What I said to Mr. Herz on Monday was that most people with electric cars charge at home. Or where they can on the fledgling highway fast charge network to get them where they need to go. He raised the possibility of selectively charging in Seattle to lower emissions, and I said that it might be possible to choose whether to charge at work or home if you commute between the Eastside and Seattle, but that I _didn't_ know of anyone who did that.

I'm a former reporter myself, and I don't appreciate having my statements so completely misconstrued like that to fit Mr. Herz's premise.

SEVA does fully support clean, renewable power for transportation, however.

Guys, let's think this through. Electricity is fungible and both these utilities connect to the same power grid and exchange electricity with other utilities (notably the BPA.) It's entirely possible, for example, that your Seattle-charged Tesla causes BPA to have less power to sell to PSE, which means they must turn up Colstrip to make up the difference.

@1: You told me: "I'm sure there are some people who try to get a preferential charge in Seattle... I'm willing to bet that there's one or two people doing that." I quoted you accurately. If you have any other concerns, feel free to take them up with my editor: eli@thestranger.com.

Is a Toyota Prius C an relevant comparison to a Model S? The latter is a full size luxury sedan with comparable acceleration to the highest performance sedans in its class (V8 or V10s), and can be configured with seven seats. It also has a trunk, unlike the Prius C.

Tesla Model S customers are trading in luxury sedans or SUV's for an all electric vehicle, so even with marginally clean power the Model S is generating huge emission reductions on a basis of the reference case.

Ditto @Bigring ----- the Tesla ought to be compared to a larger vehicle, i.e. a Lexus sedan, not a Prius! The fact that the heavier Tesla matches a Prius — in a coal heavy region — is pretty impressive. The transition to EVs is a complicated situation that requires some study. There is no apples-to-apples happy equation to be had. I'm disappointed that the Stranger has done such a bone-headed job with this. EVs are better in just about any region but Ohio or Kentucky, which is amazing.

@MarcVH Charging EVs (a Leaf takes 24kwh to go 100 miles) is likely less of a draw on a utility than hot tubs, or even microwaves, and the emissions reductions are considerable compared to internal combustion. The "fungible" nature of the grid means, actually, that it will be possible for the same Tesla, down the road, to be charged with more and more solar and wind.

What seems glaringly missing from this story is the fact that Olympia democrats are still patting themselves on the back for the Tesla Motors rebate program that they levied on taxpayers. If you buy a Tesla you get a couple grand in the form of a rebate check. The reason this is abhorrent is that the Tesla model S is a luxury car, and moreover has enjoyed unbridled success, little of which can be attributed to the rebate. Millionaires don't need any relief from the price of a luxury car. They'd buy it anyway.

Hey all,

I think the point of this article isn't to bash EVs but to point out that it's crazy that we're still charging our green NW technologies with coal power. EVs are great! But why in the world is PSE still hooked on coal?

@Eastpike. The enabling legislation for tax exempt EV purchases was enacted in 2009, three years before the model s was available.

The law also allows for tax credits on propane and CNG equipped vehicles.

Rebublican sentator holmquist tried to expand the scope of the tax exemption in 2014. http://legiscan.com/WA/text/SB6496/id/93…

I think you missed the mark.

Ansel, you asked me whether people who lived on the Eastside charged selectively in Seattle, and I said no, they generally charge at home or wherever the highway fast chargers happen to be, if they're taking a long trip. That was my main answer.

I also mentioned that SEVA members who want lower emissions often put solar panels on their homes. You didn't quote that part. Or, that PSE customers can avail themselves of PSE's "Green Power" option, which supports renewables. You didn't mention this, either.

Then yes, with further conversation, I did perhaps allow myself to speculate on _your_ premise that someone who lived on the Eastside and lives in Seattle (or vice versa) might be able to preferentially charge at work. You could do this, sure. But your small quotation makes it sound like I asserted this is a thing people regularly do, and it's not really a thing.

I'll curb my willingness to speculate in any future conversations, I guess.

The final quote was also out of context, as an answer to a different question. You asked whether SEVA was involved in the fight against coal in the power mix, and I said no, SEVA focuses on promoting electric vehicle adoption, though we have also lent support to carbon reduction programs like the pending Low Carbon Fuel Standard the Governor is considering. But then I said that SEVA is generally supportive of cleaner power, i.e. "we want our members to plug in to the cleanest grid they can."

