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everybody in London is breathing toxic levels of PM2.5 particles. And the fact that the largest sources of PM2.5 particles are tires and brake dust suggests that electrification is at best only a partial answer.
We also have to drive a whole lot less.
Fortunately, London appears to be pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy when it comes to greener transportation, including electric buses to a massive investment in cycle infrastructure, the goal really does appear to be easing gridlock and rethinking how we get from one place to another.
London's cycle superhighways have already shown they can deliver 70% increases in cycling, and now Mayor Sadiq Kahn has announced an entirely new, fourth superhighway bringing segregated lanes to Southeast London for the first time.
Instead of car tire and brake dust, Londoners will be able to inhale healthier bike tire and brake dust.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Friday October 06 2017, @12:18AM (24 children)
And cars have engine braking, which has the same effect.
So i suspect, evs and ice cars will generate around the same level of brake dust (either emergency stops, or the final stop after slowing down)
If london wanted to reduce the level of brake dust, they would get rid of the speed bumps and other man made obstacles on the road. Having to accelerate, brake, accelerate,brake all day long not only wears out rhe car and tyres,but increases emissions and brake dust. However they seem to be going the opposite way, because since when does a politician do something sensible?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Gertlex on Friday October 06 2017, @12:26AM (6 children)
Regen seems to let cars slow down as they coast a lot faster than just taking foot off the pedal in an ICE. I've also heard from a few Prius owners about how their original brake pads are like new.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by martyb on Friday October 06 2017, @01:09AM (3 children)
Heh.
Reminds me of a GEO Tracker [wikipedia.org] I used to have. Just a 2-door, 2-wheel-drive, canvas-top, barebones, 4-cylinder, standard transmission model. About the only extra it had was a radio.
Anyway, at something like 95k miles, I started to hear a squeal when I used the brakes. Took it to the shop and sure enough, needed to replace the front brakes. The tech told me that it must have been set up incorrectly at the factory (I'd bought it new) as the rear brakes had barely any wear at all!
Let that sink in a moment... 95,000 miles on just the front brakes alone!
How'd I do it? Double-clutch and down-shift whenever I needed to stop. =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday October 06 2017, @05:31AM (1 child)
That's quite an achievement, but as an advanced shade-tree mechanic, I'd rather replace brake pads than clutches. I know you said "double-clutch" but it's still got to wear the clutch more than just leaving it in gear, right?
Disclaimer: I'm writing this from the frame of reference of: a good friend needs me to (help) change the clutch in his wife's Mini-Cooper. Ugh.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Friday October 06 2017, @12:44PM
You may not have had the benefit of learning to drive under my Dad's instruction... on a World War II era Willys Jeep. He expected we would have trouble learning to use the clutch well, but his tone of voice and look on his face made clear that slipping the clutch or grinding the gears was a... Very Not Good Thing. Let's say I was "motivated" to improve my skills right from the get-go.
I would rev match to a very close degree so the clutch would only need to [dis]engage and the synchros had almost nothing to do.
As far as I could tell, I never had a problem with the clutch at all, so I might have been doing something right. =)
Fun times. It rode like a bicycle as it had a high driving position, stiff suspension, and a short wheelbase. Anything other than straight-ahead and level travel led to much more head motion than a lower-slung conventional vehicle. It only had about 80hp from the inline 4-cylinder engine. I had the rear-wheel drive model, so no off-roading for me. Still, it was lots of fun and I miss the old thing.
Ugh, indeed! That's one small vehicle that's very-much cramped for space. I'd heard by word-of-mouth back when they came out that they had troubles with their clutch — best of luck to ya!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by Gertlex on Friday October 06 2017, @06:05AM
Obviously I am your average automatic-driving American. So I expected I'd encounter a blind spot of mine... and too, manuals are more common in Britain, the location of discussion, which I forgot to consider.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Friday October 06 2017, @05:55AM
Yes, regen should do most of the work. I have a good friend who has had a Chevy Bolt for about 6 months. Amazingly, to me anyway, the default behavior is that the friction brakes do much (most?) of the braking. He showed me he has 3 levels of regen, but it's all based on the accelerator pedal. I would have thought a brake fluid pressure sensor, or something like that, should modulate regen braking. Anyway, if he puts it in the highest regen mode, when he lets off the accel. pedal the thing really slows down hard. I would be more gentle with the accel pedal. He loves seeing the regen watts indicated on the dash. It does light the rear brake lights when regen slowing.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday October 06 2017, @07:13AM
I dont know. With all the cars i had, you could drive in normal traffic without needing the brakes at all. I use my brakes so little i get rust on the disks from lack of friction, and have to actually go for a fast drive to clean them up from time to time.
