Tesla Founders Blog

An even more obscure wrinkle – when I got my solar it was just before the newer extended daylight savings. The TOU meter came pre-programmed with firmware that uses the old daylight savings calendar. PG&E sent me a letter saying they would NOT reprogram the meter (too much hassle and no upside for them), so I am stuck with two months of the year with less optimal rate structure. The problem is the rest of our lives are scheduled around the real clock time so we get home sooner and start using appliances before the schedule has gone into “off peak” hours.

By the way, you might find this document interesting and relevant.

With Nanosolar now having funding of almost half a billion bucks I look forward to the day of cheap Nanosolar for home use & car charging-maybe it will hit just in time for the plug-in hybrid takeoff around 2011. Also-what about charging thru the air (induction charging is it called ?). What would be the loss in power over, say 2′ from garage wall to car vs. plugging in the car ? Or, maybe better- a wall mounted plug-in arm that senses where the car plug is within a range of a couple of feet and automatically hooks up to the car. Then you just drive car into the garage every night and forget about it re. charging. The induction deal would be really neat, but I guess elect. loss wouldn’t make it good- and there is no way to minimize this power loss (?).

Martin sez:
Aside from efficiency issues, I always worry about stray electromagnetic fields for inductive charging, especially over a large distance. Might stop a pacemaker or two!

Martin:

Geeeeezus! PG&E sure has a quagmire of territories, tiers, rates, and schedules! Interpreting your monthly bill must be a challenging as reading IRS tax forms! Whatever the bottom line, however, with well over 1,000 miles behind you in your Roadster, have you been able to calculate the average number of miles per kW you’re getting? Does the charger even keep track of how many kW go into the Roadster over time?

Martin sez:

Someone suggested I buy a used power meter and set it up as a sub-meter for the car – I think I will do this so I won’t have to guess anymore.

Well, since inductive charging is out (except for diehard republicans of Rove/Cheney quality) then maybe mount a short rail on the garage wall at the same height as the car charging port- the charging plug-in arm moves along the rail and telescopes out with the car charge port electronically telling it where it’s at-or, mount arm on a ball joint that can swing within a short range to port-or maybe something similar on floor. You could also just put a stop in the floor-like conc. parking lot wheel stops-to make sure car is lined up with wall or floor charging arm. A car that fuels itself-poifect !. Need those cheap fuel cells for solar storage so can sun power when get home at night. First cheap Nanosolar, then cheap fuel cell. One day, no doubt, solar cells on car as option that are relatively cheap & powerful enough to charge car in parking lot at work-get the price of those MIT 41% efficient cells down, that should do it area-wise.

Martin sez:

(GV is a “gasoline vehicle”, an old type of car that ran on “gasoline” , a liquid fuel that you had to get from a “filling station” often miles from your home. In the days of GVs, you had to plan your week around your trips to a “filling station.” There, you had to hold a nozzle for several minutes that poured this smelly, flammable liquid into a tank on your car. The whole time while you were holding this nozzle, you were staring at a big sticker on the face of the “gas pump” that informed you that the vapors you were breathing were known to cause cancer.)

Great article! We will just have to be happy with mpKwh and figure out our own costs.

Chris H. There are no laws in Canada preventing BEVs. This mis-conception has been promoted by ZENN in their (successful) quest to pressure the governments (federal and provincial) into allowing their low speed NEV on public roads. This has nothing to do with electric power and everything to do with safety. These NEVs are not certified for highway use, no airbags, roll cages or crash tests. ZENN’s argument is that because the speed is limited, they are not require to be safe.

# Martin said:
## My first (naive) comments while at Tesla were between 1.5 cents and 2 cents per mile, if I recall correctly.

Although the Tesla web site said 1 cent per mile in the early days, your earliest blog on the subject had said this:

My electric rate at home is 13 cents per kilowatt hour. At this rate, the Tesla Roadster costs about 2.6 cents per mile to drive. Compare this to my Mazda 3, which goes 33 mpg, for a fuel cost of about 8.6 cents per mile at today’s gas prices. (The story gets better if I sign up for the 5 cents per kilowatt hour incentive EV rate from PG&E.)

