Yes and a true capacity test requires at minimum a full charge/discharge cycle, which is not practical in a swap scheme unless you keep lots of stock (not to mention the extra wear on the pack, electricity costs, and the time it takes). It’s not like a propane tank where you can do a pressure test in minutes and the…

Putting aside that MOUs aren’t really worth much (BP signed a similar MOU with Nio in 2018 and it went nowhere), Sinopec is China state owned. As for Shell, they invested in similar greenwashing schemes like hydrogen stations, where they raked in plenty of California government money for stations that have done…

Except batteries are a lot more complicated than propane tanks to evaluate. And given packs are not standardized (not even in the above examples, they only work for one brand) it’ll be hard to build up enough volume and essentially you will only have one choice. The biggest problem is as pointed out elsewhere, there…

Yep, this idea only works when governments are subsidizing things, which is what China is doing. CARB pulled their support in favor of hydrogen, so the idea never went anywhere, plus they never gave upfront grants/loans like the Chinese local governments were doing. DC fast chargers are a far better investment for the…

It works in China because the local governments are willing to subsidize the stations. Here in the USA, not even California was willing to subsidize it. CARB gave some credits to Tesla, but they quickly removed it in favor of supporting hydrogen and the support was never anywhere near what Chinese local governments…

Given the report doesn’t say the Land Rover driver was injured, I’m not sure if this disproves SUVs are safer. They may be more susceptible to roll overs, but modern cars have side airbags, some with laminated glass to prevent you from being thrown from the compartment, so the probability of serious injury from roll…

That had me scratching my head also. AFAIK the mobile carriers announced years ago they were going to phase out 3G even with deadlines (which they have since extended) and the automakers still chose to stick with 3G when they obviously knew it would sunset while the car was still well under warranty?

The people shopping this car would likely be other Mercedes buyers that just got the electric itch and the pricing is in line with the S-Class which is its gasoline analog. Mercedes was never about value for the dollar and I imagine most of the cars are leased. Although things are different due to the distorted used…

I like that this is a hatch, but does the load floor/rear lip really need to be that high? Looks like in the rear part, pretty much all the height is below that lip, and it looks fairly shallow (not sure if this is a distortion from camera lens or dimensions of car).

I can’t believe I even have to point this out, but obviously what people are talking about is bringing Tesla cars to test too. This is not some unusual request and had been done before.

With that statement it makes even less sense. The “current state of charging infrastructure” very much includes Tesla’s supercharger network! In fact, it makes a huge part of the EV charging infrastructure in the USA!.

That makes zero sense as a justification, that’s like saying you shouldn’t compare charging speeds and battery life of Apples vs other products because the Apple product uses a proprietary connector. As long as the products are cross shopped, I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be compared, because an actual…

Yeah, leaving out Teslas (which makes up a bulk of EVs sold today) makes it kind of meaningless. Although if you look at other such comparisons, the Teslas tend to slaughter everyone else on long road trips. To beat a Tesla with a non-Tesla on a cross country trip, pretty much all the stars have to align.

There’s a few factors that can make a car have a battery that old. First of all, a 2021 Model 3 could have been manufactured as old as October 2020. Second of all, although this situation is rare and Tesla tends to use refurb batteries for replacing defective batteries under warranty, they likely have stock of some…

You make a good point, that is what really matters to end user. From how Tesla service operates, I doubt they are doing VIN flagging and keeping a record of how much range the car had when it was sold. Most likely they do it based on EPA and the Monroney sticker, as that’s the easiest way (multiply that number by 70%,…

First year degradation is always a lot more, and then it slows down. It really depends on what SOC and temperatures it was stored at. If it was fully charged and stored in high temps, it’s not unusual at all to lose that much, if not more. Modern cells with thermal controlled packs don’t do quite as bad as specified…

That’s informative. It makes sense to update the rules in response to changes in the industry.

Because we allow that for any other driving scenario and generally the bar for driving on the road is very low here. Preproduction cars are driving on public roads regularly. Learner’s permits are issued regularly to people unfit for the road on their own. Heck, many people that drive on the road today with their…

It has to move with you, before that function is activated. If it’s was just somewhere and you came into range, it won’t activate.

The difference is Tile is cross platform so you can still receive the “thank you” notification when it connects to your Android device and you have the Tile app. Also, the app needs to be running for it to work, and the install base is much smaller (so the chances of it being able to track a vehicle is much smaller).