When the world talks about the environmental tradeoffs associated with EVs, the discussion often revolves around mining, battery recycling, and — more recently — tire wear. Electric cars, with their significantly heavier curb weights than ICE-powered cars (and high torque/regenerative braking), tend to absolutely chew through tires, and this sends tiny microplastics out into the environment and potentially into our lungs. So what can we do about that? Well, one British Startup thinks the answer could be: Just collect that tire particles before they ever gets out into the environment, and then recycle them. Here’s how The Tyre Collective plans to do this.
I think on some level it’s always been pretty obvious that tires send dust out into the environment. I mean, you buy a new tire, it has X amount of tread on it, you drive 40,000 miles, and it now has less thread on it. That material has to go somewhere, and it’s only recently that people began to realize that these microplastics are a big deal. Again, it’s not exactly a new concept, with the California Air Resources Board referring to tire wear as a “non-exhaust source of inhalable particles,” and noting that they could become a dominant source of vehicle emissions: From CARB:
Vehicles emit inhalable particles from two major sources: the exhaust system, which has been extensively characterized and regulated; and non-exhaust sources including brake wear, tire and road wear, clutch wear and road dust resuspension. The non-exhaust sources have not been regulated because they are difficult to measure and control. However, with increasingly stringent standards for exhaust emissions, the non-exhaust fraction has become increasingly important. Model predictions (both MOVES and EMFAC) suggest that traffic-related emissions of both PM2.5 and PM10 will eventually be dominated by non-exhaust sources.
Additionally, there is concern that exposure to these particles may increase in California because proposed regional land use and transportation plans may lead to denser cities and a higher proximity of people to major roadways. Given the increased relevance of non-exhaust emissions, new studies are needed to better estimate their magnitude and to assess the potential to control them. But before an effective method to control these emissions can be devised, a greater understanding of their physical and compositional characteristics as well as overall emissions is needed.
The study of non-exhaust sources is highly complex…
Tire Wear Is Bad For The Environment And Human Health
But as the world struggles with its ICE-EV transition, tire wear has jumped into the limelight as tension brews between EV proponents and EV detractors. To EV detractors, the tire issue is one they can point to to show that EVs aren’t exactly perfect, and that’s fair enough, even if headlines like The Atlantic’s “EVs Are Sending Toxic Tire Particles Into the Water, Soil, and Air” and Grist.org’s “EVs are a climate solution with a pollution problem: Tire particles” seem a little slanted. Still, despite those headlines, both stories do note that gas car tires pollute, too, it’s just that EVs have really highlighted the extent of the problem. Grist.org’s piece notes the difference in tire wear between EVs and gas cars:
The average battery for an EV on the market today is roughly 1,000 pounds, with some outliers approaching 3,000 pounds — as much as an entire gasoline-powered compact car. Emissions Analytics has found that adding 1,000 pounds to a midsize vehicle increased tire wear by about 20 percent, and also that Tesla’s Model Y generated 26 percent more tire pollution than a similar Kia hybrid
The story goes on to say that, per the founder of a London-based emissions testing company, tires are a “fundamentally open system, so there is no viable way to capture the polluting particles that fly off of them.” The story also says that a single car emits just under nine pounds of tire wear each year. “Globally, that amounts to six million metric tons of tire pollution annually, with most of it coming from wealthier countries where personal car use is more prevalent,” the piece says. This is bad for both the environment and for people:
The researchers found that one tire will shed between two and fourteen pounds of rubber particles due to road wear (from initial use to initial disposal). These particles may be small enough to be picked up by wind and carried for up to a month before they are deposited on land. Larger particles can be caught in stormwater runoff and transported along curbs and through stormwater systems where they are typically deposited into a local waterway. Constituents of these particles, pollutants such as microplastics, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and other toxic chemicals can then pollute local water and soil.
As for the smaller particles? Grist.org writes:
Smaller bits of tire particulate linger in the air, where they can be inhaled, and the smallest of this particulate matter — known as PM 2.5, because each particle is 2.5 micrometers or less — can directly enter the bloodstream. A 2017 study estimated that tire wear is responsible for 5 to 10 percent of oceanic microplastic pollution, and 3 to 7 percent of airborne PM 2.5 pollution.