Note, Tesla’s web site still says:
“Electrical Cost to Charge the Batteries
With your electrical company’s incentive pricing factored in, it will cost you roughly 1 cent per mile to drive the Tesla Roadster.**
…
** Since most car owners recharge at night, this calculation uses off-peak charging rates with a time-of-use meter. To calculate your exact cost-per-mile, contact your local electricity provider.”
So, they may still be offering up overly optimistic values.

Chris,

Everything I have read from the government has refered to motor powered vehicles and has not singled out any type such as “gas, diesel, natural gas, bio-diesel, E85…”. My point is that Electric vehicles are not disbarred.

A couple of years ago I sent an email to ZENN and asked them for a copy of the document that disbarred electric vehicles in Ontario. They sent me a copy of the LSV 500 document, which described requirements to meet this standard and included the fact that the vehicle was not capable of exceeding 40 kph. The word “electric” or any other type of propulsion was not used anywhere.

Since this is off-topic maybe you would like my email, click on my name and scroll to the bottom.
I live in Hamilton.

In the Wired “Better Place” article they say:
“…into a spot and the spot connects itself. In 2008, we put the cable in the unit, in 2010 we use an arm, in 2012, there’s a smart arm that connects automatically…”

Martin said:

I think I am getting about 300 Wh/mi.

—————————–

Okay! Sounds pretty reasonable if the charging efficiency is 86%: about 3.25 miles per kW.

Let’s see… that means that, if I had a Tesla in my area, and drove it as aggressively –er, expertly– as you do, it would cost me about… 2.62 pennies per mile on average. Not bad at all, if you ask me! Although an i-MiEV (at 6 miles per kW) would cost about half that, it doesn’t have anywhere near the power of a Roadster.

Any way you add it up, the costs are MUCH lower than with a GV –and not just in terms of dollars, but also CO2 emissions, energy independence, and national security.

Martin sez:

Hey, are you going to write a calculator for your utility company? Come on you guys, help me out here

Martin sez:

Hey, are you going to write a calculator for your utility company? Come on you guys, help me out here

———————————————-

Aw’right, then… since you’ve thrown down the gauntlet.

The electricity rates from Rocky Mountain Power (PacifiCorp) here in Utah are not nearly as complicated as what you have to deal with in California. Apparently the whole state is one “territory.” They do have special rates for those who qualify due to “economic hardship,” but… if one can afford an EV…

Other than that, there are really only two rate schedules: the basic plan, and a time-of-use plan. If customers opt for the latter, it only kicks in from May through September by punishing on-peak usage (1-8 PM weekdays) and rewarding off-peak usage (all other hours). In both schedules, the price per kilowatt goes up in three tiers: up to 400 kWh, 600 kWh, and 1000+ kWh.

Here is a spreadsheet that I have compiled with those data:

Utah_EV_cost-per-mile.xls

I hope Excel users can open it okay, because I exported it from my preferred spreadsheet program.

You’ll see in the spreadsheet than one merely needs to enter basic figures for watts-per-mile and charging efficiency, or alternatively the miles-per-kWh. The sheet will then calculate the results for that particular EV, in tables for both the basic plan and the time-of-use plan. It also reports the lowest and highest rates in those tables.

At the bottom I have also put a “quick-and-dirty” calculation. If one enters the average rate per kilowatt according to one’s statements, it will show the average price per mile. For example, I put in my average rate for the last two years ($.084600) and found that it would have cost me $.026069 per mile to drive a Roadster.

As a comparison, I tried entering into my copy the variables for the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. It reportedly gets 6.229656 miles-per-kWh. Consequently, the lowest rate in the tables turns out to be $.009852 per mile (less than a penny!) and the highest $.023202 per mile. When I use my quick-and-dirty calculation, its average cost would have been $.013580 per mile.

Martin sez:

By the way, it’s the quick & dirty average cost per kWh that got me into trouble in the first place. All of my EV usage will be on top of my domestic “baseline” usage, so its incremental cost will be at my highest rates with a tiered system like PG&E’s.

Martin said:

All of my EV usage will be on top of my domestic “baseline” usage, so its incremental cost will be at my highest rates with a tiered system like PG&E’s.

———————————————-

Yeah, that is an important point. Simply using an “average” rate is likely going to fall short because charging an EV in most cases will raise that household average –probably into the realm of the highest tier!

