Then secondary problems such as sedentary lifestyles and children unable to play on their street because of the dominance of cars (car numbers increased almost 3x in Ireland since 1990, when I was a kid).
There are more reasons cars are bad for society and bad for the individual – loss of communities dues to freeways [3]; loss of sense of community due to people not walking around and meeting their neighbours [4]; a ticket price to society when a car is deemed a requirement just to work and shop [5]; the 1.35 million people who die in road traffic accidents each year [6].
The reason I asked why electric included was because brakes within electric cars can operate very differently than that of combustion cars. Whereby the brake pads within electric vehicle almost do not need replacing for the life of the car.
Vastly reducing the amount of brake dust that is given off the vehicle in comparison to combustion vehicles. The same way in which riding a bicycle produced brake dust but not in the same volumes are combustion cars.
Car tires I completely agree however almost anything that rolls uses rubber and as such if we introduced more bicycles instead of cars we would also be polluting the streets with rubber. You could argue however that this is offset by the health benefits this would provide people rather than being sedentary in a car.
With regards to communities I would argue that nothing is stopping people from walking around and meeting their neighbours. However, people can visit other communities or extend their community boundary using cars and railways etc. Therefore our sense of community isn't just those immediately, but those across town as well.
Based on another comment, tires shed off much more rubber the more weight is on them. So an electric car will use much more than a regular one, and a bicycle will use basically none compared to that.
I dunno what the author meant, but probably alluding to the fact that the electricity powering your EV comes from a plant burning fossil fuels.
I've been curious about this topic for a while: what contributes more pollution per mile traveled -- an internal combustion engine or a Tesla charged with power from a coal/gas/wind/nuclear plant. If anyone encountered an analysis like that, please link!
A study that emerged in the last few days says that in such scenarios in OECD countries, and including all life cycle costs, EVs generate only about 40% of the CO2 emissions of ICEs. No link at hand, sorry.
