Environment isn't getting much of a break in a city where the good times still roll

The oil industry dominates New Orleans, where a few concessions to the environment include small solar panels atop parking meters, above, and a growing network of electric streetcars, including this one on Canal Street, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

NEW ORLEANS -- On a six-day visit to the Big Easy, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.

Downtown streets were filled with an unusually large number of big SUVs and pickup trucks, and only a small number of gas-electric hybrids.

I rode plenty of electric streetcars, but saw not a single all-electric car from Tesla, Nissan, BMW or other manufacturer.

And solar panels seemed more common on parking meters than on buildings and homes.

In the city's Garden District, I saw a rare Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid in a neighborhood filled with SUVs.

Oil, music and fish

A visitor soon learns how important the petroleum industry is to New Orleans and Louisiana, despite the Deepwater Horizon spill six years ago that nearly destroyed the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil companies are the major sponsors of two major music and food festivals in April -- the French Quarter Festival and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which began Friday.

Louisiana is the primary source of the nation's crude oil, and the second-largest refiner of petroleum for gasoline and plastic, according to the New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corp.

Meanwhile, the Louisiana fishing industry has bounced back, "accounting for 26 percent of all seafood landed in the country, and 40 percent of all seafood consumed by Americans each year," the city's marketing group says. 

Tesla New Orleans

Tesla Motors has promised a service center in New Orleans beginning in 2014, but Model S owners are still waiting.

A friend who lives in the city says he has seen a few Teslas.

The company Web site lists a New Orleans service center as "coming soon."

Tesla has installed free Superchargers and destination chargers across Louisiana for Tesla owners.

Times says if you want a fast, luxurious EV, just wait 5 years for Audi or Porsche

DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH: Audi and Porsche showed all-electric concept cars at the Frankfurt Auto Show in Germany, above and below, but production models wouldn't go on sale until 2020 -- that's five long years from now.

OH MY ACHING BACK: The low-slung Porsche concept looks like it is aimed at the young and limber. And the 300-mile range would be of limited value to older drivers, who need frequent bathroom breaks.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We're all familiar with the phrase, "Start your engines."

But Tom Voelk, a contributor to The New York Times, really stretches the meaning of "start" in his story from the Frankfurt Auto Show in Germany on Monday.

After noting Tesla Motors has had the market for "high-end electric cars" to itself since the Model S went on sale in 2012, Voelk claims:

"But that is changing as other automakers start to introduce their own models [italics added]."

Really? 

The story is silent on new production models of all-electric cars from Audi and Porsche, both of which are owned by Volkswagen, but does describe two "concepts" that are at least five years away from production.

This is the same kind of hype and exaggeration you see in automakers' TV advertising, but Times readers deserve better.

New Teslas

If Audi and Porsche actually put their EVs on sale in 2020, they will be competing with a Tesla crossover, the Model X, as well as the smaller Model 3 with a range of 200 miles and a price of around $35,000.

A second-generation Tesla Roadster might also be available and could a second-generation Model S be far behind?

Model S still on top

Until then, the Tesla Model S remains the fastest, most luxurious all-electric car you can buy, one that has earned Consumer Reports' highest rating ever.

Unlike the Times and other publications, Consumer Reports' evaluations aren't influenced by advertising or the fleets of free Audis and Porsches available to automobile writers and VIPs. 

Porsche's low-slung Mission E Concept claims an 0-60 time that is already eclipsed by the fastest Tesla Model S.

The German automakers' response to Tesla's zero-emissions cars has been disappointing.

Still, the Mission E Concept shows Porsche learned a great deal from the two Tesla Model S four-door hatchbacks the automaker purchased and shipped to its engineers in Germany.

And given that country's dark past, any future all-electric models from Audi and Porsche likely will meet resistance from affluent Jewish buyers, who rewarded Lexus, Toyota's luxury division, with early and continuing success.

In July, Lexus outsold Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi in the U.S. for the first time.

The second revolution from Tesla: Putting the adventure back into vacation car travel

With no Tesla Superchargers between Albany, N.Y., and Montreal, Quebec, we stopped at the Basin Harbor Club, a resort on Lake Champlain in Vergennes, Vt. Owners of the Model S will find at least two Tesla Connectors, which charge the all-electric hatchback at the rate of 31 miles per hour, below. 