I have therefore now added a “slower-and-dirty” calculation to the bottom of my spreadsheet:

Utah_EV_cost-per-mile.xls

This alternative is based upon a year’s driving, as rates go up-and-down according to seasonal demand. It also relies upon these assumptions:

* EV charging is always done off-peak (at night).
* EV charging exceeds 1000+ kWh per month (highest rate May-Sept)

I think that most folks would agree with the first assumption. As for the second, in our household we average 994 kWh per month, so I am confident that most users here in Utah would indeed exceed the top-tier 1000+ kWh to charge an EV, especially during the hottest half of the year.

One now simply needs to enter in the spreadsheet the number of miles one anticipates driving the EV per month, and it will calculate the total cost per year and per mile, for both the Basic rate plan or the Time-of-Day option.

For example, I entered 1,000 miles per month for the Roadster, and the results are:

Basic plan (Roadster)
—————–
$325.71 per year
$.027142 per mile

Time-of-Day option (Roadster)
—————–
$299.80 per year
$.024983 per mile

This shows that by opting for the Time-of-Day plan, a Roadster driver could save… $25.91 over a year’s time in Utah.

Curiously, it also shows that the Basic plan has a $.001073 $/kWh higher rate with the “slower-and-dirty” calculation than with my “quick-and-dirty” calculation. And the Time-of-Day plan has a -$.001086 $/kWh savings with the “slower-and-dirty” calculation.

For those interested, here’s how the “slower-and-dirty” numbers also added up for the i-MiEV:

Basic plan (i-MiEV)
—————–
$169.67 per year
$.014139 per mile

Time-of-Day option (i-MiEV)
—————–
$156.18 per year
$.013015 per mile

With a good piece of land, you don’t have to put the panels on the roof of the house. You could find a clear patch somewhere and run wires back to the house. Remember Rob Wilder’s installation?

All this fine tuning, penny pinching talk of cents per mile to drive a Tesla-what are you guys, engineers or something ?-oh, right dang-I forgot. Grid power, schmid power- in a couple of years throw some Nanosolar on the roof and call it a day.

Here in Seattle we have 70% hydro-electricity in our grid. Our average cost is about 8 cent per kwh. There are no tiers (yet).

I have been riding a Vectrix electric scooter for about 2 months (1,600 miles so far) and have been monitoring my energy consumption and cost with a UPM energy meter.

http://www.smarthome.com/1139.html

The Vectrix battery is 3.7 kwh but it requires a bit over 4 kwh during charing process.

At 8 cents per kwh it costs about 32 to 35 cents, so it is less than 1 cent per mile to ride.

62 mph max speed
40 to 50 miles in range per charge
3-4 hours to recharge from a standard outlet.
0 to 50 mph in about 6 seconds

I have just put down my deposit for the Tesla. So based on my experience, I have some preliminary numbers.

53 kwh Tesla battery would cost about $4.25 to charge from empty. There is typically about 10% to 15% extra required to run the fan for cooling and there is some loss during transfer.

So about $5 to recharge from empty in the Seattle region.

Then there is the discharge rate to consider. Am I driving hard and getting poor milage? Or and I in extendend range mode and getting great milage? I will just use the 200 mile per charge estimate.

$5.00 divided by 200 miles = 2.5 cents per mile to drive the Tesla with 8 cents per kwh electricity.

So if you guys are paying 12 cents per kwh or a really high tier 3 rate, then I estimate your cost per mile is above 4 cents per mile.

Just my opinion based on 2 months of tracking with my Vectrix electric scooter.

Gabe-my power use is very low-except for like 3 1/2 months of summer (to power a/c-I have gas heat). I looked into getting solar via my power company but they don’t allow you to sell extra power to them ( brilliant !-unlike Germany-they’re smarter than us, you know), you can only cancel out your power bill-except for $8 per month “service charge”-so actually you can never totally cancel out the bill. I wanted to install a small solar “stater kit” which would be good for later car power, but local installation company on the power company’s list of “approved installers” said that unless you have a certain min. size system “the inverters or whatever” won’t work. After factoring in all of this I said to heck with it- when I get a plug-in hybrid or EV or Aptera (or ?) in like 2 years, I figured maybe by then Nanosolar would be available for home use. Their website originally said that with large mass production the cost might be 1/10 of silicon cells-even though they are less efficient-like what, half as efficient (?). My ideal payback time for solar would be one year-if Nanosolar gets price down “as advertised” and I get a small system, which is all I need, maybe one day this would be possible. No doubt some day down the line, wherever, it will be possible. Also, the local power company only has a certain number of slots per year for people to install solar. Bottom line was that it made no economic sense-I’d just be doing the environment a favor-but I don’t see the state govt./power company trying too hard on this-unlike in other countries. Not buying surplus power from home solar installers is absurd-same for the “yearly quota ” on installations. If I could have sold my excess solar to the power company I’d have installed a system.

