Speaker
Nick Molden
CEO, Emissions Analytics, UK
Nick founded Emissions Analytics in 2011 to understand real-world emissions and fuel economy and emissions from vehicles. Its EQUA Index database of thousands of independently conducted tests is an international performance benchmark. The wider mission is to understand the holistic environmental impact of vehicles on air, soil and water, from tyre wear rates to volatile organic compound emissions.
Nick is chairman of the European standardisation CEN Workshop 90 on collecting real driving emissions data, which has led to the publication of the AIR Index. He is also chairman of CEN Workshop 103 on standardising the collection of vehicle interior air quality data.
He is a specialist in data analytics, particularly in the automotive market, through his prior work at Oxford Indices Ltd, a data specialist, United Business plc and Haymarket Media Group. Nick is a graduate of the University of Oxford, and an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London.
Abstract
Around six million tonnes of tyre ‘rubber’ are released into the environment per year worldwide – about four kilograms per car – yet this is almost completely unregulated. These emissions are much greater in mass and number than the particle levels from the tailpipes of modern internal combustion engine vehicles. The material spreads through the environment via air, soil and water, and the effects on health and biodiversity are only just beginning to be understood. How omnipresent are tyre wear emissions, why have they historically been ignored, how bad are they, and what could be done?
The subject has recently moved up the environmental and regulatory agenda due to the rapid penetration of battery electric vehicles into the car fleet. These vehicles are typically 40% heavier than a traditional vehicle, due to the mass of the battery. That, together with the high torque from the electric motors, is likely to increase tyre wear rates significantly, unless mitigations are put in place. As a result, a trade-off can be seen between the momentum for decarbonising fleet emissions and more localised environmental pollution.
Therefore, it is important to see emissions from vehicle in a wider context than the historical focus only on tailpipe emissions. This can be seen, to some extent, as an artefact of the relatively easy identification and measurement of pollutants from the constrained tailpipe system compared to the ‘open’ system where vehicle tyres contact with the roadway.
Potential solutions include reducing the rate of tyre wear, making the chemical formulations less potentially toxic, and collecting the wear on the vehicle as it is released. These can be considered in the context of the proposed Euro 7/VII regulation and the database of wear and organic chemical composition recently compiled by Emissions Analytics.