Greenercars.org still hates Tesla

[chriSharek]

The other curious facts in their table is that the 2014 85 scores a 37 and the 2015 scores a 46. Now, to my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong here folks) there is NO difference in the size of the batteries, the size/weight of the overall vehicle or anything! Why the big jump in scoring - or moreover - why any difference?

And they list both the 60 and the 85 as a 5,000 pound vehicle. I don't think this is correct either . . .

 

[traxila]

Their methodology is whacked. I suspect that they may not be amortizing the manufacturing-related emissions over the vehicle’s entire lifetime, but rather over just one year. Otherwise I can’t see how they come up with these numbers. The fact that they inexplicably list both the 60kWh and 85kWh models at the same inaccurate (5000lb) curb weight, whereas in reality the 60kWh model is 200lbs lighter than 85kWh, is further evidence that they’re just making stuff up. I say we sic Elon on this. After what he did to Broder, I’d love to see his takedown of these guys.

Elon's got more important things to do. I suspect we all do. It would prob be their wet dream for Elon to put them in the press. Let them fester in the corner.

 

[chickensevil]

Well, I wrote to them again, I kinda took some of your guys comments in my response (hope you don't mind) it just annoys me that they continue to have a serious hate for Tesla...

Your latest blog posting talking about the i3 and then finally mentioning Tesla, leaves me with more questions than it answers.

First off, 65kW doesn't exist because A: if the car was 65kW it would drive slower than a Prius and B: if you intended to say 65kWh then that product doesn't exist at all.


Second you list the curb weight as 5,000 pounds... This is grossly overweight even if you did have a bunch of weighty options on the car. Mine is just barely over 4600 as an 85kWh car, and I have quite a few options including the heavier glass roof.


So if you can't even get basic numbers right, how can you expect anyone to take your data as credible.


Now, if you would please tell me how your 2014 Tesla 85kWh scores a 37 and the 2015 scores a 46??? There is no substantial difference between the two years. Because this is what really bothers me about the whole thing... It is like you finally took enough crap from us complaining at you guys that you gave the 2015 a decent score, but still haven't touched previous years... So what changed?

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Elon's got more important things to do. I suspect we all do. It would prob be their wet dream for Elon to put them in the press. Let them fester in the corner.

I would agree, except the LEED program uses these guys as their "standard" for what is green and what isn't. And this program is used across the whole country. Heck, even the gigafactory is being built with a target of scoring a LEED platinum rating... So this little company isn't just some crazy tabloid that you can just ignore and hope it goes away.

 

[Gizmotoy]

I can forgive the, um, "rounding up" of the weight from 4,600 to 5,000.

You probably shouldn't. Earlier in the thread I posted that according to articles online vehicle weight is a primary component of their algorithm. If one of their main metrics is weight, and they're adding another 400 lbs for the hell of it, clearly something is up. That's above the fact that weight itself should *not* be a major part of a "Green Car" algorithm on its own. You can have an efficient heavy car despite its weight, or an inefficient light car.

A quote directly from GreenerCars' analyst in January, 2014:

"We rated the Tesla this year, and it’s a heavy vehicle with a heavy battery," Vaidyanathan said. "Weight is one of the biggest determinants."

The link from last year, if anyone's interested: ACEEE Green Car Ratings: No Respect for Weighty Tesla | PluginCars.com

 

[jvonbokel]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I found 2 spots in my new employer's parking lot reserved for cars with a minimum "green score" of 40, and thought for sure the Ford Escape parked there was in violation. Sadly, not only is it allowed to park there, but apparently my 2012 Model S is not (though I doubt anyone would guess that if I did). While I'm here I might as well respond to some old posts about the "MPG" they're using.

All the Model S listings, How did they get the '2.8 MPG City' '2.87 MPG Highway'??? going full retard and looking in the mirror?

And isn't 2.8 a bit low? Shouldn't it be more like 3.5 to 4 mi/kWh?

Yes their estimate seems a bit high on energy usage. I believe that's about 357Wh per mile which I only get in the dead of winter and heavy on the accelerator.

