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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the vroom-vroooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmm dept.

A score of 103 out of 100 could be called kind of... Insane. This is exactly what the Tesla Model S P85D in 'Insane' mode received during testing by Consumer Reports (CR), a score so off-the-charts good that it actually broke the scale and forced CR to revise how they measure things. The official score with the new, updated methodology will be 100/100.

What made the Tesla break the ratings was the combination of supercar performance and extreme energy efficiency. These things haven't historically been found together, and so CR never had a car that go such high scores in both columns.

Impressive, but alas...traffic.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:42PM (#229145)

    Still trying to figure out how this was calculated:

    And yet it’s more energy-efficient, getting the equivalent of 87 mpg.

    Here you go: [edmunds.com]

    To create the mpg equivalent, the EPA uses an established energy standard of 115,000 BTUs (British thermal units) per gallon of gasoline. Grossly oversimplified, this means that if you ignited 1 U.S. gallon of unleaded gasoline, it would generate that much heat. To create the same amount of heat, you would need 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

    It was the very first hit in a google search for "electric car mpg calculations" [google.com] I am always happy to help the google-handicapped among us. Would you like me to build you a special parking space too?

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  • (Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Friday August 28 2015, @07:44PM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Friday August 28 2015, @07:44PM (#229146) Journal

    Silly me, I went to the Consumer Reports site, which is down.

    Still think it's a rather dubious comparison.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 28 2015, @08:12PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday August 28 2015, @08:12PM (#229162)

    I'm all for "hyping up" electric vehicles and their virtues, but if we are going to equate the heat generated from burning a gallon of gasoline to the heat generated from direct electrical heating coils (as opposed to, say, a more efficient heat-pump...) it seems like we are forgetting about transmission losses and other important factors.

    What might be a more fair comparison is miles driven per barrel of Brent Blend... "Refineries in the United States produced an average of about 12 gallons of diesel fuel and 19 gallons of gasoline from one barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil in 2013." leaving a diesel->gasoline conversion question, give diesel ~111% of gasoline, then that comes to 32 gallons of "gas" per barrel.

    Then, there's "~570 kWh electricity generated per barrel of petroleum," with "electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 6% of the electricity that is transmitted and distributed annually in the United States", so call that 536kWh/barrel, or 16.75kWh from an "equivalent" gallon of gasoline. This neglects the petroleum byproduct value, but, do we really need plastic playground equipment sold by WalMart?

    So, where the EPA's 33.7kWH/gallon comes up with 87mpg for the Tesla, using "barrels of oil equivalent," (assuming your electricity is generated by burning oil, which much of it is in the US), we'd get 43mpg - still not bad, but not the quantum leap it's being advertised as. Factor in the "value" of plastics, pesticides, lubricants and other oil byproducts, and the electric cars are more or less on-par with their gas burning cousins, if you make your electricity by burning oil.

    http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 [eia.gov]

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @09:27PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 28 2015, @09:27PM (#229192) Journal

      ...all the while ignoring the externalities of securing supplies of oil, costs of environmental degradation, costs to the common good of having oil companies dominate government, etc.

      I am, however, happy you made this argument, because it rather points up how weak the case for gas-powered vehicles has become that its defenders should have to go to such lengths to "prove" EVs are un-economical.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 28 2015, @10:39PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday August 28 2015, @10:39PM (#229211)

        Not ignoring the evils of oil at all - but we should also pay close attention to the evils of electrical power generation, transmission and storage.

        My grandfather poured used motor oil along the base of his chain linked fence to keep the grass from growing on it - probably wasn't too good for the groundwater.

        However, today, how many people dispose of their batteries "properly," how many end up incinerated, or in land fills, or EPA superfund sites, or discarded randomly on the ground?

        Even hydro-power isn't without its environmental costs - all in all, I'd rather have nuclear (or better still, fusion), but it doesn't take a lot of sociopolitical awareness to point at Fukushima and scream NIMBY!

        TANSTAAFL

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:00AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:00AM (#229271)

          > However, today, how many people dispose of their batteries "properly," how many end up incinerated, or in land fills, or EPA superfund sites, or discarded randomly on the ground?

          From electric vehicles? None.

          Furthermore, transmission of electricity is significantly more efficient than transmission of gasoline. You made no mention of the fuel used by tanker trucks to move gasoline from refineries to gas stations. Nor of the cost to actually refine the oil into gasoline.

          You seem way more interested in picking at minutiae for electricity than an even handed analysis.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday August 29 2015, @04:13AM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday August 29 2015, @04:13AM (#229322) Journal

          There really is no reason to worry about disposal of alkaline batteries. Alkaline batteries can be safely disposed of with normal household waste. Even disposal in a fire presents no real risks other than they might pop open.

          I think most people dispose of Lead Acid car batteries properly. You can get money for them.
          Lithium cells might be the most abused, but with a drop bin at ever electronics store and builder's supply, most people are aware.

