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How to get incredibly accurate information on your EV's charging power

One would think that paying about $300 to receive a bit of bad news about electric-vehicle charging would be counterproductive. But the fine folks at Teslarati believe that truth is beauty, and they're willing to pay a little extra for the straight dope. There are always losses when taking power from the grid and shoving it into an EV's battery pack. The question is how big are these losses. Teslarati calculated digital read-outs from the dashboard of their Tesla Model S all-electric sedan and found that Tesla builds in about a nine percent efficiency loss when it comes to recharging the car. But the blog thought the Tesla couldn't know exactly what was transpiring between the wall and the battery, so it footed the bill for about $300 to install a digital submetering unit from EKM Metering. With a little calculation, Teslarati was able to figure out after a couple of recharging rounds that the efficiency loss per recharge was closer to 15 percent than nine percent. That means that, instead of paying about 48 cents on the dollar relative to filling up an economy car (factoring in the AAA average price of $3.66 per gallon), Tesla owners are paying about 52 cents on the dollar. Not much compared to paying upwards towards $100,000 for the vehicle itself, but, hey, every cent counts, right? Get all of the details here. Featured Gallery Tesla Model S View 10 Photos News Source: Teslarati Green Tesla Electric recharging

There's now a Tesla Model S registered in all 50 states

Yes, you too can impress friends at cocktail parties by knowing that the last state to go without a registered Tesla Model S battery-electric sedan was indeed Mississippi. And the second-to-last one was West Virginia. That's what Edmunds is saying, citing data from Polk. Mississippi was the final hold-out until one intrepid Jackson resident made the Model S plunge. The state's non-Tesla stature wasn't a surprise, given that Mississippi has the lowest percentage of plug-in vehicles in the country (on the flip side, Washington, Hawaii and California are there three most plug-in prevalent states by percentage of registrations). Another fun cocktail party fact: more than 20 percent of Mississippi's registered vehicles are trucks. Tesla took about a year and a half to finally register a vehicle all 50 states. Comparatively, the Nissan Leaf took almost two years to be registered in all states, while the Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in took just 11 months. Tesla sold about 22,300 Model S vehicles last year, and the approximately 6,900 units sold during the fourth quarter made it the country's best-selling plug in during that time. The bad news is that our Mississippi Tesla owner can't count on getting free electric charging from Tesla any time soon. The nearest Superchargers are in Texas and Florida, two states away. News Source: Edmunds.com Green Tesla Electric ev sales west virginia

Tesla to earn $250 million from sales of California environmental credits

Tesla Motors is expected to release quarterly earnings figures within the next few days, and the Silicon Valley automaker is thought to have attained profitability for the first time ever. As it turns out, a good bit of that profit will reportedly come from the State of California.
According to an article from the LA Times, Tesla, which is reportedly on pace to sell 20,000 vehicles in 2013, receives as much as $35,000 in environmental credits from California for each Model S it sells. These credits can then be sold to other automakers that do business in the state but don't sell zero-emission vehicles of their own. Some experts believe Tesla could earn up to $250 million from such ZEV credits.
While profits from ZEV credits equals good news for Tesla, some experts and rival automakers aren't very pleased with California's strong-arm tactics when it comes to the sales of electric vehicles. "At the end of the day, other carmakers are subsidizing Tesla," said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst at Gartner Inc.