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No surprises.

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.

The number of ICE cars I get stuck behind from time to time that just REEK is amazing. I’m in a decently well off area too.

Some putting off soot clouds, white smoke, nothing visible but clearly not doing complete combustion. Sometimes I wonder if half the cylinders are even working.

I’ve heard one car like that is the equivalent of a surprisingly large number of modern ICE cars is in good shape.

I love EVs. I’ve had one for 5 years now, and I’m glad they help. But I think the “are new EVs worse than new ICE” discussions so often miss a fact.

The pollution from ICE isn’t just from very modern well tuned vehicles, things vary wildly. But all EVs use the same power supply (assuming local grid only), so no individual vehicles put off 10x the pollution per kWh.

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.

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.
> Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again

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."

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.
The surprising part to me is that there are now enough EVs to make a measurable difference, since I kept thinking they are still relatively rare. The linked study has this piece of data:

    From 2019 to 2023, ZEVs increased from 2.0% (559943 of 28237734) to 5.1% (1460818 of 28498496).
So 1 out of 20 cars in California is an EV.
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.

And we're burning the fuel they'd run on anyway.

That's framing the topic completely out of the issue with global impacts of humanity on ecosystemic sustainability, including biodiversity.

Less commut and more collective transportation is going to be far more significant in term of global impact, whatever the engine type.

I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon. I cannot and will not own a smart car any more I want to own a smart TV or smart fridge or smart toaster.
The real scandal isn’t just battery degradation… it’s that manufacturers have zero incentive to solve it. Your car becoming worthless after a decade suits them down to the ground.

Battery swapping changes the game entirely. Imagine a national network of exchange stations (co-located with existing petrol infrastructure, you can use the overhead canopy for solar). Standard pack sizes scaled by vehicle class: compact cars get 2 cells, vans get 4, lorries get 8.

Whoever owns these battery packs now has skin in the game for longevity. Their profit depends on keeping packs in service for 20+ years, not selling you a new car.

Suddenly the R&D money flows towards batteries that last, obsolescence now costs them money, and isn’t a happy accident that keeps you hooked on buying more cars.

You’d still have the option to buy your own packs outright if you only ever charge at home, but the network creates the economic pressure for genuine improvement of longevity in battery tech that’s completely missing today.

I’m aware that a company called “Better Place” failed. But they were a startup trying to strong-arm the automotive industry. A nationally coordinated infrastructure concern is different, and the air quality data from this study suggests we can’t afford to keep muddling through - and I really think that peoples concerns about batteries are not misplaced.

Perfect is the enemy of good, but damned if we can’t at least align incentives for better.

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%.

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

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.
Anyone can argue ICE vs EV all night long but there's only 1 metric I care about, in favor of EV:

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.

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.
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
Well, if EVs are made mandatory we'll have even less air polution because fewer people will be able to afford a car.

The auto industry seems to have ran out of early adopters already. Now they need a kick in the privates to make cheap EVs.

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
I've developed a habit of holding my breath for a few seconds whenever a particularly smelly/polluting car drives by me while I'm walking on the street, so when I hear/see an EV approaching I often feel relieved. I'm lucky to live in a city with comparatively clean air, but I hope a time comes when we treat car exhaust gases the same way as we treat second hand tobacco smoke because in both cases pollutants are literally being absorbed into our bodies.
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

Does the study account for things like coal-fired power plants in Delta, Utah being operated by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power? This makes for less pollution at the site of the vehicle, and more pollution two giant western states away.
I love EVs, ever since I test drove an BMW i3 in 2012. Quiet with high drag - of course this is the future.

BUT I don't think switching to EVs will help reduce CO2 in any way - not even if all the EVs are charged using 100% solar/wind. The narrative usually is "I get an EV instead of an ICE, charge it with regenerative energy and have 0 emissions, thus not burning oil and saving on CO2".

But that is not how a globalized world with free markets works. In order to save on CO2, we would need to keep that oil not burned by the EV underground, but that does not take place. The market reality is that oil price will just drop with less demand from ICE vehicles. But with falling prices, other business models that require refined oil will become viable and the oil is still burned - just somewhere else. No one so far has made a good argument why the Saudis or Russians would leave their ressources underground, just because demand from ICE vehicles drop.