          However, the other angle you touch upon briefly, there simply isn't enough generation capacity to pick up the entire transportation sector.
          Luckily we have a few years to build lots of generation plants. To bad we don't have any acceptable fuel source for these plants.
          Probably haven't got near enough solar either.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 29 2015, @08:07PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday August 29 2015, @08:07PM (#229534) Journal

            I don't think anyone should worry about the grid's capacity to support EVs, because most EVs will recharge @ night while demand is low.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
          • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30 2015, @12:17AM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday August 30 2015, @12:17AM (#229626)

            Could just be my personal experience, but lead acid battery recycling programs have had some environmental problems, search this page for "battery":

            https://www.tceq.texas.gov/remediation/superfund/sites/byname.html [texas.gov]

            In the 1990s, the primary waste stream in South-East Florida contained enough mercury (mostly blamed on batteries) that the incinerator plume over the everglades was causing top predators (including alligators and birds) to die off from mercury poisoning, they stopped using the incinerators and et'voila: the predators recovered in a very short time, though panthers have many other challenges...

            http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1993-08-25/news/9308250593_1_mercury-florida-waste-to-energy-plants [orlandosentinel.com]

            When I bring my used up lithium (and other) batteries to the customer service counter at my local builder's supply store, they look at me like I'm high - then remember that training they had a few months ago and say, "oh yes, of course, just leave that here." I honestly think I'm the only person who ever does that there.

            I'm all for more-better electricity, and I'd love to convert my sports car from gas to electric, but a conventional performance (250HP) engine replacement in my car runs about 10% of the up-front cost of an electric today ($10K vs $100K), and has about 5x the life expectancy (25 years and counting on my original, ~5 years before batteries are going to need serious refurb)... of course, the batteries are only about 30% of the $100K, but still.... the technology just isn't quite here yet.

            Still, when I installed electric service in my garage, I spec'ed a 100A panel, just incase we do end up with a practical plug-in electric car, someday.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by RedBear on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:32AM

          by RedBear (1734) on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:32AM (#229356)

          However, today, how many people dispose of their batteries "properly," how many end up incinerated, or in land fills, or EPA superfund sites, or discarded randomly on the ground?

          I'm sorry, but you're comparing something that typically fits in one's pocket and gets discarded in a trash can with something that gets stripped, crushed, shredded and recycled on a routine basis by people who do that for a living. The battery packs in EVs are simply too large and too valuable, both monetarily and in terms of recyclable resources, to simply be thrown away. You can (and should) recycle your phone and your laptop batteries, but I guarantee the batteries from EVs will all find their way back into the supply chain as recycled materials. Lithium is just about as endlessly recyclable as aluminum.

          Even hydro-power isn't without its environmental costs - all in all, I'd rather have nuclear (or better still, fusion), but it doesn't take a lot of sociopolitical awareness to point at Fukushima and scream NIMBY!

          Having observed human socio-political systems and human history, I have less than zero confidence in our ability as a species to successfully sequester nuclear waste for the requisite time period necessary to allow it to degrade into something safe. TANSTAAFL is true, but the free-est lunch we have available is renewable energy from sun, wind, hydro and geothermal sources, combined with energy storage in highly-recyclable EV and grid-level batteries and possibly compressed air storage [youtube.com] (watch it before you laugh), and other energy storage technologies that don't produce radioactive waste that will be dangerous for the next 50,000 years. The environmental costs of renewables and batteries are as low as they are ever going to be, and minimal compared to nuclear and fossil fuels.

          --
          ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
          ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30 2015, @12:41AM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday August 30 2015, @12:41AM (#229632)

            I agree that car batteries _should_ get reprocessed and recycled, but the current lead-acid battery handling system is not at all confidence inspiring.

            Solar "looks" like a clean technology on it's face, but when you factor in all of what goes into making solar panels, there's a lot of not so great stuff happening on that side of the process, and again, there's the disposal / recycling side of things to consider - just because something goes to a recycling plant doesn't mean that it has zero environmental impact, lots of recyclers have less than stellar environmental records.

            I tend to like nuclear because, in the USA and Western Europe at least, people seem to take it seriously, unlike coal's ash and heavy metals emissions, diesel soot, natural gas (fracking) by-products, etc. If we ever get to practical fusion, that seems like a good path.

            Compressed air storage is a nice storage tech, but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up with some pretty hilarious failure modes, much worse than pumping water into high elevation reservoirs. Wind seems to be a pretty "honest" power source, you see almost all the bad stuff directly, too bad it's not enough to supply our present appetite.

            When I look at a place like Nauru, I can't help but think what a nice nuke generator could do for the place... basically unlimited electricity, bring in electric powered earth moving machines and reshape the interior landscape back to something attractive - desalinate ocean water for agricultural use... it would be awesome, and if the nuke was mismanaged and leaked, it probably wouldn't make the place any worse off than it presently is without it. No other (currently available) energy tech could transform a place like that. The Nauruans had enough money to do it at one point, but they didn't manage the money too well...

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:37PM (#229241)

      > the heat generated from direct electrical heating coils (as opposed to, say, a more efficient heat-pump...)

      Really bad comparison, just absolutely terrible.

      Heat pumps don't generate heat, they move it. Hence the name pump.
      FYI, a refrigerator is a heat-pump, moving heat from inside the fridge to outside the fridge.