Which Is Greener The Audi A7 Diesel Or The Tesla Model S?

Do they let you enter the location where you'll be charging the electric car? If not, the numbers are total BS! In the only detailed study of the ecological impact of electric cars that I've seen (by the IEEE and published in their award-winning journal "Spectrum" a few years back ... you know IEEE, the folks behind all your electronics standards from Ethernet to WiFi to cellular to BlueTooth to ZigBee's 802.15.4 infrastructure). Anyway, they determined that "on average" electric cars generate more pollution than gas-powered cars in the US. And since Diesel is much cleaner than gas, the A7 would win handily. But if you plugged that Tesla in to a garage in Northern BC or Quebec then it would be cleaner because it would be powered by hydro-electric electricity instead of coal.
Of course, adding the location would be too much work, so we'll get the bogus figures that will favour hybrids and electrics (like all the other "green" web-sites supported by Toyota's marketing division).

Maybe I'll post this on its own. The IEEE is the world's largest professional organization. You must have a 4-year engineering diploma from an accredited university to apply. Membership is roughly 1/3 of a million spread around the globe. Its journal is one of the most respected ever.
They published a title article called "Unclean at Any Speed: Electric cars don’t solve the automobile’s environmental problems"
here's a link
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/unclean-at-any-speed
[img]http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/07electricmain-1371658800700.jpg[/img]
Tesla on pile of coal

This site uses the EPA Greenhouse Gas Score, and the EPA automatically gives all EVs a 10. Not a very meaningful comparison, imo.

At the same time I find it funny that DieselRules is trying to attribute Ozzie Zehner's opinions to IEEE when they have explicitly disclaimed them.[1] His article in Spectrum was fluff and innuendo disguised as science. Actual lifecycle studies compare individual vehicles, since (surprise surprise!) broad generalizations are too simplistic.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/evs-and-the-environment-the-discussion-continues

Relevant section: "Note that IEEE does not typically take official positions on technology topics, and that articles appearing in IEEE Spectrum represent the ideas of its authors, not IEEE or its organizational units. Spectrum’s editorial mission is to act as a forum for the discussion of new and emerging technologies, and we hope you’ll add your own thoughts to the deliberations unfolding here."

Tell you what, I'll lock you in a garage with a diesel idling for 30 minutes and then then you can tell me if it is cleaner than an EV or not.

So the electricity that the EV runs on just magically appears and inserts itself into the battery of the EV vehicle ??

The energy expended to manufacture the Lithium Batteries came from nowhere ?

Just because, you cannot see the effects of the energy capital does not mean it does not consume any, its just consumed at a location away from the greenie idiots who believe its magic energy, free from God and thus good for the environment.

So diesel just magically appears and inserts itself in the tank of the ICE vehicle?

The energy expended to explore, dig, and refine petroleum came from nowhere?

The amount of energy required to manufacture the batteries is miniscule compared to the energy consumed in the lifetime of the car. Batteries also happen to be highly recyclable, diesel is not so much.

There is something called renewable energy sources that are becoming popular. Cleaning up the grid is happening as we speak and studies done with data just a few years ago are now irrelevant. Batteries play a critical role in the process of making electricity production sustainable and where we find them being used is in electric vehicles.

An EV can run entirely on renewable electricity and many of them do so today.

Renewable energy is the solution ... in the future. Right now, other than Hydro-electric, the "new" renewables are such a small component of energy consumption that they can be called nill for arguments sake.

To explain the efficiency of an electric car in the US, just look at the energy costs:

Gas/diesel car: pump raw crude product to refinery, refine, truck to sales-point (small consumption of energy) burn in engine at 40+% efficiency.

Electric car: (best version) :: pump raw crude product to refinery, refine, truck/train to power-plant (small consumption of energy) burn to create steam driving giant turbines and generate electricity at 40+% efficiency.
Run electricity through wires to home (small losses). Charge up a battery (bigger losses all as heat) converting electricity to chemical energy. Drive vehicle, converting chemical energy back to electric energy (more wasted energy: heat from batteries, and fans blowing fresh air over hot batteries to keep them from over-heating). Cables and motor-drive electronics are very efficient, and only lose another 5 - 15% of the energy. Motor windings also get hot.

Electric car: (worst version) :: clear off the tops of hills in Kentucky to produce coal that has barely more energy than what it takes to haul it to the power-plant. Burn to create steam and continue with wasteful electric vehicle process above.

So, simply put, there is a lot less energy loss burning the fuel in the car compared to burning it at the power-plant, and then wasting it in the charge/discharge process.
You can't argue with this, based on the simplest law of thermodynamics: energy is neither created nor destroyed, just moved around. So the solution with the least losses is the most efficient overall, and unfortunately that is still the Internal Combusion Engine. At least with America's "dirty electricity".

Anyone who can't understand this should go back to Grade 9 science class.

There is no scenario in the US where burning diesel is going to be more efficient than an electric powertrain for cars of similar size. Even with the dirties generation of electricity possible, you are looking at 2-3x greater efficiency using a battery and simple electric motor. The ICE itself does a terrible job of converting fuel to actual motion and is where most of the waste comes in.