Let me try to help out visually on similar color cars....which makes you drool more?

Yes:



Not so much:

 

This guy is very uncomfortable in the C7 I believe that is why he is looking at alternatives.

 

A clear top. Gives you another inch I believe..
My 6'7" 220 lb son in law got in mine and said it was snug getting in but once in was comfortable and was suprised he could driving comfort. A tad hard seeing stop lights tho.
As far as how fast a Z51 will go , I hit 150+ a while back ... had an **** trying to run me off the road ... I got clear and was on the brake when see 145 on HUD ...
Called sheriff with discription of truck, a dodge and I think it was a Viper that got mad when I passed him. So have no fear if you have to your Z51 can do it.

 

Ludacris mode is only available above 95% charge. You might have to tow it to the 1/4 in order to get the use.

 

A little clarification on the Tesla is needed in this thread.

While absolute best quarter mile results are at an approximately 90% state of charge, Ludicrous mode is available full time as is Insane mode and the Ludicrous equippped car will still run deep into the 11s even at a less than 95% state of charge. Both cars, the ones equipped with Insane or Ludicrous, can be put in either Insane or Ludicrous mode and kept there. The top speed for the Tesla Model S is a governed 155mph. Not 130mph.

Like the Tesla P85D with Insane before it, the Tesla P90D with Ludicrous has performed very well on the drag strip. The performance versions have a hole shot which is comparable to most any other street vehicle on the road today and better than most. The instant on torque of Insane and Ludicrous give a driving experience which is akin to being catapulted during launch. This is more extreme and of longer duration in Ludicrous vs Insane.


One thing left out of this discussion was the free OTA updates and other for pay updates available for the Tesla.

My Tesla is a P85D, and it is in line for upgrade the factory upgrade from Insane to Ludicrous. Several P85D owners have elected to go this route when Tesla made the retrofit of Ludicrous Mode, initially offered in July of 2015, available to pre existing cars previously equipped with Insane mode. A similar move which is unheard of amongst any other auto manufacturer that I can think of.

Any other manufacturer would have required the purchase of a new car to get Ludicrous. Tesla offers it for sale as a retrofit to owners who purchased before it was released.

Over the air updates have included features from autopilot, to graphical user interface changes, gauge cluster changes, all the way down to minor software tweaks.

Teslas can be run repeatedly on a drag strip if the owner desires. This P90D with Ludicrous made 20 passes the day this video was made, and was not at 95% state of charge for the video.


The following video is "old" and shows a P85D run in Insane mode for each pass.


But if the original poster can't fit himself inside the Vette, or the Model S P90D with Ludicrous, well then the Tesla SUV, the Model X, can also be had in a P90D with Ludicrous.

And will run into the 11s on the drag strip with with a novice behind the wheel. Someone mentioned "soccer mom". Well, this soccer mom mobile will run well into the 11s with mom driving.

 

The tiny little detail that the green mafia seems to miss about electric cars is, duh, where do they suppose the electricity to charge the battery comes from? The tooth fairy? Most comes from coal, then nukes, then natural gas, and only a small part from green sources like solar or wind. So if you draw a circle around not only the car, but also the production of the energy which drives the car, the Tesla and Vette are pretty much comparable on emissions. That is not intended to say anything at all bad about the quality or performance of the Tesla or other electric cars. It’s simply to point out that what’s probably their biggest selling point, their alleged environmental friendliness, is somewhere between nonsense at best, and an intentionally misleading lie at worst.

 

As I'm not a member of the green mafia, and run my smokers, (just smoked a pork shoulder today. 8 hrs burning Mesquite) my tractors, and my riding lawn mowers, etc., at will, and my cammed Z06 would never pass smog in at least California, I could not care less whether the electricity for my Tesla comes from burning coal or pig sh**.

And I'm hardly the only Tesla owner who feels the same way.

I don't care where the energy comes from or how the energy gets to me, I am only interested in performance.

But arguably the biggest selling point for Teslas at least, I cannot speak to the other EVs out there, is the lack of need to buy gasoline.

It has been my experience, that most of the Tesla owners I have come across, could not care less about "green energy".

Tiny little detail that's left out??? Show me a Tesla owner, particular the owner of one of the performance versions of the car, and more often than not I can show you a case where the cutting edge technology and freedom from the gas pump was what sold him the car. Not any "green" or "alternate energy agenda".

 

Granted, the Tesla is high performance, and if you bought it for that, fine. But as far as gas, you have to offset the reduced gas bill with the increased electricity bill, so on balance, I doubt overall cost has changed much. Perhaps in California with very high gas taxes/prices there may be some savings, but less so elsewhere.

