This is the Tesla Roadster:

It is all electric, runs on 6,000 cells of Lithium Ion battery (essentially the same cells that are in a laptop). It accelerates to 60mph in 4 seconds, and has a range of about 200 miles. It’s wildly exciting to ride in.

A fillup takes 3.5 hours of 220V at 70A, which is 15kW x 3.5 hours or 54kWh or about $5 of full-price electricity at Northern California prices (about $.10/kWh). (In practice, you’d get a special night-time rate that is cheaper.) That comes to about 250Wh/mile or $.025/mile.

Compare that with a fleet average vehicle getting about 25mpg. With California gas prices at $3.50/gallon, that’s about $.14/mile, or nearly 6 times more expensive (and that “fleet average” vehicle certainly won’t accelerate like the Tesla!)

Here in California, that electricity is probably produced by natural gas - that generates about 650 g of CO2 per kWh of electricity generated (source: UK goverment report), which gives the Tesla a footprint of about 125 gCO2/mile.

Compare that with a “fleet average” 25mpg car burning gasoline, generating 8800 g CO2 / gallon burned (source: EPA), which translates to about 352 gCO2/mile.  In fact, a delicately driven Prius getting 60mpg is roughly equivalent.

But the good news is that with 10 square meters of solar panel, you can generate enough solar power to drive your Tesla 200 miles per day with zero (first-order) carbon output!

More broadly, developing expertise in electric power storage and automotive drive trains opens the door to leveraging future more efficient electricity generation opportunities, such as hydroelectric, wind, industrial PV, or even nuclear power for personal transportation.