As with all the other data, this comes from the EPA. The EPA measures energy consumption from the wall, which includes charging loss, so they're at 38kWh/100mi, or about 380Wh/mi, which checks out, because 89MPGe equates to 378.7Wh/mi. If you use the kWh/100mi metric, you'd get 37.87, which rounds to 38kWh. To get to the ~300Wh/mi for the "Rated" miles, you have to assume about 80% charging efficiency. I think the Model S is a little better than that (maybe 85-90%), but it's minor enough to not complain about.

It's also worth noting that the EPA city/hwy rating on the 2016 Model S70 is 88/90, and those MPGe values translate to 2.61kWh/mi and 2.67kWh/mi, which is exactly what greenercars reports for 2016 S70.

 

[chickensevil]

Yeah they secretly have raised the Model S levels to above 40 even though you can find a 2015 S85 as "green" but a 2014 or earlier isn't good enough... Even though they are the SAME CAR.

When I found out about this I yet again pestered them with emails... No response... Not that I'm surprised. This has continued to be an annoyance for me.

 

[Roamer]

Yeah they secretly have raised the Model S levels to above 40 even though you can find a 2015 S85 as "green" but a 2014 or earlier isn't good enough... Even though they are the SAME CAR.

When I found out about this I yet again pestered them with emails... No response... Not that I'm surprised. This has continued to be an annoyance for me.

Good for you. Keep pounding on them. Pure stupidity deserves all the pain you can inflict.

 

[chickensevil]

Good for you. Keep pounding on them. Pure stupidity deserves all the pain you can inflict.

In light of this thread getting resurrected again, it got me to finally break down and find an email address for LEED/USGBC. So I sent them the following:

I have tried every other recourse, and can't seem to get my building to apply the correct rules as it relates to the "Green Parking" spaces provided as part of our LEED Gold Certification. Currently parking management is only half applying the rules as it relates to parking for Green vehicles. According to your documentation on these parking spaces, they are supposed to be determining the eligibility of Green Vehicles based on two lists:

greenercars.org/ACEEE list of green vehicles with a green score of 40 or higher
CAARB ZEV list

They are only referencing the first list and not all ZEV vehicles according to CAARB cross over into the ACEEE list. I inquired numerous times to ACEEE about their list and why some cars were not on it, and when they finally provided a response I was told that my car wasn't produced in high enough volume for them to be bothered to even score it. When they finally did score later Model years, their first go was in 2014, when they scored the car at 38, and then in 2015 they gave it a much higher 46 and 47 score when *nothing* had actually changed about the car between 2014 and 2015, never mind that they still don't include 2012/2013 MY cars on their list at all.

So the issue becomes, because my building is only half applying the rules, they are rejecting my application for parking since my car is not "on their list", when they are not actually looking at the CAARB ZEV list at all which is where you will find my car.

Since I haven't gotten anywhere else, I looked on the LEED and saw that buildings actually have to be recertified periodically, which means that if they are not doing what they are supposed to do, then hopefully LEED can exert influence into this, and correct this issue. What is the point of me going through the trouble of actually trying to drive a ZEV vehicle for the purpose of getting parking in my building (and helping the environment), if they don't actually honor that and provide parking.

Your assistance in this would be appreciated.

You will note in my email, that I reference a re-certification requirement. I didn't realize this was a thing, but since it is, that actually makes me hopeful that LEED will actually respond to this. Also note that while I don't include the building address in the body of the message, my address is in my signature block which I removed from the above posting.

I don't want them to pull the certification for the building, I just want someone to actually apply the rules correctly... it really does annoy me.

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Oh and the new 2016 numbers were posted, so they appear to hate Tesla even less, yet they won't go back and correct historical numbers! So check this out.

2016	07_LRG	TESLA	MODEL S (70 kWh)	Electric (Li-ion bat.)	Tier 2 Bin 1 / LEV II ZEV	2.6	2.7	53
2016	07_LRG	TESLA	MODEL S (85 kWh)	Electric (Li-ion bat.)	Tier 2 Bin 1 / LEV II ZEV	2.6	2.7	53
2016	12_UTS	TESLA	MODEL X AWD (90 kWh)	Electric (Li-ion bat.)	Tier 2 Bin 1 / LEV II ZEV	2.7	2.8	51
2016	12_UTS	TESLA	MODEL X AWD (90 kWh)	Electric (Li-ion bat.)	Tier 2 Bin 1 / LEV II ZEV	2.6	2.7	50
2015	04_WGS	TESLA	MODEL S 60 kWh	Electric (Li-ion bat.)	ZEV / Bin 1	2.80	2.87	47
2015	04_WGS	TESLA	MODEL S 85 kWh	Electric (Li-ion bat.)	ZEV / Bin 1	2.61	2.68	46

Not only have the scored 2016s much higher than the 2015s (which themselves were higher than the off the list 2014s that got like 38 or something), the one common denominator is the Model S 85 which is *the same car* that was released in 2012, for all intents and purposes...

