So, the ULEZ is grossly counterproductive then, is it?
The Guardian reports that it’s actually tyres, not ICE exhausts, which produce the pollution:
Car tyres produce vastly more particle pollution than exhausts, tests show
This makes the ULEZ worse than useless, it’s counterproductive:
“Tailpipes are now so clean for pollutants that, if you were starting out afresh, you wouldn’t even bother regulating them.”
Oh, right.
But there has been particular debate over whether battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which are heavier than conventional cars and can have greater wheel torque, may lead to more tyre particles being produced. Molden said it would depend on driving style, with gentle EV drivers producing fewer particles than fossil-fuelled cars driven badly, though on average he expected slightly higher tyre particles from BEVs.
Gosh, that is interesting. So, in order to reduce pollution in London we should be banning the heavier, EV, cars and encouraging the lighter, less pollution producing, ICE ones.
As ever, because of course, public policy is exactly and entirely opposite to good science then.
True, there is still that little point about CO2. But this evidence indicates that the continuation of the use of the internal combustion engine - because of weight - is desirable. All that’s necessary is to produce synthetic petrol by the upgrade of green hydrogen and we’re done. That also saves all of those costs of having to rewire the entire country to charge EVs. Of course, it also means that that idea of banning the sale of new ICEs is nonsense as well.
Is politics going to do that? Rescind the ban on ICE sales? Not just reduce but eliminate the subsidies to EVs, those more polluting vehicles? Reverse the way the ULEZ works in order to actually reduce pollution in London? Of course we know the answer to those questions, politics isn’t going to do that - is it heck.
For politics isn’t driven by actual science nor even by good sense, which is why politics is such a foully bad way of running anything, isn’t it?