3 ms·

In good dry Norwegian summer weather, at a steady 90 kph on the flat, my 2015 Model S 70D will consume about 170 Wh/km, that's 3.4 kWh for 20 km. So 6.8 kWh for

In good dry Norwegian summer weather, at a steady 90 kph on the flat, my 2015 Model S 70D will consume about 170 Wh/km, that's 3.4 kWh for 20 km. So 6.8 kWh for urban driving with what is probably a much less efficient drive train sounds a bit high but not wildly off.

Someone 5y ago
Google tells me your car weighs 2090kg/4647 pounds. This tuk tuk probably weighs a tenth of that. Add passengers, and you probably are still looking at a factor of 5. Also, I don’t think 90kph is a realistic cruising speed for this tuk tuk. Assuming 22kph, that’s a factor of 16 in air resistance. The Tesla wins on a aerodynamics, though, and rolling resistance could be lower for a Tesla/US road than this tuk tuk/Sri Lankan road. Overall, I would guess you would need a factor of 10 or so to compare the two vehicles (but that’s a wild guess/gut feeling. If humans had 8 or 12 fingers, chances were my guess would be 8 respectively 12).
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  You are right of course about the tuk-tuk not cruising at 90 kph. I used that because consumption at that speed is about the only figure I can be confident of regarding the Tesla; it's hard to find a road where I can travel the requisite 10 km at 22 kph to get a good consumption reading. Perhaps I'll give it a try if I can find a place to do it, I read somewhere that someone did an economy run in a Model S and got a thousand km range at something like 30 kph. I think that the Tesla probably benefits from an economy of scale both in manufacturing volume and advanced motor and inverter design. According to our favourite search engine tuk-tuks weigh between 250 and 450 kg so with driver and passenger the smaller ones are about one sixth the mass of my car, the bigger ones a bit over a quarter. The small motor in the tuk-tuk is probably much less efficient than the Tesla motor even in the middle of its power range. Also I doubt that the tuk-tuk would have especially effective regenerative breaking because doing this automatically requires coordination with the mechanical brakes. I'm pretty confident that no vehicle in the tuk-tuk weight class other than some specially designed research vehicle will travel a kilometre on only 17 Whr, certainly not one carrying passengers. The losses will be dominated by rolling resistance. Or did I misinterpret your factor of ten? For comparison an electric scooter with a 36 V, 7.5 Ah battery has a range of 25 km, that's 10.8 Wh/km. See https://stayclassy.no/collections/el-sparkesykkel/products/classywalk-s50-n-elektrisk-sparkesykkel https://stayclassy.no/collections/el-sparkesykkel/products/c... Anyway, none of this is meant to detract from the achievement of the guy with the solar powered tuk-tuk. P.s. not that it makes any real difference but the roads are Norwegian not US. :-)

Someone 5y ago

Google tells me your car weighs 2090kg/4647 pounds. This tuk tuk probably weighs a tenth of that. Add passengers, and you probably are still looking at a factor of 5. Also, I don’t think 90kph is a realistic cruising speed for this tuk tuk. Assuming 22kph, that’s a factor of 16 in air resistance. The Tesla wins on a aerodynamics, though, and rolling resistance could be lower for a Tesla/US road than this tuk tuk/Sri Lankan road. Overall, I would guess you would need a factor of 10 or so to compare the two vehicles (but that’s a wild guess/gut feeling. If humans had 8 or 12 fingers, chances were my guess would be 8 respectively 12).

kwhitefoot 5y ago
You are right of course about the tuk-tuk not cruising at 90 kph. I used that because consumption at that speed is about the only figure I can be confident of regarding the Tesla; it's hard to find a road where I can travel the requisite 10 km at 22 kph to get a good consumption reading. Perhaps I'll give it a try if I can find a place to do it, I read somewhere that someone did an economy run in a Model S and got a thousand km range at something like 30 kph. I think that the Tesla probably benefits from an economy of scale both in manufacturing volume and advanced motor and inverter design. According to our favourite search engine tuk-tuks weigh between 250 and 450 kg so with driver and passenger the smaller ones are about one sixth the mass of my car, the bigger ones a bit over a quarter. The small motor in the tuk-tuk is probably much less efficient than the Tesla motor even in the middle of its power range. Also I doubt that the tuk-tuk would have especially effective regenerative breaking because doing this automatically requires coordination with the mechanical brakes. I'm pretty confident that no vehicle in the tuk-tuk weight class other than some specially designed research vehicle will travel a kilometre on only 17 Whr, certainly not one carrying passengers. The losses will be dominated by rolling resistance. Or did I misinterpret your factor of ten? For comparison an electric scooter with a 36 V, 7.5 Ah battery has a range of 25 km, that's 10.8 Wh/km. See https://stayclassy.no/collections/el-sparkesykkel/products/classywalk-s50-n-elektrisk-sparkesykkel https://stayclassy.no/collections/el-sparkesykkel/products/c... Anyway, none of this is meant to detract from the achievement of the guy with the solar powered tuk-tuk. P.s. not that it makes any real difference but the roads are Norwegian not US. :-)