Lol
Him: here’s a bunch of studies about how evs produce measurably more pollution from tire wear.
You: okay, but have you considered this blog post by a towing company that cites anecdotes from taxi operators?
No dummy, the RAC is one of the biggest automotive companies in the UK. Tyre repair companies also say it. Common sense says it. If tyre tread on EVs was substantially less than ICE vehicles it would be borne out by data but it is not.
It literally is borne out by data though. The way that source wriggles around is crazy.
They carefully pick the worst case scenario tire wear number then use it as a baseline for the mathematics that underlie the sentence
the tyres would be bald in less than 1,358 miles, or two months’ worth of driving
and extrapolate that out to
we now know that tyre wear is nowhere near as big a contributor to particulate matter emissions as some media coverage has suggested
The dancing around weight and tire wear is even more absurd:
modern electric vehicles aren’t actually that much heavier than many modern petrol or diesel cars, especially with the recent trend towards bigger and heavier SUVs
and a long section about taxi tire math that ends with the buried admission
Ryan notes that his diesel taxis do tend to get an extra 5,000 to 10,000 miles of lifespan out of their front tyres
But even if you aren’t interested in reading that source with a critical eye and recognizing the ways it manipulates language and information to make a point (I’m still not clear why a towing company wrote this), you can literally just look next to the authors name and see:
Author of this report commissioned by the RAC
I genuinely cannot understand why you’d choose to believe a dubious blog entry from a towing company over research from literally any other source.
Shame on you for making me bring out the [ ] over the British equivalent of a triple a guide.
But even if you aren’t interested in reading that source with a critical eye and recognizing the ways it manipulates language and information to make a point (I’m still not clear why a towing company wrote this), you can literally just look next to the authors name and see:
The RAC isn’t just a “towing company”. It provides a range of motor services like breakdown assistance, insurance, vehicle inspections, servicing, fleet management. Therefore it happens to know a great deal about automotive matters unlike say Forbes or some other outlet which does not. It’s also not some stealth EV proponent controlled by some shadowy puppet master, it just happens to have knowledge from supporting fleets of EVs of their outcomes. The AA, a similar organisation also debunks EV myths, again coming from a position of experience.