Lightning vs old tech (or so they say)

[ZeusDriver]

The Lightning beats the Insight pretty easily on efficiency ’cause BEV.

It's fun to imagine that it does, but that is not the case in real life.

The Insight is far more efficient at moving one or two people and some luggage, if you are thinking about resource consumption and generation of CO2.

I am something of a "nut" about such things, so when my wife started talking about getting a new car, I put together a spreadsheet outlining costs in fuel, electricity and CO2 costs for driving and vehicle production. The vehicle types she is looking at range from about 30 to 40 in MPG (plain gas or hybrid) and from 2.8 to 3.5 m/kWh for the BEVs. I put my Lightning on the sheet as a reference point at 2.2 m/kWh. I assumed a three year life before buying the next vehicle.

(I have been buying one new vehicle per year recently, but use to get many years out of a car.)

I assumed 9600 miles per year.

A modern 40 mpg hybrid small SUV produces, in three years, 25,400 lb of CO2 between fueling and production. My lightning is not a whole lot worse, at 28,727. A Kia EV6 is better, at 19,094.

The Insight (a new one, but with the same specs as the old one) would come in at about 14,000.

That is incredibly pessimistic for this particular Insight, however, because its construction CO2 cost is 0... it was long ago amortized over three years. So If I had this particular Insight, its yearly CO2 footprint would be 3200 lb. Driving my Lightning is about 9 times worse.

If we were talking only about immediate consumption and CO2 generation, then the Insight is just slightly better than the Lightning (3200 lb vs 3709 lb).

If we time traveled back to 2000, then the Insight would be about even with the Ford Ranger EV that was available in California... if you only look at CO2 from driving. However, the Insight would still be far better in construction CO2. which tracks with vehicle mass.

Environmentally, it is always far better to keep driving the old car, unless it is a true gas guzzler.

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[22legit2quit]

It's fun to imagine that it does, but that is not the case in real life.

The Insight is far more efficient at moving one or two people and some luggage, if you are thinking about resource consumption and generation of CO2.

I am something of a "nut" about such things, so when my wife started talking about getting a new car, I put together a spreadsheet outlining costs in fuel, electricity and CO2 costs for driving and vehicle production. The vehicle types she is looking at range from about 30 to 40 in MPG (plain gas or hybrid) and from 2.8 to 3.5 m/kWh for the BEVs. I put my Lightning on the sheet as a reference point at 2.2 m/kWh. I assumed a three year life before buying the next vehicle.

(I have been buying one new vehicle per year recently, but use to get many years out of a car.)

I assumed 9600 miles per year.

A modern 40 mpg hybrid small SUV produces, in three years, 25,400 lb of CO2 between fueling and production. My lightning is not a whole lot worse, at 28,727. A Kia EV6 is better, at 19,094.

The Insight (a new one, but with the same specs as the old one) would come in at about 14,000.

That is incredibly pessimistic for this particular Insight, however, because its construction CO2 cost is 0... it was long ago amortized over three years. So If I had this particular Insight, its yearly CO2 footprint would be 3200 lb. Driving my Lightning is about 9 times worse.

If we were talking only about immediate consumption and CO2 generation, then the Insight is just slightly better than the Lightning (3200 lb vs 3709 lb).

If we time traveled back to 2000, then the Insight would be about even with the Ford Ranger EV that was available in California... if you only look at CO2 from driving. However, the Insight would still be far better in construction CO2. which tracks with vehicle mass.

Environmentally, it is always far better to keep driving the old car, unless it is a true gas guzzler.

Well said. Good points on the carbon footprint or whatever the buzzword is.

 

[chl]

My 2012 Nissan Leaf averages about 4.7miles per kWh, local driving, very little highway speed, but only has 24kWh capacity new so range is limited. Cost per mile is about 2.7 cents if I include all the costs the utility includes in my bill which comes to about 14 cents / kWh (always charge at home) - btw, battery capacity is now about 83% after 13.25 years, low mileage. A lot of stuff can go into the Leaf, the rear seats fold down,

My Lightning, local driving has had as high as 3.2 miles per kWh in the mild Sept weather and the SR battery has 98 kWh new. That cost per mile about 4.3 cents.

Our 2015 Prius hybrid averages over 50mpg, gas recently was about $2.63 per gallon so the cost is about 5 cents per mile. We've put a lot of stuff in the Prius with the seats folded down - my wife used to do a lot of pottery shows, so we'd get tables and bins in there, and what didn't fit would go in the pickup.

I didn't include the hidden costs or what economists refer to as 'externalities' to the environment which are higher when burning gasoline, but because of those I prefer one of the EV's to the Prius.

 

[22legit2quit]

The Prius continues to be brought up. I have alot of respect for it because it is the better OVERALL car between the two. This is all things considered, drivability, fuel economy, space, seating. It is just a more reasonable choice for a normal person. I remember a time when it was the hottest car for any uber driver.

That being said, the gen 1 insight from a fuel economy standard is the best choice. Before all of the comments come on stats about the Prius eco that came out in 2015, which was a plug in hybrid that had an electric only driving mode please remember that it would be the same unfair comparison that others have commented about earlier. The insight doesn’t have that, but if it just had the same setup it would still be lighter and the drag coefficient is similar.

I do plan to make the insight have a plug in capability with a fully electric drive mode. Which I indicated in the original post. When that eventually happens I have no doubt that there will be very few, if any vehicles that could get close.

From what I researched and taking from some of everyone’s comments. The lucid air pure, model 3 and a few others are in the 4.5 mi/kwh range. These are with the small batteries (88 kWh I believe for the lucid which is probably the top end of EV imo). They have a single motor but the weights are 4500lbs or there about.

So, I add a new Nissan leaf battery pack, motor, inverter, the whole smack. That adds 1000lbs. That makes the car weigh, let’s just round to 3000lbs. I have a slightly smaller, depending on battery choice, battery capacity. I’m also substantially lighter and still maintain my original drivetrain, so maybe I’ll figure out how to substantially charge battery while driving with the motor but it isn’t the point. What do you think would be the best mpg or mpge? Again this wasn’t the point.

I just wanted to compare and document the lightning against old tech, kind of like the title indicates. This isn’t a laboratory controlled test trial or something like that, but I’ll gladly take suggestions on how to make this more informative. It’s just meant to show the true value of the lightning as a very reasonable daily driver both from an overall value standpoint and efficiency. Also, it is showing the very obvious issues with innovations in efficiency being either suppressed, completely dogged out for one reason or another, outright ignored or a combination of all of those. It also stands to give others whether that’s potential adopters, those who have left the community and those who haven’t been given the right information the ability to make a better informed choice. If i wanted to compare a model 3 or lucid air that’s fairly simple math. I don’t really need to lease or buy one to know that a smaller electric vehicle will likely get better range than a larger one. Thanks for all the feedback!

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