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Toyota Partners With Tesla To Make Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes "Toyota just announced that it will invest $50 million in Tesla Motors and the two companies will partner to manufacture electric vehicles to meet California's growing demand for greener cars. Bay Area residents should be especially excited, as this venture is expected to create thousands of new jobs in the San Francisco Bay area, and is sure to be a boon to California's flagging economy. Tesla fans as well should rejoice as the new partnership will allow the EV startup to bring its highly coveted, iconic design to more affordable electric vehicles like the Model S sedan, which will sell for $49,900 and gets 300 miles on a 3- to 5-hour charge."
It's the other way around, actually. 80 - 90% of a vehicle's lifetime energy use is in driving it around. You can google many versions of this calculation, but here's one from Slate.
You might be remembering the report from a few years ago that claimed a Hummer was more efficient than a Prius, but that's been pretty thoroughly debunked many times now.
Because that post deserves it. What a load of BS.
First off Top Gear isn't a source of factual information, they are an entertainment program. They have a massive anti-EV, anti-Hybrid bias. Do you remember Tesla story where they had to push the Tesla off because it ran out of power? Well it didn't actually run out of power, they just did that for dramatic effect. I love watching Top Gear as entertainment, but they are not credible source of anything.
So who knows what the actual facts of the M3 run where, but still you are just making the information up, because even top gear didn't make those claims.
They raced a Prius around a track at it's absolute limit, pedal to the metal 100% of the time, and followed it in a M3 which could match the Prius easily at part throttle and under those circumstances and claimed the M3 got better gas mileage. That is possible but given it is Top gear, in no way guaranteed.
But even Top gear didn't claim that an M3 got better highway MPG.
The rest of the post is just a reiteration of the debunked Hummer is better than a Prius FUD.
Pure FUD, no facts. If there isn't a mod for that, there should be.
Not even lose to accurate. Manufacture of a car is about 50,000 miles worth of gasoline for the average vehicle. So if a car lasts 300,000 miles (500,000 for diesels) then we're looking at just 14% of total energy expenditure, not 75%.
Of course this is why the Cash for Clunkers idea was ridiculous. If people had been required to upgrade to 40mpg or higher, then it would have been good, but going from 20 to 25mpg is nothing. The increased fuel efficiency does NOT make up for the ~50,000 miles worth of manufacturing energy wasted to destroy a perfectly working vehicle.
It's the equivalent of me going round smashing windows in order to try to boost the economy. (Or starting a war.) It's destruction not production
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That's already taken care of. The rolling blackouts in California were frauds, perpetrated by Enron, which was gaming the California electricity tariff system for money. A fair number of those responsible are in prison now.