Featured Four-time Tesla owner opts for Prius Prime

Lol most Tesla owners chucking $66,000 plus on a car will proabably have more than an acre of land that would be mowed at least 16 times during the course of a summer.

 

If you're willing to spend the big bucks to have solar powered lawn care gear, these folks are the leaders in that market: Home - MEAN GREEN MOWERS

 

Not sure which of my points that was addressing

 

I did, too, till I got an Ego battery-powered mower.

Rural folks mow more than that. My mother-in-law has about three acres of lawn to mow. In the spring, they have to mow twice a week or it gets too tall. Most of the neighbors have similar or even bigger yards.

 

I was thinking the same.

 

Depends on what's on the property. Our 12 acres lot is mostly covered by forest. I have less than a half acres of land without trees. I have turned most of what used to be a lawn into a meadow with wildflowers. I cut grass 2-3 times a season. Unfortunately, those grass and vines I cut are tough perennial weeds not easy to cut with a battery-operated mower, so I do use a gas-powered mower and a gas-powered brush cutter. I did buy a battery-operated trimmer which works fine on the small portion of the garden with more manicured turf. I also do quite a bit of cutting trees and large logs which requires a gas-powered chainsaw. I have few other gas-operated yard tools like a tiller, a pressure washer, and an auger but they get used much less frequently. All and all, without counting the gasoline used for the portable generator during a power outage, I use less than 5 gal total for a year which also includes operating the gas engine 2 cycle snow thrower. 16 gal of gas is a lot for small yard equipments.

 

You seem to make a lot of assumptions. Do you have any data for this, or your other assumptions?
In the past, I have spent that much on a Tesla, although our family’s previous four Tesla’s all cost less.
Our lot size is a third of an acre. Our yard equipment is electric.

Are you also one of those people that complain about wealthy people that don’t put their money where their mouth is?

 

Where is all this hate you are seeing? Is your calling the Tesla poorly built hate then?

Calling out hypocrisy or questionable calculations isn't hate. If the Model S traded in for was one of the first, it would be 8.5 years old. They then bough 3 new Tesla's since then. Buying a new car every 2 years or less, and claiming eco footprint as a reason is hypocritical. Assuming each of these Teslas replaced a car currently owned, holding onto a car that still runs is generally environmental better than getting new, because of the emission deficit a new car has. Getting used is even better.

The Prius Prime being cleaner all comes down where they charge, and how miles the Prius will end up using gas for. The Prime is likely better than an old Model S, but currently available Teslas it is close. Using the Fueleconomy.gov calculator for me, the performance Model 3 and S bests the Prius Prime in GHG emissions. With the national grid average, the Prime only beats the performance S by 10g/mi. That calculation assumes some level of hybrid use by the Prime.

My friend with a Tesla has about as much land as most people in NJ; maybe a quarter acre. In California, where Teslas are popular and homes expensive, it is likely around the same. Some towns there have even banned gas power equipment.

Unless they bought three Model 3's since 2018, they probably spent more than that on the cars. With eco footprint being a concerned, assuming they installed solar or pay more for renewable power has a good chance of being true. So they are also likely to also pay to reduce any other gas use they have.

 

Maybe where you live. But here in Silicon Valley, where there are tons of Tesla's, most people have homes on lots a small fraction of an acre and that includes the house.

Mike

 

I went back and looked for the hate too, could not find it. Guy wants to buy a bunch of new cars? Ok. I don't hate that, do you? Guy switches from brand x to brand y? I don't hate that either.

Guy then claims he's doing it for eco reasons.

Okay... you get right down to it I have no hate for that... but you have to admit, that level of tone-deaf hypocrisy is just funny as h*** and I could not help but to highlight it. Was that the hate?

Now, I see very little harm in making a post like that. After all, we aren't even talking about a specific individual. Nobody has been named. This might all be fiction. This is a blind item posted in a blog for heaven's sake. It's straddling that muddy skidmark between non-news and fake news.

I know it's not fashionable to stay calm and keep a sense of proportion lately but maybe it'll catch on someday?