 

The increase in electric bill is nominal. I am in western Pennsylvania, BTW.

It cost me somewhere between 2-3 cents per mile to run my P85D.



Take a look:

My cost for electricity, fluctuates between a low of 5.69 cents per kWh in April of 2015, up to a high of 9.20 cents per kWh for November of 2015, back down to 9.00 cents per kWh for January of 2016 .

Count on 38 kWhs per 100 miles or 0.38 kWh per mile, looking at the EPA portion of the sticker in one of my prior posts.

So thats 0.38kWh for each mile x $0.0569 for every kilowatt hour = $0.0216 per mile, i.e. about 2.16 cents per mile to run it when I was at 5.69 cents per kWh, up to $0.03496 per mile in November, when electricity was 9.20 cents per kWh.

So at 2.16 cents per mile, (or you can use the 3.49 cents per mile worse case if you like), if I go 100 miles for my daily commute, or 50 miles one way and 50 miles back, (my P85D has about a 230 mile range at 90% charge and 253 mile range at 100%, and some Tesla's, namely the P90D versions, and some others, have even more range than that), well then it would cost me about $2.16 a day up to about $3.49 a day to run it for a distance of 100 miles.

You can multiply that out over 30 days to tell you how much it would add to my utility bill per month were I driving 100 miles a day, every single day for a 31 day month. However I do not drive 3,100 miles a month. That works out to 37,200 miles a year. I don't drive that many miles in a year. Or you could call it 36,500 miles using the 365 days in a year. I don't drive that many miles a year.


You can even do it based upon how many miles per month you drive. Say you're doing 20K miles per year. That's 1,667 miles a month. So at 9 cents per kWh, you're talking 0.38kWh per mile that you drive, 9 cents/kwh x 0.38 kWh/mile or 3.42 cents per mile x 1,667 miles = 5704 cents, or $57.04 a month added to your utility bill.

Worked out another way, again, look at my EPA sticker. 38kWh per 100 miles, X 1667 miles per month. .........38 x 16.67= 633.46 kWh..at $0.09 per kWh = $57.04.

If I'm at $0.0569 per kWh, (5.69 cents per kilowatt hour), well then it costs me 633.46kWh x $0.0569 or $36.04 per month added to my utility bill to go that 1667 miles.

All of this is assuming that I don't do any free public charging or Supercharging, which would lower your home charging costs even more. You can get free electrons while doing your grocery shopping, at some supermarkets, or depending upon where you work, sometimes even at your workplace if you're lucky.

If you live somewhere where the per kWh rates go down late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, well then you could make out even further because the car charges while you sleep and is charged to either 90% or 100%, your choice, when you get up in the morning.

When I pull into my garage, I'll have about 130 miles of range left, or about the equivalent of around 7- 8 gallons of gasoline left were I driving my CTS4, which has an 18 gallon gas tank. (see below)

In contrast, my Cadillac CTS4 gets 17 MPG according to the DIC based on the combined city and highway manner I drive, and it will burn mid grade gasoline which is about $2.46 a gallon around here. Actually it's dropped now to a little over $2.00.

So worse case, it costs me $2.46 to go 17 miles, or $0.1447, or 14.47 cents to go one mile in my CTS4. To go 1,667 miles in my CTS, it would cost me $241.00.

At $2.00 a gallon, it would cost me about $200.00 to go the same distance.

With the Tesla, I only need 0.38 kWh in order to travel one mile. And my electric company is charging me right now, $0.09 (9 cents) per kWh.

And yes, some of that electricity and the price I'm getting it for is coming from and due to nuclear power plants and coal. But like I said before. I don't care so much about that. What I care about, is my fuel cost, what level of technology do I have, and will my car perform up to and meet my expectations. That's what I want to know. If it's not a polluter, well then great, ok, it's not a polluter and has a "smaller carbon footprint", great. But that is hardly why I bought it.

 

You say 2.2 cents per mile for energy assuming electricity at 5.7 cents per kwh and the Tesla using 38 kwh per 100 miles. A gas powered car getting 25 mpg on $3 gas would be 12 cents per mile, leaving a large gap in energy cost.

But the average US price for electricity is 12 cents per kwh, so you’re quoting an electricity cost less than half the national average. At 12 cents per kwh, your 2.2 cents per mile goes up to 4.6 cents. You’re also ignoring the fact that electric cars are subsidized on fuel in that they don’t have to pay gas tax, so those driving electric cars aren’t paying their fair share of highway costs. Average gas tax is about 60 cents per gallon, which on a 25mpg car amounts to 2.4 cents per mile. That brings you up to 7 cents per mile, and we haven’t questioned the window sticker claim of 38 kwh per 100 miles. If electrics are anything like gas cars in that regard, window sticker mileage claims are at least somewhat optimistic.