We had more than three hours to kill before setting off on the final leg of our trip from Hackensack, N.J., to Montreal for the International Jazz Festival.

Grass and soil are hardly the ideal parking surface. While we waited for our Model S to charge, we had lunch and then sat in front of the fire in the resort bar, listening to a player piano. Before we left, we made a reservation to stay at the Basin Harbor Club on our way back to New Jersey after July Fourth.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Owners of the Model S can still tear up the highways on their vacations, speed into service areas and race to the bathroom, their bladders about to burst.

If they have Tesla Superchargers to rely on, that is.

But on our trip from Hackensack, N.J., to Montreal on Saturday, we found only one Supercharger on the most direct route, and it was slower than I expected.

That stop lasted about 90 minutes to add 110 miles of range and have a bowl of soup at the Whole Foods Market in the Colonie Center, a big mall outside Albany, N.Y., with six free Superchargers. 

The Tesla app on my smart phone reported the Supercharger was adding 84 miles an hour, but when I first plugged in the car, the rate of charge was a lot slower, though increasing by the minute.

I had to stop outside Albany, because my Model S 60 has a maximum range of 208 miles and the distance to Montreal from our home is about 360 miles.

Lunch break in Vermont

Our second stop was at the Basin Harbor Club on Lake Champlain in northwest Vermont, where we found a Tesla Connector that charged our car at pretty much the same rate as the 240-volt outlet I had installed in my garage -- 31 miles an hour.

We started our third and final leg to Montreal about three and a half hours later, and had about 30 miles of range left when we pulled into the garage of the Hyatt Regency.

I didn't know at the time, but the Connectors at Basin Harbor are part of a network Tesla calls Destination Charging, where the company partners with hotels, restaurants, shopping centers and resorts "to make charging when you arrive at your destination as simple as charging at home."

See: Tesla's Destination Charging Network

The alternative to stopping in Vermont was to drive a circuitous route of Superchargers, going west in New York State, north to Canada's Ontario Province and then east to Montreal -- a driving time of more than 10 hours, and that's without break time.

Our drive was an adventure

Instead, we got to cross a gorgeous cantilevered bridge and drive over some twisting two-lane blacktop in Vermont, where we discovered a beautiful resort that may figure into future vacation plans.

We drove through farmland stretching to the horizon in Vermont and Quebec, a soothing landscape so different from the sea of brake lights we see on our congested, antiquated streets in North Jersey.

In Vermont, we were driving on a two-lane road and saw a white-haired man, who just got off a tractor, ambling to his mailbox, more or less with his back to us.

Then, he turned, flashed a smile and waved. 

And on Route 89 in Vermont, as we headed toward Canada, a Harley-Davidson rider pulled up in the fast lane, turned his head and gave me a thumbs up.

Most annoying?

The most annoying part of the trip wasn't the sluggish Supercharger outside Albany or the detour to reach the Tesla Connectors in Vermont.

It is what Tesla calls Range Assurance, which tries to route you via Superchargers when you enter a destination in the car's navigation system.

When we set out the 135-miles trip to the Colonie Center Superchargers, the Google Maps navigation system kept on sending us to the new one in Newburgh, N.Y., even though we started the trip with a rated range of 210 miles.

After we charged the Model S in Vermont, we couldn't set the Hyatt Regency Montreal as our final destination without repeated warnings there were no Superchargers on our route.

I had to use the Waze app on my phone to navigate to Montreal. 

Rue University in Montreal, not far from our destination, about 13 hours after we set out on Saturday morning. More than four hours of that time was spent charging the Model S.

As we approached Montreal, the sky took on a golden glow.

My lunch at the casual Red Mill Restaurant, part of the Basin Harbor Club in Vermont, included a tasty Lemon Chickpea Soup ($4 for a cup).

My wife had Sriracha Chicken Wings ($10) and Sweet Potato Fries ($2), which proved irresistible.

Red Mill Restaurant at the Basin Harbor Club.

Lake Champlain Bridge connects New York State and Vermont. In Canada, we drove over another Champlain Bridge to the island of Montreal.

We streamed Bob Marley and other reggae stars as we drove north on Route 87 in New York, a stretch of road that has no service areas and no Tesla Superchargers.