If you really want to get into it, have a look at the article “Where the rubber meets the road: Emerging environmental impacts of tire wear particles and their chemical cocktails,” which was written, in part, by EPA researcher Paul Mayer. Here’s a little snippet going into the health implications of tire wear particles:
Some tire chemicals are known toxicants to terrestrial organisms and humans (e.g., many metals, PAHs), but the potential toxic effects of many tire-derived chemicals on terrestrial organisms remain unknown. For humans, oral and dermal exposure to tire particles is expected to be minimal compared to inhalation exposure (Kreider et al., 2020). While the larger fraction of particles is primarily in the non-respirable size range (5 μm–220 μm, mode approximately 75 um; Kreider et al., 2010), smaller sized tire particles (PM10 and PM2.5) contribute to particulate air pollution that can get deep into the lungs and into the bloodstream. Du et al. (2022) found 6PPD and 6PPD-quinone in the urine of children and adults including pregnant women in China, showing that tire-derived chemicals can get into the bloodstream, presumably from inhalation exposure to tire particles. While tires are a major source, other rubber materials such as belts hoses and cables also may emit 6PPD and 6PPD-quinone (Bohara et al., 2024; Cao et al., 2022), and facilities such as sports fields constructed wth tire crumb may be exposure points for humans (Skoczyńska et al., 2021). Mice exposed orally to 6PPD and 6PPD-quinone showed signs of hepatotoxicity from bioaccumulation in liver tissue along with disorders of lipid metabolism and inflammatory immune response due to gene upregulation, suggesting potential health risks to mammals (Fang et al., 2023).
The toxicity of tire particles has been investigated in various in vitro studies, which have consistently shown DNA damage and inflammatory effects, while in vivo studies using rats and mice have found inflammatory response and pulmonary toxicity from exposure to tire particles (Baensch-Baltruschat et al., 2020).
Improving Tire Emissions
It’s bad. So what’s the solution, you may wonder? Well, “Where the rubber meets the road” says opportunities basically involve changing the tires or collecting the wear particles:
Potential mitigation opportunities for uncontrolled environmental release of tire particles and chemicals include actions by four sectors: tire manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers, government, and the general population. Approaches for mitigating tire particle and related chemical pollution range from prevention (e.g., reformulating tires to remove toxic ingredients and reducing tire wear debris formation and emissions) to collection and treatment (e.g., capturing tire particles or tire-related chemicals after dispersal into the environment)
You may have already read about the former option — changing up tires. Canary Media, a website devoted to clean energy, recently wrote “Tires wear out fast on EVs. This startup wants to fix that.” The startup in question is a tire company in Britain; from the article:
To try and solve that problem, U.K. startup ENSO Tyres has been developing tires designed for EVs that it says can slash particulate emissions by lasting longer than competing products. Late last month, the company, which was a finalist for the Earthshot Prize in 2023, announced it had signed a letter of interest with the U.S. Export-Import Bank to build a $500 million factory in the U.S., set to open in 2027. The company hasn’t selected a location yet but named Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Georgia as potential options, and said it is exploring how it can use Inflation Reduction Act tax credits to finance the project.
[…]
The secret to creating higher-quality tires that take longer to wear down is not one Erlendsson was willing to reveal. But beyond using higher-grade, longer-lasting materials, ENSO tires are also made to have lower rolling resistance; when a car starts moving, the tires don’t hold a vehicle back as much, reducing friction and causing less wear.
Startup Says It Wants To Collect Tire Wear Particles
But you likely haven’t heard about any solution that collects wear particles; I hadn’t until I stopped by the future innovations section of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where — among the various robots and autonomous cars and flying cars and other things that are neat but probably not happening anytime soon — I stumbled upon a booth displaying how much tire dust cars and buses emit everyday, and showcasing a strange contraption that mounts behind each wheel to collect that dust.
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The British startup is called The Tyre Collective, and it describes its goal on its website, writing: “Tyre wear is the second-largest source of microplastics in our oceans, toxic to marine life, and air particulate pollution. It gets into our waterways, the air we breathe and there is nothing to stop it! The Tyre Collective spearheads the capture and monitoring of tyre wear, accelerating the shift towards zero-emission mobility.”
The company’s display at Goodwood was compelling; it included clear boxes filled with the amount of tire wear buses and cars emit in a single day:
Tyres wear down every time a vehicle accelerates, brakes or corners. We discovered that tyre wear is charged by friction with the road. Our patent-pending device uses electrostatics and airflow to capture them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo-2b5JzTl8
The device The Tyre Collective showed at Goodwood essentially looked like a bunch of charged plates located just aft of a tire and lined up parallel to that tire’s direction of travel.