2 cents per mile, 3 cents per mile, 5 cents per mile: these numbers are all dishonest. First off, the cost of the car is $100K so even at 10 cents per mile, it would take you a million miles before you paid as much in electricity as you paid for the car itself.

But more importantly, the pack is rated for, what, 125,000 miles? And it costs $30,000? That means the replacement cost of the battery pack is 25 cents per mile, completely dwarfing the cost of electricity.

It’s the same with my Prius. I’ve got 160,000 miles on it, and it’s consumed around 4,000 gallons of gasoline in that time, at an average of around $3/gal (when I bought the Prius gas was under a dollar!) So, $12,000 for the gas. But the car was $20K, and I’ve probably paid another $10K for regular maintenance and replacement parts etc etc.

For all practical purposes, I think of the electricity for my EVs as “free”. The cars are so efficient that inevitably the electricity cost is dwarfed by everything else.

Martin sez:

Yes of course anyone who buys a $100K sportscar is not doing so to save money! But I simply wanted clarity on how much the electricity costs.

I really think Gore needs to do a sequel movie: “A Convenient Truth”. No one is really getting the word out there ” to the halibutin’ sloth-like masses” re. the huge green tech. & energy potential- I keep up with some of it, but it’s bigger than I even know, no doubt at all. This society in some ways went off the rails a long time ago (but don’t get me started on when that started). I think that those 35,000 lobbyists in D.C.-and who’s behind them-, and lack of detailed media reporting (as usual-and no doubt influenced by the former) has a lot to do with it-and that’s an understatement. Neither Obama or McCain are fully with it, but McCain with his “drill everywhere and build a lot of nuke plants too” is really out of it. He said that he is a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt-well I got news for him: “Teddy would not approve his message”. The ideal president (the the guy in 1960 would do) would just get on the horn with all the engineers and scientists working in the green field and just stand back and get out of there way-while fully “publicizing” what is going on and all the potential. Simple as that-in a “non-derailed society”, that is. By chance I’m listening to an example of it right now-some joker on PBS republican convention coverage is at the podium and just said “drill baby now”- to which the audience of smiling fools chanted ” drill baby now”-even holding up placards reading “drill now” .Guess all these halibutheads conveniently forgot all about the truth of global warming as soon as the “powers that be” changed the agenda (in the usual 2 week or so cycle) by jacking up oil prices in the past few months (a rather suspicious event that certainly could have been pre-engineered by “someone”-and no doubt about it either). Man oh man-I wish europe started about 60 miles away so I could more easily get away from a society composed of about half “Green Day Style American Idiots” -or if not, they effectively might as well be.

Hmmm- Mike Huckabee is now on the convention podium talking the usual talk of “less govt. under the republicans”-only problem iz: govt. spending and the deficit has gone to record levels in Bush’s 8 years. He’s yapping about $4 gas and less govt. programs-even though a govt. program (state and federal combo) to put a plug-in hybrid in everyone’s garage -and solar on the garage roof- starting in 2010 would kick the halibut out of $4 gas in short order. The typical “republican” M.O.: say you want to get govt. out of everything at all times (except war, war profiteering, and military spending, of course)- forget the reality of what you actually do-just say that ultimately stupid (when taken to it’s logical conclusion) party line at all times. Everything at all costs for so-called “personal freedom”. Forget the larger society and planet and the “common good”. Well Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Eisenhower (even) and JFK would “beg to dream and differ” from the(se) hollow lies”. When they say “don’t raise taxes” they mean don’t raise taxes on the most wealthy people-when both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet beg to dream and differ from this hollow lie. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we finally raised the lousy minimum wage for the first time in what, 25 years. Man oh man-”the republican philosophy”: “don’t look past your own nose, protect what you’ve got at all cost, live the good life with the other vested interest good old boys (and girls) and to heck with almost everyone else-and do all you can, including lying, cheating ,distorting the truth, yada, yada, yada-to KEEP it that way (till antarctica unfreezes). At least the party has Gov. Arnie of Calif-how the heck did they let that happen !? Like I said-this society went off the rails in some respects decades ago.

