I should have clarified that it is true for Tesla everywhere, they just suck at repairs. But even in Finland there are other brands that do better. You have the Nissan Leaf, for example, which can be repaired anywhere that can repair Nissan fossil cars. The only exception is the battery and other parts of the HV system, but for them to get damaged the crash would need to be severe enough that a fossil would probably be written off anyway.

What's wrong with current batteries?

If you want cheap, the Korean and Chinese ones are excellent quality and attractively priced. The only limitation is charge speed, which means about 30-40 minutes for a 20%-80% charge. But given you will be driving for 4-5 hours before you reach that point, it's not really a huge deal.

For faster charging the Chinese LFP batteries are unbeatable. They have demonstrated a 5 minute recharge, but even with current production cars you can go from 20% to 80% in about 15 minutes. Don't tell me a 15 minute stop after 5+ hours of driving is unacceptable.

It depends on the vehicle. Teslas show a range estimate based on a fixed kWh/kilometre figure that is programmed into the software, so if it shows a lower range at 100% charge then that is an accurate description of how much capacity the battery has lost.

Other cars show range based on recent driving style, so you need some other way to check the battery. An OBD-II dongle is the usual way - there are standard codes for battery state-of-health. Even there though, it's not always clear because e.g. Korean cars will show 100% due to the way they specify usable capacity vs. the gross capacity of the battery. Even that is useful though, as you know it will behave just like a brand new one.

There are other issues, like a bad cell making the state-of-health inaccurate in practical use. It's not a great situation for buyers, but sticking to good brands with long warranties (e.g. Korean ones) is a pretty safe bet. It's not really any worse than with fossil cars either - you can check them over, but unless you strip the engine down you can't really know that there is nothing wrong with it.

Are you sure about that? These stats suggest that there are quite a lot of cars being imported into China: https://www.marklines.com/en/s...

The reason for the dramatic fall in Japanese exports to China is because of sentiment over the release of water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

To be fair, and I'm a big fan of EVs, there is an issue with battery damage. Because there is a lack of qualified technicians that can work with high voltage, and because the manufacturers don't tend to provide tools for detailed battery diagnostics, if the battery pack gets scratched sometimes the insurance company will just write it off.

Batteries are a lot cheaper now so it doesn't mean the whole car is written off... If they can find someone able to source and fit a new one.

It's an issue that is improving, but for now it is a real problem. That said, fossil cars are nearly as bad, since in any accident the crumple zones are going to... crumple, and require a fair few parts replacing.

It's weird that the US doesn't have more EV trucks. Europe has plenty of EV vans (we don't really do trucks) that are priced attractively compared to the fossil fuel counterparts.

You will come to appreciate the remote control when you can turn on your A/C remotely, so the car is nice and cool/warm when you come out to it. For truck owners the "utility mode" can be quite nice as well, where you can use the EV as a huge battery to power tools and camping equipment etc. Because there are no emissions it's no problem to run it indoors, no noise either.

Maybe the US will improve by the time you come to replace one of your trucks.

Teslas are not aluminum monocoque. Thanks for playing.

Like all cars, they're made from a mix of metals. I can only assume that you're thinking of the gigacastings, which are deep interior components, and if you're damaging one beyond usage, you've utterly obliterated your car already. They're not crush structures; the crush structures are mounted to them. They're also not the only main structural elements. The pillars for example are UHSS (ultra-high strength steel). But you're generally not going to be replacing or welding UHSS either. Once again, Tesla is not at all unique in this regard.

And technically you could fix mangled gigacastings, with body pulling. But body pulling isn't recommended on any monocoque car, only body-on-frame, as force transfer in monocoques is unpredictable.

As for "impinging on battery components", again, the battery is nestled between the gigacastings, making it even more internal. If you're penetrating that deep into the car, you're already talking about a writeoff.

People seem to have these weird images in their head of cars that are utterly mangled just being fixed for a practical price. That doesn't happen. Cars have outer panels and crush structures that are designed to be repaired / replaced. If you're penetrating deeper than that into primary structural members, the insurance is just going to write the car off.

Lastly: I have a Tesla. There is no "high cost of insurance". It's perfectly reasonably priced for a car of its price.

The G-force depends how long the acceleration period is.

For small payloads there is a US company that is working on a system that spins a small vehicle up to speed and then releases it, but here they are talking about a track that is very long and straight so the average acceleration is much lower.

Not sure what the point of lobbing a "smart bomb" is, but that could just be some BS that the journalist made up. I realized years ago that they just make shit up when it comes to countries in that region. About 80% of what you read in Western press about Japan is nonsense too.

Meanwhile the entire Model 3 rear drive unit and suspension can be removed with just four bolts and a couple connectors, but you tell yourself whatever you want. And there were parts shortages in the first like 6-12 months as production ramped, but haven't been in a long time. The only thing you might have a shortage on is something new like the Cybertruck.

Batteries are not consumables. They're designed to last similar lifespans to engines + transmissions. They're warrantied for 8 years / 200k km, and you don't warranty something that you expect to die the day after warranty, or half the failures will be under the warranty period. And if you replaced an engine and a transmission, at a dealership, with a brand new one, that wouldn't exactly be cheap either. You get a better deal with third parties and salvage parts, and the same applies to EVs.

The main source of depreciation of EVs is simply how much better EVs keep getting and how quickly it's happening.

Insurance companies do not "insist that even a small ding in battery cover should lead to a total battery replacement". This is entirely made up. Nor are EV premiums "insane levels".

Just utter tripe.

That'd odd because the relevant railgun that the US abandoned was to launching aircraft, not weapons. They already have catapults on aircraft carriers to get the planes up to speed before they run out of runway, and the idea was to replace it with a railgun for even higher speeds and more mechanical robustness.

The power requirement was the issue in the end. But the Chinese system is very different. For a start it will be 10s of kilometres long, so doesn't need such massive acceleration. More like a souped up maglev, and their maglev tech is being rolled out already.

So really neither comparison is all that apt.

It's just a side project in their development of a lunar lander.

That's right, NASA contracted them to develop the 2nd lunar lander after Starship. They are supposed to be landing humans on the Moon later this decade.

Sorry, ignore my other comment. Need more coffee.

Most people here use debit cards for that. Money goes straight out of your account, and authorization is one-time via PIN or biometrics so they can't make bogus repeat debits.

Haven't had a cheque book for decades.

That was true of Tesla and maybe other US brands, but in Europe the situation was very different. For the most part they were as repairable as any other car, the only major difference being that a qualified technician was required to work on any high voltage stuff.

The established brands mostly used the same parts as they did in their fossil cars where possible. There were some issues because of new platforms being introduced, but those affect new fossil ones too.

Also, how is not filling it up charged at $340? Of course we have fees for refuelling in Europe, but legally they can't just make it some arbitrary fine, it has to be at least plausibly related to the cost to them.