Explain to me how that car magically went from not being rated at all (2012/2013) to getting rated but scoring just under the bar (2014 - 38), to making the list and getting a 46 (2015) which is actually a pretty decent score, to blowing through the 50s and getting a 53 (2016)!

Also, I love how the X which is now rated, starts off with a 50/51... according to their testing methods, heavier vehicles get negative impacts, which was their whole stated reason for it scoring as low as it did in 2014. The Model S was a "heavy vehicle" which made it get a 38... yet here we are, magically, a car that ways an extra 1000 to 2000 pounds getting a 50!!! I just don't get it... This whole thing smells something awful the longer I track them.

 

[FlasherZ]

Re-apply, call your car a 2015.

 

[GoTslaGo]

Maybe it's time for a new non-profit Green car rating organization. Seems to me the collective smarts and wisdom of what I've read in this thread could probably create an appropriate one.:wink:

 

[Peter_M]

How about this for a green car rating scheme for any hybrid, PHEV or BEV:

• Battery smaller than 15 kWh: 0 points
• Battery from 15 to 60 kWh: 1 point
• Battery bigger than 60 kWh: 2 points

This gives cars that can shift typical day-to-day city driving to electric one point and cars that can shift long trip driving to electric another point. It's simple and it meets the goal of getting people to shift to non-fuel-burning cars. All this other stuff about sales volume, vehicle weight, number of seats, drive train technology, etc. just complicates things and they aren't good measures of GHG reduction. Of course, there would need to be a few conditions to avoid loopholes (e.g. you can't just carry around a battery in a gas car), but I think a rating scheme could be almost as simple as this.

Privileges (e.g. parking, HOV lanes), purchase incentives and tax breaks could all be based on a scheme like this.

 

[Cyclone]

Yeah they secretly have raised the Model S levels to above 40 even though you can find a 2015 S85 as "green" but a 2014 or earlier isn't good enough... Even though they are the SAME CAR.

When I found out about this I yet again pestered them with emails... No response... Not that I'm surprised. This has continued to be an annoyance for me.

We noticed that at work. Thankfully, the head of our program that manages that is a Tesla enthusiast. When he saw that and heard the logic "this is meant to reduce the emissions, so why is a car with no emissions not permitted?", he got the policy rewritten to be GreenScore over 40 OR BEV zero-emission car as defined by CAARB standards or something like that. So when I'm not charging, I'm free to park in one of our "green" spaces. Basically, what you put in your email to LEED (we are a Gold site I believe).

 

[chickensevil]

By the way if you look in the large car category on their site for the greenest cars, the Model S 2016 is now number one on their list. I was studying through trying to figure out what they classified the Model X as since their score is decently high and I'm not seeing it. It's funny how they went from two years ago saying that the Model S wasn't a great car (go read there blog post defending their terrible score) to now secretly admitting it is the best in its category. I say secretly only because they still haven't put it in like their top 10 overall list... A list that includes the Prius Hybrid, not even a BEV...

 

[GoTslaGo]

By the way if you look in the large car category on their site for the greenest cars, the Model S 2016 is now number one on their list. I was studying through trying to figure out what they classified the Model X as since their score is decently high and I'm not seeing it. It's funny how they went from two years ago saying that the Model S wasn't a great car (go read there blog post defending their terrible score) to now secretly admitting it is the best in its category. I say secretly only because they still haven't put it in like their top 10 overall list... A list that includes the Prius Hybrid, not even a BEV...

Congrats on your new 2016 Model S! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge...:wink:

 

[Speight]

Explain to me how that car magically went from not being rated at all (2012/2013) to getting rated but scoring just under the bar (2014 - 38), to making the list and getting a 46 (2015) which is actually a pretty decent score, to blowing through the 50s and getting a 53 (2016)!

