I've never believed that Tesla had a viable product. In fact, Electric vehicles make very little sense and are far less "green" than most consumers perceive them to be. It's sad that people tend to believe whatever marketers tell them... Check out this article... By far the most comprehensive analysis on "green" cars so far. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732412850457834...
"The average car on the road is about 11 years old, and the average car is driven about 15,000 miles per year. Multiply those figures together and you’ve got a fairly average car with something like 165,000 miles on it"
This is generally incorrect, because if you think about it the cars that died young aren't included in the average. The problem is that there are two averages being cited, and you can't just multiply them to determine a joint average without knowing the nature of the underlying distribution.
Not only is it a math error to multiply it out like that, but it's also wrong to extend the logic to electric cars. Electric cars are likely to have LESS than the AVERAGE CAR total mileage, because (a) they're less useful in places where people need to drive extra-long distances, (b) the batteries get worse and worse at holding a charge over time, just as cellphone batteries do. (c) it's still a rapidly-advancing technology, meaning older models will get obsolete quickly and need to be retired faster than they do with a more mature technology.
> Is this guy serious? The average car is driven 13.5k miles/year. So 50k is 3.7 years.
Did you read the rest of the article?
Quote: "To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, just as they do in a cellphone. Nissan estimates that after five years, the less effective batteries in a typical Leaf bring the range down to 55 miles. As the MIT Technology Review cautioned last year: "Don't Drive Your Nissan Leaf Too Much."
Electric cars have a shorter effective range than "the average car" and due to charging time are less suitable for long trips (or for purchase in places where long trips are the norm) so they're likely to get driven less. And the range gets shorter as time goes on so even if they're comparable in the first year they won't be in later years.
Anyway, the article gave TWO data points. He said "IF a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime..." gave some conclusions, and then went on to talk about a better-case scenario of the car being driven 90,000 miles. Can you at least accept these as a bracket? The conclusion he reached from considering these two hypothetical data points was that electric cars might be worse than non-electrics in terms of CO2 impact or they might be better, but were unlikely to be a vast improvement and in any case the term "zero emissions" is a misnomer.
When doing a cost-benefit analysis at the end, Lomborgh used his optimistic estimate - 90,000 miles - to conclude that the government would be spending $7,500 in subsidies to save $44 (in the US) or $48 (in Europe) worth of carbon.
No, I mean the dictionary definition of the word. He called the greenhouse effect a "myth", and has been thoroughly discredited by the scientific community and respectable publications.
> [Lomborgh] called the greenhouse effect a "myth"
That claim appears to itself be a "myth" promulgated by people who don't like the guy's political conclusions.
The wikipedia page that made this inflammatory claim gave as its only reference a print-only newspaper article, from 1998, in Norwegian. (the ref was: Bjørn Lomborg, 'Det går bedre', newspaper article, Weekendavisen 13 March 1998)
So IF that article actually exists AND the claims made about it were valid, the best you'd be able to say is presumably that he said something once, 15 years ago, which when translated to English was taken to mean he suggested the "greenhouse effect" was a "myth". But given how much he's written on the subject in English in articles and reference sources that can actually be checked, the more likely assumption is that there was some amount of exaggeration/mistranslation going on. For instance, he might have been arguing that some claim about the greenhouse effect was "a myth", if that word was even used. Near as I can tell, all the google-able articles point back to that wikipedia page as a source, which - since it's been marked "citation needed" for more than 6 months - I've just fixed.
I'm wary of the truthfulness of anything from the WSJ Op-Ed, and with good reason. That said, I checked out this article at it appears to be largely based on a deliberate mischaracterization of an article from the Journal of Industrial Ecology, which can be read here (for free it appears):
The Op-Ed author is trying to claim that the article supports his thesis that EVs have a bigger environmental impact than ICE vehicles. To do this he must assume that an EV will only be driven for 50K miles in its lifetime: otherwise he bumps up against the article's main thesis, which is that even at 65K miles, with the article's very conservative assumptions, an EV has a carbon advantage over ICE. The advantage grows significantly with longer, and more realistic lifetimes.
I think this is typical of an WSJ Op-Ed. Anyway, here's the abstract of the cited article:
> Electric vehicles (EVs) coupled with low-carbon electricity sources offer the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to tailpipe emissions from personal transportation. In considering these benefits, it is important to address concerns of problem-shifting. In addition, while many studies have focused on the use phase in comparing transportation options, vehicle production is also significant when comparing conventional and EVs. We develop and provide a transparent life cycle inventory of conventional and electric vehicles and apply our inventory to assess conventional and EVs over a range of impact categories. We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km. However, EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain. Results are sensitive to assumptions regarding electricity source, use phase energy consumption, vehicle lifetime, and battery replacement schedules. Because production impacts are more significant for EVs than conventional vehicles, assuming a vehicle lifetime of 200,000 km exaggerates the GWP benefits of EVs to 27% to 29% relative to gasoline vehicles or 17% to 20% relative to diesel. An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle. Improving the environmental profile of EVs requires engagement around reducing vehicle production supply chain impacts and promoting clean electricity sources in decision making regarding electricity infrastructure.
EVs as drop-in replacements for ICE vehicles would still have all the congestion, hazardous-to-pedestrians, spread out, lack of real downtown, etc. issues (i.e. LA) that people such as SF zoning/neighborhood people don't want. I suspect there are some anti-car people who are terrified of EVs because they remove the environmental/pollution/global warming argument against cars (at least, if the energy powering them is from nuclear/wind/solar).
Consumer interest in decent but imperfect early-generation electric vehicles will motivate further investment and ultimately better technology in future generations.
I am not sure why this comment is getting down voted, if anything it made me read the article quoted above and I was wondering if anyone else had any inputs or addendums (as in, with the issues listed with electric cars, why Tesla is selling well)
