Tesla has a fuel cost comparison at
http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric#savings" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. You may have to look around for it. But it comes out to saying that the cost for "fuel" is about 1/5 of that you would incur with a sedan that gets 22 mpg. That's at current average gasoline and electricity costs. So if they're reasonably accurate it's along the lines of getting 100 mpg.
When I was in the field the day before yesterday we were talking about one of the guys on the boat. He lives in Baton Rouge, LA, and has to commute to Thibodaux, LA, every day. His situation is that he married a woman who has kids and the father is involved and bottom line means he can't move. So he has a commute of about 140 miles round trip per day. He said it's costing him $600 per month in gas and even if you have a car that gets 30 mpg it'd work out to about $340 per month based on current average cost of gasoline in Louisiana.
The big problem, to me, is still the range. They say 300 miles. But there are indications that the range varies with temperature. There aren't a bunch of "rapid charge" stations out there right now. And even if there were "rapid charge" means about 30 minutes.
That' means the Tesla is still pretty much a "second car" kind of thing for most people. If you are just going to have one vehicle you can't have one that has a 300 mile range on a charge and less than that under less than optimum temperature conditions.
But, hey, when I started college in the 1970s Texas Instruments LED calculators cost like $70 in 1976 dollars. That's about $288 in today's money and they couldn't do anything close to what one can do now with a calculator one can buy now for maybe $10 at Wal Mart.
I'll take on your fat, middle aged ass in any athletic endeavor you want. Except for cheeseburger eating, you're definitely the Wayne Gretzky of that.