Martin-yeah, you got that right. But, if politically you can’t stamp out coal-which you in fact could with a fully informed public (try to pull that off in derailed America), then a “delayed solution” tacked onto existing plants is at least better than nothing. If carbon capture could be scaled up to be somewhat cheap, then slap it on those thousands of coal plants around the world “as a stop-gap”- but that’s a big “if”. At least the europeans are looking into it. Of course solar and geothermal cover the whole problem-no doubt about it, at potentially a fraction of the cost. McCain talks of “clean coal” and clean nuclear . But the guy doesn’t know (or he’s lying if he does) that for the cost of getting just some of that -going forward, as in “new plants” you could power the whole country via solar & geothermal. Watched Palin V.P. candidate speech at convention-she did a good job of appealing to “small town America” (very clever, part of the McCain ploy in picking her -no doubt about that) . Only trouble iz: “small town Americans” are ultimately the fools who point blank gave us 8 years of Bush/Cheney- wonderful. I have absolutely no faith in or sympathy for that ultimately non-progressive, “not fully informed and don’t wanna be” -and so, basically, pathetic- voting block. I also have no faith in anyone who cleverly, and with planned disinformation, caters bigtime to that block-period. She also pulled the usual republican ploy of linking “democrats” to the elite and to the Hollywood Crowd and the usual ploy of scaring people with “the arab/foreign threat”. Man -the same cynical, divisive, cleverly calculated Rove-style M.O. This is makes “the diehard republican crowd” such a wonderful bunch of connivers. Of course they also think Gore is a bigtime elite guy. Never mind the inconvenient truth that he is and has been right on just about everything under the sun. Of course McCain is, in some respects, the “maverick” they talk about-trouble iz not nearly enough. As I say: cynical ploys du jour at it again-very clever, very reasonable-sounding but ultimately political tricks as usual. The bottom line iz: NOW “the republicans” are saying “we’ve got to go green”-of course not nearly are they saying this enough. NOW they are agreeing that Gore had/has a point. NOW they are changing the agenda to make it look like their “party of the fat cats” is now with it environmentally and now with it re. “change” across the board. Well I for one remember history, and there’s no excuse for the last 8 years and all the republicans who were with Bush lock stock and barrel on the environment and everything else-and for McCain basically “going along with Bush to get along-and get ahead in the future”- as in trying to get the payoff now by being elected president. Baloney- Gov. Arnie might have a leg to stand on in this regard, McCain doesn’t . Voting for a lie of a war and wanting to stay with it, after all the people the lie killed and maimed, “till we achieve victory” – what a halibuthead. Almost $5000 per second down the drain in a money- making war benefiting the” usual gang of idiots”- a gang which McCain, by backing this halibut, is a member of. All the aforementioned people killed/maimed had/have one life, that’s ONE-and their life,to them should be (as in: no kidding) worth far more than that of Bush, Cheney, Rove, McCain or anyone else – such as the head weasels of war profiteers Haliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root- who wants to put them into the middle of a total lie of a war. There are over 4000 people who “used to be in our military” who would no doubt have loved to have been around to watch all the people have such great fun laughing it up at the republican convention-catch my drift ?

