The Daily Telegraph reports that electric cars create more pollution from the wear and tear of their tyres than normal cars.
How lovely and clean London’s air will be once that nice Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (Ulez) has been extended across the entire city and the Government’s ban on petrol and diesel cars has taken effect. Well, not quite. In fact, was there ever such a misnomer as a “zero emission vehicle”? Far from cleaning the air there is evidence that in one respect the adoption of electric vehicles could make pollution worse.
Electric vehicles might reduce carbon emissions (though far from eliminating them – indeed their manufacture involves carbon emissions). They might not have exhaust pipes spewing out nitrogen oxides. But growing attention has been paid in recent years to pollution from tiny particulate matter, which can penetrate deep into human lungs. Long-term exposure has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and lung cancer. Trouble is that a fair amount of these emissions from cars emanate from tyres, not engines, and electric vehicles could possibly emit more because their heavier weight causes greater tyre wear.
While huge attention has been paid to emissions from exhausts, which quite rightly have been cleaned up over the years thanks to progressively tougher regulations, rather less attention has been paid to tyres. The Euro 4 regulations for petrol engines and Euro 6 regulations for diesel engines – on which Ulez is based – take little account of emissions from tyres; they are based on emissions from exhausts. Yet it doesn’t take too much to wonder if a heavy electric car driven around the streets of London could be emitting more tyre pollution than a relatively light petrol car.
Everyone wants clean air – and air pollution has fallen dramatically in many respects over the past half century. But regulations which fixate on one form of pollution and ignore others ultimately help no-one. We had a similar thing 20 years ago when the EU, along with the Blair government, offered tax incentives to encourage diesel engines on the grounds that, mile for mile, they spewed out less carbon dioxide. So they did, but they also emitted more nitrogen dioxides.
There is no point in employing measures like Ulez to drive petrol and diesel engines off the road unless legislation is also going to tackle pollution from tyres. There must be ways in which this form of pollution could be reduced, such as by tweaking the chemical composition of tyres – which use synthetic rubber manufactured from oil. Why can’t we have tax incentives for harder-wearing tyres, or for lighter vehicles? That would rapidly encourage car manufacturers to find ways of reducing tyre emissions.
The trouble is that this is not how green politics works. Rather it is in the hands of student-like activists who will obsess about one narrow objective to the exclusion of all other concerns. The promotion of electric cars is a case in point. Their cheerleaders have turned them into a pin-up for the green movement – while ignoring the carbon emissions from their manufacture, the consumption of heavy metals in the making of their batteries, and the filthy pollution from their tyres.
While this news article did include some new information about the tires of electric vehicles that I did not know, this news article also conveniently ignored other equally important points on why electric vehicles are ironically bad for the environment. (I am from the USA, so my spelling of some words will reflect such a background). Electric vehicles can also cause harm to both natural, as well as artificial, guidance systems. Biological life forms that need such things, like birds, insects, and other flying creatures, can have their guidance systems irreparably damaged. Also, like humans, as well as other non-flying creatures, these flying creatures can also be more susceptible to various forms of cancer, as well as hearing loss, the latter of which will happen as a result of ultra high sound frequencies, which happens with electronic devices. Moreover, the chemicals that are in electric vehicle batteries, as well as the increase of cancer emitting signals from certain energy waves that electric vehicles, as well as electric appliances, but especially electric vehicles, are capable of utilizing, also contribute to cancer. The materials that make up the batteries, as well as the other parts, of electric vehicles, also tend to cause not only cancer, but also other diseases as well. The little to nonexistent safety standards to mine and manufacture such materials, as well as the unpaid, forced, unsafe, and, often, underage work forces that are forced to make these things happen due to slavery by corrupt corporations that are actively working with rogue nations that openly produce slave labor, also contribute to cancer and other diseases, as well as, ironically enough, increased amounts of pollution. I also find it hypocritical, as well as convenient, that the people that called the 9/11 incident as “an inside job”, as well as “a war for oil that is being promoted by Big Oil”, also conveniently seem to ignore the facts that the company that they ironically, as well as pathetically, condemn, both of the mom and pop sized companies, as well as the big mega-corporations, have not only have had their hands in pies of the so-called “alternative fuel source” companies for years, but that they also secretly own them by the way of the activist groups that shill for them, as well as the shadowy Luciferian globalist elite that think that they control the world, including all of these parties, as well as the other companies that enforce unpaid, unsafe, immoral, wicked, dishonest, disreputable, and slavery promoting companies in which to promote those jobs that make up the so-called “alternative fuel source” companies. Finally, the incidents of electric vehicles that are catching on fire are NOT decreasing, but, rather increasing, namely, to a point that would make Ralph Nader, were he still alive, question his devotion to the environmentalist cult. Seriously, where are the safety standards here? Also, the electric vehicle manufacturers had, what, literally three centuries to iron out these sorts of things BEFORE making such a massive push for allegedly more environmentally safe, as well as friendly, vehicles, as well as power sources? Honestly, being an environmentalist is ironically being against the health of this planet.