Carry that weight? Electric vehicles outweigh gas cars but aren’t main culprit of road wear
Batteries make EVs heavier than gas-powered vehicles
Civil and environmental engineering professor Kevin Heaslip, director of the University of Tennessee’s Center for Transportation Research, said EVs often weigh 30% more than gas-powered vehicles.
The main reason is the weight of their batteries, which can add hundreds of pounds or more.
Experts said EVs’ additional weight has little impact on infrastructure, but can create more danger in collisions.
Heavy trucks damage roads
Heaslip and professional engineer Mark Gottlieb, associate director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Institute for Physical Infrastructure and Transportation, said heavy trucks cause the vast majority of damage on U.S. roadways.
“Load-related damage to pavement and bridges is caused almost exclusively by heavy trucks. The deterioration from a single large truck can easily be equal to that of thousands of autos,” Gottlieb said. “The contribution from autos and light trucks is insignificant. It makes no difference if they are EV or internal combustion.”
Just think of how much heavier, and how many more wheels, are on commercial trucks.
A semitruck with eight axles weighing 80,000 pounds does 2,500 times more road damage than a two-axled, 4,000-pound sedan, according to the American Institute of Physics.