Ah-but trees are very inefficient and we have chopped down a lot of them over the centuries. Ireland used to be a total forest. On further reflection re. “republican style politics”: here we go again-pandering to “small town middle America” so that they “vote against their interests”: as in for continued tax breaks for the rich- at all costs-that’s “job one”. See, if the rich don’t keep getting their Bush/Cheney style tax cuts lordy, lordy it’ll wreck the economy. IF that were really true, what a pathetic commentary on America THAT would be ! I don’t see McCain coming from small town middle America, with white picket fences on his seven homes, via his rich wife. What have Bush/Cheney done for progress in America and “jobs for middle America” ? Gore, defeated by middle America, would have cleaned Bush’s clock in this regard. But like I said, here we go again. All you have to do is this: pitch patriotism, religion, right to life, foreign threat, europeans as “not like us and elitist”,” liberal media” & Hollywood crowd & celebrities equals “democrats”. Just pitch: America First, drill for oil, people vs. owls and treehuggers- “can’t have both”- conservatives vs. “tax and spend liberals” even though Bush & Republicans have spent the country into the frickin’ ground. You know the drill-and certain factions of the republican party (who are extremely elitist and extremely “non-middle America” to the nth degree, but of course) will laugh again at middle America , behind their backs, all the way from the polling booths if this M.O. works again. The rich vested interests will again have used underinfomed “middle America” to screw the country up-not as bad as Bush, of course-nothing could be that bad. Of course knowing where Obama really comes from leaves us with a choice of pre-selected candidates no matter how you look at it. Whatever happened to the candidates who didn’t go for ploys and spoke to the whole country- ESPECIALLY in terms of vision and progress: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK-and even Reagan in a lot more meager way ? The first three would have an absolute field day re. the potential of green tech.

There is a very good news article over at the BBC comparing the 3 main CCS technologies under development.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7584151.stm

I think CCS should at least be investigated as a stop gap technology before cheap solar and electricity storage i.e. ultra capacitors / batteries / EV’s become available over the next 10 to 15 years. Then who needs base load power stations if the storage capacity is large enough?

I’m going to jump in here with a solar comment and avoid the political stuff. Reading along here I keep seeing people talking about putting panels on their roofs. Believe me, for any number of reasons the roof is the location of last resort for the installation of panels, even in places where snow and ice buildup isn’t a problem.

The biggest reason is that, regardless of where you are located you want to be able to adjust the angle of the panels to the sun. PV operates at optimum output at a 90 degree angle of incidence to the sun. The sun moves 47 degrees seasonally in the sky, everywhere on the planet, and being able to adjust the panels to ensure the best angle will net you a hell of a lot more power than just fixing them in one position on the roof.

My panels (www.wagonmaker.com) on the house we built in Colorado, were split between the roof and the ground because we started out as neophytes and bought into the “panels on the roof” line everyone was putting out. Panels on the ground are easy to move, easy to maintain and easy to clean.

Then there’s the reality that panels last longer than many roofing materials, which require replacement, and having to R&R panels is expensive. Plus, the necessary penetrations of the roof to mount them and the DC GFCI requirement adds complexity you don’t need and the danger of roof leaks.

Your fire department will think better of you if you ground mount them too since they aren’t too keen on dragging hoses around on a roof with panels on it, should the worst thing occur and you have a house fire.

These days, given the ability to install PV arrays at higher voltages and use state of the art charge controllers to adjust the charge voltage, I say avoid the roof. You’ll be glad you did

# Tom Eliot wrote:
## the roof is the location of last resort for the installation of panels,

I like having mine on the roof for the following reasons:
1> I don’t have the yard space to put them otherwise.
2> They add another layer of insulation/sun-protection for the roof, so my roof stays cooler and my house needs less cooling.
3> My roof is up higher than the yard so I don’t have the same issues with tree shadows up there.

Coincidentally/luckily I had a new roof put on right before the solar panels. The installers like it that way because they know it would be a huge hassle to remove the panels to repair the roof, so it is best to have a new roof under the new panels.

Yeah, my panels are attached to a frame about 6″ above the roof so there is some airflow.

It is non adjustable, so it isn’t at optimal angle in the winter. Some panels are better than others when subjected to suboptimal angle of sunlight incidence.

By the way, adjusting the angle of the panels seasonally only helps somewhat. If you really want full output you need a full tracking system.

- GV is a “gasoline vehicle”, an old type of car that ran on “gasoline” … while you were holding this nozzle, you were staring at a big sticker on the face of the “gas pump” that informed you that the vapors you were breathing were known to cause cancer. -

Martin, I know that you are not one to accept compliments easily, but this stuff is hilarious! Maybe there will be a stand-up comedy circuit for this “brand” of humor!

- Comment by DrTaras September 6, 2008 @ 5:48 am -

Your clock is off by an hour or else it does not recognize Day Light Savings time; alternatively your server is somewhere in the Pacific!

