I was out skating today. Everyone was having a fun time until a diesel truck simply drove down the nearby road. It stunk up and polluted the frozen lake air for a solid few minutes. I hate diesel trucks with a passion and if I live long enough to see it happen, I will celebrate the day they become defunct. Tesla's EV trucks need to deal the same hard kick to diesel trucks that they did to cars.
Not only is diesel exhaust more polluting than gasoline exhaust, but because it burns cooler than gasoline, the fumes remain near the ground longer, affecting people.
No matter how we look at it, EVs are much friendlier and safer to the environment. Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again, but in today's world we are rapidly moving away from it and towards nuclear/hydel/wind methods for generating power.
I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to come.
Even if the fossil fuel argument at the source was/is valid, it's infinitely more efficient to do it at the source than in a car. You can extract far more energy and do better to mitigate byproducts.
Even if the electricity source would burn similar fuel, just the fact that you don't pullote right in the middle of population centers makes a huge difference. In reality, it's not only that, but _also_ that they use cleaner methods of energy production.
> I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to come.
for this to happen the EVs depreciation needs to drastically improve compared to ICE. I don't see this. On top of this EVs tend to push ideas from Software/Tech companies, such as recurring revenues (because the underlying technology lends itself to it better).
Personally I'm unsure that this will be accepted by all consumers as much as is needed. After all the automotive marketing has since Ford insisted that driving was about "freedom". So some pivot needs to happen in the messaging. Suppose decades is a lot of time to change it. Personally I think EVs are nonsense, and a better utopia would be making sure public transport is abundant, high-quality and free.
Is that true? EV have much higher emissions of micro plastics and pfas (or variations thereof) due to increased tier degradation. EVs are typically way heavier than similar ICE due to the batteries and combined with the higher torques, tires wear faster.
Even if we still make a mess I think centralization of the mess is better than distributing it - what I mean is that polluting cities where millions sleep, eat, drink and breathe will probably be worse, net effect, than containing energy pollution to select places.
Running EVs in densely populated regions is probably a lot better for the population on the whole even if the net pollution would stay the same, IMO.
Still no EV is even better, but we’ve created a world where transport is often required so, one step at a time I guess.
And it is a fallacy for obvious reasons, including
a) electricity generation is more flexible, and rapidly shifting to solar and other non-polluting sources.
b) Moving pollution away from people is better. Cars are inherently around people, streets, residences etc.
c) One centralised plant with no weight restrictions is easier to control for emissions and efficiency than many thousands of mobile, weight-constrained power plants.
d) Wikipedia: "The extraction and refining of carbon based fuels and its distribution is in itself an energy intensive industry contributing to CO2 emissions."
We're still burning massive amounts of fossil fuels as waste products from refining oil to make plastics and chemical feedstocks. A huge amount of that is propane that just gets flared off.
We could have been running cars on that for decades, but getting people to make their dirty polluting inefficient old petrol cars run on fuel that emits carbon dioxide and water with no HC, CO, SOx, NOx, or particulates was nowhere near as profitable as selling them lots of debt to buy cleaner greener diesels.
Even if the source of electricity used to charge an EV is mostly generated by fossil fuels, EVs are still probably more energy efficient because gas powered cars are not particularly efficient at turning gasoline into useful energy compared to the efficiency of larger scale power plants.
Also as you point out, non-fossil fuel energy is becoming a larger part of the grid over time, so an EV you buy today will become cleaner over time, while the fossil fuel reliance of a gas car purchased today will never improve.
Honestly the biggest blocker for EVs from my perspective is charging infrastructure. Public fast charging sites are too uncommon compared to gas stations and a less than ideal solution to use for all of your charging needs and lots of people live in housing where installing a charger at home is difficult or impossible. Eventually both of those will change, but it will lag significantly behind the quality of the vehicles themselves.
The interesting thing to me is that even for people who can't charge at home, EVs and charging infrastructure have reached the tipping point where they're at least viable. They're less convenient in such situations than a gas powered car and so will be limited to people who are extra motivated for one reason or another. But the EV world is over the "possible" hurdle so the "practical" threshold seems inevitable.
