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simianparrot 5 hours ago

What about the increased pollution from road dust? In Norway this has led to higher pollution levels that are directly dangerous to people and animals than back when we were all combustion vehicles.

The heavier EV's are causing genuinely harmful particles simply by driving on the roads themselves.

Peanuts99 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Woah hold on there. Where is the evidence for both increased dust and increased pollution levels?

EVs generate next to no brake dust due to regenerative braking, most EVs have mechanisms to forcefully use the friction brakes at some points to stop surface rust for this reason.

It's true they're generally heavier than the equivalent ICE vehicle, but this is usually around 200-300KG heavier - it causes a small increase in tyre wear and associated particulates but these are heavy large particles - the majority larger than pm10. That's a problem for water courses and micro plastics but nothing that'll get in your lungs or bloodstream. Anecdotally, my EV tyres (a particularly heavy model too) have lasted fine - my last set did 53k miles.

ICE cars produce plenty of pm10s, pm2.5s and smaller particles as well as nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and plenty of other harmful pollutants that EVs inherently don't. Even the power generated for them is usually produced away from the majority of the population.

alex_duf 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This claim keeps circulating around and around and is not "EVs are producing more pollution", it's "if EVs are going at motorway speed, and if we only look at the pollution generated by the tires, then indeed they produce a little more".

But that's completely ignoring tailpipe emission, and the fact that in an urban setting it's still vastly more advantageous to drive an EV.

See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2025.104622

andriamanitra 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where did you get the idea that EVs have caused it? As far as I know the amount of road dust from EVs is within the same ballpark so the claim that it has led to overall higher pollution levels sounds inconceivable. I can't even find sources that indicate high pollution levels in Oslo besides a Bloomberg article that says the situation has actually improved in recent years. [1] On the contrary Oslo seems to be doing comparatively well according to the air quality data from iqair. [2]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/why-oslo-...

[2] https://www.iqair.com/us/norway/oslo/oslo

Tepix 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On the other hand the EVs produce no exhausts and less harmful particles from using their brakes.

zarzavat 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This sounds like a nice problem to have. Most of the world lives cities blighted by ICE pollution.

fraboniface 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thats' why you need light EVs. Norway has electric tanks. China has light EVs.