"they still kill people with their exhaust daily"
Exactly my point. The pollution from road and tires kills more people than exhausts on a modern vehicle. And now that we are moving to heavier vehicles that need to compensate with higher power we will have even more pollution and carcinogens killing us. I'm a car mechanic and take the bus+subway to work but on the rare occasion I bring my car to get some work done I get lectured by customers, about how I should buy an ev for 5x the cost of my current car while they trot around in their 4 ton beasts every day. I've used my current set of tires for 6 years. Many of my EV customers need new tires every 6-12 months. People need to change their habits before buying en EV unless all they want to do is virtue signal.
I've been wondering... Those batteries are really heavy and I've already had to explain to multiple customers that their ~1000kg heavier and ~100kw stronger engine (to get similar acceleration in a comparable model to the gas vehicle) is going to eat up tires twice as fast. If you were burning through a set of tires a year you better budget for two sets and the extra time to come in and have them changed every 6 months. And all those extra tires have to come from something. And shipped from somewhere. And then the roads need repaving more often because of both the extra weight and higher power output. 1000's of km of road that will have repaving works going on twice as often. On top of reduced traffic throughput while roadworks are ongoing, is any of that taken into account when comparing environmental impact? How will the increase in airborne particles and toxic runoff from the roads affect the environment?