Electric vehicles are said to offer multiple benefits, producing fewer pollutants, having lower running costs and, if the electricity that powers them is generated renewably, providing far lower carbon emissions.
But a study looking at the UAE has highlighted a potential downside: they could wear out the country’s roads faster and may require more durable and expensive types of asphalt to be used.
More rapid damage to roads may occur because the weight of the battery means that battery electric vehicles − BEVs − are typically heavier than their petrol or diesel equivalents.
The research looked at scenarios if Class 5 lorries – medium-sized lorries that might be used for deliveries in urban areas – powered by internal combustion engines are replaced by an electric vehicle.
Class 5 vehicles were chosen because they are the most common truck type on the UAE’s roads, and the calculations in the study used the UAE’s actual lorry traffic figures as a starting point.
The researchers calculated that if half the Class 5 ICE lorries on the UAE’s roads were replaced by the electric vehicle (EV) model, the wear and tear they create could jump more than 70 per cent.
The work was carried out by Mohamad Fares and Dr Michele Lanotte, both previously at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi and now at Michigan State University in the US.
Roads to ruin?
Using computer modelling, it concluded that compared to traditional ICE vehicles, the increased weight of EVs “accelerates pavement deterioration”.
For example, a road structure that begins to fail within six years when all vehicles are powered by internal combustion engines would last just 42 months if half of the ICE vans are replaced with EV vans, the researchers calculated. That represents a reduction of more than 40 per cent in the lifespan of the roads.
Initially presented at a conference earlier this year and released online this month, the study is the latest to indicate that EVs impose a greater distress on road infrastructure than do ICE vehicles.
The issue of increased road damage caused by EVs interests many other scientists, including Dr Alex Apeagyei, a highways and transportation engineer at the University of East London.
He said that the primary impacts in terms of road damage from electrification would come from buses and lorries, since these created a much greater load on roads than smaller vehicles, such as family cars, do.
“There could be significant impacts if every new truck is electric,” Dr Apeagyei said.
This is explained by the mathematics involved: a vehicle twice the weight of another will not create double the damage, but 16 times as much, so heavier buses and lorries will have a particularly significant impact.
The new study indicates that changing the type of binder or bitumen, the black-coloured liquid that binds together the aggregates such as gravel in asphalt concrete layers, can make roads in the UAE better able to cope with the increased loads from EVs.
For example, the researchers highlighted a “high polymer modified binder” and a “terminally blended rubberised binder” as being able to extend the life of road surfaces in the country.
“Both binders are produced in the UAE and are currently used in a limited number of projects with special performance requirements,” the study said.
Dr Nick Thom, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham in the UK, said that the materials used in roads could be upgraded over time to cope with the greater stress roads are under, such as from increased traffic volumes or vehicles becoming heavier.
“We’re trying to make sure the technology is keeping pace with the stress that it’s under,” he said, adding that “for sure” roads being created now were typically stronger than those from a few decades ago.
Much of this is to do, he said, down to the bitumen, with additives helping to make it tougher or more resistant to water. Improving these additives is an active area of research.
Tough conditions
Roads in the UAE already cope with some of the toughest conditions on earth. While air temperatures can climb well above 40°C, the surfaces of roads can be much hotter still − often above 60°C.
Last year scientists at the University of Sharjah released a map showing the ideal grade of asphalt binder for each part of the UAE, as the demands on roads vary because of slightly differing temperatures and variations in the traffic loads.
Aside from using stronger types of bitumen, there are other potential ways to reduce the damage to roads, such as trying to predict where damage will occur and taking pre-emptive action.
This approach interests Prof Mujib Rahman, head of civil engineering at Aston University in the UK. A 2025 study that he co-authored found that machine learning could use nine indicators of the condition of the road surface to forecast where potholes would occur.
The method was 99.6 per cent accurate at predicting which areas would not develop potholes, although its ability to predict areas that would have them was much lower, at 55.5 per cent, but is likely to improve as the model is developed.
“If we can predict there will be a pothole there in five years’ time by looking at the data, before we get to five years, we have proactive measures to stop the pothole from forming,” he said. “That will be financially cheaper.”
So, strengthening the road surface in advance costs less than making repairs after it has failed.
The potentially faster acceleration of electric vehicles could be another factor that increases the distress or damage that roads experience in future, said Dr Eyal Levenberg, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark.
Also, Dr Levenberg said that autonomous vehicles, because they are more likely than vehicles driven by people to follow exactly the same path as one another, could put greater strain on roads.
“If they’re driven by robots, they may be very precise in their path,” he said. “You accept there’s some lateral wander because humans are not perfect drivers. If it’s robots, it’s more precise.”
Potentially, some lateral wander could be deliberately introduced to reduce this precision and spread the load on roads more evenly.
While some stresses and strains in the future will come from technology, others in the present day are caused by a long-standing issue, the overloading of lorries.
“In several countries, especially developing countries, they have overloading,” Dr Apeagyei said. “A road designed for 20 years will fail after five years. In countries like Ethiopia, Tanzania and Brazil that’s being observed. “If you increase the truck weight … you should expect much faster deterioration.”
Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority was contacted for comment.