That last statement was about clean power generally and had nothing to do with preferentially charging on the Eastside vs. Seattle, but in your story, it sure seems to.

A couple more corrections:

1) A car's battery capacity is in units of kilowatt-hours, not kilowatts.

2) I also don't think that your back-of-the-envelope carbon emissions per mile is quite right. It's certainly not two-decimal places precise. Clark and I both cautioned you about quoting a specific stat.

The Union of Concerned Scientists looked at this question carefully and found that, from an emissions standpoint, electric cars are a bit better than the best hybrids in the northwest grid, equivalent to a 73 mpg car, whereas the Prius C gets 50 mpg. If there's a comparison stat to quote, that's it. And we both shared this report with you.

See p. 12 and p. 33
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/c…

Just a point of clarification: Seattle's first choice of power is its own generation sources (Skagit project, Boundary, etc) then BPA (which is mostly hydro, and one nuclear). Some coal does get into the mix, but very little, and the utility purchases REC's to compensate for that.

PSE also has it's own hydro, and also buys from BPA, but public utilities get better pricing than investor-owned, so they will want to go with their own generation first, including colstrip.

But here's the thing - you can''t really turn a coal power plant on and off, or throttle it back much, so they run at capacity pretty much all of the time, which means that a lot of electricity gets dumped overnight and at other low-demand times. So if you charge your EV at night from a coal power plant, you are making that plant much more efficient. And while I think that "clean coal" is a myth, it's a lot easier to regulate a handful of smokestacks than it is to try to regulate a million or so tailpipes.

And so as to not be a total Pollyanna, City Light used to have a partial ownership in the Centralia coal plant. Citizen pressure made the utility sell that off several years back.

I question what they expect to do with all the lithium battery disposal? What's the replacement 5-8 years depending on use and charging. I hear that they can be used to for a short time after plugged into the standard electrical grid for about a year. The we'll have a ton of hazardous waist to dispose of!? Not to mention the destructive process of mining lithium.

MarcVH @3 gets it. Every clean kWh you don't use in Seattle is sold to another utility where it displaces a dirtier kWh. The carbon dioxide that gets released then drifts all over the world, causing just as much havoc no matter where you charge. It tends not to matter _where_ you charge up your EV. It matters somewhat more _when_ you charge up your EV. Under some circumstances you can time your charging to coincide with when there is an excess of clean power (say wind) on the grid. It is easy to move power from county to county, but hard to store power from hour to hour. Ideally our electric meters would be "smart" and guide us to making good choices.

Catalina's comment @12 delves more accurately into the subtleties of the issue than does my comment @14, but the point remains that where you charge up your EV makes quite a bit less difference to the global environment than Ansel's piece may lead one to believe.

MC Tatonka dear, I used to be the Electrical Car Hostess for a local utility, but I have new duties now, so I may not be "au courant" on everything EV. But I believe your concern about recycling has been at least preliminarily addressed:

http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/what…

As for the mining process, I won't pretend to know anything about that. But is it any worse than what we do to get oil?

Even if Williams-Derry's analysis is correct -- and I notice that Anzel Herz does not give us a link to the article he quotes so we can go see for ourself -- Anzel is incorrect in that reduction in CO2 emissions is only 1/2 of the societal benefits that Electric Vehicles bring. The other equally large advantage Electric Vehicles bring to society is not in the reduction in global emissions, but also rather in their reductions of local air pollutions. These reductions in local pollution in turn do really good things like reducing childhood asthma. So even if it were true that global CO2 emissions from the Tesla match that global CO2 emissions from the Prius -- the Tesla would still be providing twice the societal benefits.

Not to imply that I am supporting PSE -- which is truly in every way a terribly horrible stinkpot of a company!

Ansel,

What a cheap way to get people to click into your article.

As one could have guessed, w.r.t EV footprint you've brought nothing here that hasn't been beaten to death elsewhere. The facts are:

- Coal power generation in the US is decreasing fast

- PSE, considering the region it operates in, is on borrowed time with that plant. This story should be about PSE, not about EVs. Rather than focus on PSE to help escalate the public pressure on it - you choose to malign EVs. Instead of mobilizing all the PSE customer base, you choose to slut-shame only the small percentage who are EV drivers, and let the others bask in their apathy as if a dirty coal plant is only the business of EVs, not of anyone who uses the electricity.

- EVs have in fact been a catalyst for accelerating the emergence of renewable generation. Most EV drivers either install solar on their homes, or pay the utility extra to support renewables.

