It’s all about carbon footprint!

I’m still debating the pro and cons of owning a Tesla electric car, and the more I dig into the subject, the more I discover, and the less I’m able to reach a decision I’m comfortable with.

At first, I was focusing solely on the “great American road trip” that my wife and I occasionally take and, with an electric car, the added difficulty of planning an itinerary around refueling at some kind of public charging station along the way, including the extra time this might take when a fast charge isn’t an option.

Then, the debate moved into issues like the kind of vehicle we’d really need. In Park City, it has to be an all-wheel drive (AWD) version, with decent ground clearance and a hatchback so I can conveniently load our ski gear and sit on the sill while we put on our boots.

Of course, all along, the cost has always been a factor. I’d rather not fork the price asked for a brand new model S or X, but would be more willing to buy down the line and go for the upcoming model Y, if and when it comes out, unless I’d consider a used Model S.

That was until the other night when I ran into a neighbor who had just done that, and complained that the car was too low (old fellows like me would agree!) and that, in spite of being AWD, it wasn’t great in snow. Now, I was confused and that younger neighbor was hinting for me to look into a used Model X, that in his view would be more appropriate, but is rated very low by Consumer Reports…

Today, I’m realizing that first and foremost, I should have begun by figuring how big a dent the switch to an e-car would have made into our overall carbon footprint. My wife and I drive no more than 10,000 miles a year, which for our two cars represents 4 metric tons of CO2. A Tesla would cut that by two-third, down to just 1.3 ton.

At the same time if my wife and I take a round-trip flight between Salt Lake and Geneva to visit friends and family, it sets us back 6.6 tons, which is huge and 2.5 times what we’d save by driving an electric car. I ended up my introspective carbon footprint tour at the EPA website.

There, I figured out that our total household carbon footprint including home, car and recycling, put us at 11 metric tons per year vs. 13 tons for the average American two-people household, so I felt a tiny bit better, but my good mood was soon eclipsed when

I saw that, as a nation, America’s per-capita footprint was a whopping 16.5 T compared to 8.9 T in Germany and a remarkable 4.6T in France! As for my car decision, I was still incapable of saying if Tesla is yet the right choice for us...