Idea For Elon Musk & Tesla: Put CO2 & Energy Savings On Touchscreen

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An idea for Elon Musk and Tesla is to add a new measure to the dashboard that shows how much CO2 is saved per car per mile. This would show how much electric energy each Tesla owner saves. The tweet below is where this idea originated. It includes a link to an article from SpringerProfessional.

The article in SpringerProfessional raises questions about another article. This article is a German research article titled: “Fossil fuel Engines, Wind Engines and Diesel Engines. What does the CO2 balance sheet reveal?” That article was written by Christoph Buchal, Hans-Dieter Karl, and Hans-Werner Sinn. It’s an opinion piece that claims that a Tesla Model 3 emits 11–18% more CO2 over its lifespan than a Mercedes C220 diesel car does. However, a correction of the calculation’s errors show that the Model 3 actually emits 63% less CO2 than previously stated.

The SpringerProfessional piece that Buchal, Karl, and Sinn lose focus in their article since they don’t seem to know just how coal or ICE (internal combustion engines) work.

6 Liters of Diesel = 42 kWh Needed

The article highlights that about 42 kWh are needed to produce every 6 liters of diesel. Several factors are taken into account that show this and it also shows that this takes an electric car 200 kilometers or around 124 miles. Factors include numbers that come from ExxonMobil, which told Springer Professional, “the largest amount of energy is consumed during the actual drilling activity, which takes a few weeks or months, depending on the type of rock and the depth of the hole, which can be up to 80,000 kWh per day.”

The innovative Transport Policy Working Group says that 1 GWh is needed to produce crude oil with an energy amount of 277 GWh. Also, factored in is the transport of crude oil to refineries via deep-sea tanker. These ships can carry up to 300,000 tonnes of oil and consume about a thousand of their cargo capacity per day. Also included is the transport of crude oil by pipeline — to transport it for more than 500 kilometers, pumps with high power are required. The author calculated that the average length of the pipelines has an annual energy expenditure of 583 GWh for gasoline and 833 GWh for diesel.

Add in the energy it takes to refine the crude oil and then transport gas and diesel fuel to the filling stations.

The Idea for Tesla

The idea for Tesla is to show how much CO2 is saved from Tesla owners using Teslas — right on the touchscreen. Tesla already shows CO2 and energy savings on the mobile app and online based on vehicle referrals. However, a feature highlighting savings from an owner’s miles driven and updating as you drive would be extra cool.

Perhaps showing more people just how much a Tesla saves can inspire new potential customers to go electric — or can give them justification for doing so.

Image credit: Zach Shahan

 


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Johnna Crider

Johnna owns less than one share of $TSLA currently and supports Tesla's mission. She also gardens, collects interesting minerals and can be found on TikTok

Johnna Crider has 1996 posts and counting. See all posts by Johnna Crider