They're less toxic than the lead-acid batteries in regular cars.

 

But, not in an attempt to confirm what the first dude said, there a lot more batteries in the electric car. sooo.....In the most recent "green analysis" I read about hybrid/electric cars, the ungreeness of the batteries is pretty minor worry.

 

The Tesla is an awesome engineering feat, but I'm still not completely sold on the greeness of it. All those batteries, plus they need to be charged somehow, and electricity from your outlet doesn't exactly come from solar panels (yet anyway), and if everyone replaced their gas cars with strictly electric and charged them at home, well yeah.

 

^totally. Right now, I'm thinking they are "green negative". Ha. Meanging, they are less green than their gas counterparts. They still require petroleum-based energy to generate the electricity they use, and the production uses energy, and the batteries are a disposal problem. I think on balance, if you powered them w/ alternative clean energy like solar, they'd be great. Right now, not so much. But, like with anything else, you can't just have it all at once, so I'm glad they are developing the cars.

 

You are misinformed. They get recycled, actually. And their constituent materials are rather benign, for the most part.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=66

 

Imagine worst case/"equivalent" scenario and that the power plant that provides the electricity to charge the Tesla is powered by large motors burning gasoline. So this is one or several gigantic gasoline motors -vs- many much smaller motors directly powering vehicles.

Now go look up "efficiencies of scale."

Now realize that for each unit of work performed (measured in watts) a single large power plant (in da 'hood), is far more efficient than millions of small power plants (under the hood). If that weren't the case, we'd all simply have generators at each of our house, and why bother with a national electric grid?

There's your answer.

 

From what I can find, the Tesla produces 0.24 lbs of CO2 per mile driven. The Prius produces 0.34 lbs of C02 per mile driven.

It's not a zero-emission car unless your 100% solar, sure, but it's a damn lot better than any other car out there that can do 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.

And for $0.02 per mile they say - even at 28 mpg, my S2000 costs $0.15 per mile with gas prices the way they are today.

 

There is an alternative. One of the Tesla engineers has a solar panel at his house. He charges his Tesla off of it and also uses it for his home (partial), so his Tesla runs without petrol sourced energy.

 

Nice way to buy into a complete lie. This is related to the completely ludicrous line that says a Hummer is greener than a Prius. Yeah, maybe in the 17th dimension it is, but in the real world, the Hummer is far bigger, far heavier, takes more materials (including plastic, meaning it requires more oil just to make than a much smaller hybrid) to produce, has a less fuel-efficient engine, has creally bad aerodynamic quaities, etc. etc. on down the line.

Someone needs to do a little more thinking instead of buying into talking points.

 

lol
You guys need to relax.

a) my comment was meant to be slightly inflammatory for purposes of entertainment, and otherwise not entirely serious

b) it doesn't take 17 dimensions. Fact is, the greenest thing you can do is drive your current car for the rest of your life. If you look at product life cycles - testing, plant manufacturing, materials and waste during the build, transport, operation, maintenance, and finally disposal of any new car (hybrids included), the net effect on the environment is WAY worse than just driving around your existing car and pumping some C02 into the air. Cars only put a fraction of the man-made C02 into the atmosphere.

Now, if you're already gonna buy a new car, which isn't a green thing to do in the first place, then sure, go buy a hybrid if that floats your boat. The net difference between the two types of cars is probably minimal. My problem with the whole thing is that people rush out to buy hybrids like they are helping the problem....they are actually making it worse by putting more cars on the road. They should be waiting until theirs dies, if the environment is so important to them.

Recycling is great, but that doesn't make it GOOD for the environment. If there wasn't any waste to that process, then there would be no need to recycle the batteries. Don't let these companies fool you into thinking it is completely clean. The recycling plant uses energy, it pollutes while it was being built and it pollutes in operation, indirectly and probably directly. It's not so simple as just "recycling it" and making it all better. It's better than throwing it in the river, sure, but the process has more inputs than fairy dust, and waste doesn't just magically turn into eevian, either.

As for the solar panel on the roof...that's great if you can swing it and you live in a sunny place.

And, like I said in my previous post, I'm all for these cars and I'd buy a Tesla if I had the coin and the patience to get one.