- In your comparison, you chose to pit the heaviest-footprint BEV vs. the most compact ICE hybrid, put them on the Eastside - and still the BEV came slightly ahead. Compare the Prius C to a similarly-sized car like the BMW i3, and there's no contest in footprint. And in a few years' time when that plant eventually winds down, there will be no contest regardless of which two vehicles you choose.

What a train wreck, err battery electric vehicle wreck, of an article.

Ansel, you and the Stranger would do well to re-write this one.

Who cares about the externalities of electrical generation.

Let's talk about the enormous societal costs of the batteries.

Lithium is a filthy smelting product, and produces 10,000 pounds of waste for every pound of finished product, this doesn't include CO2.

Natural Gas would produce fewer wastes.

This article and these comments reflect a confusion I see too often in the discussions of hybrid and electric vehicles. These vehicles are a partial solution to two different but intersecting problems: reducing air pollution (lithium isn't causing the climate change that threatens the planet) AND reducing U.S. dependency on imported oil. The fact that they're not a perfect solution doesn't mean that they shouldn't be considered at least useful transitional contributors to both goals. And heading off climate catastrophe will tale a whole lot of those partial solutions.

Transitioning from petroleum to cleaner energy is not possible if cars do not also make the transition. It is a required step, not the only step.

I wonder where Ansel gets his figures. Worst case - where 100% of electricity is produced from coal - would put the Tesla S about 2 times the Prius C. Of course, we're talking only about CO2 here, not methane or various noxious compounds produced when refining gasoline.

Anyway, for PSE, which may get 20% of its power from coal, the Tesla stands solidly ahead, at 1/2 the CO2 of the Prius!

Here are my figures:

According to the EIA, electricity production from coal produces about 2.1 pounds CO2 per kwh. By the way, I'm pretty certain this figure does not include the CO2 produced by mining and shipping the coal. So we need to keep that in mind when comparing to gasoline.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id…

The Tesla S gets 100 miles per 38 kwh, according to

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?a…

which is 2.6 miles per kwh, that would be .8 pounds CO2 per mile. Add about 10% for electricity line losses and charger losses and you get about .9 pounds CO2 per mile. That's for electricity generated 100% from coal.

Now, the Prius C, for comparison,
According to this .gov site,

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?a…

The Prius C averages about 50mpg. And the EIA, at

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id…

tells us that using 1 gal of gas produces about 20 pounds of CO2. In addition, refining oil creates about 100 pounds of CO2 per barrel, or about 3 pounds per gal.

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/g…

So, per mile, the Prius C produces about .45 pounds of CO2. Again, this figure does not include pumping oil or transporting.

@12: "But here's the thing - you can''t really turn a coal power plant on and off, or throttle it back much, so they run at capacity pretty much all of the time, which means that a lot of electricity gets dumped overnight and at other low-demand times."

Not really 'dumped'. When Colstrip's operators (PPL) fire up the plant, the owners (PSE among them) are allocated a certain portion of the output. If the can't use it, they can trade it with other utilities to offset their energy needs. Later on, these utilities might 'pay back' PSE using their own generating resources. As you say, coal plants can't be turned on at the flick of a switch. Or throttled up and down. So they are scheduled as base load sources, while hydro and gas turbines are used to 'top off' the system.

So when you sit in Seattle and plug your Tesla or Leaf in at night, odds are pretty good that there's a coal plant running to supply it. Just like on the Eastside. PSE is paying back Seattle City Light for the daytime peaking power that they borrowed.

Good luck figuring out who is responsible for which carbon.

The U.S. Department of Energy states quite plainly on its website that in 2013, 39% of the electricity generated in the United States came by way of burning coal. Some secret.

Electric cars are not a panacea, but they are a step in the right direction. Electricity can be generated in other ways besides burning coal. A Prius, miserly though it may be, is 100% reliant on fossil fuels.

@12 Catalina Del-VuRay: 45 years ago, Seattle City Light ALSO once thought it would be a "great" idea to put two nuclear power plants in Skagit County--one on Backus Hill near Burlington (visibly east of I-5!), and the other on the Kiket Island Peninsula (now known and open to the public as Kukatali on the Swinomish Reservation as part of Deception Pass between SR 20 and near the communities of La Conner and Anacortes). Those of us local and regional residents way back when had to battle our butts off to stop that insanity (the 1976 gubernatorial election of Dixy Lee Ray didn't help, either).
Fortunately, neither proposed nuke plant became a reality. I shudder to think what would have happened to the greater Puget Sound Region if we'd had a tsunami / earthquake / national disaster like the one at Fukushima, Japan on March 4, 2011.
Oy VEY---sounds like SCL's "Big Ideas" Department STILL needs serious public watchdogging.