Once when my main brakes failed, i managed to get home using nothing but engine braking and the handbrake, and then to the garage from there (possible, but really not fun to do unless necessary)
Saying that, never drove a car with electric regen braking, so i cant compare the two. However if you apply the brakes on a normal car, you use friction straight away, while on the other you can do some level of normal braking on the regen before brakes are applied.
So for people who cant anticipate traffic well and find themselves braking a lot, or for those who live in areas with lots of obstacles on the road, regen braking would be a benefit IMO.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:15AM (15 children)
> they would get rid of the speed bumps and other man made obstacles on the road
Road furniture is for traffic calming. If idiots would drive their cars at a reasonable speed in residential and pedestrian areas the need for calming devices would never have been necessary. I'm a car driver and I sometimes resent speed bumps (sleeping policemen), but I also understand that it's the bad behavior of some drivers that caused them to be installed in the first place.
We're all in this together...it's called society.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:43AM (13 children)
What is a "reasonable speed"?
To me, it is whatever I can manage without adding substantial risk of hitting something.
So here is what I did with the speed bumps on my route to work:
The road is marked as 20 MPH (32 KPH) maximum, 15 MPH (24 KPH) advisory, with 7 speed bumps. I approach a speed bump at 45 MPH (72 KPH), then hit the brakes immediately prior. The front of the car drops down due to braking, then bounces back up higher that it started. This helps me clear the speed bump. I then stomp the accelerator pedal to the floor, getting back up to 45 MPH (72 KPH) again. I do this 7 times in roughly a mile (1.6 km).
Now, isn't that awful?
In the process I have broken two oil pans (underinflated tire) and shaken a headlight loose. That adds more debris to the road.
Since then, I ditched that fuel-efficient little car for a giant van. Now I can take the speed bumps at full speed, yeah! Either way, the noise pollution is pretty serious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @03:09AM
To add to the fun, you know you can now add some "running on coal" effect, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:42AM (3 children)
Continuing with the joke...as long as your suspension has enough travel, it's not a big deal to hit the speed bumps at high speed. Suspensions are designed to be high pass filters. Watch motocross motorcycles sometime, with about 300mm (1 foot) of suspension travel the wheels move up and down while the riders get a pretty decent ride over very rough surfaces.
Of course if you don't have enough bump travel, you bottom out the spring (or damper/strut) and break suspension parts.
No longer joking...the reasonable speed is often defined by the local residents who live along that road.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @06:01AM (2 children)
My suspension couldn't quite manage. I had a 2001 VW Passat with the USA ride height. (the 2001 Passat rides lower in the EU, via different springs)
So I would often get a weird THUMP from not having enough travel. The trick with the brakes would avoid the problem if I got the timing right. Briefly slam the brakes hard to make the car nosedive, then it rebounds to get over the speedbump.
I never broke any suspension parts. I broke some engine mounts, causing my engine to be supported on the transmission. That may have caused my transmission issues. I broke two oil pans, but at least one of those was partly due to an underinflated tire. I knocked my left headlight clear off of the vehicle. I should have stopped to grab it, but I mistook it for random trash.
Now I have an E350 Econoline van which handles speedbumps decently. I guess riding in the back seat could get wild. There is lots of clearance. My van looks like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_E-Series_wagon.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Local residents often get to define the speed limit. Because of their understandable bias, they will not choose anything reasonable. There are people living on US highways; they might like the speed limit set to 5 MPH (8 KPH) so that their kids can play unattended in the road. Fortunately we don't let things get that extreme, but it is pretty normal for speed limits to be half of what is reasonable. The same people who want 5 MPH on **their** street may be speeding on other people's streets. I'm at least not a hypocrite; I speed on my own street too.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:06AM (1 child)
facepalm.
You know you were modded funny because we thought you were joking, right?
You even included little "hints": like driving at an unsafe speed in a residential area (45 MPH (72 KPH)), and continuing to do so after you broke your car "In the process I have broken two oil pans (underinflated tire)"
By you own admission, you were having single-vehicle collisions with the ground. Here I thought I was talented doing that on my bike (folded wheel on level ground by counter-steering after a pedal strike).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @08:55AM
Part of the street has houses with lawns. There is seldom much near the road. Cars are not parked along the road. There are no bushes near the road. Visibility is great.
Part of the street has fenced backyards on one side, with 20 feet of flat sand and grass between that and the road. On the other side, there is 100 feet of grass and then a fence for a school. (yes this is a silly school zone -- as if hitting kids anywhere else would be different) Normally there is nothing anywhere near the road.
