Tesla X?

[jaaron]

We’ve been planning to get a new car in the next year, but the old one has just met an unexpectedly sudden end, so we now need one in a hurry. I’d be grateful to hear of any experience with these- good, bad or indifferent...

 

[Dancing Fire]

I Can't afford it....

 

[TooPatient]

A friend has one and loves it. We don't live near enough them for me to have ever been in it.

 

[kenny]

If you consider doing your part to reduce climate change to be a factor in picking an electric vehicle you should find out exactly where your home's electricity comes from.

IMO if it's all from relatively green sources like wind, solar, hydroelectric, other, you're good to go.
Buy an electric car.
If the electricity charging your car comes from fossil fuel, especially dirty coal, I'd look into which is greener overall, your dirty electricity or gasoline.

Determining the overall carbon-footprint of whatever generates YOUR electricity will probably be difficult since many sources of information is tainted by the supplier's conflict of interest ... after-all, anyone can post anything on the Internet.

If the electricity is from nuclear power the homework leading to a decision will be very challenging.

If climate change is not a factor in your choice, just ignore me.

 

[agingsparkle]

Just got one -- so much fun. Really, it makes me smile every time I walk up to it -- the only way to put it is that it's welcoming, which sounds crazy, but the ability to set up EVERYTHING just the way I like it (and I had a highly customizable Lincoln SUV before this) is lovely. I approach, it opens the door for me, starts playing my favorite music, sets all of the temp/seat heaters/seat position/etc. Opens the garage door when I get home, closes it when I leave. We do live in an area with primarily hydro, and are planning personal solar/powerwalls, so I'm happy to be reducing both emissions and carbon-based electricity. If you are interested, I'm happy to share some of the things I've found helpful -- more than previous cars, I've found it helps to add some 3rd party extras -- I love how sleek the interior is, but I also have a lot of stuff I want to store, and it's so curved it was a challenge to find the right dog crate, etc. I also have found that charging on regular old household 120 is really not as slow as I thought it would be -- I was planning to put in quick chargers at both places but while I was getting things lined up to do this, I realized the new long-range really does have a ton of range and I'm now thinking of just using the existing 240.

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

DH has one, we're quite happy. So much fun to drive and the Tesla superchargers are impressive. We charge at lightning speed for free.Dhs office has a regular charging station, though, so convenient for him.

 

[lissyflo]

If you consider doing your part to reduce climate change to be a factor in picking an electric vehicle you should find out exactly where your home's electricity comes from.

IMO if it's all from relatively green sources like wind, solar, hydroelectric, other, you're good to go.
Buy an electric car.
If the electricity charging your car comes from fossil fuel, especially dirty coal, I'd look into which is greener overall, your dirty electricity or gasoline.

Determining the overall carbon-footprint of whatever generates YOUR electricity will probably be difficult since many sources of information is tainted by the supplier's conflict of interest ... after-all, anyone can post anything on the Internet.

If the electricity is from nuclear power the homework leading to a decision will be very challenging.

If climate change is not a factor in your choice, just ignore me.

But if you live and drive in a city, electric seems to come out on top regardless.

For the pollutants where inhaling is an issue in particular (nitrates from diesel cars in particular), burning fossil fuels in a power station in a remote area and using them to power a car electrically is much better than burning those same fossil fuels directly in a car in a city where the emissions are then inhaled at high concentrations without being more widely dispersed. The effect of concentrated levels of exhaust fumes on brains, lungs, and lord knows what else is scary, especially on developing children’s bodies.

I appreciate the overall effect on the global environment is the same regardless (if your house uses fossil fuel power), but the direct effect on health massively depends on the location where the fuels are burnt and it’s proximity to humans.

 

[kenny]

But if you live and drive in a city, electric seems to come out on top regardless.

For the pollutants where inhaling is an issue in particular (nitrates from diesel cars in particular), burning fossil fuels in a power station in a remote area and using them to power a car electrically is much better than burning those same fossil fuels directly in a car in a city where the emissions are then inhaled at high concentrations without being more widely dispersed. The effect of concentrated levels of exhaust fumes on brains, lungs, and lord knows what else is scary, especially on developing children’s bodies.

I appreciate the overall effect on the global environment is the same regardless (if your house uses fossil fuel power), but the direct effect on health massively depends on the location where the fuels are burnt and it’s proximity to humans.