I know there are no easy answers about global warming, but SHIT! The profiteers of Big Oil and Big Coal (including political sell-outs like Doug Ericksen!) have got to be stopped in their dirty fracking and strip-mining tracks.

Which "big idea" do you have a problem with now, Auntie?

I'm all for "serious public watchdogs" - but the keyword is serious.

@21 - I don't think the article was really about the cars, but I'm totally with you. This whole idea that driving a hybrid or an all-electric car lessens your impact is nothing but a comforting falsehood. Fewer humans consuming less per capita - that's the only real way to lessen our impact. Everything else is just window dressing. That's a much harder message to make money off of, so you know - let's keep mining lithium.

"Depends on your zip code".
We put up solar panels before we bought our Leaf, which returns 4 miles per kwh vs the Tesla @2.
Lead batteries are recycled, Lithium also, AND re-purposed

Was the article title supposed to be
"PSE still using antique technologies" ?

So, "Seattle Electric Vehicle Association legislative issues coordinator John McCoy" wants to make it clear to all of us that people on the Eastside do not care about where their electricity comes from. Why?

Anyhoo, I think the big difference between electric and gasoline cars is that electricity can be generated in a sustainable fashion. The prospect of getting 100% of our electricity from "green" sources seems a lot more feasible than the prospect of switching the entire fleet over to ethanol or bio-diesel.

@11 It's a shame you had to learn that Ansel is an idiot, and not a journalist, in this fashion. Did he leave a $1,000 camera unattended while interviewing you? He certainly seemed to have left his notes behind, assuming he took any.

@27: "45 years ago, Seattle City Light ALSO once thought it would be a "great" idea to put two nuclear power plants in Skagit County"

I believe those were proposed by PSP&L (now PSE) and Seattle City Light had nothing to do with them. Seattle Cily Light was a part of WPPSS, but only participated in the first 3 planned plants, pulling out of #4 and 5 when the things started to go bad.

You say "electric cars" but in this discussion you seem only to refer to "battery cars".

An electric car can be defined as one whose wheels are turned by an electric motor.

And that motor can be powered in different ways.

A Tesla or Leaf is powered solely by many sets of batteries, charged from the standard grid.

However, the electric motor can also be powered by an onboard fuel cell, which in turn is powered by hydrogen. The processes for generating hydrogen are many, from stream reforming to lab methods like artificial leaves.

With both battery and hydrogen electric cars, there are no pollutants at the "tailpipe". The pollution, if there is any, is centralized. That means, at worse, there is a better chance to isolate and capture it, rather than spewing it into each others faces as cars sit in traffic, or pass by schools.

Please potential Tesla buyer don't pay attention to Stranger snark and buy the Tesla. Getting rid of coal-fired electricity depends on it.

PEVs, Batteries and Renewables are inextricably linked.

The rise of mass manufacturing of electric vehicles means the rise of mass manufacturing of batteries which means lower battery costs not just for transportation applications but for grid storage as well which increases intermittent renewables ability to displace coal. See http://www.theguardian.com/.../ubs-inves…...

And also ignore the false precision of the comparison to a Prius C. This is an estimate dressed up as a fact. We know from The EV Project data that in this area majority of weekday aggregate electricity demand for residential EV charging is between 7:00p-9:00p. We don't know the average PSE lbs CO2/kWh for that period. Some seasons it may be mostly wind or nat gas or coal. The information is not there to provide such an exact number for that specific time frame. False precision is a tool of propaganda not "analysis" and does a disservice to the campaign of getting rid of Colstrip.

And why assess emissions for one point of time? Lifetime emissions is what matters. The Tesla will get cleaner over 15 years as PSE gets rid of coal and the Prius C will get dirtier as more tar sands crude is used by Puget Sound refiners. We can and are retiring coal generators like Colstrip. Lets focus on getting that done and not snark See http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.…

Seattle has another big advantage over the Eastside, although the Eastside is making progress on this front. Seattle's a place where, on average, people are less dependent on an automobile to get around. And the surest way to reduce the carbon footprint of one's driving is simply to drive less.