Here you can see where the device would be mounted:
The display also showed how these wear particles could be recycled into consumer goods:
Note that the company’s website includes images of a different design, which is lower to the ground and envelops the tire a bit more:
The company, which started out as masters project at both Imperial College London And Royal College Of Art, says it’s worked with Rivian and Volvo, and is currently doing trials with a delivery company in London. “The first commercial solutions are targeting logistic fleets, starting with delivery vans, before moving onto buses and HGVs. Long term, their aim is to integrate the technology into all EVs,” the company writes in its literature.
This all sounds great, though it does raise a few questions about adding complexity, cost, and weight to a vehicle, plus it may make you wonder if this would work with an off-road vehicle without harming ground clearance (maybe it could be deployable?), and then the big question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Can this device, or a variation of it, capture enough wear particles to warrant the compromises?
That wasn’t clear to me when I spoke to the representative at Goodwood. “First,” she said, “we’re focused on increasing selectivity, then looking at volume of capture…if you look at the mass we’re collecting, about 95 percent of what we have is tire wear.”
It’s cool that The Tyre Collective can ensure that they’re only grabbing tire dust and not dirt/grime from the roads; I’d love to see whether this can capture enough tire pollution, and whether it can be engineered into a package that could work for a consumer vehicle.
Either way, it’s cool to see how folks are trying to tackle this problem from different sides.
Images: David Tracy and The Tyre Collective
The math isn’t described very well. An LS1 + Transmission is nearly 600 lbs. A Tesla Y battery pack is 1700 lbs. Add some slop between the difference for differentials, motors, other unique parts of each, etc. I can see how claiming a 1,000lb difference is reasonable. But not in the dismissive sentence in the quoted article.
Oh yeah, this is super pedantic. But I paid my membership fee, I’m gonna be pedantic.
Usually the comments at The Autopian are worth reading. This time not so much, so I stopped after a few harsh, even cruel comments about a student project and a small startup trying to do something for the environment. Those mean comments are worse than standing in front of some VCs trying to get funding. I have some experience with the latter.
About 30 years ago I lived in a rented house about 100m from Highway 101 in Silicon Valley (constant traffic). I remember frequently cleaning the black dust and grime from the window sills. I wonder what got into my lungs. Since then, I was lucky to buy a home about 1000m from the same highway. My guess would be the amount of visible dust and grime is reduced 100 fold. Particle counts in my home with windows open are low when the general air quality is good.
They are adults.
If this is the best idea they have, they should get used to harsh treatment.
Street sweepers seem like a better idea, catches brake dust too and anything else on the road.
Also looks like busses are the worst polluters, let’s replace those with maglev trains.
The downside of street sweepers being, that everything remains there on the road (and thus able to flow down storm sewers, into the nearby soil, or get kicked up by other cars and into people’s lungs) until the street sweeper actually comes by.
“EV’s are too heavy and produce more tire dust!” Solution: add more weight with dumb contraptions!
This article doesn’t mention 6PPD-q and how lethal it is to fish like Coho salmon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/09/tire-chemical-salmon-epa/
I like the new invention trying to solve a problem. But this just does not seem practical in it’s current configuration. But it’s good to know a cleaner future is over the horizon!
I am at 45k on my Bolt and am still on the original tires. They still have plenty of tread left. Not sure how this car will eat tires significantly faster than my lighter Cruze Eco.
So since EVs don’t have exhaust emissions they’re starting to look at “other” emissions, pretty sure EV sales are still much less than gas cars..and of course the #1 selling vehicle in America the last 42 years has been the F150, but sure, let’s get those pesky EVs and their tire particles.
Also I think the real solution to this should be on the tire manufacturers, we have no choice to buy the tires, they could do some research into less toxic compounds, that’s where the government regulation should be.
“Our patent-pending device uses electrostatics and airflow to capture them”
I am completely ignorant…and particularly so of electronics. However how well do electrostatic devices do in rain? We got precipitation on about 115 days a year, on average.
Rain is a major generator of electrostatic forces. You may have heard of lightning?
But … when your electrostatic filters, which have been trapping tire particles, get soaked in water from rain spray thrown up by the spinning tires don’t you end up with the electrostatic forces grounded out?