Having spent a significant amount of time in Bangkok - the city center (and many urban hubs) is an amazing walkable place with pedestrian walkways suspended above major roads, lots of frequent public transit (metro, skytrain) that honestly makes my home city of Sydney feel like a developing country.
The only downside is that traffic creates a lot of pollution, and the engine noise (not honking, there's very little of that) is so bad that you need to yell to a person standing next to you to have a conversation.
As a visitor, I can't claim to know how to fix the problems facing locals, however I can't help but feel that urban centers would be 1000x better with mass adoption of EVs (bikes, cars). I have seen a spike in the number of Chinese EVs across the city - however I'm aware that economic pressures prevent mass adoption by the majority of the road-users
This study is about air quality in neighborhoods. So it would show the same thing even if EVs just moved pollution from where people use their cars to where power plants get placed, because that's not the question it's addressing.
This is highly dependent on your country's approach to power generation.
Nitrogen pollution is usually reasonably local to the plant but also can be srubbed. Its not practical to scrub moving objects, but it is for stationary generators.
Same with particulates, you can capture quite a lot with electrostatic scrubbers.
Tires and brakes still contribute to a lot of particulate matter pollution even from EV's, but they're at least a step up. The best EV's are still eBikes though.
i moved to beijing in 2015.. and i have to buy a air purifier, prepare masks for winter. pepople talks about air polutions so much, it feels like we are struggle, not living a life. i remember one day, it was so bad, i have to wear gas mask to go outisde, i know it's rare, and people are staring, but yes, its that hard.
it's 2026 now, you barely see bad days in Beijing, most people wear mask only for the flu, not for the air pollutions. basically its only a few days in winter. and just wait for the wind, it all goes away.
shutdown factory and move them to other places sure helps, but nobody will deny that adopt ev contributes a lot. i remeber the sales data for 2024 is nearly 45%+ of new cars are EV, and 2025 is 51.8%. i'm sure the number will go up and reach nearly 100%.
Both ICE and EV cars require a support infrastructure. As sales trends change, so the emphasis on support infrastructure changes, and that accelerates the trend.
For example EVs depend on charging, so we're seeing more public charge points, as well as more home chargers, work chargers and so on.
ICE depends on gas stations (which is the tip of the gasoline distribution industry.) It also depends on ICE mechanics. As demand for those services drop off, so they'll become harder to find. (To be clear, that's not happening soon, there are a LOT of ICE cars out there...)
But 50 years from now most of that ICE infrastructure will have disappeared.
And the air conditions in Chengdu and Chongqing are getting worse with the recent smog making the headlines, despite also one of the highest EV adoption rates in western China.
Being able to mandate factory shutdown surely helps for Beijing, but is unfortunately not the case in other chinese cities
I want the future to focus more on the brakes and tire dust, and the increase in cancers and other problems by people who live near busy roads or highways experience. Nobody studies this, and combustion or battery, everyone is affected by it. Even playgrounds are filled with shredded tires, which borders on biohazard.
I want the future to focus on things that actually solve the massive problems that come from mass use of automobiles: I want bike paths and trains. Yes, so boring compared to EVs I know! And so cheap! And no catchy names like "gigafactory" for making cities bikable, or turning parking lots into children's playgrounds.
Something that needs to be pointed out, especially for those who want to push back against findings like this and essentially defend ICE vehicles:
Really step back and imagine a world where the modern EV [1] was first to market and a gasoline combustion engine was second.
Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
The downsides of gasoline cars are actually pretty crazy: complicated engines and transmissions with heavy maintenance schedules, emissions, more NVH, worse interior space and packaging, need to wait for HVAC rather than it being ready ahead of time, need to go to a special gas station to add fuel, worse/slower performance.
You would have this laundry list of downsides and your only potential plus sides are faster fueling on road trips over 4 hours long, lower curb weight, and lower cost.
And those three minor down sides are very likely to be resolved sometime within the next 10-20 years.
[1] Not talking about Baker Electric type of stuff that was quickly surpassed by internal combustion of its day
> Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
I travel monthly through rural parts of the US where EVs really don't make sense. I get the most people on HN live in suburbs/cities, but there's a lot of stuff that happens in the rural parts of the country that absolutely demands ICE vehicles. Yes the population of people out there is much smaller, but if you've ever spent serious times in these parts of the country you'd realize petroleum runs everything.