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 remember yellow-orange skies before emissions standards?
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.
imo The final hurdle for mass adoption is solving the refueling planning problem.

I was in the market for a new car in 2024. Thought seriously about a few electric options but opted for another ICE vehicle because 2025/2026 are years of many road trips, and the issue that kept coming up for me was "can I just pull off any random highway and refill my car in a few minutes?"

Unfortunately for the environment I guess, I prefer not being forced to strictly plan my trips around distance and availability and speed of chargers. I can go pretty much anywhere in North America and be reasonably certain there's a gas station just off any highway, let alone an interstate.

"Oh, do the kids need to use the bathroom ASAP? Might as well fill up a quarter tank while we're there" opportunities would also vanish.

And even if charging stations were magically placed across the country to match gas stations, there'd still be the "time to charge" problem.

I have got 15kw solar and EV, barely pay more than 50 bucks a months and that too mostly consists of daily supply charges.
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.

We have a huge power source called the sun, but our greed is not letting us use it fully.
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 are still a luxury item, only affordable by a few.

Although to be fair new ICE cars are also a luxury item. Most people can only buy used ICE cars these days

Hmmm. Do we have to do a study of that? The AQI around LHR was 3 when I went there last year. Then realized all gas cars are banned at the airport.
I want and EV but I don't have a charger and I cant have a charger since I live in an apartment.
Talking generally and depending on many factors the fossil fuel yearly energy consumption for private transportation is similar with that of home heating. ICE cars are replaced with electric and boilers with heat pumps. Both help, may be the same, but in the latter case the increase in average temperature of the last three years adds to the mix.
Comparison with the lockdown data would be interesting.
Reduction in pollution in where EV are used or where produced?
Who could have possibly anticipated this?
For the environmental impact within a specific region, electric vehicles are indeed much better than cars. However, when it comes to things like greenhouse gases and global warming, that's likely just Elon Musk's lie.
They’ve just moved the pollution out of the gentrified areas that can afford to purchase EVs at scale. Which was part of the initial goal when pushing for this insanity, as the plebs were polluting with the air of the much better off by using their 20-years old clunkers (or at least that was the discourse here in Europe). Mission about to be accomplished, those plebs now can take the bus if they still want mobility.
The problem is battery recycling. It's highly polluted and a huge source of lead and lithium exposure.
But don’t they cause higher pm2.5 and pm10 pollution from braking due to the fact that EVs are heavier than vehicles powered by internal combustion ?
If you live in North America and have a house or townhouse get a Tesla. It is such a no brainer. $5 for 500km vs $100 for 500km (gas) is just too good
Has the study made an effort to exclude any other factors? For example, a reduction in commute during the covid years?
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.
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.

It also causes roads to be damaged/destroyed FAR faster due to the vehicales on average weighing significantly more.

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.

Because this is HN, (in Allo Allo's Michelle Dubois voice...) "I shall say this only wonce": If you're curious, have a look at Earth's historical temperature and co2 data going back millions of years. What you'll notice is that there's always been oscillations, like a more or less predictable wave. Human activity is polluting the Earth, yes, but this fixation on co2 and other gases (cow farts, really?) is unhealthy to put it mildly.

I'd like to see the same attention being given to plastics (so much single-use crap and how much of it can be recycled?), synthetic clothing, and all kinds of other chemicals including the ones we put in ourselves (pharma, food) and the environment, like fertilizers or the byproducts of mining today's fashionable minerals like lithium. Not to mention the explosion in electromagnetic frequencies activity, which somehow is taken as normal and ok by the same scientific establishment which accepts thousands(?) of fake papers every year for publication. You just have to love the irony when something like Science is deemed 'settled'-- in that regard, it's almost as if we went back a few centuries.

There's certainly a lot to be said for humans needing to take better care of the planet. Co2 just gets a little too much attention for my taste. And don't take from this that I love oil. I find fracking to be abominable and another big factor in polluting the land and the water tables.