Oh, and as a side note don’t those filters get clogged up?
In short (heh) how do these filters work when they’ve gotten wet?
I have no idea how these filters are designed, but if I were designing them, I would have some sort of mechanism to clean the particles from whatever electrostatic plate is attracting them. Perhaps rotating plates with a scraper that scrapes them into a container?
I suspect this is really at the proof of concept stage where proving that it can work some of the time is good enough to push it into the solvable problem category.
I suspect this is really at the proof of concept stage where proving that it can work some of the time is good enough to push it into the solvable problem category.
Got it. It’ll be great when it’s ready. I’ll definitely put one on my flying car – they’re also in the proof of concept stage where proving that they can work some of the time is good enough to push them into the solvable problem category.
Oh you won’t need any on your flying car, do they even have tires?
I think it’s more like early stage airbags and catalytic converters. It’s generally recognized that they are a good idea, but it took a while to make the technology practical. Ubiquitous cheap computers had a lot to do with it.
And why do they keep calling those tiny aircraft for people who don’t know how how to fly “flying cars” ?
We should go back to horse and buggy. Wooden wheels don’t shed plastic and you can recycle most of the horse’s emissions
How would this work in snow? What’s next, are they going to strap a device to cow’s butt’s to collect their farts?
Old news, buddy, old news.
https://bigthink.com/the-present/this-is-how-you-turn-cow-fart-gas-into-energy/
and anyway cars got added weight for the last 30 years. ( compare the weight of a first gent Twingo [ running at less than 800Kg ] and a modern Smart-Twingo [1.2 Metric Ton-ish ] for less hability { and 50%M external size } but from the constructor point of view same car ).
And that’s for ICE cars… I’d really like to see the fuel economy of a First Gen Twingo ( or AX, or 205, or you name it small car ) with a modern engine, but without the 30 years bloat.
( I understand that some of that added weight come from more metal to make sure the biped inside is safe… but come on, in cars that are usually second cars for city commute or student cars it’s mostly irrelevant [ ok, I know students are reckless, been there done that, totaled an AX and got 3 stitches from a flying dragon { it’s a story in itself } ] )
“… without the 30 years bloat…”
30 years of crash structures & safety features.
Some notes re the particle capture device
since it can’t pick up all the way from road surface level to just under the fender level, it seems to be a smaller device that is positioned in a sweet spot for pickup. But, one would expect that sweet spot to vary significantly depending on speed, since that affects both the relative velocity of the environmental air and the rotational speed and thus the drag-alongand with that in mind, how about those front wheels that steer?would it work at all in the rain, when the plates are wet? If so, wouldn’t the now charge-neutralized particles immediately be washed away?it uses electrostatic plates? I had an electrostatic air cleaner with those in the HVAC system of one house, and what a b**** it was to clean!
This sounds like a Popular Mechanics idea of the future from 1928.
“Emissions Analytics has found that adding 1,000 pounds to a midsize vehicle increased tire wear by about 20 percent, and also that Tesla’s Model Y generated 26 percent more tire pollution than a similar Kia hybrid”
Yeah but what emissions analytics is NOT mentioning is that BEVs do NOT weigh on average an extra 1000 pounds compared to ICE vehicles. The weight increase is actually far less unless you’re comparing the massively heavy large BEVs from GM like the GMC Hummer.
But BEVs aren’t the only heavy vehicles out there. How about we look at the large diesel trucks from GM, Ford and Ram? Particularly the ones with dual rear wheels. I bet those cause way more tire particulate emissions than any Model Y.
But you know what causes way more tire wear particles than that? Big heavy trucks… especially ones with tandem axles that don’t pivot when turning.
And the solution to that problem is shifting more freight onto trains and boats.
Or at the very least, mandate that tandem axle vehicles have to have rules regarding tires that pivot to reduce excessive tire and road wear.
It seems to me this recent talk about tire emissions is an indirect attack by anti-BEV interests.
Let’s not talk about sport tires. I am sure the 50k corvettes sold by GM produced more tire pollution than the 75k EVS in they sold in 2023.
My Ioniq 5 weighs 1000 pounds more that the Subaru Forester it replaced.
Not surprised if it was an older Forester. But the new Forester against the Ioniq 5? The weight difference is more like 500lbs… unless you’re comparing a base Forrester to a loaded Ioniq 5.