Martin sez:

You’ve figured out my Pacific hide-away

T.J.,

why would you describe trees as “inefficient” when they cost nothing, require zero maintenance, and can produce unlimited copies of themselves (at an exponential rate), all for free? Do you know any man-made machines that fit that description? They operate for decades, even centuries, removing CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering it in a form that can remain stable for millennia. In addition, they produce food & oxygen for us parasitic heterotrophs, distill thousands of litres of water per day (per tree), produce building materials for our homes & vehicles (even the Aptera contains some wood).

They may be a relatively slow way of extracting CO2 from the air, but collectively they remove megatons of carbon from the atmosphere annually. If we had to perform this function through chemical or physical means, without trees or other plants, it’s quite conceivable that it would cost us trillions of dollars annually.

They may be slow, but I would not describe them as inefficient.

All the best,

Chris H.

I know this thread is pretty US oriented but maybe a Europe anecdote might be of interest. Here in Italy electricity is pretty expensive, and sounds like our metering system is at least as complex as PG&E – don’t ask me to make a spreadsheet, please – although once you start using over about 4,000kWh/yr, it tends to average out at around €0.22/kWh: yes, that’s over 30¢ US. (You can get quite a bit lower if your household consumes less than 2500kWh/yr, but you wouldn’t be charging your Tesla very often I guess

However, the feed-in tariff for PV solar installations is great – I’ve been producing now for 15 months and it is clear that I have a <10yr payback (probably 9yrs), and the production subsidy contract (€0.42/kWh feed-in + net metering) is in fact 20yrs. This means that, not only is the electricity for an EV “free” (over 10yrs), but is in fact *a way to make money* with the capital investment. I know this sounds quite surreal, but as a domestic user (in Italy, but Germany, Spain and France are similar), if I can increase my electricity usage – and I have the capital to invest in the PV – then at least the PV is an investment that pays itself back, with interest.

Therefore, for really “squishy” pricing, arguably in certain situations in Italy, Martin’s driving style and Tesla could cost around 10¢ US a mile, or… could make you money. So long as you have the capital for the PV installation, even a less efficient driving style could be welcome… you’d find more outlet for a rock solid investment.

BTW my panels are on the 30deg pitch roof – the loss due to lower efficiency winter production (pretty minimal, winter is only 10% of annual production) is way offset by the decreased likelihood of theft – a growing problem.

Martin sez:

Of course gasoline also costs lots more in Italy than it does in the USA – even as we reach $4 per gallon. But I absolutely agree – solar fixes the equation no matter what the math.

I’m gonna be unusually critical for a moment, so bear with me:

I agree with the earlier poster that the electricity is basically “free” when compared to the cost of battery replacements.

Until somebody makes an EV battery that lasts the full life of the vehicle, studying the number of pennies it costs to charge is a purely academic exercise.

Martin sez:

One more thing to keep in mind: at 125,000 miles, the Roadster pack will not be dead- it will just have reduced performance. Most cars I have owned have reduced performance at that mileage.

Martin,
When you say “reduced performance” at 125,000 does that mean reduced maximum range, but still getting the same speed?

Or does that mean that speed and range are likely to be showing age at 125,000 miles?

If all other parts are properly maintained and in good condition, I understand that the battery should still have about 70% of it’s original capacity at 100,000 miles.

I don’t know about other owners, but with $109,000+ invested, I plan on keeping mine in PERFECT condition for many years.

Martin sez:

But you should know that even doing everything perfectly, the batteries will age – the whole calendar life thing…

Sure, I will send you a blog review on the Vectrix. Where do I send it? I don’t see your email address on this blog.
If you want to contact me privately, I think you have my email from the registration.

Chimp,

Once you’ve got a topless car, your storage is limited to what you can manage to fit around. I’ve carried home a dozen 10′ 2×4 in my little two seater: just stuck them out the back window (the Honda Del Sol has a flat power rear window running perpendicular to the car, directly behind the cab).

Martin sez:

Just be sure to tie your load down carefully if you do this! I had a 4X4 slide into my hand when I swerved to avoid a deer in my Audi TT. This led to my first and only experience with an airbag. Not at all pretty.

+1 for the tiedowns!

I can vouch for James’ enthusiasm for his Vectrix. He and I have met a couple of times, each on our Vectrix’s. I got mine a year ago when I grew impatient waiting for my Tesla to arrive. James and I end up talking for hours about EV’s and the energy issues. He’s been busy chatting up some state politicians, too. Trying to get laws improved for EV’s and Hybrids.

