid was generated using coal, and the transmission lines that transport that electricity to your car loses some efficiency in the process compared to gas.
Like, how much carbon would it take to move a gas car one mile, vs an EV car.
Gas Car (Carbon Emissions) -> Gas Used in the engine + Diesel that the tanker trucker used to haul the finished gasoline product from the plant to the gas station + amount of carbon it takes to create the finished gasoline product.
EV Car (Carbon Emissions) -> The electricity that is created by burning coal at the power plant + The electricity loss that is expected from transporting the energy from the plant, thru the power grid, to the home breaker box, to the EV Car.
Which is more? Probably definitely the gas car because they're using the gas as the fuel (obvious, I know) which releases carbon when in operation. The EV Car does not produce any carbon when in operation, but does produce carbon at the power plant (and loses "carbon"/energy when transported through the power grid.)
For example, in my home state of Kentucky, about 70% of the electricity sources are from Coal Power Plants (afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric-emissions)
Which means that the average annual emissions per vehicle of an all electric car is about 5,600 lbs, whereas in California (with a lot more nuclear, solar, and renewable energy) the emissions drop to 1,300 lbs. Each of those are far lower than the gasoline powered car which emits on average 12,500 lbs each year.
Even West Virginia with its 90%+ coal, an EV is still cleaner than even a hybrid, much less a pure ICE.
iirc the absolute best engines at the moment are only 50% efficient. So half of what is put in those tanks is essentially wasted. But it is also a lot more energy dense so you don't notice that too much.
One of the advantages EVs have is with centralised production of electricity, those generators are *very* efficient (I don't know the number off hand so no point in me making one up). So even if you have a hybrid vs pure electric the battery ev would be more efficient over all at getting from fuel to movement because of that.
And remember for non evs you also have to take into account all the refining, pumping, transport etc for it to get from under the ground to the tank of the car.
and also, at least at a coal plant, the emissions can be captured and centrally filtered. whereas in a million cars, they each have to have a working an efficient catalytic converter, which is not always the case
And a lot of the people raising this argument seem to assume that the US power grid is still majority coal, when in most of the country it's not.
@@MattMcIrvin There are two ways of thinking about this. You could assume you are consuming the current average, or you could calculate based on the marginal power generation.
By plugging in an EV, it consumes energy from the grid. What is happening elsewhere in the grid at that time to compensate for it using the energy. It could be that it is using extra renewable capacity that would otherwise be wasted, in which case there are no added emissions. More likely, it is very slightly slowing down the large metal turbines in a coal power plant, and the plant will have to add a little more coal to speed them back up. In this case, the EV is effectively running on coal because that coal would not have been burned if it had not been plugged.
The margins are critical to think about because as we add more EVs, we also need extra power generation capacity, and therefore, the blend of energy sources will change by what power plants we bring on line.
When it comes to transit the answer is always the same. Public trains.
Only really works in places with little to no crime, unfortunately... It works great in Asian countries (particularly Japan and Korea) where public order is the number 1 priority to the point of being a social issue, but for example the New York subway is legendary at this point for the crazy people that ride it to the point that no one wants to take it unless they absolutely have to. And don't get me started on somewhere like Detroit...
It also isn't really feasible to build anywhere but big cities, and in America a decent portion of the population lives in rural areas.
@@ozzi9816detroits public transport sucks it’s basically nonexistent. If it existed people would use it
@@ozzi9816This is so ridiculous, the MTA system in New York is so widely used. Crime rates have nothing to do with it, we just tend to hear the “crazy” stories and not regular everyday use because that is what makes headlines and interesting TikToks. People are constantly complaining when trains/buses are out of service and when the MTA budget gets constrained, as people are quite reliant on these services. And trains connect a lot of areas on the East Coast of the U.S., both rural and urban. And much of the U.S. used to be connected by railroads, and it was still a good method of transportation. Also, if you’re going to talk on other countries with public transport systems that work, why not mention European train systems that work quite well?
@@ozzi9816 80% of the US population lives in urban areas.
@@McNasty43 with how loud and generally insufferable a big part of that remaining 20% is you'd think it was the opposite.
I thought cost was no longer a reason not to get an EV, then my mom went car shopping because our old car was falling apart. EVs, and even plug in hybrids, are still crazy expensive. but normal hybrids are about the same price as gas cars while getting better mileage, getting a purely gas car just makes no sense anymore. unfortunately, a normal hybrid is still functionally just a gas car with better mileage, it's not gonna be viable if we get rid of gas altogether, which we are going to need to do.
If you're not picky about range--say you want to car strictly as a commuting vehicle--there are some fantastically cheap used electric cars out there. But yes, if you want even half-way decent range the low end of the used car market gets very thin.
Till repairs kick you butt
@havelthebonk1226 the whole reason we replaced our old car is because it broke so often, anything has to be better than that one
I've had a few toyota hybrids, currently an AWD corolla. Great cars. Drove em 200-300+k miles and never had problems.. and you just treat it/fill it up like a normal car, except now brake pads last like 150k miles and I can go over 500miles on my tiny 10gal tank.. and dont have to waste an hour at a charge station
Thank you for that last bit about smaller cars and bicycles. Important to note that those are also safer for everyone outside the car. These bigger, heavier cars and SUVs are hurting a lot more pedesetrians.
Best argument I’ve heard is it takes so much slave labor to mine the minerals needed for the giant, giant batteries. I seriously want this argument considered in science.
This argument should be considered, but at least some studies have attempted to measure this for years. The solution is also not the purview of science/technology unless we can literally substitute different materials. It's an economic, political, and human rights issue.
The device you’re reading this response on has a li-ion battery. If you’re concerned about the slave labor, you’re participating in it. The main villain for the slave labor is cobalt, but EV batteries have been shifting away from cobalt for a while now for many reasons, including moral ones. LFP (lithium iron phosphate) doesn’t involve cobalt at all. That said, fossil fuel also involves labor issues, local-environment pollution, and many other moral issues. But think about this… the metals in a lithium battery are fully recyclable. So once we have mined ENOUGH material, future batteries will come largely from recycling. We already have examples of this - in the US, 70% of steel used today is recycled. Fossil fuel, on the other hand, cannot be recycled. It is destroyed by use.
That's true for one outdated battery chemistry, and for things like the vanadium, platinum, and other metals used in ICE engines and exhaust systems.
For those who care about energy infrastructure and human rights violations, maybe have a quick look at the OPEC and OPEC+ member states and how they behave.
(Roughly 47% of global crude is from the top 6 members of OPEC+: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Iran. To be fair, these days Russia may be producing a lot less. Without Russia, that figure is 32%.)
(Around 8-10% of an 18650 NMC111 cell is cobalt. But that's just one chemistry - other Li-ion batteries have less cobalt, or none.)
..trillions of dollars and over a million civilians lives have been lost in just the past 20yrs or so for only about 4% of our oil imports, (from Iraq).
..At least these batteries claim to have 95-98% material recovery rate, thus reducing the need to rely on these 'shady' countries over time..
..Your phone/computer, shoes, clothes etc. All made by some some crying child in a factory who cant even jump out the window anymore cause the billionaire CEO's decided it was better to put up nets than to treat them fairly..
I wish the world didnt work that way, its not my idea, and there should be laws against it in my opinion.. we can all live in harmony, but then like the 10 people who own 99.99% of everything would only own like 98% of everything and we cant have that can we?? Image Elon only being worth 100billion instead of 200+!?? the poor man has kids to feed!!