I saw three other Model S owners use one of the six Tesla Superchargers in the Colonie Center outside Albany, N.Y., close to the New York State Thruway. You'll see the Superchargers as soon as you turn into the mall's main entrance.

An 8-ounce cup of Portuguese White Bean and Kale Soup was $3.79 at the Whole Foods Market in the Colonie Center.

The Colonie Center uses waterless urinals.

Taxis in Holland, incentives in China, future models and other green-car trivia

A Tesla Model S demonstrator at the electric automaker's new Showroom-Service Center on Route 17 north in Paramus.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I don't envy all of those full-time auto writers and bloggers who have to scramble for green-car news.

Many of them write for sponsored sites, and range far and wide, even years into the future, in search of stories.

Look at all of the copy about the Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle, which isn't scheduled to come out until late in 2015.

But with a first-year production of only 2,100, it's unclear how many will be available in the United States.

What is clear is that Toyota dealers are sure to squeeze anyone who wants to buy one of the few available for a lot of added profit over the $57,500 base price, if past practice is any guide.

Junket to Japan

One of the blogs that wrote about the Mirai acknowledged Toyota provided airfare to Japan, lodging and meals to enable the writer "to bring you this first-person report."

Another blog, Gas2, even compared the Mirai to Tesla's Model S, which has been sold since 2012.

The writer did note there are only a "couple of dozen" public hydrogen fueling stations in the U.S.

China and Holland

I just read about air pollution in China, and how one city plans to limit registrations of new cars while the government weighs adding incentives for the purchase of plug-in hybrids and EVs.

In Holland, there is a fleet of Tesla Model S taxis at the airport serving Amsterdam, according to Gas2.

None of that is of any interest to me.

I've read that incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles are far higher in Europe than in the U.S., but I haven't seen anything on whether the new Congress will attempt to get rid of the $7,500 federal tax credit for the purchase of a green car.

From hybrid to electric

I live in northern New Jersey and have driven Toyota Prius hybrids since 2004.

Now, I plan to make the transition to an all-electric car, and I want to know all I can about my choices.

The Tesla Model S has twice the range of any other all-electric vehicle sold in New Jersey.

But I just read real breaking news in Automobile magazine, quoted in Green Car Reports, which says Audi, BMW and Porsche plan to attack Tesla with new green-car models due in 2018 to 2021.

Is Automobile magazine suggesting I wait?

Best Cars of 2014 

The Tesla Model S just finished first in Consumer Reports' Best Cars of 2014.

The only other green car on the list, the Mercedes-Benz E250 diesel, finished fifth.

More news I can't use

The annoying Gas 2 blog, which claims to report on "Green Cars that Don't Suck," carries a ton of news that is of little use to anyone planning to buy an all-electric car:

The latest is 15 Electric Cars Hitting the Market in 2015

Only one of the 15 is all-electric -- Tesla's Model X crossover with gull-wing doors -- unless you want to count a Croatian super-car concept with an MSRP of $1 million. 

The rest are plug-in hybrids from BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Audi and Chevy, but the BYD Tang will be sold only in China.

LOL: Auto blogger gives advice to genius behind Tesla Motors, SolarCity, SpaceX

Hybrid electric buses have been a common sight in Manhattan for years, but this is the first hybrid electric UPS truck I've seen, being driven up Third Avenue a couple of weeks ago.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Christopher DeMorro is a writer for Gas2, a blog that promises to bridge the gap "between gear heads and green heads."

I've been driving hybrids for more than 10 years and have no idea what a "green head" is.

In view of climate change and air pollution that kills many thousands of people every year, you also have to question the assertion of Gas2 that it reports on "green cars that don't suck."

How could any green car "suck," if it reduces the reliance on fossil fuels and helps clean the air?

But today, DeMorro has outdone himself with a post that advises Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk to take five steps to improve his all-electric cars:

Elon Musk should 'stop, just stop'

DeMorro faults Musk for undertaking too many projects, including an attempt "to bring solar grid storage to homes en masse via SolarCity."

SolarCity is one of many companies that install solar panels on homes. I'm not sure what DeMorro means by "solar grid storage."

More troubling is that an ad for a competing solar-panel installer appears just below the Gas2 post, "Five changes that could make Tesla better."