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I suppose the knives have come out to "debunk" the meaning of the word "depressingly."

Personally, I did the math on a Tesla purchase in 2020 given my own climate (very cold), driving patterns (90% high-efficiency highway driving), and energy mix. The end result was somewhere between 50k-100k miles to break even compared to a small, fuel-efficient Honda.

Keep in mind that a Tesla is a comparatively big car, and if you don't want to haul around that much car, you don't have to - estimates in the literature tend to compare cars of a similar "class," when your personal alternatives may be outside that class.

Also, the Reuters folks (and the EPA) are a bit optimistic and fall on the low end of published estimates I have seen for the carbon footprints of electric cars.

However, keep in mind that there's a huge variance here and many of the factors swing both ways: comparing a Tesla model X to a Honda pilot in SoCal (warm climate and tons of green energy) for a commuter (mostly city driving in traffic) may break even at 5000 miles or less.