Pretty normal for most EVs to vastly overstate range. Rivian is the exception in my experience. But yes they’re very sensitive to terrain and temperature even if they aren’t exaggerating range.
Some of the reviews have been able to get as much as 80% of the rated range under ideal conditions.
The CLTC doesn't measure actual highway usage well at all. If you drive a lot on highways and use the air conditioning you could be closer to 60% of rated range.
My Tesla long range gets about 60% of advertised range in real world conditions. I'm talking stop signs every block, mountains you need to drive across, insanely hot days, i.e. the real world.
I knew that would be the case, but I really wish there was a crackdown on this. Advertised range should be the mean of the distribution, not the max.
In fact EV manufacturers should be required to publish the distribution and they should have to pay a KL divergence penalty on it that will be distributed to EV buyers as rebates. It would also require the courts to learn about KL divergence, which I would really love to happen. We need countries run by engineers, not clowns.
Interesting that they prominently feature Lidar as an upgrade over whatever Tesla has. Sheds some light on the whole drama with lidar vs camera in self-driving.
That’s wild with that range (560 miles) it probably gets atleast 300 miles in the worst case scenario. That’s game over for ICE. What a dream. I wish we could have them in the US but my patriotism also tells me that would be the death of almost all US auto companies.
> I wish we could have them in the US but my patriotism also tells me that would be the death of almost all US auto companies.
As an American it is not clear to me that I should care about US auto companies. I care about US auto workers but if they are working at a factory in the US owned by a non-US company making that company's cars that seems like it can take care of the workers.
Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda all build cars in the US with US workers. Why not add some Chinese companies?
If there is a good reason to keep the big American companies around pass a law that makes any new non-US auto plants here be a joint venture with a big American company, with the American company having a minority ownership and getting a license to make their own version in their own factories of the cars made in the joint venture factory.
My Japanese Toyota has a greater US/Canada parts content percentage than an American Chevrolet, and the former is assembled in the US while the latter is assembled in Mexico. The only advantage US companies seem to have is nostalgia.
The only way the US is going to get better at manufacturing is to learn/steal from the best - which is China now. It was Japan a few decades ago and we made a GM/Toyota joint factory (NUMMI).
The profits of auto manufacturing are distributed to US stock holders. The same won’t be true for foreign companies. For very large industries, this is a large amount of capital either staying or leaving the US.
Also, it’s unlikely that the low prices could be maintained while also paying US labor and US safety standards. If they can then it means we’ve lost our competitive edge completely in the manufacturing sector. At that point we’d be reliant on foreign companies to operate locally here.
I'm extremely unsympathetic to US auto manufacturers. They have fumbled every time they possible could my entire life. They deserved to go under from 2008.
Let companies that actually want to innovate rise from the ashes.
I would be OK if we tariff or effectively ban Chinese EVs (as is the case now) for a little while to give our auto industry time to retool and catch up. The current situation with a ban but no long term EV adoption plan in place is just incredibly short sighted. We could end up like certain developing nations that has an indigenous auto industry that are nothing more than glorified assembler of foreign cars or the American consumer continues to buy cars that are more expensive and less performant to use and operate while making all of us vulnerable to oil price shocks.
So instead of being able to buy a 10K BYD car, Americans have to buy 30k cars that are inferior in many aspects.
It would be easier to just pay fired American Auto workers directly over protecting inefficient auto companies. I have no sympathy for Ford who keeps making the F-350 or whatever bigger and more expensive every single year. Nobody needs a $90,000 truck
I wouldn't encourage that and I don't think it will be necessary. In Europe, most Chinese brands aren't selling exactly well, while domestic manufacturers really sped up their timelines and pushed for competitive pricing, so generally I don't think there's much of a demand for Chinese EVs, except for the genuinely nice brands, like XPeng and Nio.
There's also the issue, it that in most places in Europe outside of Scandinavia, the charger infrastructure is lacking, and regular people are quite rightly averse of getting an EV if you step out of the tech bubble.
I have a friend who's a high-level manager in automotive retail, and he said he thinks Chinese EVs will be like Chinese smartphones - yes they are nice, and cheaper, but still the market looks like 70% of it is controlled by Apple/Samsung, and the rest of the manufacturers fight over what's left
I don't know about EVs specifically, but there seems to be demand in Europe for Chinese PHEVs: "Chinese automakers nearly double Europe market share to 8% in February as PHEVs drive growth" [1].
The only way to get American auto manufacturers to step up their game is completion. Worked when the Japanese cars came, American car quality improved dramatically in response because it had to.
The current gen SU7 is already available with an 830km CLTC range but doesn't actually get that range in real world driving.
