Denmark used to tax cars based on weight as it was considered that weight was equal to wear and tear on the roads. Although that logic should probably have been weight * distance driven.

Now there’s a fun tax to implement!

https://da.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A6gtafgift (Sorry in danish only)

The Tesla Model 3 Long Range weighs 1823 kg.

The BMW M340i xDrive weighs about 1818 kg.

Seeing as these two cars are similar in size, capacity, and performance (0-60 mph in 4.2 s), it is nice to see that the electric option weighs about the same as an ICE car of similar specs.

The Leaf, of course, is a very budget car that can hardly be compared to the BMW 3 series.

While EVs are just as bad as ICE cars on the tyre microplastics front, they are at least slightly better in terms of brake dust thanks to regenerative braking.

> If the pollution is from tires, then tax tires.

Why not but …

> Do this based on the compounds present in that tire.

I’m not certain we’d want to create incentive for less polluting compounds over security.

Also, tires are generally expensive and people are already driving with worn out tires regularly for this reason.

So why not, in absolute, I agree, but it may create issues.

Usually you calculate with 20% more weight from EV. Significant, but not as much as the general trend to build housewife tanks.

> before the Leaf - a Subaru Outback. It was also heavier.

A bigger car with more cargo capacity was heavier? Is that a surprise? How _much_ heavier was the Outback? Only 100 lbs or so? That's the surprise.

Not really relevant to your overall point, but I found it interesting that apparently F1 already tried that:

In 2005, tyre changes were disallowed in Formula One, therefore the compounds were harder as the tyres had to last the full race distance of around 300 km (200 miles). Tyre changes were re-instated in 2006, following the dramatic and highly political 2005 United States Grand Prix, which saw Michelin tyres fail on two separate cars at the same turn, resulting in all Michelin runners pulling out of the Grand Prix, leaving just the three teams using Bridgestone tyres to race.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One_tyres#History

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_United_States_Grand_Prix

Your first sentence implies there is some relevance of taking an arbitrary EV and comparing it to an arbitrary ICE. There's not... I am gonna bet anything your random EV is gonna be heavier than a Suzuki Swift.

No-one actually wants to do this but the answer is to tax fuel. UK road tax for example already taxes bigger/heavier cars more (albeit not particularly granularly), so there’s your weight component. Fuel consumption is a decent proxy for distance.

Obviously there’s some maths needed on how to apply the tax to both ICE and EVs, and to think about edge cases (super efficient but hard on tyres), although my gut says that likely the harder you are on tyres, the harder you’ll be on fuel.

> If the pollution is from tires, then tax tires.

I don't think you can tax tires high enough that it will make a difference, but the same is also true if we attempt to tax by weight. Any tax is going to be the equivalent of slapping €10 on a plane ticket. It's not enough to stop the behaviour, but might be enough to keep some people driving on dangerously worn down tires.

It also doesn't matter if the car is an EV or ICE, the behaviour we want to limit is driving. The idea of taxing the tires could of cause lead to development of tires that doesn't shed microplastic.

It seems a number of factors contribute to this beyond weight: how you drive (braking and accelerating aggressively), what conditions you drive in, the state of your tires, etc.

Weight seems to be one easy to understand and affecting factor. Why not start there?

Ideally, sure. But it will result in people stretching their tires more and more, and thus more accidents.

We already tax 'distance' by putting tax on the petrol.

Damage to the roads increases with the fourth power of axle weight. It follows that all passenger cars heavy or not, EV or ICE are insignificant for road-damage.

One could surmise that there is a similar relation with tire wear and therefore pollution from them as well.

But taxing tires is I think a good idea as it is a consumable and the wear and it's impact can be directly measured.

The problem I see with taxing tires is twofold:

- how is taxing going to solve this problem, it's unlikely that it is going to have a significant impact on driving

- can taxes be fed into tire research in a way that reduces the impact on the environment? Are there any solutions that need funding?

Doing a Formula 1 tace on a single set of tires would change the strategy in auto racing. I strongly disapprove.

What's the dust that coats everything stored in a parking garage? Is that tire dust or something else?

Five tons sounds like a lot. But on the other hand, the Los Angeles basin sounds pretty big. (a quick check suggests it is about 1200 square miles)

The AQI there looks good.

Manufacturers aren’t making tires and then turning them into microplastics alone. Pretending consumers aren’t part of the problem is misleading.

