Shocking : Tesla Model S gets 26.5 mpg

I do not have Actual costs for the town of Monterrey CA but I have state wide numbers. You assume your electricity is 100% produced from Oil. What is the MPG of a Tesla where the electricity is produced by Hydro, Natural Gas, Geothermal, etc?

In CA, in 2013, in MegaWatt Hours:
CA Total Electric Power Industry Total 200,077,115
CA Total Electric Power Industry Coal 823,171
CA Total Electric Power Industry Geothermal 12,306,571
CA Total Electric Power Industry Hydroelectric Conventional 23,754,599
CA Total Electric Power Industry Natural Gas 119,522,859
CA Total Electric Power Industry Nuclear 17,911,943
CA Total Electric Power Industry Other 816,045
CA Total Electric Power Industry Other Biomass 2,843,203
CA Total Electric Power Industry Other Gases 1,405,720
CA Total Electric Power Industry Petroleum 68,855
CA Total Electric Power Industry Pumped Storage 196,290
CA Total Electric Power Industry Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic 3,813,725
CA Total Electric Power Industry Wind 12,822,060
CA Total Electric Power Industry Wood and Wood Derived Fuels 3,792,073

So it looks like only 0.03 percent of CA's electricity is directly Oil fired. (Oil will be used as a lubricant in many of the other methods)

when looking at how much of each is consumed the units vary:
2013 CA Total Electric Power Industry Coal (Short Tons) 293,282
2013 CA Total Electric Power Industry Geothermal (Billion Btu) 117,417
2013 CA Total Electric Power Industry Natural Gas (Mcf) 867,610,874
2013 CA Total Electric Power Industry Other Gases (Billion Btu) 9,202
2013 CA Total Electric Power Industry Petroleum (Barrels) 140,790

Electric Power detailed State data
Other states will have a different mix of fuels and you may find one with largely Petroleum based Electric generation, but you live in CA

 

I did similar calcs a while back, not for Tesla.
When Volt first came out, Consumer Reports measured 2 miles/kWhr in winter with heat on.
Assuming 100% coal, which is more and more unlikely, I got calcs as low as 12 MPG fossil fuel equivs for EV.
But at US Average power mix, and EV's are normally assigned higher 3-4 Miles/kWhr, it's more like 50 MPG fossil fuel equivs (Prius).
Recently someone posted Tesla cold winter data it was about 3 mile/kWhr. Not too bad I am thinking guy wasn't using heat but OK.

However, sometimes it's pretty common to hear EV fans say even on 100% coal, EV's are cleaner than regular cars. I do not agree.

 

Yeah, good thing oil is a minuscule source of electricity in the power grid. You have to compare to ones grid mix.

In California and many places, the Tesla gets electricity from a large percentage of cleaner natural gas and much cleaner hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, etc.. And many offset their entire use with home PV solar.

 

no doubt a big car like the tesla is very inefficient. if you have your own ev, your wasting it on something when you could be using it for more efficient use. just like ludicrous mode, some will say, 'it gets more people into ev's, not just tesla's. that's an argument that's hard to prove, and harder to disprove.

 

Geee - I wonder why mainstream media hasn't caught on to Rob Rhinehart's web site. Authoritative? Not so much. I guess if you're hawking a protein drink, you gotta be as controversial as possible with all your POV's - in order to get people's attention. Seems to be working.
.

 

the guy is a whack job, but we have our share of them here.

 

I guess the author of the book never factored in the quantity of people charging with solar/ wind power.
Neider considering the benefits of using DC fast chargers (Superchargers) being powered by Solar as well, and ALL
Superchargers networks are with out a charge for the user.

 

The reality check based on EPA's fueleconomy.gov, says that a Tesla 70D has full upstream CO2 emissions using US average electricity equivalent to a 52 mpg gasoline car.

 

This would only apply to Hawaii, but what do you expect from a guy living on Soylent.

Depends on a person's definition of clean. ICEs aren't emitting mercury or radio isotopes, but a coal plant isn't emitting its pollution on main street in the heart of town.

Take off the Prius goggles. The Tesla S is inefficient among the BEVs, but is about as inefficient as a 45mpg car compared to a 50mpg one. Considering the cost and performance of the S, an equivalent hybrid competitor is only going to get 20mpg, and the non-hybrid much lower. As a kid, my dream car was the Porsche 911. A person of the means, and desire, for such a car isn't likely going to be considering a Prius.

 

that's exactly what i was saying, but i'm not sure about 45 mpg. i do realize there is a market that would never consider a 300 mile ev that looks like a prius, even with tesla performance.

 

According to the new clean power plan the US will take another step toward sustainable power in the next 15 years. The grid using wind, natural gas, solar, coal, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, biomass is a lot more sustainable than oil based liquid fuels.

I agree with this point that the grid should move to moresustainablitilty, but it seems to be saying the grid is not sustainable but oil based transportation is. If this is the point then its wrong.

woaa nelly! How did you screw up the math so bad

Ok here is where you screwed up the math. According to the eia coal is around 33% efficient, petroleum 32% efficient at the power plant. the mpge numbers include charging losses. Grid losses are 7% not 5%, but steam turbine loss is double counted. Oil is not burned in cars its gasoline and that only gets 84% of the energy and must be back calculated.