And of course, once past the question of energy use and emissions, there is the remaining fact I didn’t mention in the earlier note that the Tesla gets manufacturing subsidies of roughly $30,000 per car from various government agencies.

I’m not questioning the fact that the Tesla is high performance and economical on energy. I’m simply pointing out that if one compares apples to apples, the differences in energy costs and emissions are way smaller than claimed, and the direct subsidies required to support its manufacture are very large.

 

The current national average cost of gasoline is about 1.80 per gallon. Premium around here, is about $2.40 a gallon.

But i calculated a per kWh cost of over 9 cents in my prior post as well as the lower per kWh rate you refer to above.

However all of that said, I don't think that anyone expects gasoline or electric prices to remain static.

The point was in response to your statement:

I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but a Tesla keeps track of your fuel usage in KWh. In other words, one can look at the total energy usage and divide that by the mileage.

Here's mine that I took a pic of a few minutes ago for this discussion. My car has just over 12K miles on it.

I've used 4,566.6 kWh/12,787.6 miles = .3571 kWh per mile, or 35.71 kWh/100 miles. So there is no question in my mind as to if the window sticker claim of 38 kwh per 100 miles is accurate.



I have used 4,566.6 kwh of energy. For argument's sake, lets use your national average of 12 cents per kWh. I don't pay that, I pay a little over 9 cents, worse case scenario, but let's for argument's sake, say I were paying 12 cents per kWh.

4,566.6 kWh x 12 cents/kWh comes to 54,799.2 cents, or $547.99. So on the surface, at what you say is the national average of 12 cents, it would have cost me $547.99 to travel 12,787.6 miles.

$547.99 dollars /12,787.6 miles comes to $0.04285 per mile or 4.2 cents per mile using 12 cents per kWh as the going rate.

But I really would not have even paid that, because some of that 4,566.6 kWh, came free from the Tesla Supercharger, and the public chargers at Whole Foods, while my wife was grocery shopping and the car was plugged in there, and other establishments. So using your national average of 12 cents per kWh for electricity, I would have actually paid less than $500.00 to travel 12,786.6 miles. But in reality, I've paid somewhere around $400.00 to travel that far because some of the electrons have been free, and I pay 9.x cents per kWh tops.

I bought the car in April of 2015, so I have had it for 10 months. Using 12 cents per kWh, and again, I don't even pay that much, and I have gotten electricity for it free at charging stations, but lets just for arguments sake, say that I paid for it all. and at 12 cents per kWh, it would have jacked up my electric bill by about $50.00 per month.

This is why I pointed to your prior comment earlier.

Well, I don't think I could have gone this far on less than $500.00 worth of gas.

A car getting 25mpg on $3.00 per gallon gasoline, in other words, 3 dollars to go 25 miles, is coming in at 12 cents per mile as you mention above.

So for it to travel my same 12,787.6 miles, would cost it's owner $0.12 x 12,787.6= $1,534.51 or a little over $1,000.00 dollars more in fuel costs over what I would have spent to fuel my car over the same period.

As far as EV owners not paying their "fair share" of highway taxes, I feel like I pay enough in federal, state and local income tax, county, property and school tax, and sales tax, and business privilege tax, to allow me to sleep and wake up well rested, having avoided paying any more for roads than I already have.

But if you or anyone else sees myself and others as tax slackers for not paying a gasoline tax for road use, well then better to take that up with your political officials. In fact, at least one state did try this. Taxing EV owners for road use. Wanted them to pay for a tax stamp. Problem is what about the motorists, some of them actually residents of a state, who travel your state's roads, but live close enough to it to buy their fuel in a neighboring state to avoid higher fuel taxes in their home state?

Maybe they should stop those people who are residents of one state from realizing a savings by buying their gasoline over the border in a neighboring state. You own a car in this or that state, near the state line, well then you pay an upfront tax to keep you from going over the state line and into a neighboring state and buying cheaper gasoline.

As for Tesla getting subsidies, have not other American car manufacturers received government funds as well?

What does GM get from the government for making Volts? How about Ford for making EVs and hybrids?

But really we don't need to get into all of that. I only entered this thread to add and correct information which had been stated in it earlier. Not to get into a debate about subsidies, green energy, and other things which have no relevance to me as an auto enthusiast.