We could add fees to tire manufacturers, but be honest: It will just get added to the price of the tire. That’s fine if the goal is economic incentives or funding remediation, but people start to lose interest in such fines as soon as they realize it comes out of their own pockets instead of from some imagined slush fund manufacturers are keeping to themselves. (See similar problems with conversations about tariffs, which people only like until they realize they will be paying for them.)

Manufacture in country A and sell in country B. Or vice versa.

But never manufacture and sell in the same country, or the government might try to get you to pay for your negative externalities!

And now, there’s this annoying predicament where as you introduce more laws and more enforcement, you only cripple your own economy and rarely cause any significant improvement along the lines of what you hope. Look at Australia — we have all these appliance safety laws, but all of the appliances are made overseas and there’s no good point for the government to inspect and enforce compliance with those laws. I just bought a generic vacuum sealer from an online shop the other day. It was cheaper than buying at a brick & mortar store, even with delivery, and it definitely does not comply with Australia safety standards.

We’ve killed our local industry, and our economy is suffering for it. I don’t think the answer is to remove the safety/etc laws, but instead to tax all imports enormously. Be aggressive and unfair so that local industry is immediately viable. It’ll be painful, but it’s what most countries need. Comparative advantage turned out to be a terrible basis for international trade.

Also we need incentives to convince people to choose to drive lighter and smaller cars. Carrots and/or sticks should be considered.

Alternatively, new tire technologies could maybe also solve the problem.

We need to start making consumers pay for their negative externalities.

Until the externality cost is not baked into product cost it won’t be paid for.

the majority of the pollution probably comes from semi trucks rather than passenger cars, due to the huge weight and number of wheels

In this case, how can the negative externalities actually be mitigated with money? Maybe R&D to develop a less toxic tire?

revenue neutral externality taxes are great policy but terrible politics...

Isn't the plan to basically destroy all regulation in the US from Jan 2025?

This seems like an easily corruptible idea. For example, who measures the negative externalities? Certainly there are many, also certain is the ambiguity in measurement. Plenty of ways to game the system and for the system to play favorites.

I personally doubt that the American government has the power to be able to do such things. Regardless, the incoming administration will under no circumstances impose such restrictions, or push for them to be created. I seem to recall that the previous Trump administration removed restrictions around asbestos, to give you an idea.

Libertarians gonna libertarian. Even if it kills everyone.

you folx really hate working class scum, don't you

I literally cannot walk or ride a bike where I live. I will get robbed and/or killed and the weather doesn't play nice. Distances to places I need to go are also quite lengthy. Ordering stuff online doesn't solve the problem, they also drive vehicles with tires. It is out of necessity that people in my part of the world are reliant on vehicles, and I assume most other people in other countries are too.

This is a very complex problem that is extremely difficult to solve and shouldn't just be dismissed as people just being married to their cars.

However, I'd love to see a less polluting compound used for vehicle tires, which is also cost effective for the end user. In my country the railroad system is totally buggered due to crime and corruption, so there are trucks everywhere. Reducing reliance on semi trucks for freight could possibly reduce the pollution a bit. In my country at least...

Have you experienced waymo in SF? It actually drives faster than regular folks and brakes much more harder because of that. The speed limit doesn’t apply to the streets of San Francisco and it typically accelerates to the limit as fast as possible (especially electric).

> biocide

It's an anti-oxidant, to protect tires from UV and ozone degradation.

Tire companies are in the process of switching to a different anti-oxidant.

What would that additive do to prevent microplastics?

EVs have the benefit of regen breaking though, which means less break dust contributing to the pollution.

It's really not that much heavier, less than double. A Model 3 and a 3 series BMW weigh about the same.

it is not necessary though that 8 tons of energy displacement moves 60 kg individuals. we should absolutely cut down on private transit

I walk most places and when I don’t walk, I take the train, which has steel (and not rubber) tires.

Michelin is at least looking into it: https://www.michelin.com/en/media/magazine/michelin-is-takin...

Nokia is also working on green tires with more biodegradation

https://www.nokiantyres.com/about-us/news-article/nokian-tyr...

I guess when the tyres wear down it all ends up as bits of microplastic so long life tyres would be better. There tends to be a bit of a trade off between long life and high grip though.

Doesn't address the tires directly, but smaller, lighter cars are available. Maybe greater awareness about pollution from tires would help that become more of a sales factor.

Steel wheels on a steel track don’t have this issue.

Maybe I have this wrong somehow but I thought that could be categorised as "wear".