I see your point, better air for the cities, but overall the same global warming effect on the entire earth.

Climate change has so many disastrous effects.
Polar bears hunt from floating ice sheets , but rising sea temps are making those vanish.
Polar bear populations are expected to crash since they can't eat.
Residents of low-elevation islands are being displaced by rising seas.

Personally, I buy a gas car with high MPG, tiny engine, and low emissions.
Then I lower my carbon footprint even further by sipping gas by driving it like an old man on morphine.

 

[Arcadian]

Where I live, they're really not viable as an only car unless you have a decent enough setup to be off grid. To be able to do it, I'd have to spend about 50K (panels, inverter, power walls..I'll need 2).... so for now, not viable. I do want to go back to a PHEV though. BUT if VW's ID equivalent comes to the states, it will be a consideration.

 

[jordyonbass]

If you consider doing your part to reduce climate change to be a factor in picking an electric vehicle you should find out exactly where your home's electricity comes from.

IMO if it's all from relatively green sources like wind, solar, hydroelectric, other, you're good to go.
Buy an electric car.
If the electricity charging your car comes from fossil fuel, especially dirty coal, I'd look into which is greener overall, your dirty electricity or gasoline.

Determining the overall carbon-footprint of whatever generates YOUR electricity will probably be difficult since many sources of information is tainted by the supplier's conflict of interest ... after-all, anyone can post anything on the Internet.

If the electricity is from nuclear power the homework leading to a decision will be very challenging.

If climate change is not a factor in your choice, just ignore me.

I thought I might add to this that I used to work in electricity distribution once upon a time; the best way to charge your car is with an off grid solar setup, but if you live in suburbia where this is not an option then charging throughout the day is best. The reason for this is most houses with solar have what's known as net metering, where the house uses the solar generated and then sends the excess to the grid. I used to watch the percentage inputs for the grid from my dispatch station (also the place I discovered PS) and during the day we would be seeing up to 60% of local power being used having been supplied by solar panels on homes (that doesn't account for the solar that the homes with the panels are using internally). So while you can't guarantee that all the electricity in your EV is green, if your local grid is setup this way and you charge the vehicle during the day you can be assured that a decent amount of it is solar.

I don't know why people discuss more efficient ways of generating electricity for night time use when storage technologies is something that I think needs far more development here, we actually lose a lot of the electricity we generate through over-generation at non peak times and being unable to store the excess. It's not a huge amount, but it adds up and if we had storage technologies we would be truly maximizing whatever generation method we use.

 

[jaaron]

Thank you to everyone who responded. We rented one for a weekend trip and then took the plunge and ordered one when we got back.

If you consider doing your part to reduce climate change to be a factor in picking an electric vehicle you should find out exactly where your home's electricity comes from.

IMO if it's all from relatively green sources like wind, solar, hydroelectric, other, you're good to go.
Buy an electric car.
If the electricity charging your car comes from fossil fuel, especially dirty coal, I'd look into which is greener overall, your dirty electricity or gasoline.

Our home energy supplier is green - all from wind, solar and/or hydroelectric (or so they say, anyway), so charging at home will be ok. My understanding is that the superchargers, though, use whatever's on the grid, so my guess is that won't be green and (this being Europe, will likely include some nuclear sourced). Charging away from home won't be ideal, so hopefully that will only be an occasional thing.

But if you live and drive in a city, electric seems to come out on top regardless.

For the pollutants where inhaling is an issue in particular (nitrates from diesel cars in particular), burning fossil fuels in a power station in a remote area and using them to power a car electrically is much better than burning those same fossil fuels directly in a car in a city where the emissions are then inhaled at high concentrations without being more widely dispersed. The effect of concentrated levels of exhaust fumes on brains, lungs, and lord knows what else is scary, especially on developing children’s bodies.

This is a large part of the decision. We're in a large city and have become increasingly concerned about this.

Personally, I buy a gas car with high MPG, tiny engine, and low emissions.
Then I lower my carbon footprint even further by sipping gas by driving it like an old man on morphine.

The visual of that made me lol. The problem for us is that we have kids and two big dogs. We live in a city and take quite a lot of public transport, so don't use it on a daily basis, but when we do, need a relatively large car, nd the idea of buying a new SUV at this point in history felt troubling.