How green is a Tesla, really?

Critics point to three main factors that make a Tesla dirtier than the EPA’s ratings, or the company’s own data, would suggest. First, coal-burning power plants emit not just CO2 but also other noxious gases like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide—and in far greater quantities than gas-powered cars. “If a smog-testing center could measure the effective emissions of a Tesla Model S through a tailpipe,” Weiss wrote, “the owner would face fines, penalties, or the sale of the vehicle under state ‘clunker buyback’ programs.” (This problem isn’t Tesla’s fault, obviously, and it would vanish with a cleaner energy grid.)

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Second, electric vehicles are more environmentally destructive to manufacture, starting with the energy required to produce their lithium-ion batteries. Those battery packs today are big, bulky, and extremely expensive to manufacture—especially Tesla’s, which is larger and more powerful than that of its competitors. And many electric-vehicle batteries contain rare-earth minerals that are hard to come by and costly to extract. The Tesla’s AC induction motors don’t use rare-earth magnets, but even the company’s engineers would admit that the Model S takes more energy to produce than, say, a Toyota Camry. The question is how long it takes to close that initial gap once you start driving your zero-emissions Tesla. The more you drive it, the greener it becomes.

That leads to the third main argument against the Model S: that it hogs more power than advertised. Weiss reckons that the Model S’s energy-efficiency is dragged down heavily by “vampire load,” or the power that drains from the battery while the car is not in use. Those idle losses played a starring role in John Broder’s famous New York Times piece about running out of juice on a Tesla test drive. Otherwise satisfied owners complain that their cars lose battery range just sitting in the garage.

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