IE don't buy the tyres that last 1000[preferred units of measure], buy the tyres that last longer.

But then you could get into "performance per unit of wear" and how that is all defined is a wombat hole of discussion.

Buy a (motor-)bike and only use the car when you really need it.

I drive a lot more now. But I preferred the old city life, taking the subway to the office instead of driving around the suburbs.

Why on earth would you think that that would ever happen?

The only thing that will do that is regulation, either mandating the types of cars we can buy, or taxing the kinds of cars we don't favor.

People in the majority prefer large, powerful cars, given the choice. And those cars already cost a lot, so any strategy of price increases to discourage them will have to be significant. This is why most people in Europe drive small, economical cars. Big cars are heavily taxed, and so is the fuel they use.

I really wish we could buy a Citroen Ami in the US, which is a small, light, and slow (28 mph top speed) electric car for city driving. Plus, it looks super cute!

The vast majority of people would not buy those.

A slower car?

They already make plenty of them

I’m not sure it’s gentler or in any way different from a tire’s perspective than braking. If I pull my foot off the one pedal driving, the deceleration I get is fairly comparable to about 3/4 braking in an ICE. (Off the top of my head estimate for illustration purposes only.)

But the tires are made of different materials and are different in other ways too. I can tell you first hand you spend far more on tires if you own an EV. Our model y spends more on tires than our giant diesel pickup, and far more than an ICE of similar size. As for the relative amount of microplastics they emit, I really couldn’t know.

You definitely wear your brake pads out far less with an EV. Just eyeing it though, volumetrically, brake pad wear has to be relatively insignificant compared to tire wear.

I’d guess EVs still emit substantially more tire particles, and fewer from brakes but nowhere close to compensating. But I’d not be shocked to death if someone studies it and you turn out to be right.

And on the plus side, those are probably issues materials science could solve (make the tires out of something benign) whereas EVs emit a lot less of other bad things that I’m sure are not easy to solve or they already would have been.

Your hypothesis then, roughly, is that braking causes more pollution when it's more extreme (since the total braking work being done is at least as great -- in practice much greater because of the increased mass), so smoother braking will reduce tire wear.

I'm inclined to believe an extreme version of that hypothesis -- I doubt 200k miles at 1mph would wear the tread substantially -- but in practice I don't think that's the case. Electric cars tend to replace tires around 10k miles sooner, so the net effect of everything involved (heavier cars, regenerative braking, rich young guys driving faster, mostly city driving, ...) is 15-50% more tire wear per mile.

Pretty sure most wear comes from the back tires (I should say the "power tires" to consider FWD vehicles). Many electric vehicles accelerate quite quickly, which just wears their tires even more.

Braking is braking. If you're stopping in N meters, regardless of how the braking force is applied (regenerative brake vs discs), the tire is the artifact taking the load.

Even then, most cars don't routinely brake as hard as they accelerate.

Motorcycles, with their high performance, are notorious for eating rear tires much faster than front tires, and they can't be rotated.

Then, there's my vehicle, full time 4WD (not AWD, there's a difference), it wears its tires quite evenly in contrast to 2WD/AWD vehicles.

My EV runs through tires way faster than my gas car.

I'd say it's slightly worse, mainly because when you first get the car you tend to launch it a few times and take advantage of all the power. My first set of tires only lasted 27k miles.

After a year you drive normally, I get about 35k miles out of 40k mile rated tires, similar to my old Audi.

My wife doesn't buy that argument. To her, when I have regen braking on, we slow down a lot more than we would otherwise with the brakes. It could just be the way I'm driving though.

I think the bulk is dust on the road that gets washed off by rain and down the gutter. But some goes in the air.

Streetcars, subways and LRTs do not require new fancy tire compounds to stop releasing microplastics. Their brake pads can, though, although I imagine that regenerative braking helps somewhat.

Bicycles are so lightweight that the amount they release is negligible compared to a car.

Probably. Mentioned a couple manufacturers working on greener tires: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42273418

Tyres trade material for grip, so, I think it's unlikely.

Sure. They already do. We use them on bikes.

Most tires are not made from natural rubber, but from synthetics.

I guess we can ignore all these problems and keep making the environment worse, as an alternative strategy. I don't have any kids, but I hope yours are going to be ok.

Got a source on paint?

Thats stress on the road, as in things like the road surface, not tire wear. The physics about what's happening to the tire surface are pretty different from what's happening to the road.