Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

Or, buy any reasonably newish used car with reasonable parts availability, drive it gently, and keep it well maintained.

Over the long haul an electric car should be superior in total lifecycle emissions relative to a comparable ICE or hybrid, but Tesla’s questionable initial build quality (reworks figure into total emissions!) and odd design choices (like needing to replace the flash unit for the MCU, semiconductor manufacturing is highly polluting), I would question the “greenness” of Tesla in comparison to other makes.

That said, overall it feels unproductive to focus only on a car when thinking about the total impact of oneself on the environment. Someone who drives a brand new Tesla, lives in a single family home, and eats steaks every night I would guess has a larger impact than someone who drives a used Corolla, lives in an apartment, and eats lentils every night. Personal transportation matters, but it’s a part of a larger whole that’s about consuming much less.

Again, there are so many options, and it's just almost sad the lack of imagination everyone is bringing to these discussions. The same anecdotes appear, and the discussion just keeps going around in circles. Are you trying to solve the problem or are you just complaining that you won't bother?

You have never had an apartment offer power at the parking lot? Isn't that an issue with your landlords like any other apartment feature/benefit? Isn't that the same as price shopping for an apartment with in-unit Laundry or up-to-date Appliances? Maybe the Landlord doesn't presently see a need for such a convenience, but they should be willing to compete, open to suggestions and the right sort of incentivization, right? (At least, so claim the free market folks.)

Do you even need to charge at home? What's your daily commute, can you buy an EV with enough range that a supercharge once every two weeks will do it? That's the exact scenario discussed just posts above, this discussion is a flat circle.

Can you charge at work? Can you charge at the grocery when you are running errands?

Most Americans can, statistically, find a range in an EV today that they could charge once every two weeks and handle 100% of their average work life. Yes, everyone has an anecdote of how they are a special outlier that needs personal attention to their complaints.

You couldn't buy a non-hybrid EV, or you just aren't willing to put the work out into figuring out any sort of strategy or plan? It's not even rocket science. Electricity is everywhere and this should be really easy for everyone to figure out.

Does the building you are parked outside of have electricity? If yes, ask if it can give you an outside plug. That's it. Level 1 charging is that simple.

Level 2 charging is nearly as simple: Does that building have Dryers or any other reason to already have 220+ Volt A/C circuits? (Maybe you are somewhere like England where that's actually the wall sockets.) Get a "dryer plug" installed in the parking lot. Admittedly we use a bit fancier of a plug socket in that case, but the basic electronics are the same.

You aren't probably going to get a Level 3+ supercharger at an apartment complex any time soon (though it depends on your municipality and electric company and their goals for subsidizing the fun), but you probably don't need it. In most cases it's a lovely either/or: Level 1 or 2 charging at home/work, slow and steady every day, or Level 3+ charging in short bursts every two weeks or so. (Though it's not an exclusive-or; you could do both.)

There are options already. None of these are hard problems to solve. We have the technology, it's just amazing we don't seem to have the will or the imagination, at least in terms of how often these same questions come up in repeat on HN comments, and HN is an audience I'd expect to be more willing to explore creative technical solutions to problems rather than to just stop at the first anecdotal problem to mind.

For the Model S my first thought was the M4, which actually does end up with the original 1/3 weight disparity I mentioned, but I think this is just a coincidence of my first choice. Compared to an E63 AMG, a car in a similar category known for carrying a bit of weight, and the difference is closer to 10%. Compared to an RS4 the difference is about 20%.

For the Model X I was really surprised how small the differences were. Compared to a G Wagon, which I'd say is really its competition, the difference in weight is about 8%. Compared to an X5, it's about 5%. If you consider the X7 to be the competition (which most people probably do), the X7 ends up being about 1% heavier.

And just to add it since I'm already doing this, I think the clear competitor for the Model 3 Performance is the M2 Competition. They're specifically meant to be track vehicles that you can comfortably use for your daily driver. This puts the weight disparity at 18% for that model. And just for fun: https://youtu.be/HycUgd6fTWI & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pu9046wX9g

So I guess the conclusion is electric vehicles are heavier, but as you move towards already heavy vehicles like SUVs the weight differences start to vanish. But as you move towards more smaller vehicles, the difference is much more noticeable.

theoretical gallons of gas is not useful when you have vastly different ranger per gallon (or kilowatts) of energy. Reporting miles of range is what makes sense. Cars get less mileage when they 70 miles per hour than 60 mph, but its not so visible because you don't ever have such an exact measure of gas and range available.

I just moved out of an apartment building that did have chargers, but they had like two in a garage for hundreds of cars. They didn't seem to have plans to provide one for everyone.