 

Ya know, numbers are one way of looking at things another is seat of the pants and then you have the eye ball factor..the new T's look like mom's car or a lot like a Sebring ... the older T roadster looked Kool and I did think about one. But ..... I will be going on trips with the wife and my service dog. Charging stations are not at every exit or not be on the way or convenient to get to or like ocala, off in a shoping center miles off the interstate. Plus there is no standing for 2 minutes hopping in and gone. Or if I ran out of go juice getting a gallon in a can to get to a station..
I can only afford one hot toy other than my guns.... I was an HV electrician and pro electric car but for round town or to work and back. They are Not pratical for traveling. My c7 is my eye candy, hp fix and my DD to go to Dallas, Atlanta, NY, Va., and NH.
I am sure the OP knows all the numbers and his needs, I am sure he is simply looking to see if others would make him feel better about his most likely choice.
I noticed he did not get in to numbers and he did not sound like a Mother Earth News junky like me.

 

well.. I just don't think there is a fair comparison. a coupe/sports car vs a sedan. its just not fair. compare a coupe/sports car to a coupe/sports car, then it is a comparison. if you own a sedan and a corvette, good. if you want a sedan or a coupe/sprots car.. just not working... sorry...

 

Long trips, and when I say long, I mean 300 plus miles, I'd use one of my ICE vehicles, or better yet, take a plane.

I've done a 200 mile round trip in our Tesla, and the fuel cost was free as we charged it before heading back, and ate dinner while it was charging.

But just as my Vettes were not, at least for me, the best cars to travel or do road trips in, either because of the lack of space, and/or any performance modifications I had done to them, I would not plan on taking any long road trips in this car either. That said though, owners of each car take them on road trips, though neither would be my first choice for a long road trip were I driving.

 

Couple points. We pay about 1/3 for electricity off peak. We have been for the 30 years we have lived in SC. Since I would be charging at night our cost is under $0.05/kWh. That rate also applies to weekends and holidays. Similar rate schedule as businesses pay. Power companies can use less or no expensive, less economical gas turbines as they do for daytime peak demand. In SC we're also building 2 more nuclear plants. Our power bill shows the savings that provides, about $500/year.
Tesla currently has a 2 door coupe and convertible. If they put the high hp option in those cars or GM something similar in a Vette looking car it would be something I'd consider.
My Vette is a DD but being semi-retired the majority of all my driving is in it's range. We make long trips in the wife's SUV.
I'm not a tree hugger! The 8.2 liter BB in my '34 Ford ProStreet Rod gets about 8 mpg!
However I like technology and 2.8 zero to 60 would be fun! I would just have to play Janet Joplin's "Cry Baby" louder to compensate for the missing engine sound!
FWIW

 

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. Everything you've said has been going through my head. As for is this a fair comparison, maybe, maybe not. All I know is I love driving cars and the tesla was an experience like nothing I've ever had. That car can move. The handling was great but the vet can handle better.

As for the green stuff. I am about performance. Anyone who argues an electric motors instant torque is less than an ice with a torque converter and transmission is in denial. With that being said, there is nothing like the deep rumble of s v8 or a down shift at high rpm.

As for cost, one thing that's weighing on my mind is I can actually pay less buying the tesla than owning my Sierra and a z51. I would save about 200 a month in payments/insurance but I would lose the hauling capacity of my truck. The federal and state tax credits are also very lucrative. The federal credit is 7500 and the state in Colorado is 6000. The Colorado credit is fully refundable which is great!

Money wise the tesla is cheaper to own but if I want the ladies I'm thinking the vet lol. Let's be honest, it's about the American muscle and the ladies

Once I can confirm Macmulkin can roll in sales tax with the deal I'll have my order in.

Thanks everyone, this has been great fun! Such an awesome first world problem!

 

Quicksilver, you say you’re interested in performance, not efficiency, but then make two very lengthy posts about efficiency. Let me try my counter-argument one other way. Your window sticker claims 89 MPGe, meaning equivalent miles per gallon on electricity. That’s typical of the claims, implying extraordinary energy efficiency. But the inefficient part of any energy cycle is the conversion of heat into mechanical energy. In a normal car, that takes place in the engine of the car. But in an electric car, that takes place where the electricity is generated, so it’s unfair to bypass the electricity generation inefficiency in the calculation. To generate your EPA-claimed 89 MPGe, the EPA uses an equivalence of 33.7 KWH equaling 1 gallon of gas. The basis for that is that if you burned a gallon of gas, you’d get the same amount of heat that you would if you ran 33.7 KWH of electricity through an electric space heater. That’s a dumb way of looking at car mileage. What you need to look at is the amount of fuel that needs to be burned to power a car. If you roll the inefficiency of the electricity generation into the equation, and look at the amount of fuel that has to be burned at the power station to generate the electricity to power the electric car, the electricity to gasoline equivalent would come out at least 80 KWH per gallon. Using that more realistic figure, your window sticker should show more like 35 MPG. That’s still good. I’m not suggesting electric cars are grossly inefficient. I’m simply suggesting that we should look at them realistically, and stop marveling at how unbelievably efficient they are. You might quickly ask, if they aren’t all that efficient, where does the electricity cost savings come from. That’s easy. Gasoline is way more expensive than coal per unit of heat released when you burn them.