This is about 9% better, so you could take the current real-world range and increase it by 9% and probably get a decent estimate for the normal driving condition range.
You will not get 560 miles of range out of this vehicle. The typical use is probably closer to your initial worst case guess at around 350-400 miles if I had to guess. Worst case scenario would be even worse than that. The numbers are good, but they're not in a completely different league
They are in a completely different league when you account for the other full half of the story you missed:
"The company claims 5C supercharging capability, with a 10% to 80% charge completing in about 11 minutes."
Assume your worst case of 350 miles, 80% of that is 280 miles. Getting to 280 miles of no-exaggeration-real-world range in 11 minutes is actually game changing.
An 11 minute break after each chunk of 280 real miles of continuous driving does not feel like an interruption on a road-trip. 33 minutes every 200 miles definitely does.
11 minutes once per week to cover 5 days of 30 real miles of each-way commute is a forgettable amount of time.
It is in a completely different league as soon as you get 250 miles+ in the worst case scenario. I have an EV and 300 miles per charge is amazing. No American companies offer this right now.
Rivian's R1* max battery offers an EPA over 400, anecdotal experience has taught me it's actually around 325-350 on the highway with heating/AC, but still.
I believe they'd be able to sell their vehicles in the US if they were willing to build it here (or Mexico/Canada due to USMA).
If that were the case they wouldn't have the cheap Chinese labor and I doubt the Chinese government would continue to subsidize US build vehicles for the US market.
It'd still be a compelling vehicle but it wouldn't be starting at $33k.
There's a non-zero possibility of that actually happening. It's already happening in Europe. Trump has mentioned the idea of a JV with Chinese companies. It is possible for this to happen in the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting. Chinese companies have started pursuing more foreign investments as a way to avoid "involution" -- fierce and unprofitable domestic competition. Their profit margins when going aboard is considerably better than at home. Maybe it won't be $33k but it might be $45k, which for a car with those kinds of specs, it would be a steal. China's EV advantage doesn't come just from labor costs but also from vertical integration of the entire supply chain. The mining stage is pretty low margin but China does it because it enables the next stage, which is batteries where profits are better, and then you get to even more profitable stage with cars, etc.
Just a dumb estimate. I'm just making an uneducated guess on what the car would cost if it was assembled using American labor with Chinese parts. I honestly don't know what the actual price would be. It's very possible for it to be 33K.
nah. electric is and always was a political fantasy. Perhaps its day will come, electric cars are here to stay and will find their niche, but the car manufacturers are reluctantly admitting that so is ICE. Electric cars can't compete on the figures, electricity is expensive, at service stations it's exorbitant. The electricity infrastructure is woefully inadequete to handle the large numbers needed. Not to mention enviromental benefits are not that huge either.
This is mind bogglingly delusional while people are staring at spiking oil prices... and even when oil prices were at record lows it cost 5x to fill up my wife's ICE car as it did to charge my EV.
Chinese EV companies are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. These price comparisons to Tesla are good for generating catchy headlines but not useful without that context.
PRC EVs are less subsidized per vehicle than US. The context is PRC subsidies structurally drive down manufacturing costs vs US subsidies remains largely sunk cost pork barrel job programs. An unsubsidized PRC car is still going to be significantly cheaper than a subsidized US car in same tier.
Chinese taxpayer subsidize a sector they find important, so what? Good for us consumers, especially the non Chinese ones that don't even get to see the bill in their taxes.
US automakers too have received plenty of subsidies, bailouts, tax credits, manufacturing credits, etc, etc.
The range is Chinese CLTC range, which is a more generous rating than the US range ratings.
It's an impressive range number, but don't try to compare it directly to range numbers for other EVs.
The current gen SU7 is available with an 830km CLTC range. If you drive one on real roads, you will not get 830km of range. :)
You don't get real mileage out of the declared Tesla ones either.
AAA rates Tesla Y better than most.
https://www.aaa.asn.au/2025/12/new-test-results-to-help-ev-b...
AAA is the Australian Automobile Association
Yep, I get 240 mile range on my 330 mile range Model Y.
How fast are you driving to get that kind of drop? That's a lot worse than what I experience. I find I get the EPA range driving 55 in the summer.
Pretty normal for most EVs to vastly overstate range. Rivian is the exception in my experience. But yes they’re very sensitive to terrain and temperature even if they aren’t exaggerating range.
If you live anywhere will hills, wind, or cold weather you'll experience this
what will you get?
Some of the reviews have been able to get as much as 80% of the rated range under ideal conditions.