Even in a world where electric vehicles came first this would still be the case.
Kind of funny anecdote, as a bit of a car enthusiast.
I drive a Polestar 2, and someone asked if it was my favorite car I've owned. And I said, no that's a Mazda 3 hatchback... 6-speed manual. Lovely vehicle to drive. Economical, but luxurious for the price. Very practical, too.
But... if you asked me if I'd go from the Polestar 2 back to the Mazda 3? I'd say no. I'll keep the electric. Of course it's not a fair comparison... one had an MSRP of $27k and the other $67k. One has 186HP and the other 476HP (and all-wheel drive).
One had a lot of routine maintenance of the engine, while the other has needed wiper blades and tires. And one requires standing outside in 10° F days like today pumping gas, while the other one is charging in my garage (and warms up the cabin from the press of a button on my phone.)
The Mazda 3 was more of a driver's car, and if I had bought either new, it would be a very different equation. (I bought the 3 w/ 8K miles on it for $20k; I bought the Polestar w/ 20K miles on it for $29K.) The Mazda 3 has a vastly better interface - better auto-dimming headlights, tons of buttons for climate, stereo, etc.
But the Polestar 2 is the one I would rather be driving... for now. (I just hope more "driver's car" electric options come to our shores.)
I'd call the that country that adopted EV's first and gasoline second... extinct after WW2. If nothing because the country wouldn't be able to launch an airforce to counter the bombers hitting your power plants. If not that then there's the constant contention of having to pull power lines forward and leaving them vulnerable to artillery fire while the petrol tank hit and run with impunity.
Plus now you have problems moving tonnes of food, water, ammunition on BEV vehicles that no longer have reliable charging access. Being unable to supply your military is more or less a death knell for any fighting force.
Even setting aviation aside, a lot of the reason why gas engines were adopted was because agriculture was among the first to do so, they were less finicky then ox and horses. Rural areas didn't have access to electricity like cities did at the time though; It was a lot easier to have a tin of whatever liquid fuel (gasoline was a byproduct of kerosone production at the time).
In the 1920s, a lot of auto startups had a unique idea. Then they got crushed by Henry Ford's and GM's production lines. And then the depression.
The Model T was a farm car. 50% of the population lived in rural areas, and they didn't have electricity. There was a market for an urban electric short-range car, it just didn't hit the economy of scale at the right time. But not because it was a bad idea.
> Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
Anyone who likes the sensations of driving and not just going fast in a straight line. When you show me the equivalent of an EV Lotus Elise, I'll be properly swayed.
You can already tell how much of a difference it makes in a city. Visiting Boracay after visiting other philipin island is heaven. I heard some Chinese cities are basically just EV, I can’t imagine how much nicer it could be to walk through New York without all that noise pollution
It's great to see a reduction in local pollution but it is worth remembering the electric vehicles ultimately have zero impact on climate change and petroleum consumption (which as continue to rise year-over-year).
Oil not used in ICE cars is just used someplace else.
Electric cars are great for the city/suburbs but don't really make a dent in the larger resource usage issues facing us.
Yeah, this kind or Validate my own Beliefs that EV won't solve the fossil fuel burning. But they can at least make energy used by vehicle independent of the source used to generate the energy.
Basically, the government and private sector can switch to renewable energy at some point even if they are using Fossil fuels today.
Anyone know how far off economical EV motorcycles are? They'll be game-changers for many south east asian cities where traffic is 90% motorcycles, which seem to pollute as much (/more ?) than cars.
? They're already here. Seeing more and more delivery drivers zooming around on them, especially since a year or so ago. And they're not choosing them for ethical reasons, I can tell you that much.
Personally, I hope EV adoption (in Indonesia) improves, as they mostly come from China and challenge the status quo of Japanese cars.
Chinese cars are a "better deal" because they give more bang for the buck. Japanese cars, on the other hand, are very "stingy" due to decades of near monopoly.
I know I will be damned for this comment but nevertheless even EVs produce pollution with regard to tire abrasion. Tire abrasion itself is the main contributor to microplastics
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 64.3 ms ] threadNo matter how we look at it, EVs are much friendlier and safer to the environment. Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again, but in today's world we are rapidly moving away from it and towards nuclear/hydel/wind methods for generating power.