My guess is that they used different information about the environmental impacts from the battery manufacturing (and possibly the aluminum body as well) for each year. So according to their data, it is now "greener" to produce the Tesla battery packs than it used to be a few years ago despite the actual car being identical. It's likely that most of the changes in these values are actually due to the old data being inaccurate or based on incorrect assumptions, rather than a major change in the actual impacts of battery production, but I guess they don't have data that separates the two factors, or just have a policy against re-rating older vehicles to take into account updated model parameters.

 

[chickensevil]

My guess is that they used different information about the environmental impacts from the battery manufacturing (and possibly the aluminum body as well) for each year. So according to their data, it is now "greener" to produce the Tesla battery packs than it used to be a few years ago despite the actual car being identical. It's likely that most of the changes in these values are actually due to the old data being inaccurate or based on incorrect assumptions, rather than a major change in the actual impacts of battery production, but I guess they don't have data that separates the two factors, or just have a policy against re-rating older vehicles to take into account updated model parameters.

Well they didn't have any issue revoking all the Deasel cars after the VW scandle and new information was presented... Why can't they do the same when the situation was reversed.

Also, I still have questions for why they adimately defended their position in 2014 and then quietly changed their stance... If only they would ever actually respond to emails or phone calls...

 

[Shaggy]

It is interesting to note that they (correctly) ding EV cars for the impact of their fuel generation (coal, natural gas, solar, wind, etc) but oddly not ICE vehicles. They only count those cars' exhaust and not what it took to get the the gas to the tank (like they do for EVs' batteries). They do not consider the energy or pollution involved in drilling, transport, refining into gas, or transport of said gas to a station in its report; it's especially egregious when you consider how a barrel of middle eastern oil to to a refinery in the US...

 

[GoTslaGo]

It is interesting to note that they (correctly) ding EV cars for the impact of their fuel generation (coal, natural gas, solar, wind, etc) but oddly not ICE vehicles. They only count those cars' exhaust and not what it took to get the the gas to the tank (like they do for EVs' batteries). They do not consider the energy or pollution involved in drilling, transport, refining into gas, or transport of said gas to a station in its report; it's especially egregious when you consider how a barrel of middle eastern oil to to a refinery in the US...

Don't forget Tar Sands. Sorry to our Canadian friends, but you guys are really destroying your own country for this crap.

Oil sands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[chickensevil]

Actually got a response from GBCI on this, at least that's something! They referenced the same lines as I had found previously, but I think this time at least I can take their email and send it to the parking office should there be any further discussions about that, as I have not just the regulation, but someone from them stating that is how the regulation works.

Thank you for contacting GBCI regarding parking issues in your building. Since you did not identify the building about which you are asking, I'll respond based on NC 2009. Without knowing the project, I cannot verify that this credit was attempted or achieved, but for the sake of discussion, I'll assume that it was achieved.

In NC, SSc4.3 (Alternative transportation - low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles | U.S. Green Building Council) is the credit that applies to FEV/LEV vehicle parking. As noted in the requirements, "For the purposes of this credit, low-emitting vehicles are defined as vehicles that are classified as Zero Emission Vehicles(ZEV) by the California Air Resources Board. Fuel-efficient vehicles are defined as vehicles that have achieved a minimum green score of 40 on the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy(ACEEE) annual vehicle rating guide." I suggest that you show this to them with a printout of the list that includes your vehicle.

It seems to me that the issue is one of ignorance of the requirements rather than any intent to ignore the requirements.

There is no recertification of any construction based rating system (BD+C and ID+C); that is only a requirement for an Operations& Maintenance certification.

I hope I was able to provide the information you were seeking, but if not, please feel free to reply to this email and I would be happy to assist with further guidance or more detail. For future inquiries, please contact us at Contact | GBCI.

Best Regards,
Peggy Brock
Green Building Specialist, AIA, LEED AP BD+C Green Business Certification Inc.
2101 L Street NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20037

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Oh, by the way, I made sure to respond back to them thanking them for actually replying to my inquiry. It's amazing how simple such a thing is, and it was greatly appreciated (especially given lack of response from other organizations...)

 

[S'toon]

Don't forget Tar Sands. Sorry to our Canadian friends, but you guys are really destroying your own country for this crap.

Oil sands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We know. Unfortunately the oil industry has regulatory capture of Canadian governments. All the parties, even the used to be social democratic NDP kowtow to them.