There’s a group of Tesla owners here in Seattle that have gotten together, once to check out the color selection kit I recently got. The excitement level is steadily building among us. There’s at least one Signature 100 Roadster in this area, so we’re anticipating seeing a Roadster on the roads around here not too long from now.

Electric rates for me is very simple. $10 “facilities fee”, then $0.082/KWh. I’m paying an extra $0.01 or so on every KWh for “green”, renewable electricity. I’m a member of an Electric Cooperative, so these rates may be a bit different than Puget Sound customers in the Seattle area.

Martin, have you got your mobile charging adapter for your Roadster yet? What’s the reason for the delay in getting that device? I’d never want to leave home without one! The way you’ve mentioned it, I sense that you’d also prefer it in your trunk, “just in case”.

Martin sez:

No mobile charger yet – I don’t know what the hold up is. You are right – I would like ot in my trunk for trips where I am pushing the range of the car! I would probably not haul it around for normal commute days though.

Martin, do you have an ETA for the drive train upgrade for your roadster? It will be great to hear your impressions between the two.

Martin sez:

No word yet on an upgrade schedule.

Hoping Martin or others know the answer to the
following: if one’s house is already on the
PGE E7 rate, does getting the Tesla delivered
automatically mean that the house needs to go
onto one of the E9 rates, or can the whole house +
charging station stay on the E7 rate?

If it’s the first, then it seems as if there
might be circumstances under which a second electrical system on the E9B rate might make
sense, at least for one particular house…

Martin sez:

But it is also a bad deal if your solar annually generates more energy than your house uses annually – PG&E will keep the surplus (without paying you) and will not apply it to your E9B usage – you must always pay the full amount of your E9B meter usage regardless of how much surplus your E7 meter shows.

Specs I’ve seen for the Telsa High Power Connector give the input voltage range as 208-240V. The specs also specifically mention that any if a 3-phase service is used, any 2 phases can be connected to it.

Chris- I meant that trees are inefficient vs. the amount of co2 being put out. Wikipedia article or carbon sequestration sez that trees (including urban trees) remove 12.1% of yearly U.S. co2 emissions- said that to meet Kyoto goal of 7% reduction in co2 would “require planting an area the size of Texas with trees every 30 years”. Article said that the oceans are biggest c02 removers.” Our efficiency in putting out co2″ obviously makes the planet’s systems inefficient. I was just on an Alaska cruise (”see your glaciers while they’re still around”). Mendenhall glacier outside Juneau has really shrunk-especially in like the last 2 years. At Hubbard glacier, further north, ship gets to within 1/3 mile-glacier is about 2 1/2 times taller than ship. Parts of the glacier would fall off into the sea at about 15 min. intervals (called “calving”)- some where huge chunks, a few stories high. The naturalist guide on the ship said that there was more ice in the water leading up to the glacier than he had seen on prior cruises on the ship all year long. Hope this doesn’t mean even more rapid acceleration of global warming in the last few months. The ranger at the Mendenhall glacier visitor center said that they were surprised by the increased melting rate in the last 2 years. Sailing up to the Hubbard glacier at 7:00 a.m. was like sailing into your freezer. Some of the ice is really blue-the ice that was deeper in the glacier where most of the air was squeezed out of it.

Martin said:

Is there a good repository for these spreadsheets? It would be cool to have them available and under revision control suitable for an open-source project.

——————————–

That’s a good question. Not sure I have a good answer –yet. Maybe I can run the idea past, say, Plug-In America or the Electric Auto Association. They might welcome a collection of EV spreadsheets according to area and utility company.

I suspect, however, that we’ll have to offer them more than your two files (for PG&E and SCE) and mine (for Rocky Mountain Power), or they won’t be convinced. Let’s hope that others will also take up the challenge soon!

Hi Martin — Been a solar generator for a while and spent a bunch of time looking at E7 vs E9 schedules, etc. Seems like one of the things we, as a group, might want to do is lobby to increase the baseline quantities for anyone who owns an electric car. Seems like at least as good of a reason as electric heating.

Have you or anyone you know attempted this yet with PG&E?

BTW — Thanks for all of your efforts at and post Tesla!

Martin sez:

I agree – why reward people for electric heating anyway? My contacts at PG&E have all left…