The CLTC doesn't measure actual highway usage well at all. If you drive a lot on highways and use the air conditioning you could be closer to 60% of rated range.
Article says that'll be about 400 miles in the real world.
~30% less. So about 600km. Still a very good number.
300-400 miles depending on conditions
That's still phenomenal imho.
The US ranges are also way overestimated.
My Tesla long range gets about 60% of advertised range in real world conditions. I'm talking stop signs every block, mountains you need to drive across, insanely hot days, i.e. the real world.
I knew that would be the case, but I really wish there was a crackdown on this. Advertised range should be the mean of the distribution, not the max.
In fact EV manufacturers should be required to publish the distribution and they should have to pay a KL divergence penalty on it that will be distributed to EV buyers as rebates. It would also require the courts to learn about KL divergence, which I would really love to happen. We need countries run by engineers, not clowns.
Interesting that they prominently feature Lidar as an upgrade over whatever Tesla has. Sheds some light on the whole drama with lidar vs camera in self-driving.
the sensors on my robot vacuum are an upgrade over whatever Tesla has
When you give a snake oil salesman the reign over technical decisions…
That’s wild with that range (560 miles) it probably gets atleast 300 miles in the worst case scenario. That’s game over for ICE. What a dream. I wish we could have them in the US but my patriotism also tells me that would be the death of almost all US auto companies.
> I wish we could have them in the US but my patriotism also tells me that would be the death of almost all US auto companies.
As an American it is not clear to me that I should care about US auto companies. I care about US auto workers but if they are working at a factory in the US owned by a non-US company making that company's cars that seems like it can take care of the workers.
Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda all build cars in the US with US workers. Why not add some Chinese companies?
If there is a good reason to keep the big American companies around pass a law that makes any new non-US auto plants here be a joint venture with a big American company, with the American company having a minority ownership and getting a license to make their own version in their own factories of the cars made in the joint venture factory.
My Japanese Toyota has a greater US/Canada parts content percentage than an American Chevrolet, and the former is assembled in the US while the latter is assembled in Mexico. The only advantage US companies seem to have is nostalgia.
The only way the US is going to get better at manufacturing is to learn/steal from the best - which is China now. It was Japan a few decades ago and we made a GM/Toyota joint factory (NUMMI).
The profits of auto manufacturing are distributed to US stock holders. The same won’t be true for foreign companies. For very large industries, this is a large amount of capital either staying or leaving the US.
Also, it’s unlikely that the low prices could be maintained while also paying US labor and US safety standards. If they can then it means we’ve lost our competitive edge completely in the manufacturing sector. At that point we’d be reliant on foreign companies to operate locally here.
I'm extremely unsympathetic to US auto manufacturers. They have fumbled every time they possible could my entire life. They deserved to go under from 2008.
Let companies that actually want to innovate rise from the ashes.
They will scream national security.
While kidnapping foreign head of states, threatening allies and launching wars in the middle east.
I would be OK if we tariff or effectively ban Chinese EVs (as is the case now) for a little while to give our auto industry time to retool and catch up. The current situation with a ban but no long term EV adoption plan in place is just incredibly short sighted. We could end up like certain developing nations that has an indigenous auto industry that are nothing more than glorified assembler of foreign cars or the American consumer continues to buy cars that are more expensive and less performant to use and operate while making all of us vulnerable to oil price shocks.
Ok.
So instead of being able to buy a 10K BYD car, Americans have to buy 30k cars that are inferior in many aspects.
It would be easier to just pay fired American Auto workers directly over protecting inefficient auto companies. I have no sympathy for Ford who keeps making the F-350 or whatever bigger and more expensive every single year. Nobody needs a $90,000 truck
I wouldn't encourage that and I don't think it will be necessary. In Europe, most Chinese brands aren't selling exactly well, while domestic manufacturers really sped up their timelines and pushed for competitive pricing, so generally I don't think there's much of a demand for Chinese EVs, except for the genuinely nice brands, like XPeng and Nio.
There's also the issue, it that in most places in Europe outside of Scandinavia, the charger infrastructure is lacking, and regular people are quite rightly averse of getting an EV if you step out of the tech bubble.
I have a friend who's a high-level manager in automotive retail, and he said he thinks Chinese EVs will be like Chinese smartphones - yes they are nice, and cheaper, but still the market looks like 70% of it is controlled by Apple/Samsung, and the rest of the manufacturers fight over what's left
I don't know about EVs specifically, but there seems to be demand in Europe for Chinese PHEVs: "Chinese automakers nearly double Europe market share to 8% in February as PHEVs drive growth" [1].