My eyes and ears and hands work, and I dedicate them all to driving. There is plenty of space; the situation beats some interstate highways. https://goo.gl/maps/heBgaHJUd5S2 [goo.gl]
Oh, BTW, my wife reminds me that one of the broken oil pans was her fault, at lower speeds. (so for me just 1 oil pan, 3 motor mounts, and 1 headlight)
And no, I didn't know anybody thought I was joking. I figure it is kind of funny that I would stubbornly persist with the car damage.
(Score: 2) by http on Friday October 06 2017, @05:19AM (7 children)
You're a clueless driver, and a jerk to boot. You're slamming on your brakes for speed bumps on a route you take regularly? No wonder your car got damaged. You won't convince anyone you weren't pulling that shit everywhere else you drove.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @06:17AM (6 children)
How else could I get the timing right and be sure that there weren't any hidden dangers?
With a previous commute elsewhere, I got good enough that I could drift a tiny bit.
I've gone 17 or 18 years without hitting anything. I might reject the yoke of the nanny state, but that doesn't make me clueless. Aside from speed, I actually follow rules far better than the typical driver. I've worn out turn signal lights, and not by leaving them on for miles.
BTW, I learned the suspension trick (slam brakes briefly) originally to deal with potholes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday October 06 2017, @08:50AM (4 children)
"I've gone 17 or 18 years without hitting anything. "
Luck does not equal skill.
If you truly drive like you say, it is only luck keeping you semi-safe.
(I was a professional truck driver trainer and amateur circle track and drag racer at my local tracks. Your driving stories sound like a 17 year old kid with his first set of wheels, no skills and a ton of bravado. I call bullshit.)
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @10:07AM (3 children)
It's familiarity with the road, familiarity with the car, and paranoid alertness for anything out of the ordinary.
I only drive my commute like that. Elsewhere, the worst is much more mundane speeding. I'm not out there cutting off truck drivers or street racing.
It took a couple years before I understood the van well enough to go over 60 MPH (96 KPH) in it. (no, not on my commute) One has to have a good feel for how the suspension responds. I'd be there on a highway marked for 70 MPH or 75 MPH, and I'd be going 60 MPH or even a bit less. Several years later, I've briefly done 90 on really good interstate highways. That requires top quality pavement, intense concentration, a solid grip on the steering wheel, braced seating, and low wind.
The van can not usefully be drifted. Drifting is safe only on flat gravel surfaces with low speeds. It is kind of fun, but pointless.
I'm really tempted to get a WRX STI or Golf Type R. I probably ought to spend the money on my kid's education though.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @12:54PM
Get the WRX and some life insurance. The kid will be fine.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday October 07 2017, @04:47AM (1 child)
"It's familiarity with the road, familiarity with the car, and paranoid alertness for anything out of the ordinary."
You're fooling only yourself. No responsible driver ever drives like that. Too much macho, not enough sense. It WILL catch up to you.
"Elsewhere, the worst is much more mundane speeding. I'm not out there cutting off truck drivers or street racing."
This is the first thing you've said that makes sense.
"Drifting is safe only on flat gravel surfaces with low speeds. It is kind of fun, but pointless."
Drifting is safe (for other people) ONLY at the track, and even there sometimes bad shit happens. A drift can easily get out of hand, even at low speeds. It's NEVER safe in an uncontrolled environment.
Personally I love high speed asphalt drifting, never got the hang of it myself, but my nephew Josh kicks ass at it, and spends and ungodly amount for tires over a season...
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @08:59AM
It's weird that people see my behavior as some sort of macho thing. I'm much more of a calm, calculating, paranoid sort. I just like to go fast.
Drifting a van is NOT safe at the track. The tires would grip a solid surface too well, causing a roll-over. To drift a van without rolling it, you need something like a loose gravel surface. Snow, ice, water, and oil might also allow drifting without rolling the van.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:37PM
How else do you get the timing right? Uhh you go slow over the speed bumps. I hope you break your van too.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:45AM
If the road is marked at speed X, you should be able to go over the speed bumb at speed X, not X/3. The way the speed bumbs are build almost everywhere i've seen is to make them so big, that you need to slow down a lot to get over the bumb without breaking the car. That does not calm the traffic.
Also each and every bumb should be marked with a road sign right at the spot where the bumb is. Sometimes it's hard to see them (weather and other conditions) and you can't even drive over them at the given speed. That's just pure FU to all drivers.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Friday October 06 2017, @07:17AM
Engine braking is an accidental feature of ICE. It can be useful for maintaining reasonable speed down long hills without burning out the brakes.
But it doesn't compare to regen, which is designed in specifically at useful rates. And in the case of the latest EV designs such as the new Nissan Leaf, regen is integrated with real breaking and with acceleration too to provide for one pedal driving. With the break pedal only of use as an emergency brake.
And of course engine braking only slows the car. Regen actually recovers kinetic energy back into potential energy for driving.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!