I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to come.
Less commut and more collective transportation is going to be far more significant in term of global impact, whatever the engine type.
for this to happen the EVs depreciation needs to drastically improve compared to ICE. I don't see this. On top of this EVs tend to push ideas from Software/Tech companies, such as recurring revenues (because the underlying technology lends itself to it better).
Personally I'm unsure that this will be accepted by all consumers as much as is needed. After all the automotive marketing has since Ford insisted that driving was about "freedom". So some pivot needs to happen in the messaging. Suppose decades is a lot of time to change it. Personally I think EVs are nonsense, and a better utopia would be making sure public transport is abundant, high-quality and free.
Electric cars are heavier and produce more tire grime.
Running EVs in densely populated regions is probably a lot better for the population on the whole even if the net pollution would stay the same, IMO.
Still no EV is even better, but we’ve created a world where transport is often required so, one step at a time I guess.
FYI, if you want to search for this, it is called "The long tailpipe" theory (1) or "long tailpipe fallacy".
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_tailpipe
And it is a fallacy for obvious reasons, including
a) electricity generation is more flexible, and rapidly shifting to solar and other non-polluting sources.
b) Moving pollution away from people is better. Cars are inherently around people, streets, residences etc.
c) One centralised plant with no weight restrictions is easier to control for emissions and efficiency than many thousands of mobile, weight-constrained power plants.
d) Wikipedia: "The extraction and refining of carbon based fuels and its distribution is in itself an energy intensive industry contributing to CO2 emissions."
We could have been running cars on that for decades, but getting people to make their dirty polluting inefficient old petrol cars run on fuel that emits carbon dioxide and water with no HC, CO, SOx, NOx, or particulates was nowhere near as profitable as selling them lots of debt to buy cleaner greener diesels.
And we're burning the fuel they'd run on anyway.
So direct environment impact is still huge for EVs and calling them ZEV is literally a scam.
Also as you point out, non-fossil fuel energy is becoming a larger part of the grid over time, so an EV you buy today will become cleaner over time, while the fossil fuel reliance of a gas car purchased today will never improve.
Honestly the biggest blocker for EVs from my perspective is charging infrastructure. Public fast charging sites are too uncommon compared to gas stations and a less than ideal solution to use for all of your charging needs and lots of people live in housing where installing a charger at home is difficult or impossible. Eventually both of those will change, but it will lag significantly behind the quality of the vehicles themselves.
The interesting thing to me is that even for people who can't charge at home, EVs and charging infrastructure have reached the tipping point where they're at least viable. They're less convenient in such situations than a gas powered car and so will be limited to people who are extra motivated for one reason or another. But the EV world is over the "possible" hurdle so the "practical" threshold seems inevitable.
The only downside is that traffic creates a lot of pollution, and the engine noise (not honking, there's very little of that) is so bad that you need to yell to a person standing next to you to have a conversation.
As a visitor, I can't claim to know how to fix the problems facing locals, however I can't help but feel that urban centers would be 1000x better with mass adoption of EVs (bikes, cars). I have seen a spike in the number of Chinese EVs across the city - however I'm aware that economic pressures prevent mass adoption by the majority of the road-users
Nitrogen pollution is usually reasonably local to the plant but also can be srubbed. Its not practical to scrub moving objects, but it is for stationary generators.
Same with particulates, you can capture quite a lot with electrostatic scrubbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
It also simply moves the pollution to places like Africa where the extremely dirty lithium mining is externalized away from wealthy westerners.
Environmental externalization.
https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/news/illusion-truth-surrounds-inacc...
When I am going to take my son to school, he doesn't have to smell the gas and the fumes from the exhaust in the garage.
it's 2026 now, you barely see bad days in Beijing, most people wear mask only for the flu, not for the air pollutions. basically its only a few days in winter. and just wait for the wind, it all goes away.
shutdown factory and move them to other places sure helps, but nobody will deny that adopt ev contributes a lot. i remeber the sales data for 2024 is nearly 45%+ of new cars are EV, and 2025 is 51.8%. i'm sure the number will go up and reach nearly 100%.