One sign that we're spoiled (in a good way) here in the Seattle area. Regarding: "a fifth of the electricity coming through Puget Sound Energy's grid into your car originates at a dirty coal plant in Colstrip"--a lot of metro areas around the USA could only dream of having only a fifth of their electricity come from coal.

Thanks to Catalina Vel-DuRay for the detailed explanation @12 and the follow-ups.

Oh, and is it merely a sad coincidence that the name of this coal town is Colstrip? Is there strip-mining there too?

This is one of the rare times the comments are infinitely more informative and accurate than the article. (Way to go Catalina Vel-DuRay).

That is. Unless it's Ansel. Who is seriously uniformly terrible.

Makes me wonder: who is Ansel blowing at the The Stranger to keep his phony baloney job? I hope it's Eli. Otherwise I can't think of a single other reason he keeps this hack on staff.

@11

Who fucking cares? Let it go.

Holmes dear, Auntie Grizelda is partialy right, and certainly correct in spirt.

City Light and Snohomish PUD purchased Kiket Island for their own nuclear power plant in 1969. Citizen activism prevented that plan from moving forward.

Backus Hill was a Puget Power project.

I'm a former reporter myself, and I don't appreciate having my statements so completely misconstrued like that to fit Mr. Herz's premise.

You must be new here.

I notice nobody mentions the significant environmental impacts of the dams that create hydroelectric power. Is that not a concern?

We really need to stop caring what kind of cars the 1% drive. How much actual difference would it make if every Tesla were a Prius? Or a Suburban for that matter. The number of them out there is a rounding error. Their total carbon emissions under any circumstances is a rounding error.

What matters is what the 99% are driving. It makes a massive difference to get people getting 20 mpg into cars that get 25 mpg. And really to get rid of the ones not even getting 20. There's even significant gains to be had if you can get the millions and millions of drivers getting 25 mpg up near 30.

But what about the little sliver getting over 30 mpg? It's nice, but really, taking what is a very small fraction of our fuel consumption and cutting it down to 40 or 50 mpg in a hybrid, or even eliminating it with an electric? It costs a few thousand dollars to go from a car with really shitty mileage to one that's moderate. A few more thousand to go from moderate to pretty good. It costs tens and hundreds of thousands to get those last few gains.

You're getting very small gains from the least polluting segment. And only for people who can afford $70,000 cars on top of that. Not important.

There's vast numbers of people with shitty trucks that get only 15 mpg, or shitty cars that only get 20 mpg. They're the ones we should be talking about. Who does what with a fucking Tesla is obsessing over what the rich do. That belongs in the garbage along with speculation over what they'll name the royal baby.

Plus, Teslas -- and Priuses -- just give rich assholes one more reason to feel smug. They should feel the opposite.

It depends on the dam, bigyaz. For instance, City Light's Skagit project is a certified low-impact Hydro installation. That's mostly because they are located above the spawning grounds for salmon in the Skagit River, but also because the dams are operated with a "fish first" philosophy. (that wasn't always the case of course, but it has been for the last twenty years or so.

Other dams, such as CL's Boundary, which is run-of-the-river(no reservoir), or PSE's Baker River dams, aren't so benevolent, but there is mitigation that can be done to help lessen the impact.

But no source of generation is perfect, that's for sure.

Every time we add a windmill or a solar panel, my electric car will get greener. My car could give a shit where the electrons come from. I have the POSSIBILITY of driving an ever-greener car. Hybrids simply top-out.

Anyone who thinks that coal generation will have very long life in this part of the country aren't paying attention to the steady, sometimes insanely-steep price drop of renewables, and the massive externalities of fossil fuels - soon to be INTERNALIZED at the behest of insurance companies and investors who are already massively hedging against climate change. As more money flows into these hedges, investors will not tolerate a regulatory scheme that artificially externalizes costs for competing assets. And the pendulum will swing... hard.

The fossil fuel industry, to quote my grandfather, will come out "looking like it was ridden hard and put away wet."

@44: Thank you.

