How green are electric cars

Tesla definitely is the most efficient EV out there. Maybe Lucid now rivals that.
Also there is no really working and ease of use competition to Tesla Supercharger network.
The problem with the (majority) rest of the networks is they sucked government money for installation, but the problem is the maintenance.
 
Wow- this question brings out super strong feelings - but this is A2OC - it would be great if we could all disagree a bit more cheerfully!!
We couldn’t really spot the electric car that could do everything for us - we were looking for a small hatchback not needing or wanting a big saloon - so got a second hand (but biggest battery) i3 which is great fun - but keep our A2 FSI for long trips.
I suspect our A2 will be our last ICE car - but it might take a few years for battery technology to give us the range we want on a small car and prices to start to soften, so hoping it lasts a good few more years…,
Chris
 
PS: just one info regarding Tesla and longterm (over 10 years) maintenance costs. Tesla makes changes/optimizations on all parts “on the fly”. So for example they see something does not work, they change it immediatelly and so on and so on. This si great for first owner, maybe second, etc. until this part needs replacement. Then, you will not know which part to order and probably Tesla will not have it in stock. Especially if the part becomes a major problem on many vehicles and they will run out ofvthe stock. This is quite big problem in USA with independent repairers. Not only that: there were cases when the same car had one new part and one old part installed in the suspension. Well, these are not the problems for first owner to worry about and lease is the way to go.
We all know what a problem this can be with obsolete and nonavailable parts for our A2. For now there are still scrapcars around, when this will end…
While for example legacy automakers do the changes with MY changes and some even rarer. For example Toyota: you can get parts for 15 years old cars without any problem. BMW: 40 years old cars no problem (usually). They think about aftersales support when developing the car.
This is another way that Tesla is shaking up the traditional approach to car purchase and ownership. You basically have no right to service and it strongly discourages independents. It's a closed shop. As a classic car owner this feels fundamentally wrong.

On the flip side that allows them to do continous iterative improvements without tying it to specific model years.
They use a lot of software design principles in car design - things like backward compatibility. For example, you can fit the Inverter from a 2022 M3 to a 2018 M3, even though the component is substantially redesigned and has gone through at least 3 majors revisions. So they dont need to maintain stock of 3 or 4 differnet inverters for the car, just 1.

When they do have breaking functional changes, they typically offer older cars upgrade paths - for example you can upgrade the MCU 1 ina 2013 Model S to MCU2.5 to avail of new software features. The MCU2.5 is backward compatible with the ancilliary hardware of the old Model S (cameras, etc.). By contrast I don't think I can upgrade the head unit in my 2016 alhambra to a 2019 one.

The highly integrated and smart nature of the car also allows a LOT of bugs/faults to be diagnosed and resolved remotely. e.g. Heatpump issue in extreme cold. Took them a few months to fix, but no cars had to be returned so overall a better experience. Sharp contrast to VW ID3/4 battery cooling pump issues that swept the US and Europe and took them ages to a) diagnose, b) replace. It transpires (after a year) that most of the issues were false alarms due to coolant cavitation when the cars were left sit for a bit and could be prevented/cured with a software fix.

Time will tell what approach they have to much older cars, but my sister's 2013 Model S is as good as new for parts availability.
 
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