For example EVs depend on charging, so we're seeing more public charge points, as well as more home chargers, work chargers and so on.
ICE depends on gas stations (which is the tip of the gasoline distribution industry.) It also depends on ICE mechanics. As demand for those services drop off, so they'll become harder to find. (To be clear, that's not happening soon, there are a LOT of ICE cars out there...)
But 50 years from now most of that ICE infrastructure will have disappeared.
Tire dust has been studied for decades and the most recent research I've seen suggests the issues are less concerning than previously estimated.
https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/news/illusion-truth-surrounds-inacc...
Brake dust is significantly reduced by EVs:
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/running/do-electri...
Really step back and imagine a world where the modern EV [1] was first to market and a gasoline combustion engine was second.
Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
The downsides of gasoline cars are actually pretty crazy: complicated engines and transmissions with heavy maintenance schedules, emissions, more NVH, worse interior space and packaging, need to wait for HVAC rather than it being ready ahead of time, need to go to a special gas station to add fuel, worse/slower performance.
You would have this laundry list of downsides and your only potential plus sides are faster fueling on road trips over 4 hours long, lower curb weight, and lower cost.
And those three minor down sides are very likely to be resolved sometime within the next 10-20 years.
[1] Not talking about Baker Electric type of stuff that was quickly surpassed by internal combustion of its day
I travel monthly through rural parts of the US where EVs really don't make sense. I get the most people on HN live in suburbs/cities, but there's a lot of stuff that happens in the rural parts of the country that absolutely demands ICE vehicles. Yes the population of people out there is much smaller, but if you've ever spent serious times in these parts of the country you'd realize petroleum runs everything.
Even in a world where electric vehicles came first this would still be the case.
I drive a Polestar 2, and someone asked if it was my favorite car I've owned. And I said, no that's a Mazda 3 hatchback... 6-speed manual. Lovely vehicle to drive. Economical, but luxurious for the price. Very practical, too.
But... if you asked me if I'd go from the Polestar 2 back to the Mazda 3? I'd say no. I'll keep the electric. Of course it's not a fair comparison... one had an MSRP of $27k and the other $67k. One has 186HP and the other 476HP (and all-wheel drive).
One had a lot of routine maintenance of the engine, while the other has needed wiper blades and tires. And one requires standing outside in 10° F days like today pumping gas, while the other one is charging in my garage (and warms up the cabin from the press of a button on my phone.)
The Mazda 3 was more of a driver's car, and if I had bought either new, it would be a very different equation. (I bought the 3 w/ 8K miles on it for $20k; I bought the Polestar w/ 20K miles on it for $29K.) The Mazda 3 has a vastly better interface - better auto-dimming headlights, tons of buttons for climate, stereo, etc.
But the Polestar 2 is the one I would rather be driving... for now. (I just hope more "driver's car" electric options come to our shores.)
Battery technology was significantly much worse. Lithium batteries were only discovered in the ‘70s.
Gas engines were far more polluting but way less complex in 1910.
Plus now you have problems moving tonnes of food, water, ammunition on BEV vehicles that no longer have reliable charging access. Being unable to supply your military is more or less a death knell for any fighting force.
Even setting aviation aside, a lot of the reason why gas engines were adopted was because agriculture was among the first to do so, they were less finicky then ox and horses. Rural areas didn't have access to electricity like cities did at the time though; It was a lot easier to have a tin of whatever liquid fuel (gasoline was a byproduct of kerosone production at the time).
In the 1920s, a lot of auto startups had a unique idea. Then they got crushed by Henry Ford's and GM's production lines. And then the depression.
The Model T was a farm car. 50% of the population lived in rural areas, and they didn't have electricity. There was a market for an urban electric short-range car, it just didn't hit the economy of scale at the right time. But not because it was a bad idea.
Anyone who likes the sensations of driving and not just going fast in a straight line. When you show me the equivalent of an EV Lotus Elise, I'll be properly swayed.
Oil not used in ICE cars is just used someplace else.
Electric cars are great for the city/suburbs but don't really make a dent in the larger resource usage issues facing us.
Chinese cars are a "better deal" because they give more bang for the buck. Japanese cars, on the other hand, are very "stingy" due to decades of near monopoly.