2023-06-29 15:39:28
An interesting correlation was found between the weight of electric cars and road cracks. Are electric cars really more harmful to the roads than their petrol or diesel counterparts? There was an article in The Sun newspaper in which a British journalist complained regarding the number of potholes in the UK these days: “It was recently announced that there are 556,658 bloody potholes in the UK. There is almost one for every immigrant. We like to think that the roads in Africa are bad, but I drove through Senegal and it was like rolling on the marble floor of a billionaire’s pool room. Every other day we read regarding an unfortunate person whose life was turned upside down, sometimes literally, following encountering a crater in the road. Last year I drove into a hole so big that dinosaurs lived at the bottom. Two of my tires were destroyed in the crash, and since they were made in a Ukrainian factory, I had to wait three months for them to be replaced.” After the flood of complaints, he pointed out that the already terrible conditions will be exacerbated by electric cars. “In addition, modern cars are heavy with all their safety equipment. Especially if they are powered by batteries. Which means we don’t need them on a cratered road…” After the article, of course, many people were angry with the journalist for stating untruths. However, the Telegraph investigated and found that there really is a correlation between the quality of the roads and the weight of electric cars. The British analysis found that electric cars are more responsible for the destruction of road surfaces. A kind of asphalt load and wear coefficient was calculated, highlighting that an electric car “loads” the road more than twice as much on average as a gasoline or diesel-powered counterpart. In this regard, they stated that the wear rate of the heaviest, up to 2,000 kilogram, fully electric cars is 2.32 times greater than that of internal combustion cars. However, considering “normal” weight cars, the situation does not change much: it is 2.24 times greater than that of gasoline-powered cars and 1.95 times greater than that of diesel-powered cars. “Britain’s unclassified roads – explained industry expert Rick Green – would not be designed for the weight of heavy vehicles, so heavier electric cars might exacerbate existing weaknesses and thus accelerate their decline”. Unfortunately, it is a well-known fact that in some electric cars, the battery alone can weigh as much as a smaller gasoline car, and this is not a small problem to consider. In addition to creating more potholes, which is an increasingly serious problem not only in the United Kingdom, but also in Hungary, they also play an important role in accidents: colliding with a heavy car is never pleasant. Some associations also expressed doubts regarding parking garages, multi-level parking lots, in which hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicles can be parked, but which are designed for a certain weight.
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