But does the Forrester have performance comparable to the Ioniq 5?
No.
And that matters because an ICE vehicle with performance that is comparable will weigh more.
And the Ioniq 5 has a bigger footprint too… it’s 3 inches wider, an inch or two longer and a 13″ longer wheelbase… though it’s not as tall.
It was a 2017. Forester had larger interior volume, within 1.5″ in length (Ioniq is longer) and the Ioniq is a bit wider (~4″). But these are still similar sized cars. Five Seat 2-row SUVs with a backpack’s difference in interior space between them.
Similar equipment levels for both. Forester had a sunroof and Ioniq does not.
I’m just going by Edmunds numbers (probably a base Forester, but also probably a RWD not long range Ioniq).
Forester : 3422 lbs
Ioniq 5 : 4297 lbs
Edmunds lists the current Forester at 3528 pounds, and C&D lists the Ioniq at 4687.
I will admit I exaggerated the weight difference. It’s not 1000 pounds, it’s 875.
Ioniq 5 is quicker 0-60, but otherwise performs the same in our use. The Forester was a 6-speed, so a little more interesting to operate. The extra weight of the Ioniq is quite noticeable when turning. I don’t really push this car to find the limits, also didn’t with the Forester.
I’m not saying that every EV replaces a notably lighter vehicle, but it did in my case.
These particulates are a menace and I hope this tech matures. I used to live next to a freeway and anything left outside was covered with black dust the day after I cleaned it.
I believe, after admittedly cursory research on which I’d love to be corrected, that there is currently not a federal ban on asbestos in imported aftermarket brake pads, shoes, and clutch parts. Here’s a link to the EPA’s short answer to the question about asbestos in brake pads:
https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/there-still-asbestos-automobile-brakes
California has had a ban in place for some time. Do they regularly test these things as they come off the boat from China or India? No idea.
https://dtsc.ca.gov/scp/brake-pad-legislation/#:~:text=This%20law%20bans%20brake%20pads,5%20percent%20copper%20in%202021.
“I used to live next to a freeway and anything left outside was covered with black dust the day after I cleaned it.”
The black dust could also be diesel emission particulates… or a mix of tire and diesel particulates.
Their original idea was to have cars with magnets for bumpers so the cars repel each other and don’t crash.
Then they moved on to a plan to have all traffic lights permanently yellow, so you wouldn’t have to stop but everybody would know to be cautious.
Next they tried to increase vehicle performance by plumbing the air conditioner vents into the engine intake. Cold air makes more power.
Seriously, though. Is this a real product or a hoax? I can’t help but feel like this is just some elaborate trolling.
Who’s “They”?
A long line of people who learn one car thing and fixate on it, regardless of its actual benefit.
Environment aside, having a device collect tire particles from burnouts would make cleaning your car easier
Burnout-related cleaning is not a big thing in my world.
That’s sad, but admitting you have a problem is the first step.
Miata and Subarus. I’m not shredding any tires these days.
It is sad.
One of the reasons why modern tires are so prone to giving off microparticles during breakdown is the same reason why they come in a variety of tread patterns and sizes — the artificial materials.
The old tires before the 1930s didn’t last very long at all, but they did break down pretty easily without any help. Tire dumps weren’t really a thing because the tires could be shredded and would decompose over a few years due to being almost entirely natural rubber with a bit of tin and other metals mixed in. Tires afterwards, especially after the DuPont and Bridgestone experiments in the 1940s, tended to be much tougher because they didn’t use rubber. As a result you started seeing tire dumps, because you really had no way of just throwing tires out the way you used to. Because of the constant race for a longer lasting tire more and more artificial compounds were mixed in. This is exactly why a tire fire’s such a dangerous thing — the compounds break down into arsenic, hexachlorides, and pure carbon.
It’s specifically things like the hexachloroarsenate that’s used that prevent the tire from wearing so quickly. They’re what prevent the tire’s chemical bonds from breaking down the way an organic compound would, and thus cause the tires to persist as microparticles.
In short we go back to using rubber and deal with tires not lasting fifty thousand miles anymore.
So a catalytic converter for your tires. Nice idea. I would be a little worried about theft though.
So long as it’s not a required component for inspections the demand would be pretty low. For example, in Michigan no one has to get an emissions test to register a vehicle, in California ya do. One state has non-existent catalytic converter theft, the other rampant. Classic unintended consequences.