[1] https://www.autonews.com/retail/sales/ane-europe-chinese-feb...
The only way to get American auto manufacturers to step up their game is completion. Worked when the Japanese cars came, American car quality improved dramatically in response because it had to.
The current gen SU7 is already available with an 830km CLTC range but doesn't actually get that range in real world driving.
This is about 9% better, so you could take the current real-world range and increase it by 9% and probably get a decent estimate for the normal driving condition range.
You will not get 560 miles of range out of this vehicle. The typical use is probably closer to your initial worst case guess at around 350-400 miles if I had to guess. Worst case scenario would be even worse than that. The numbers are good, but they're not in a completely different league
They are in a completely different league when you account for the other full half of the story you missed:
"The company claims 5C supercharging capability, with a 10% to 80% charge completing in about 11 minutes."
Assume your worst case of 350 miles, 80% of that is 280 miles. Getting to 280 miles of no-exaggeration-real-world range in 11 minutes is actually game changing.
An 11 minute break after each chunk of 280 real miles of continuous driving does not feel like an interruption on a road-trip. 33 minutes every 200 miles definitely does.
11 minutes once per week to cover 5 days of 30 real miles of each-way commute is a forgettable amount of time.
The time/mile charge ratio is actually the story.
It is in a completely different league as soon as you get 250 miles+ in the worst case scenario. I have an EV and 300 miles per charge is amazing. No American companies offer this right now.
Rivian's R1* max battery offers an EPA over 400, anecdotal experience has taught me it's actually around 325-350 on the highway with heating/AC, but still.
I believe they'd be able to sell their vehicles in the US if they were willing to build it here (or Mexico/Canada due to USMA).
If that were the case they wouldn't have the cheap Chinese labor and I doubt the Chinese government would continue to subsidize US build vehicles for the US market.
It'd still be a compelling vehicle but it wouldn't be starting at $33k.
There's a non-zero possibility of that actually happening. It's already happening in Europe. Trump has mentioned the idea of a JV with Chinese companies. It is possible for this to happen in the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting. Chinese companies have started pursuing more foreign investments as a way to avoid "involution" -- fierce and unprofitable domestic competition. Their profit margins when going aboard is considerably better than at home. Maybe it won't be $33k but it might be $45k, which for a car with those kinds of specs, it would be a steal. China's EV advantage doesn't come just from labor costs but also from vertical integration of the entire supply chain. The mining stage is pretty low margin but China does it because it enables the next stage, which is batteries where profits are better, and then you get to even more profitable stage with cars, etc.
Why 45k and not 33k, if we ignore the tariff issue? It being 33k would be a good thing, 45k would miss the point.
Just a dumb estimate. I'm just making an uneducated guess on what the car would cost if it was assembled using American labor with Chinese parts. I honestly don't know what the actual price would be. It's very possible for it to be 33K.
> If that were the case they wouldn't have the cheap Chinese labor
I don't think labour costs are much of a consideration anymore. It's 2026; robots do most of the work.
People are completely oblivious about modern auto making.
And Mexican labor at this point is cheaper than Chinese. Makes sense to me.
BYD was planning to do that, but Trump said he'd put 100-200% tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico and BYD cancelled those plans.
nah. electric is and always was a political fantasy. Perhaps its day will come, electric cars are here to stay and will find their niche, but the car manufacturers are reluctantly admitting that so is ICE. Electric cars can't compete on the figures, electricity is expensive, at service stations it's exorbitant. The electricity infrastructure is woefully inadequete to handle the large numbers needed. Not to mention enviromental benefits are not that huge either.
This is mind bogglingly delusional while people are staring at spiking oil prices... and even when oil prices were at record lows it cost 5x to fill up my wife's ICE car as it did to charge my EV.
Chinese EV companies are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. These price comparisons to Tesla are good for generating catchy headlines but not useful without that context.
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/02/27/elon-mu...
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/117956/documents/...
For the Chinese customer it is not a headline, it is an actual price tag
Current Chinese EV subsidies are on the order of 10%.
And Tesla also receives subsidies from China because of their Shanghai gigafactory.
PRC EVs are less subsidized per vehicle than US. The context is PRC subsidies structurally drive down manufacturing costs vs US subsidies remains largely sunk cost pork barrel job programs. An unsubsidized PRC car is still going to be significantly cheaper than a subsidized US car in same tier.
Why do I care for the context?
Chinese taxpayer subsidize a sector they find important, so what? Good for us consumers, especially the non Chinese ones that don't even get to see the bill in their taxes.
US automakers too have received plenty of subsidies, bailouts, tax credits, manufacturing credits, etc, etc.