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Source: https://clifhigh.substack.com/p/3-million-barrels-of-oil-per-batt?r=jy267&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email https://clifhigh.substack.com/p/3-million-b

• philipkglass 4y ago
  This analysis is off by orders of magnitude. Tesla shipped 1.3 million vehicles in 2022, each of which contained a battery pack [1]. 3 million barrels of oil contains 6.1 * 10^15 joules of primary energy [2]. World primary energy production in 2021 was 5.95 * 10^20 joules [3]. Combining these numbers, Tesla's 1.3 * 10^6 battery packs shipped in 2022 would have taken 7.93 * 10^21 joules to manufacture. This is more than 10 times annual global energy production and is clearly in error. Another way to spot-check and reject this number is to note that 3 million barrels of oil would cost in the neighborhood of $240 million. Getting that much energy from coal might cost only $75 million per vehicle but it's still a proposition that would see Tesla losing approximately $100 trillion dollars per year on sales of 1.3 million vehicles. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/investing/tesla-deliveries-production/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/investing/tesla-deliveries-pr... [2] https://www.ocean.washington.edu/courses/envir215/energynumbers.pdf https://www.ocean.washington.edu/courses/envir215/energynumb... [3] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2022-full-report.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...