regenerative braking is going to offset added weight of electric cars.<p>the article from the premise however specifically notes that it disregards pollution contributions of the impacts of EV on 1. powerplants to make the electricity and 2. mining and manufacturing of EV major components such a batteries.<p>While it's possible to scrub pollution from powerplants if you don't care about the cost of electricity you still have the much nore important issue of CO2 (G warming pollutant) which the article also does not address. Far more important than PM2.5 pollution imho, unless you're addressing just the cars within major metros like NYC, London, etc.<p>In this regard, point #1 is a major major negative mark when you compare EV versus a well designed gas powered hybrid. .
I love in-depth evaluations like these. There are many people who want to question the status quo, just as there are many people who want to defend it, but discussions with data behind them are so much more compelling.<p>This discussion leaves open questions about how much the size of particulate emissions matter, how much of each size becomes airborne versus simply falling to the ground, et cetera. In other words, this makes for an excellent starting point for someone else to do some more research and improve the picture. That can't be said of most discussions.
Though it won't probably change the final result of the calculations, the adoption of 65,000 km duration for brake pads and 80,000 km for tires sounds to me optimistic.<p>I would say 40,000-50,000 km for both brake pads and tires.
Mass of particulates isn't the issue, it's what the particulate actually is. The author makes a brief comment about this but then goes on to wholly ignore the vastly varying impacts of different kinds of pollution.