Actually, an emissions equivalent is not MPGe. It is assumed the US grid is about 60% fossil fuel powered (in most these comparisons) MPGe is a measure of energy use, not emissions. More accurate measures would be in kilowatts / mile.
The Rivian R1T is around 70 MPGe. My Tesla M3 is about 135 MPGe. I am expecting the Lightning standard battery to be slightly better than the Rivian and the max battery to be slightly worse.
There is a whole lot we do not yet know about the Lightning. Does it have a heat pump? Is the design limited by the abilities of suppliers who are not yet building efficient HVAC systems? How is thermal management of the battery handled?
The spice in Tesla’s secret sauce is that they in source and build all their own sub systems. Tesla has a heat pump which replaced inductive heating. Tesla has little cooling lines and has even optimized their in car chip boards to use very little power (self driving system is less than 100 watts for two redundant systems, yet it has about 7x the video processing power of a gaming PC which are 700 plus watts these days) All of this adds up to a 25 to 30% more efficient vehicle which is then easier to charge, uses a smaller battery, is lighter and goes further.
Ford may very well have come a long way from the Mach E. We just don’t know yet…. Lucid hit it out of the park on their first product. The Rivian’s inefficiency surprised me (many blame the tires). Ford has done a lot of aero work with the truck and the aluminum body may make this a great EV. We will just have to see.
The Rivian R1T is around 70 MPGe. My Tesla M3 is about 135 MPGe. I am expecting the Lightning standard battery to be slightly better than the Rivian and the max battery to be slightly worse.
There is a whole lot we do not yet know about the Lightning. Does it have a heat pump? Is the design limited by the abilities of suppliers who are not yet building efficient HVAC systems? How is thermal management of the battery handled?
The spice in Tesla’s secret sauce is that they in source and build all their own sub systems. Tesla has a heat pump which replaced inductive heating. Tesla has little cooling lines and has even optimized their in car chip boards to use very little power (self driving system is less than 100 watts for two redundant systems, yet it has about 7x the video processing power of a gaming PC which are 700 plus watts these days) All of this adds up to a 25 to 30% more efficient vehicle which is then easier to charge, uses a smaller battery, is lighter and goes further.
Ford may very well have come a long way from the Mach E. We just don’t know yet…. Lucid hit it out of the park on their first product. The Rivian’s inefficiency surprised me (many blame the tires). Ford has done a lot of aero work with the truck and the aluminum body may make this a great EV. We will just have to see.
