> with the ongoing push towards gigantic SUVs

this is not a global thing.

I'd rather have longer range than faster charging because I pay so much less for electricity at home than at a public charging station.

Being able to bring more energy with me is a very useful.

I partially agree, but this doesn’t totally address the range issue. There are big sections of the western US (for example) where the existing EV ranges are a dealbreaker.

Increased charging rate also means that fewer charging stations can serve more cars. One Megawatt charger can serve 4x as many cars as a 250 kW charger in the same span of time.

Sub-10-minute charging is going to be standard in new Chinese EVs very soon. There are already many new models on the market this year with charging times between 5 and 10 minutes. There will soon be cars with Megawatt charging speeds that sell for $15k.

As I understand it, Chinese manufacturers have optimized for a different set of parameters than European manufacturers. The Europeans emphasize range, but the Chinese are more willing to trade range for cost while optimizing charging rate.

I strongly believe these announcements are simply performance art for the capital markets to keep the share price higher than fundamentals would dictate.

Great, you've designed and prototyped the vehicle. When will they be built at the rate BYD and other Chinese automakers are building EVs? Until then, it's vaporware. All that matters is deliveries (China is exporting ~4M more vehicles per year than VW delivers globally, as of this comment).

This car is roughly 3-4x more efficient than the average Chinese SUV, which typically consume well above 20 kWh/100 km (which energetically, though not in terms of emissions, approaches what an efficient compact ICE car consumes). It does this range on a 50-something kWh battery pack, instead of a three-digit kWh battery pack. Since consumption is so low, range added per minute of charging is up there. Everything can be smaller, lighter, made with less resources, creating fewer emissions, byproducts and downstream effects etc.

Yes, driving truck-sized cars with two-ton batteries the size of a french-door fridge also works and also easily moves 1.5 people per trip.

> an additional few hundred miles just isn't that useful anymore.

Bad take.

The lower is your state of charge, the more you are willing to reach the destination with your remanining capacity :) The time spend riding slower is usually not so different than when you drive normally, and it reduces the inconvenience of looking for a charger almost at the goal.

seems you compare apples and oranges, I very much doubt your stated consumption is under same conditions you describe for their consumption

ordinary cars can get to 13kWh/100km which ain't that far from 7.5 you mention

Seemed to have been produced a bunch for never making it into production

> A limited production of 250 began by mid 2013 with pricing started at €111,000 (~ £119,000). As a plug-in diesel-electric hybrid, the XL1 was available only in Europe and its 5.5 kWh lithium-ion battery delivered an all-electric range of 50 km (31 mi),[3] had a fuel economy of 0.9 L/100 km (310 mpg‑imp) under the NEDC cycle and produced emissions of 21 g/km of CO2.[8] It was released to retail customers in Germany in June 2014.[3]

The current safety and mpg targets for car manufacturers incentivize them to produce 'cars' of a certain size and weight to avoid compliance with stricter standards on smaller vehicles.

As such, the manufactuers have incentivized customers to buy SUVs for a few decades now.

Because they are very comfortable. I'm not saying people should be obsessed about them, but that's part of why they are paying premiums for SUVs. Driving higher on the road on a wide car has a strong appeal for most people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Cybercab

Cybercab is most efficient electric production car, 165 Wh/mile

Waymo should call up Volkswagen and place an order to ensure it goes into production.

Waymo should have a mixed fleet of 2 adult passenger vehicles like this one, 4-5 passenger models as well as some vans. It'll save them a lot of money, and will make streets safer by normalizing small vehicles.

VW's term is "near-production" -- an achievement which, of course, can declared arbitrarily.

Aptera is even more vaporware-y than this though.

The extra range seems to mostly come from big increases in aerodynamic efficiency rather than just jamming a huge battery into the chassis so I'm not sure it would demand a huge premium, at least not because of the BOM.

How is the infotainment tablet in a 14 year old Model S performing these days? Haven't they progressively worsened its performance through software updates and then sold you a hardware upgrade to fix it for several thousand dollars?

I'd rather just bring my phone, which gets replaced every 4-years or so anyway.

what do you call a dieselgate for ev? hmm

coool interior and aero. all of the hyper efficient designs end up looking like the modern prius designs with the swan tail rear and hawk-beak nose.

Same thing you did sixty years ago when your Cadillac got a flat: take the cover off the wheel well.

https://photos.classiccars.com/cc-temp/listing/165/1814/3484...

The panel over them called a fender skirt comes off usually, this is far from the first car with skirts or spats. They used to be quite popular.

Presumably the faring panel comes off, just like on an early-model Honda Insight

No different than the front tire, same thing as any modern car which does not carry a spare tire either.

In the long term we are all dead. But I think you mean that VW fleet electrification effort is dead. Which is not true either. You're underestimating the willingness of people in Europe to buy domestically produced cars. Even if they are not the state of the art from the perspective of picking up the latest EV technology. Don't forget the new china propagated LFP batteries are not better than the already existing NMCs. They may be cheaper, NMCs got cheaper too.

Is this implication here that you think this car is an electrified golf cart? What makes you think that it wouldn't be fast or fun to drive? Most electric cars are extremely fun to drive due to their extremely high acceleration.

The development and building of newer, more efficient electric vehicles does not preclude the investment in more high speed electrified rail and busses. That complaint is a non-sequitor.

More and more buses in my local mass transit system have moved to EV's (these specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_GB_Kite) as they age out their older buses and build out the infrastructure they needed.

I like them, they are smoother and quieter than the ones they replaced (in fairness that was the oldest diesel buses mostly), I don't like the new on board announcement "Next stop <X>, You are at <X>" style but that's because I'm not partially sighted/blind and it's a small price for making life a lot easier for those folks (and headphones exist).

Why can't an electric car be fun to drive? I have an old car I'm not planning on changing but electric cars I've driven just seem quieter, smoother and just better than ICE vehicles.

That /just/ is bearing a lot of weight there. And what is Volkswagen going to do to build highspeed rail, they're a car company so they're making cars...

The US is trapped in a local maximum due to history, geography and finally politics. There's a lot of local resistance specifically to highspeed rail because to stay highspeed the trains usually bypass smaller local towns so they don't get the benefit but all the negatives of it's construction.

> electrified golf carts

I'm not clear how something that ran up to 138 kmph (85 mph) during an (intentionally low-speed) efficiency test, would be equivalent to a golf cart?

> Why don't we just build high speed electrified rail

Good luck convincing all those Americans the rail line has to run through their property to freely give up the right-of-way. You're already dead in the first few hundred feet of rail when the first person says "fuck off, no" and starts challenging your eminent domain.

How on earth would that work in Houston? Why on earth would people want to arrive at any destination soaked in sweat? Everyday on here someone makes a tendentious post about the viability of public transit.