 

I agree that claiming to be buying so many cars like that for eco reasons is both silly and hypocritical. Not being able to see that is pretty dumb.

HOWEVER,
It isn't like the used car is discarded. It is sold to someone else. And IF it was sold to someone that wanted a eco friendly car like that but could not afford it then there could be merit to the idea. If someone was buying EVs and giving them away to help the environment, no one would see a problem in that I don't think. So isn't the only difference that funds are changing hands?

There is a difference between being a bad use of ones funds vs being bad for the environment.

Mike

 

Yes, and I acknowledged this point 25 posts ago. Buying a lot of eco cars is better than buying a lot of non-eco cars. Kind of like saying "it's getting warmer" to the people in a burning building is better than saying nothing at all.

 

In the USA, almost 1/2 of the teslas are sold in California. In California, the majority of the sales are in the Silicon Valley and Los Angeles Valley. In Silicon Valley, a yearly wage of $150K is not unusual. On the flip side, within commute distance of Silicon Valley it's not unusual to find a $1,000,000 4 bedroom 3 bath house on 1/5th acre. In Los Angeles the average middle class home is still on a 1/5 acre lot.

So the assumption that lots of money means lots of land is incorrect, at least it is for a large portion of the Teslas sold in the USA.

 

i have an acre and a pip. i couldbuy a tesla, and still have an acre. i'm searching for the correlation...

 

Yes, it is kind of pointless to compare. What's your best possible (door to door) travel time from downtown LA to Lake Tahoe? That should be easy enough since it's freeway most of the way.

According to Google, I can make that trip in 7 hours, 42 minutes without breaking the speed limit.

 

And part about the used car going to someone else has been pointed out here. More used clean cars on the market is a good thing, but what if this person went through cars this quickly before finding Tesla. Maybe they were hybrids. maybe they were diesels as those were thought clean by the public not too long ago. Or maybe he wasn't concerned with green back then, and their cars were FSP's

The Model S in question was described as 'well worn'. Presumably it was time to replace it, and the other cars they were being used by others, so downsizing the fleet wasn't the option. Somehow, the Prius Prime has a smaller carbon footprint than the Tesla's available was one reason for the decision. The other reasons stated alone where quite valid reasons to switch, but the difference in carbon emissions is likely splitting hairs when considering the specifics of the person's use patterns.

Of course, the article could easily be over stating the importance the person to these reasons. We are also assuming that these were the important ones as the article mentions there were others. But we can't say, and now can't know as the original post seems to have been taken down.

Something about gas use for lawn care making driving a BEV meaningless or hypocritical.

Yeah, you should reduce gas from power equipment, but I suspect people driving BEVs probably have. The hold up for really large lawns has to do with limited options to do so without replacing the lawn with something else.

 

Funny, I stumbled across this thread... I’m the actual 4 time owner who traded my Model S in for a Prius Prime. I signed up here to respond.

Many of you have no idea what you’re talking about and certainly didn’t read my post on TMC. You actually reach the irrational level of Tesla fanboys—which I find embarrassing. The article took journalistic liberties on my reasons. Being eco-friendly certainly wasn’t my main reason. Poor quality, reliability, and customer service were my reasons.

As for my 4 Teslas... one was totaled by a drunk driver in 2016. My 17 Model X was bought back by Tesla in 2020, due to a defect. My 16 Model S was traded in for the Prime a couple weeks ago. And my wife bought the Model Y in February. So some of these assumptions in this thread are comical.

Tesla’s build quality and reliability are abysmal. They produce amazing, fast cars if you have the patience to deal with the problems. That was my point. I took a tremendous downgrade in styling and performance with Toyota... but the Prime’s quality and efficiency far surpass any Tesla I’ve owned. And I won’t even get into Tesla’s depreciation...

And for this other sidebar on size of yard and mower gasoline usage... please... I have an autonomous electric mower.

 

highest Tesla ownership concentration is Bay Area & South to LA county. Lot size is typically averaging 60'x60' (apartments vs estates) .... far cry from an Acre .... but that's the nature of stereotyping.

Thus . . . we installed fake grass.

.

 

It does look great :



Less bother too.