Electric Vehicles Cause Double The Road Damage
Heavy electric vehicles cause twice as much damage to road surfaces than their combustion-powered equivalents, a report Tuesday has claimed
A UK study led by the University of Leeds found the average electric car puts 2.24 times more stress on roads than a similar petrol vehicle – and 1.95 more than a diesel.
Larger electric vehicles can cause up to 2.32 times more damage to roads.
The stress on roads causes greater movement of asphalt which can lead to small cracks and eventually expand into potholes with local government authorities left to repair the damage.
Impact is even bigger with larger EVs, which can lead to up to 2.32 times more damage to road infrastructure, according to the report as outlined by the Daily Telegraph.
The increased weight of EVs can be primarily attributed to their heavy batteries, which can weigh up to 500 kilograms.
This is not the first time EVs have come under scrutiny for their on-road weight.
As Breitbart News reported, the safety risks posed by heavy electric vehicles in any collision with lighter vehicles has pushed the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to issue a general warning to all road users.
The official, Jennifer Homendy, raised the issue in a speech in Washington to the Transportation Research Board when she pointed, by way as an example, to an electric GMC Hummer that weighs about 9,000 pounds (4.5 tons) with a battery pack that alone is 2,900 pounds (1.5 tons) — roughly the entire weight of a typical Honda Civic.
“I’m concerned about the increased risk of severe injury and death for all road users from heavier curb weights and increasing size, power, and performance of vehicles on our roads, including electric vehicles,” Homendy said in remarks prepared for the group.
They are also wearing out tyres much faster than ICE cars.
If the world only had EVs to drive, the cost of road maintenance would double.
Roads require asphalt made from petroleum products.
Do you see the false economy and hypocrisy?
See more here technocracy.news
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Tom
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Excellent points as we can see what happens to the right lanes on the E-ways as most heavy semis travel in these lanes.
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Joe
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Complete BULLSHIT!!!
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aaron
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how so joe
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Whokoo
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Yeah Joe. Give us the goods!
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D. Boss
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Well not complete bullsh*t, but mostly stinky manure. Let’s look at some real numbers shall we?
Tesla Model Y is a luxury SUV and has a curb weight of 4,500 lbs. The equivalent gasoline powered SUV would be a Toyota RAV4, with a curb weight of 3,600 lbs. So yes the Tesla is 900 lbs heavier than it’s equivalent petrol powered cousin.
BUT 4500/3600 is only 1.25 times heavier, not double the road damage bubba!
Lies, damned lied and statistics play the shell game once again! (Not that I am advocating the stupid decision to build or buy an electric vehicle, I think they are asinine and foolish and you cannot replace even a small fraction of hydrocarbon fueled vehicles with the available mineral resources globally, but I abhor idiot sentiments like “double the road damage” embodies)
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ozwedge
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The report also included the following statement (but not in the above article):
The analysis uses the “fourth power formula”, which is widely used by highways engineers and researchers to assess the damage caused to road surfaces by heavier vehicles. It means that if weight on a vehicle’s axle is doubled, it does 16 times the damage to the road.
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Howdy
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“According to a report from the Asphalt Industry Alliance published in March, the cost of fixing Britain’s pothole backlog has risen by about £1.5 billion from the previous year to $14 billion. ”
https://www.driving.org/rising-popularity-of-electric-cars-could-lead-to-increase-in-potholes-survey-reveals/
This is now because road tax no longer exists, and is covered by council tax, so even non-drivers pay for it. Of course, the money is diverted from maintenance.
Should E-vehicles actually achieve the take-up hoped for, the average citizen, not the motorist will be faced with a big hike in tax purely on road condition alone, and yet the tax disk will be transferred to those E-vehicles making them even more expensive, which of course the average citizen also pays for the “carrot on a stick” to make the purchase more tempting, so loses out even more to drivers’ benefit.
Good deal, yes?
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D. Boss
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Sounds like more hogwash to me. I’ve had my drivers license for 50 years and in that time the average car weight has gone from 4-6,000 lbs down to 2-4,000 lbs.
So has the interval of road repair or repaving gotten 12-16 times longer due to this so called “forth power formula”??? No it hasn’t. (roads are damaged or repaired more often now than back when I was young and stupid)
Passenger cars do not do the majority of the damage to roads, trucks do and trucking weight x frequency has only been steadily increasing.
An 18 wheel tractor-trailer with a gross weight of 85,000 lbs means each wheel has 4722 lbs on it’s contact area. The cars with 4 wheels only have 1000 lbs per wheel or less. So by this hypothetical 4th power rule, trucks do 256 times more damage to roads than do passenger cars.
In the US there are 103 million passenger cars, driving an average of 13,000 miles per year. So 1.4 trillion miles total for cars.
The big, 18 wheel trucks travel 177 billion miles per year carrying 10.93 billion tons of freight. So if these trucks are doing 256 times more road damage than the passenger cars, the cars would have to drive 45.3 trillion miles to do the equivalent damage. So either 32x more cars or 32x more miles by the existing cars to do the equivalent road damage as the transport trucks/trailers.
https://www.trucking.org/economics-and-industry-data
I simply do not buy this “4th power” figure. Or if it were true then almost nothing you do with passenger car weights or numbers is going to make much of any difference to road damage totals if trucking remains as it is or grows as it has been.
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Howdy
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It is obvious that weight equates to wear, and damage. The UK road tax system used to be based on this fact, and the larger the vehicle, thus the weight, the greater the tax paid. Now of course it’s emission nonsense.
Should cracks develop, water can enter which then freezes leading to further fracturing and so on, with grit application in winter preventing the asphalt from stitching back together, and you get the point.
Chippings of a particular hardness, based on the traffic load are added as a surface dressing to increase the wear resilience but it isn’t a total cure. One may notice some roads have green, or red appearance.
Damage is particularly noticeable in warm weather as asphalt will creep as it softens, with bus stops suffering much due to stationary heavy loads. One may remember roads softening and water spraying fleets in the past, yet not any more. Pitch would soften and bubble to be plucked by children, yet again, no more. I guess there’s a real fact in there that no longer is true, eh?
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Dave
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EVs Unsafe at any speed 🔥
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Robert Beatty
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Not only are EVs heavier, they also accelerate faster. This produces a high wear factor on asphalt roads, particularly in hot weather. Heightened road damage shows up in the higher EV tyre wear rates.
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Ted
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My concern is with the microplastics and other toxins generated into the air and waterways by tyre wear and bitumen (asphalt} wear. Tyres in particular can have heavy metals in their composition which end up in the lungs of pedestrians and drivers alike. These heavier EV vehicles just make matters worse, with the added illusion that they are environmentally friendly so are used more often thinking they do not do much environmental damage. The idea should be to gradually eliminate rubber tired vehicles in favour of steel wheel on rail transit, not foster their use.
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