Marvelous ... so that's 70% more emissions, a monopoly on maintenance to push prices up, but also they are so much heavier that they will cause more damage to roads and the potential for multi-level car parks to collapse ... presumably with the increased mass, you're also more likely to die if you have the misfortune of a head on collision with an EV than a petrol or diesel car.
Pothole damage from electric cars is double that of petrol, Telegraph data show
Electric cars damage roads twice as much as their petrol equivalents, analysis has shown, as the pothole crisis grows on Britain’s roads.
Analysis by The Telegraph has found that the average electric car more than doubles the wear on road surfaces, which in turn
could increase the number of potholes.
Road industry bodies have raised fears that
electric cars could exacerbate the problem on residential roads. The number of electric cars being driven has tripled to 900,000 since 2019 ahead of the Government’s 2030 ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars as part of its net zero drive.
The Telegraph found that the average electric car puts 2.24 times more stress on roads than its petrol equivalent, and 1.95 more than diesel. Larger electric vehicles weighing over 2,000kg (2 tons) cause the most damage, with 2.32 times more wear applied to roads.
Such stress on roads causes greater movement of asphalt, which can create small cracks. If these are not fixed, then these expand and
eventually develop into potholes.
The Telegraph used analysis led by the University of Leeds which assessed the weights of 15 popular electric car models alongside their petrol equivalents.
Researchers divided them by size, including small electric cars weighing over 1,000kg, such as the BMW Mini Cooper SE 3 Door and Peugeot e208, medium models over 1,500kg such as the Ford Focus Electric and Vauxhall Corsa-e, and larger vehicles including the Jaguar I- pace EV and Audi e-tron 50 Quattro.
They found that the electric vehicles were on average 312kg heavier than similar petrol versions. This is because they must carry heavy batteries, which can weigh up to 500kg.
Rick Green, chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, previously told The Telegraph: “Unclassified roads would not have been designed to accommodate HGV axle weights, so heavier electric cars could
exacerbate existing weaknesses thereby accelerating decline.”
Separate research from the University of Edinburgh found that the roll-out of electric lorries could increase the damage to roads in Scotland by almost a third. Lead researcher John Low estimated that it could cost the Scottish government and councils an additional £164 million to maintain roads if all buses and lorries became electric.