As far as taxes and subsidies, there are various ways of looking at them. I’m certainly not suggesting that you have done anything to cheat, or that you don’t pay much tax. But various government entities have given electric cars huge subsidies on the basis that they are very friendly to the environment. So to justify the subsidies, one should examine the basis for the environmental friendliness claims. Those claims may not be why you bought the car, but they are why the massive subsidies exist. My point is that the claims are grossly exaggerated, and the subsidies should thus be eliminated. So far, people like me who try to make that point have lost the debate, so the subsidies continue. Since they are there, and are fully legal, there’s nothing wrong with you taking advantage of them. But don’t try to convince a knowledgeable person how wonderfully efficient your car is. The main efficiency of electric cars, whether from Tesla, GM, or whoever, is in converting huge and misguided subsidies into benefits for those who buy them.

 

I didn't say that I wasn't interested in efficiency.

My point was in response to your statement concerning the environmentalists. I'm not interested in the green peace agenda and I was basically saying that myself and many other Tesla owners do not fall in with that group

The EPA makes mpg estimates for ICE vehicles as well. Sometimes those estimates are atypical. So if we're going to say that the yardstick is inaccurate or atypical for EVs, then it's easy to point to inaccuracies or atypical numbers in ICE vehicles as well.

Furthermore the estimates for ICE cars and EVs is made using driving patterns of use that not some owners may or may not meet.

When I think in terms of "efficiency", in a vehicle, I only care about how much it costs me in my price paid for fuel to get from point A to point B.

I'm thinking this is the way that many Americans who consider their overall fuel costs approach the topic of their vehicle's fuel efficiency.

The position and argument that you're countering in your above post, is one that the greenies make.

I'm not in that group and thus do not make that argument and am apathetic when it comes to it.

I care about what "I" spent in fuel costs to get from one point to another.

Well, no I wouldn't ask that. Because I don't care.

Ok. But the bottom line for me when I look at my yearly costs for my automobile fuel, is that I've spent considerably less for fuel to travel the same distance than I would have had I been buying gasoline.

Then I'm thinking that the best way to complain about that would be to go to one's political authorities or attack it through the political process.

I'm not here to justify the subsidies. You need to take your argument to the green peace movement. Not a man like myself who couldn't care less what fuel his car runs on as long as its cheap and as long as the car will perform with the best.

Well then respectfully I suggest that you take that argument to those who make it.

Not to those whose who could not care less about it.

That's an argument that should be debated on the senate floor.

But as already mentioned, efficiency for me is in how much my fuel actually costs me.

When it costs me less than $500.00 in fuel to travel 12,687 miles, well if that's not "efficient", I guess I'll have to suffer through whatever it is.

For me the main efficiency in my electric car is in how much my daily fuel cost is to run it.

 

Perzackly.

I'm no tree hugger either. But one can set a Tesla to charge at whatever time you want it to charge.

We pay a flat rate. If I could charge at 2-3AM for less than 5 cents a kWh, I'd definitely do it.

You multiply that times my lifetime use, and it would come to about $300.00-$400.00 in fuel costs thus far and that's not counting any free charges.

In your case, at less than 5 cents per kWh, and 38kWh per 100 miles, it would cost you less than $1.90 to travel 100 miles. Or less than 1.9 cents per mile.

 

Interesting question. Practical novelty or soul stirring inspiration? I live in the Chicago burbs and the Teslas are increasingly a dime a dozen. Which surprises me because they aren't cheap. They do catch my eye and a P85 black with black rims showed up at work and it is slick.

Personally, I would never pay that much for a sedan that didn't rumble, i.e.: Cadillac V or BMW M whatever.

As for comfort, that's another matter. I'm 6'4" 250lbs and I am on the edge of comfort. Head room is minimal, but I have a convertible and drive it with the top down every chance I get. It always feels smallest when I go from my Jeep Grand Cherokee High Altitude to my DSOM Convertible...but that evaporates the first time I stomp on the gas!