Much heavier?
Sorry, but semis manage to beat them in the weight department.
I’m sure our roads can handle a few Teslas.
Oh I agree that semi’s are much heavier. That is obvious.
But they are much heavier than the average car and the roads are not at all designed for half of our cars to be that heavy. States are already noticing that their roads are getting extra ripped up by the 5% or so we have. Also, barriers much more easily breached (as they are by semi’s as well).
“Sorry, but semis manage to beat them in the weight department.”
You are right. A typical semi will cause 16,000 times as much wear per mile driven vs any light duty vehicle. There are a dozen peer reviewed studies showing this.
“The curb weight of the F-150 ranges from 4,021 pounds to 5,740 pounds.”
A 2024 Tesla S is 4,561 to 4,766 lbs
2025 Ford explorer curb weight 4,344 to 4,766 lbs
Every one of these vehicles is on 20 inch alloy wheels so the tire patch foot prints will be virtually the same square cm area.
2023 S60 curb weight 3730–4470 mine is the T5 AWD and 4000+lbs
Model 3 Tesla 3,862 to 4,034 lbs the RWD with LFP pack is the 3862lb the AWD LR performance is the 4034#
These last two cars are within one inch of each other in length and width both seat 5 and are both comparable luxury sedans. They also both ride on identical sized 245/45R18s so the tire patch foot prints are identical. The ICE S60 is heavier than the model 3 by a good bit.
Road wear is a direct mathematical function of psi of tire patch foot print. It’s not a linear function it’s polynomial exponentially increasing as tire patch psi increases. Semis by a large margin account for most of the wear on road surfaces their diesel taxes don’t come close to covering the maintenance costs even at 200000+ miles driven per year. The tax payers via the general fund subsidise the Federal hwy fund and semi trucks by proxy.