Your Tesla Will Not Save The Planet

Editor’s note: Today is an “every other Sunday,” meaning an article for my paid subscribers, albeit with a healthy preview. Enjoy and thank you for reading!

Much of the United States is enduring a heat wave, born of a combination of El Niño and a southerly dip in the jet stream. My locale, a stone's throw from the northern border of New York City, is no exception. The Lovin' Spoonful comes to mind, of course.

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half-dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

Heat waves are nothing new, of course. Summer In The City was released fifty-seven years ago. NYC's highest recorded temperature of 106° was recorded in 1936 ("recorded" being the key - reliable records only date back a century and a half or so, i.e. 0.0000035% of the Earth’s history, i.e. if the Earth was a year old, we started recording temps 1.1 seconds ago). Weather and climate have always been things, even before humans started burning stuff. Even before humans existed.

To read the hysterics, however, you'd think that this is all a - unprecedented, b - solely humans' fault, and c - proof positive that we MUST. ACT. NOW!!! to save the planet. The actions to be taken are, of course, limited to the hysterics' specific demands - demands that conveniently serve other agendas, of course, and that conveniently ignore remedies that don’t inflict pain and misery.

As sure as the sun rises, the fact that we've resisted their endless demands for personal privation (while they continue to fly private jets) has served to amplify their screeches, with such as the always entertaining Rep Ilhan Omar (D-MN) laughably and risibly asserting that that we experienced the hottest day in 120,000 years.

No matter any reality checks, it remains that many people 'want something done' about climate change, with that 'something' being a combination of Other People's Money and personal virtue signals.

Which (finally) brings me to today's topic:

Buried in this pleasant Substack post about the Lake of the Ozarks was this lovely little nugget:

[T]he coastal elites—the people summering in the Hamptons and Nantucket, those who sail, those who believe their Teslas will save the climate...

I recall seeing my first Prius (the virtue-signaler’s preferred vehicle before Teslas arrived), a quarter century ago. It elicited a mixed bag of responses. On the one hand, the technology tickled my engineer's brain, with efficiencies like regenerative braking getting nods of "nice!" from me.

On the other hand, the price disparity vs high-MPG gas-only cars raised an eyebrow of suspicion. With a premium of $5K or more above its equivalents, it'd take a LOT of driving to make the car a net-positive. If we go with 55 MPG for the Prius vs 35 MPG for a gas-powered equivalent, a back-of-the-envelope break-even is at 270,000 miles driven, and that's before factoring time value of money or inflation into the computation.

Fast forward to today, and the comparison runs thus: Prius base price $28,545, 56 MPG, 150 HP. Hyundai Elantra base price $21,765, 37 MPG, 147 HP. Price difference, $6780. Break-even mileage @ today's national average $3.569, 207K, again before inflation or time-value-of-money.

While I'm tempted to mention the Prius battery replacement here ($2K-$4500 at 150K miles), there's data that suggests the Prius does better in non-battery maintenance costs, which may offset that outlay, so I'll leave that out of the calculus today.

Bottom line, buying a Prius over a high-mileage internal combustion engine (ICE) car does not make economic sense unless you drive way more than the average Joe and plan to put 300K or more miles on the car before you sell it (resale values Prius vs Elantra appear equivalent).

So, why buy?

The answer appeared in my assessment of people I know who drive Priuses. Yes, indeed, you can guess the punch line. My Prius driving acquaintances were almost universally "green-focused" and on the left side of the political spectrum. Oh, and above-average affluent, suggesting that the Prius purchase was about carbon emissions, not economics.

Which is fine. If economics were all that mattered in purchasing vehicles, there'd be no market for sports or luxury cars. We each choose what matters to us.

Fine, up to a point.