Hey Ansel you missed a big aspect which is PSE like many utilities are part of a REC program called "Green Power" by which customers can opt-in for 1cent/kwh to have their electricity purchased by the utility from renewable sources. If you care about the environment it is massively worth it. I checked their own numbers and verified with Rocky Mountain Institute and it's seems to be a legit program; something worth some investigation to see how well it actually has worked?
You can read more on their sites:
https://pse.com/savingsandenergycenter/G…
While EVs are still in the early adopter stage you will see high subscription rates of this service and similar ones nationwide. Once EVs become more mainstream then you can expect that to go down, but cleaner sources will continue to make all the average fleet cleaner (that can't be done at a same pace with ICE -internal combustion engine- cars.

#21 That's actually incorrect.

#43 It's ironic, isn't it, that our human nature makes us want to always pass the blame/responsibility for action onto someone else.

As others have posted, the Prius CO2 footprint used for comparison doesn't account for oil transport, refining, etc. involved in getting the gasoline to the pump.

Even correcting for that (as other posters have already re-run those numbers), it's still apples-to-oranges, as the Model S is not a direct competitor of a the compact-class Prius.

A more appropriate hybrid to compare it would be the BMW ActiveHybrid7, which is a car that the Model S directly competes with in the marketplace. The 7-series hybrid is rated at 22/30 MPG to the Prius' 51/48, so roughly double the CO2 emissions.

Likewise, if you wanted to compare the Prius to an electric car, you'd be better off comparing it to the compact Leaf, which is rated at 126/101 MPGe to the Model S' 88/90 - roughly 3/4 the CO2 of the Model S.

Are you trying to tell me that when I pay PSE extra money to be on the green program my dollars are still being directed to coal?

Or are you trying to say you don't like electric cars?

Ultimately, my dollars are no longer going to the Middle East. That is a step in the right direction. There are some fringe benefits for public health. The air quality warning days are not being brought about by the coal plants

Walk. --- http://www.walking.net .

Pedestrians' rights !!! --- http://www.feetfirst.info/ ;D

One significant difference that Mr. Herz has neglected between the hybrid and the electric bears mention. The oil and other pollutants which the internal combustion engine creates then enter our streams and rivers where they kill salmon. The fish return to spawn on the first rains of autumn, just as the accumulation of summer's oil changes and coolant flushes are washed into the hydrosphere.

This tips the scales further in the direction of the electric vehicle, which is already the cleanest mode of personal automotive transportation.

Another point: the cheapest electric vehicles are less expensive than comparably sized cars in the long run, even if one is doing their own oil changes and coolant system flushes. Put a Prius C up against the i-MiEV and see how it pencils out.

I spent a little time figuring out the numbers. For the record, I want Colstrip out of PSE's fuel mix. But using bad numbers about EVs to make a point about Colstrip is not the way to do it.

So the clues: PSE's 2012 GHG Inventory is mentioned and the Sightline quote is "If you are drawing from the the mix of generators that PSE owns, Telsa comes out neck and neck with a plain vanilla Prius." The PSE Inventory http://goo.gl/Jn9evF page 34 Table 6-2 divides out PSE-owned Electric Operations, which include Colstrip, and Electricity Purchases:

* PSE-owned = 33% of PSE's electricty with emissions intensity of 1.5 lbs CO2e/kWh
* PSE Purcharses = 67% of PSE's electricity with emissions intensity of 0.6 lbs CO2e/kWh
* PSE weighted average electricity emissions intensity is 0.9 lbs CO2e/kWh

And here is the problem: the only way a Tesla has .50 lbs CO2e/mile is if one assumes that it is exclusively charged with PSE-owned electricity. How the hell does that happen? PSE's dirtiest electrons (PSE-owned electricity) somehow sorts itself from the other electrons and ends up going to homes with Teslas. Really?

Here are the numbers for EVs charged on PSE electricity using 0.9 lbs C02e/kWh overall emissions intensity, apple to apples comparisons and fueleconomy.gov combined city/hghwy fuel economy stats & their methodology which includes 5% grid transmision loss (I've included a 20% adder for upstream emmissions for oil sands content in WA gasoline):

2014 all-electrics on PSE kWH vs fossil fuel vehicles
Lbs CO2e per mile

*Luxury Sedans/Large Cars
Tesla P85 all-electric = .38
BMW ActiveHybrid 7L = 1.02

*Midsize Cars
Nissan LEAF all-electric = .30
Prius hybrid = .51

*Compact Cars
Ford Focus Electric = .27
Prius C hybrid = .51

*40 foot Bus
Proterra Next Gen all-electric = 1.83
Daimler Orion VII hybrid = 5.09

*America's best selling pick up
Ford F-150 2WD 3.5L = 1.42