Another way electric cars clean the air: study says brake dust reduced by 83%

Summary

Photo by Avess Berge on Unsplash A new study is out which quantifies just how much EVs help not just in cutting harmful exhaust emissions, but also cutting other types of pollution that come from personal vehicles. But of course, public transport, biking and walking are even better. We’ve seen plenty of studies showing how the benefits of shifting to EVs translate to the real world, for example in California and London, where higher EV shares and regulations aimed at cutting down the excesses of polluting vehicles have produced significant air quality benefits already. As it has become more and more untenable for anti-EV propagandists to deny the air quality benefits of EVs, a common refrain from them has become “but tailpipe emissions aren’t everything, what about brakes and tires, huh?!” Putting aside for the moment the clear concern trolling involved in this response, it’s always been easy enough to point to regenerative braking as a reason that EVs improve that problem too – since they rarely use the brakes, they obviously wouldn’t emit as many brake particles. Advertisement - scroll for more content But now we have proper quantification of that, and not only is the reduction in brake dust from battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) quite high, its also much higher than the benefit gained from either conventional gas-only hybrids or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). The analysis looked at various “non-exhaust emissions” of road transport, recognizing that as car exhaust becomes cleaner due to greater fleet electrification, other forms of emissions will end up taking over as the dominant pollutants from road transport. It turns out that BEVs reduce the amount of brake dust by 83%, according to a new analysis by EIT Urban Mobility (a body of the European Union) and Transport for London. The study looked primarily at London, Milan and Barcelona. The primary reason for this is the use of regenerative braking, meaning that electric vehicles can slow down without rubbing friction br...