"Austin" (not his real name) is a neighbor whom I recently had a gentle conversation with after he tried lecturing four kids, including one of mine, on the moral rightness of driving Tesla instead of something with an internal combustion engine like my XC70. According to the Obama-era fueleconomy.gov site, his Tesla Model X (a small sedan he describes as an SUV) uses about 37 KWH per 100 miles of highway driving, while the newest 325 Volvo XC90 AWD is said to use about 4.5 gallons per 100 miles. The same site gives the MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent) estimate for the Tesla as 89 and that for the Volvo as 22.  The MPGe metric is supposed to represent the energy use of the vehicle on a tank- or battery-to-wheels basis in terms of the energy available in a gallon of gasoline, but neither the theoretical calculation nor the data provided by the Energy Information Administration translate easily or directly to real-world experience.  My...(Read Full Post)