The Tesla app has a Charge Stats section that include a "gas savings" number, which, as far as I can tell is utterly bogus. Are there settings somewhere to make it more realistic? Nothing about this is going to change how happy I am with the car! (I've suspected all along that there was basically no difference in fuel cost/mile between the Tesla and the kind of ICE car a tesla buyer is likely to be switching from, so that's my inherent bias)
I just passed my one year anniversary with the car and just turned over 15,000 miles, so I thought it would be a good chance to look at this. The app says I've spent $1592 on electricity and "saved" $630 vs buying gas.
To start with, Tesla uses an average cost for gasoline in Massachusetts of about $4.50/gallon for the last year, while AAA reports that in their surveys across the state the average was about $3.75. The latter number is certainly more consistent with the numbers I've seen posted onthe stations as I've driven by, so I'd like to correct that to the more reasonable number.
Second, how is it making the cost comparison? I replaced a Ford C-max (hybrid, non-plugin), which is a similar size, though much lighter, vehicle. It averaged 39 mpg over the 9 years we drove it. So 15,000 miles last year would have cost us $3.75/gallon / 39 miles/gallon X 15000 miles = $1442 per year of driving, or about $150 less than paying for electricity for the Tesla. (Before you ask, yes I've easily had $150 worth of more fun in the Tesla). Fleet costs may well be different, but this app is purporting to tell me how much *I* have saved driving *my* car.
I understand why they want to inflate their value, and in the end it doesn't really matter, but five decades of conditioning working as a scientist and having alarm bells go off at numbers that don't pass the "does this make sense" test makes me unhappy every time I look at that screen in the app. As they say, facts matter, and I hate it when "my side" uses bogus numbers.
I just passed my one year anniversary with the car and just turned over 15,000 miles, so I thought it would be a good chance to look at this. The app says I've spent $1592 on electricity and "saved" $630 vs buying gas.
To start with, Tesla uses an average cost for gasoline in Massachusetts of about $4.50/gallon for the last year, while AAA reports that in their surveys across the state the average was about $3.75. The latter number is certainly more consistent with the numbers I've seen posted onthe stations as I've driven by, so I'd like to correct that to the more reasonable number.
Second, how is it making the cost comparison? I replaced a Ford C-max (hybrid, non-plugin), which is a similar size, though much lighter, vehicle. It averaged 39 mpg over the 9 years we drove it. So 15,000 miles last year would have cost us $3.75/gallon / 39 miles/gallon X 15000 miles = $1442 per year of driving, or about $150 less than paying for electricity for the Tesla. (Before you ask, yes I've easily had $150 worth of more fun in the Tesla). Fleet costs may well be different, but this app is purporting to tell me how much *I* have saved driving *my* car.
I understand why they want to inflate their value, and in the end it doesn't really matter, but five decades of conditioning working as a scientist and having alarm bells go off at numbers that don't pass the "does this make sense" test makes me unhappy every time I look at that screen in the app. As they say, facts matter, and I hate it when "my side" uses bogus numbers.
