Hi Dave - If you are recharging your Tesla for free from your rooftop solar, are you
- Leaving the car at home most of the day?
- Not driving it very far or very often?
- Living in a warehouse with a solar roof?
Just curious as I looked at doing the same thing and realised I would need 7kWh every day to keep an EV charged if I only drove it about 40km a day (which is my average). That's about 2.7kW of solar panels in Winter, which is a big proportion of what I'm allowed; I also don't fancy staying at home for 2 or 3 days afterwards if I drove the car any further.
Here in WA the grid is about 75% fossil fueled; a grid-charged EV driven 40km using 6kWh is actually responsible for about 4kg of CO2 emissions. My little ICE would use 2.6L of petrol to cover the same distance and emit 6kg of CO2, so not a big deal.
The reason Teslas are lighter and a bit less power hungry than other EVs might be because some models have NCA batteries, which have a thermal runaway temperature around 150 degrees, compared to a more conventional LFP battery at about 270 degrees. It might also be the reason they seem to feature in more EV fires. https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-205-types-of-lithium-ion
Methinks I'll be driving my ICE for a while yet.