OK lets do coal on the tesla S 70D then oil on the S 85 (the worst value)
coal 33% x 93% x 101 mpge / 84% = 37 miles / (gallon equivelent coal to gasoline)
oil 32% x 93% x 89 mpge /84% =32 miles / (gallon equivalent oil to gasoline)
265/32 = 8.4 gallons versus 8.5 in the lesux GSh, but are you really going to find that place where you can get the grid to give you all oil. Honolulu is the closest, but it gets 9% renewable, and is now buring a lot of biodiesel. Wouldn't you get the more efficient 70D there anyway, I mean you drive around the island a couple times in its range and its cheaper.

Luckily very little of the grid is oil, and coal is decreasing. The model S 85 (the least efficient one) should be about as efficient on fossil fuel as the prius is on oil. Coal is more ghg intense then oil though, so to have the same well to wheel ghg emissions as the prius you need to move up to the S 85d.

 

Should have stayed with what I originally put down: 40mpg; about 25% difference between Model S and the most efficient BEV available. But it isn't the worse.
i3 BEV =124mpge
Golf EV = 116
Leaf = 114
Soul EVFocus EV = 105
Model S 70D = 101
S 85D = 100
S 60 = 95
S P85D = 93
S 85 = 85
B-class ED = 84
Rav4 EV = 76
Cayenne S e-hybrid = 47mpge and 22mpg

 

Compare Side-by-Side
Callout to the porsche, high power hybrids don't work. The PHEV in charge depletion mode only gets 2 mpg better than the regular model. and the 14 mile range means you won't be using electric that much, but hey its better than the pure gas version. The tesla model 85D and 70D produce about as much ghg as a prius if there was a national grid, 1/3 less ghg than the prius in california. If the clean power plan goes through the average for the country in 2030 will be 20% less ghg in the much more powerful awd tesla than a prius. Yep as the tesla ages it will use less fossil fuel unless you start it on 100% renewable to start.

 

And gasoline is getting dirtier in carbon emissions. Tar sand based gas is being shipped to the North East now.

 

By 2035, damn that's a long time, the story will die, just like the cnw story still seems to be around. By then many of the 40+ year old coal fired power plants will finally be retired, and people won't be able to pretend that the new plug-ins are causing us to build and burn more coal.

Until then I expect a lot more bad math and bad reasoning like this guys thread. The bad numbers get more and more necessary, as the narative has been around a long time, when the grid was dirtier and plug-ins less efficient. All we can do is point out the bad math and bad reasoning.

 

Well it is a straw-man argument in CA, as no oil (ok 0.034% oil) is burnt anyway making CA electricity.

Others have tried to show that if oil was used, a Tesla gets better than 28 MPG, but since oil is not used it is meaningless to even have an MPG.

 

Or the country. Even oahu, or most oil burning region has 9% renewable + a lot of that oil is bio diesel. Still that brings a tesla model S 70D to over 40 mpg about the same as a camry hybrid and much lower than the island average. Still no reason to spend $70k for a bev in oahu you aren't going to run out of juice. Still a volt or a leaf makes perfect sense.

 

Of course 'gasoline and diesel' just pop out of the ground right at the Service Station and do not require transportation of the oil, fracking of the oil, and transport of the gasoline --- thus it is so CLEAN. Gasoline and diesel engines have so many parts produced in such 'CLEAN' factories by use of no electricity? and then ?? Oh, what the h--- no one is ever going to teach the non believers any thing. Jealousy is an ugly thing.

 

I average 300 wh / mile in my P85D which includes daily insane mode launches.

I've driven 9000 miles in it since the beginning of April. My cost per kWh is 11 cents on PG&Es EV-A rate. If I charged 100% at home, I would have spent (accounting for the 10% I lose while charging) I would have spent $326 or about 93 gallons of regular at $3.50 / gallon (although you really have to use super as no regular car would accelerate like a P85D on regular gas). But assuming regular gas, 9000 miles / 93 gallons = 97 MPG.

Now on to my personal costs:

However, I charged 1/3 of that on super chargers and about 1/3 at work. So I only spent a little over $100 since beginning of April. But wait, my overall PG&E bill dropped by $50 / month even with charging, so I'm actually being paid for each mile I drive, not the other way around.

That article doesn't take into account the 6 kWh of electricity it takes just to refine oil into a gallon of gas. That's enough to move my less efficient P85D version 20 miles before anyone has even used that gallon of gas. Then there's the cost of energy to transport that gasoline before it can be burned up in our cars.

Even if you don't use clean forms of energy but instead use only natural gas, each mile driven in a Tesla produces about 1/2 the carbon of that same mile driven in my Prius.

The article is lame. It assume 100% energy generation from crude oil when that's not even close to reality and doesn't factor in all the energy costs to actually make the gasoline.