People seem to be under the impression that China is only capable of making dirt cheap trinkets. They are more than capable of manufacturing quality items. It's the old standby of you get what you pay for . You buy the cheapest shit manufactured in the USA it's going to be the exact same quality of the Chinese shit.

China is making a better product and making it cheaper. That's pure capitalism.

Yeah, American conglomerates are allocating way too many resources to extracting more money from the customer rather than making a better product. Tesla's insistence on achieving full self driving is not in the interest of the consumer. It's in the interest of its bottom line. Consumers would much rather buy a cheap car without autonomy. In fact, that's what most consumers can afford. You can add the entire social media and AI nonsense to this bucket. They are giant resources suckers that hoover up all the

I agree with you, but the advertisement "800 km (497 mi) total charge, 520 km (320 mi) recharge in 5 minutes" still can make a really strong selling point to any vehicle integrating these batteries. These are the numbers slashdot naysayers have been asking for (I won't buy an EV unless it can do X), and now he have them.

Of course now the naysayers are going to switch to the problem of charging infrastructure so I'll start: the very fast chargers are are only needed on highways every 200 km/mi, so they will

It takes all kinds, but market heavily favors those who want short recharge times.

> 15 minutes is a plenty fast recharge time to go from 20% to 80% on a decent size battery

what, like a 75kWh battery? So 60% is 45kWh in 15 min, or 180kW? 180kW?!? That’s charging at a mere 241 horsepower, a mere toot of energy usage. Kind sir, in order to truly experience the raw power potential, I get up daily at 4 am and start my elite training regimen to be able to actually unhook the 6” diameter liquid helium cooled superconducting cable able to meet the demand of charging a 100kWh pack in 0.3 seconds. I hook it up and with effortless precision open the 1.21 gigawatt floo

> After driving for 3+ hours I like a break to stretch my legs and maybe have a light snack.

You're already beyond that maximum. There have been repeated studies that have all shown driving performance impairs beyond 2.5hours and that you should take a 15min break then, which is more than enough to get even a 2015-2017 generation electric car charged enough to go another 2.5-3 hours down the highway.

I get it if you only get 2 weeks holidays a year then your holiday becomes a competition to maximise every minute you spend at the destination, but it should be important to you that you actually make i

I doubt the infrastructure for fast charging is in place anyhow, as it would probably require installing new power-lines for miles to get enough voltage, let alone having needed safety features for high voltage. It's not just about the connector.

> I argued against NEVI funds. Those measly chargers would have been outdated by the time they were installed, and we would have foolishly wasted taxpayer money on them.

> Just look at where the tech has already come in such a short amount of time.

That's actually not a valid conclusion. First of all, the infrastructure required to put in EV charging is more than just chargers. It is power to the site, transformers, etc. And none of that infrastructure becomes worthless when charging tech improves. You might want to add a second transformer if you upgrade the charging hardware to charge at twice the speed, but the transformer doesn't stop being able to service chargers; it just services a smaller number of them.

Moreover, if you assume that the num

> We have cheap chinese batteries that you see burn/explode all the time, so would YOU trust one of these VERY powerful batteries?

Absent information on the chemistry, no. And I haven't even looked yet, but I'm okay with waiting a little while until these batteries have been evaluated by third parties before I try to do my own toilet research. I'm not gonna try to make myself an expert on advances in battery chemistry. What I do know is that CATL is a top name in batteries, and that there are battery chemistries which are more or less flammable than others, so I don't assume that they are or aren't reasonably safe.

On the pessimistic si

> We have cheap chinese batteries that you see burn/explode all the time, so would YOU trust one of these VERY powerful batteries?

Yes. From a big reputable Chinese company, yes. Some unbranded battery of unknown origin, no thanks. Remember, China gives the death penalty to businessmen who knowingly kill people with dangerous products (e.g. melamine scandal).

Would I buy a [famous US brand name redacted] deathtrap, no thanks. I know someone who bought one and the brake pedal snapped when they put their foot on it!!

You do know there is a huge difference between the "cheap" stuff (everywhere) and the "good stuff" (everywhere, even in China).

The stuff that's imported into the US from China is mostly the lowest cost (and thus the lowest quality) goods because companies in the US focus on price first and quality second. The domestic products in China have about the same high standards as everywhere else. In China, reputation matters and people talk QUICKLY.. so a bad product in many cases will DOOM a company (legally, fin

> We have cheap chinese batteries that you see burn/explode all the time,

> so would YOU trust one of these VERY powerful batteries?

Why would you not. All smartphone batteries are made in China. 100% of them. And yet across literally many billions of devices a small subset of a couple of models have had issues.

I mean do you go outside? What happens if you get hit by a meteorite. WHY ARE YOU OKAY WITH THAT RISK!

It requires around 700kW of power. The already installed Tesla V4 chargers can go up to 350kW and the new ones should go up to 500kW. The standard technically allows up to 1MW.

Just wait for lighting to strike the clock-tower. I saw a dude who looked like a tall Bernie Sanders pull it off.

It makes much more sense to have a reasonable size battery at the charging station which is filled at a slower speed, but continuously. People aren’t going to be charging their cars that often at these stations.

900 miles is probably overkill, but there are areas in the country where you'd better treat the half tank mark as empty, even with a gas car. Those places tend not have chargers. Factor in reduced performance in hot and cold in an EV, you'd do well to treat 75% as empty in those places.

Idiotic. What we need is to pass laws to mandate cars forcefully stop every 2.5 hours to stop people dying needlessly due to driver impairment, just like we don't let people drive drunk, they shouldn't drive fatigued either.

Back in 2015 we already passed a threshold for EVs to drive down highways long enough and fast charge enough to move continuously at the maximum safe rate (2.5h driving, 15min break). Let's not have technology promote unsafe stupid attempts at setting land-duration records for idiot road

Rapid charge cables are already chunky and heavy because they have active cooling systems like a water jacket built into the cable because of the heat. God knows what a 5 minute charger would look like but realistically I don't a human operating it. More likely the the car parks over the charger which mechanically couples with the car. Maybe the charger would have to include lines that circulate coolant around the battery at the same time as it delivers power to dissipate heat.

Almost all of the above is happening, eg the UK is adding more than 1,000 chargers a month and a lot of these are AC in everyday places.

But I agree that what isn’t yet happening, which would be useful, is scale destination charging — eg car parks being built with a 7 / 11 / 22 kW charger for every space.