A quick follow-up to our May, 2023 post entitled “More Tire Toxicity in MoCo?” , because another report in the Miami Herald by Ashley Miznazi confirms what we published just a few months ago:
Ah, yes, “getting away from gasoline” — just like MoCo’s Executive, the “green fiend” himself, Marc Elrich, wants you to do! Be like him. Drive a “green car”. Save the planet. Don’t pollute Gaia!
Oh, wait:
“I’ve always driven combustion engines and I thought it was time to try to save the planet,” Semel said.
But after less than 5,000 miles of driving around his Boca Raton neighborhood, Semel was shocked to find some essential — and very expensive — parts were already wearing out. The tires.
“If somebody looked at me and said, Mr. Semel, you are going to love this car but in about 7,000 miles you will have to pay 1,400 or 1,500 dollars to replace the tires, I wouldn’t have bought the car,” Semel said.
Huh. Where the “rubber” meets the road (so to speak) and your wallet meets the repair shop… EVs aren’t really all that great for the local environment or local air quality, after all:
To some extent, running through tires quickly may offset the reduction of damaging emissions that EVs offer. Some studies have shown that tires actually have more particle pollution than exhaust, 2,000 times as much.
“Tires are rapidly eclipsing the tailpipe as a major source of emissions from vehicles,” said Nick Molden, to the Guardian who conducted one study with Emissions Analytics.
The rubber also literally meets the road faster on an electric vehicle. Electrical motors can produce peak power, or torque, almost instantly, unlike mashing the gas pedal of a regular car, which requires gas to flow and burn in cylinders and a bunch of mechanical parts to start moving.
So, once again, second order effects and actual environmental impacts are thrown to the wind because “feels” and “emissions” in a strange “MoCo” crusade against carbon. Marc Elrich and his MoCo Department of Environmental Protection have an entire web page and numerous links to “dealers” of these expensive EV toys (the individual mentioned in the Miami Herald article dropped nearly $100K for their model car) … but not a single mention of “tires” (I searched) or the environmental impacts wrought by burning through rubber, faster.
These pollutants are getting into the air and water table of MoCo, so shouldn’t we demand a proper accounting of everything that Marc Elrich and crew are dispensing into the environment? These are the same people who file reports and track the number of plastic bags they’ve “estimated to have saved” through the regressive bag tax.
Look, maybe EVs do “cut down on emissions” and maybe they are truly cost-efficient over time compared to their ICE counter-parts. I’m dubious but I’ll play along. But the bottom line is that they are polluting the local environment with actual physical particulate from burned rubber at a far faster clip then ICE vehicles. This is “proven science” – to borrow a phrase.
Where is all this particulate going? Is it further impacting “black and brown” neighborhoods in MoCo? Does it impact our tap water in MoCo? How safe is it to eat fish from MoCo streams near EV-heavy roads and bridges? How come nobody asks these relevant questions in the Exec’s office?
We all know why.
More to come.
Related posts:
More Tire Toxicity in MoCo? Why the “EV Push” by MoCo is a Push for More Toxic Tire Pollutants in Our Local Ecosystem
Community Profile: Mimi’s Ice Cream – Serving Happiness One Scoop at a Time
Cobalt Red: Is MoCo Government’s Obsession with Promoting Electric Vehicles Helping Fuel the Congo’s Cobalt Mining Tragedies?