Why Pot holes are only going to get worse – thanks to EVs!

It’s at this time of year (January 2023 at time of writing) that you may feel that a large 4×4 may be more appropriate for your daily commute or shopping trip, than your current car.

Local and main roads develop pot holes faster than a child with chicken pox and you may feel as if you’re driving across the surface of the moon!

This happens in the winter, each year, due to the cold and wet weather we have here in the UK. Small cracks in the road surface allow water in and, as the temperature drops below freezing, this water freezes and expands.

Each time it does so it pushes the road surface apart, creating larger cracks in the road. Gaps can start in a very small way but, with continued freezing, water opening up the surface and continual wet weather refilling the cracks, the surface begins to break apart forming – you’ve guessed it, pot holes.

Of course, this does not happen on the entire road surface because the tarmac, when laid, forms a watertight seal. So why doesn’t this affect the entire road surface, or more accurately why does it affect some parts of the road more than others?

The answer is that vehicles create more wear on some parts of the road surface than on others. These areas typically affect places where vehicles brake or accelerate or corner sharply. In each case a vehicle’s tyres need to grip the surface to ensure that it stops, accelerates and corners safely.

When vehicles do this they stress the road surface and create tiny cracks in the surface, which is how pot holes begin.

It’s just the start…

And now the bad news – this is going to get worse, every year.

Why? Because more vehicles will become electrically powered and electric vehicles weigh considerably more than petrol or diesel ones. Just a small EV, such as the MINI, weighs around 150kg (two adults) more. Some are considerably heavier with the largest EVs weighing over 2 tons!

In the MINI example above, imagine adding two adults to every journey, two adults that your car has to slow down when you brake, two adults that it has to accelerate when you move off and two adults that it has to hold in place when you corner.

All of that puts extra stress on our roads and with more EVs coming into general use the outlook for our pot-holed roads in winter is not a rosy one at all.

The Solution

So, what can be done about it? Sadly, not much. Although traffic levels have subsided with the move to hybrid working there are still millions of vehicle journeys every day, journeys that are essential.

At best, road tax for EVs needs to take into account of the damage to the road surface but whether this is politically a good move remains to be seen.

In the medium to longer term it is likely to simply be something we will all have to deal with and driving less closely behind other vehicles, giving ourselves more opportunity to see and avoid pot holes, is the best we can realistically hope for.

Or simply buy a large 4×4. But those are heavy….

How to report a pot hole