Should We Get Rid of the ICE?

In my last post I suggested that we all stop driving as it’s bad for the environment and our health. But that’s unrealistic. We all need to use a car at some point or another. Driving is a bit of a necessity, in fact, I like driving!

So of course there’s the other option which I purposely avoided mentioning in my previous post. Cars with BATTERIES! Specifically, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) like the new Toyota Prius pure Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) such as the Nissan Leaf and all Teslas and finally Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) that store hydrogen in a tank to create electricity when mixed with air, such as the Toyota Mirai (no you haven’t been in one, there are less than a hundred in the UK at the moment).  

I’m going to avoid talking too much about PHEVs as they are something of a compromise as they still have a traditional engine. Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles are a potential opportunity to be explored in the future but for the time being, I'd like to keep this blog focussed on pure electric vehicles or BEVs although many of the factors that I’m about to mention apply to other EVs as well. 

Now in terms of the arguments for giving up traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) powered vehicles for EVs, there seem to be two main ones.

I’m going to call refer to them as 1. The emissions argument and 2. The ‘everything else’ argument which I’m going to discuss in my next post which will be at some point in the next few days.

First of all, argument number one. Emissions. 

On a basic level, I’ve done an entire blog post (hyperlinked here if you’re not a regular follower) about the negative effects of ICE emissions but the story doesn’t end there.

We should also remember that some of nasty ‘emissions’ from cars are not from the exhaust but from brake pad wear, tires, etc. This article published a couple of years ago by Grigoratos and Martini mentions these ‘nonexhaust emissions’ and this 2012 article by Harrison et al. goes as far as stating that ‘abrasive emissions from brake, road, and tire wear, and the resuspension of materials from the highway surface, which, as a result, make up a similar proportion of the airborne particulate matter (PM) resulting from vehicle use as exhaust emissions’.

The study took place in London and we can combine the results with this study by Boulter et al. that uses a model to estimate PM₁₀ emissions as a result of brake wear in the UK. It becomes apparent that if nonexhaust emissions account for nearly as much PM release as exhaust emissions and brake wear accounts for approximately one third of those nonexhaust emissions, brake usage accounts for, very roughly, a sixth of PM₁₀ emissions from cars.

PM10 emissions from nonexhaust sources make up 'a similar proportion' as those from the exhaust. As the main nonexhaust sources are tyre, brake and road surface wear; we can see from this chart that brake wear is a serious issue when thinking about total PM10 emissions from a car. 

Given what we know about the harmful health effects of particulate matter from my previous post, it’s clear that if we MUST continue using our cars, we should stop braking whilst driving with immediate effect!  

What’s this you say? 

Impractical? 

Well the good news is that EVs can save the day here once again. Not only do they not emit any exhaust emissions, their nonexhaust emissions also aren’t as bad as their traditional ICE counterparts. 

This is because of the regenerative braking system fitted on pretty much every single EV.

This video does a pretty good job of explaining how a regenerative braking system works, but in essence, instead of brake pads clamping onto a brake disc and converting the kinetic energy of the moving car into heat energy and sound energy (SCREEECH!), the spinning axle of the car acts as a generator and the kinetic energy of the rotating axle is used to spin the electric motor and in turn recharge the batteries. 

This results in fewer harmful particulates being released into the environment for us to breathe in. 👍

Let’s return to my original argument on why we need to stop driving. I said there were two main reasons. Firstly, the fact that traditional cars require petrol or diesel which are refined from oil which is a non-renewable resource and secondly, their emissions.

Let’s skip to the second one quickly... electric cars have no exhaust emissions and their nonexhaust emissions are considerably lower than their ICE (internal combustion engine, in case you’ve forgotten) counterparts as a result of technologies such as regenerative braking systems. 

Bearing this information in mind, this means that the global carbon concerns that I raised in the previous post would be somewhat mitigated as EVs don’t directly emit any carbon (but I've come across some stuff that indicates that they may do so indirectly which I will cover in a future post). 

From the point of view of health effects...

I’ve shown that the contents of exhaust emissions can cause serious health effects and since EVs do not give off any exhaust emissions, EVs would certainly be better for our health. Yes, it's true that are other nonexhaust emissions such as tire rubber particles that get given off by EVs also but these amounts are negligible when compared to the other emission sources of exhaust emissions and brake wear.

Therefore, we can clearly see the health benefits of everyone switching to EVs as well.

That concludes the emissions argument… now the other argument on why we should stop driving- using up precious oil. The good news is that as EVs don’t require petrol or diesel but only require electricity, we don’t need to use any oil.

Actually, hang on, oil and other non-renewable resources are sometimes used to generate electricity so that kind of defeats the argument. Damn. That doesn’t help... or can we work around that? More on this in a future post! 

So those are the arguments for giving up cars in general and I’ve shown how EVs can be the answer. Now there’s still one more part of the argument left, the ‘everything else’ argument for why should switch to electric vehicles.

Watch this space!