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. :)
https://www.aaa.asn.au/2025/12/new-test-results-to-help-ev-b...
AAA is the Australian Automobile Association
https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/elektromobilitaet/elek...
One of the reasons i quit my 20 year+ membership with them.
I mean - have some bias? Fine with me, i can read between the lines. Come up with ridiculous crap and reasons to favour domestic brands? There is a line, at least for me and many others that do know when they're intentionally ignoring, downrating, downplaying etc. etc. etc.
Another example? German IT magazine "c't" by heise recently featured a test (4/2026, page 16ff.), in cooperation with ADAC, about subscriptions in electric vehicles - actually one thing where Tesla shines (it's a flat 10€ per month, other countries get a 99$ a year deal) - others don't even bother listing prices until you order, for example.
With no single word that test mentioned Tesla (yet, priding themselves having queried 16 brands for information) - only in the final table overview, there indeed is one column for them.
The bias is showing, it's ridiculous and they can, as far as i'm concerned, go the way of the dodo.
If they aren’t fake, it’s pretty obvious why Tesla doesn’t get much of a mention.
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.
Distribution of what? Assuming you mean the distribution of driving range achieved 'in the real world', how would that work before a car is sold? How often would it have to be updated in their advertising material? Over what sort of area would the distribution be calculated? How would anyone know if the advertised range of two different cars was even comparable?
Whilst the standardised tests could be improved, they are still the best way to compare products.
> should have to pay a KL divergence penalty on it that will be distributed to EV buyers as rebates
I get about 15% more range than advertised, should I have to pay a penalty for this?
Anyway Tesla has data from all their cars, they could use that.
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.
So for 900km CLTC, I think it will go like at least 600~650km easily.
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.
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).
That said, there are a lot of reasons (environmental, regulatory, govt subsidies) why US companies can't imitate Chinese companies.
What a lot of people don't understand is that provincial governments in China do not have the ability to tax their citizens, but they are required to provide a host of social services. So what they do is start for profit companies, and use the profits of these companies to fund the state. This is the giant octopus of state owned companies in China. The same is also true of the central government, which does have the power to tax, but in practice is unable to collect income taxes from the vast majority of the population, which is why China's tax share of GDP is so abnormally low and the government is constantly cash-starved. Here, too, what happens is the government starts for profit companies whose revenue goes to the state. Sometimes a holding company is owned by the central government, but there are satellite ownership structures owned by provincial governments, with portions of these sold off to private investors.
Of course many of these state owned companies lose money, but they are subsidized by the central government in a hidden way, which is that state owned banks lend them money which is routinely forgiven, or stealth forgiven via artificially low lending rates and constantly rolling over loans. Effectively it is impossible for these companies to go bankrupt, which is why you ocassionally get huge scandals when the government allowed some real estate companies to go bankrupt in the past. People didn't think such a thing was possible.
So due to the quirks of taxation in China -- basically no one pays income tax -- the government is strongly aligned with for-profit businesses, as these are crucial to funding government operations. That could be anything from a cigarette company owned by a province to an airline, beer maker, construction companies, basically everything. Local officials sit on the board and have outsized ownership stakes, and profits go into the coffers of local and central governments as well as the personal bank accounts of officials.
As it is illegal to be a member of a non-government controlled union in China, the same officials can ensure harmonious labor relations. They also don't need to worry too much about environmental regulations because when the government inspectors arrive to check on the government steel mill, there is a strong incentive to make sure that this, too, is harmonious. And the state owned banks ensure cheap credit is available without too many questions asked.
This is how you can get enormous for profit companies in China that are not in any real danger from market competition, or from government regulation, or from labor strife, or from environmental regulations. Even energy consumption is subsidized.
But what you don't get is high levels of efficiency or labor productivity. This is the middle income trap that China is currently in, and it's not really a model that nations in the west can follow.
As a single example, let's look at China's largest steel maker, China Baowu Steel Group, since the parent brought up steel production and the need to "learn from the best". Baowu is a holding company 100% owned by the central government, but it owns child companies that are owned mostly by various provinces.
In terms of labor productivity, they produce about 550 tons of steel per worker per year (130 million tons of steel and 237,000 workers).
Let's compare that to, say, Nucor Steel in the US, which produces about 1000 tons of steep per worker. Or SSAB in Scandinavia which produces about 600 tons of steel per worker using non-fossil fuel processes. And both of these are under much stricter environmental regulations, and have real unions they need to deal with, and do not get the benefit of borrowing unlimited funds at interest rates that are well below the rate of inflation, and whose loans are routinely forgiven.
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.
Protectionism is how you end up with a country like North Korea on the extreme end.
Let companies that actually want to innovate rise from the ashes.
While kidnapping foreign head of states, threatening allies and launching wars in the middle east.
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
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
[1] https://www.autonews.com/retail/sales/ane-europe-chinese-feb...
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
"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.
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.
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.
US media has been telling me China is bad, I as someone born and grew up in China also know China did bad things, but what is it exactly that made you hostile to things related to China?
Chineses goods have one focus and one focus only: Make money and fast.
Those 902km in reality won't reach 500km in real life, assuming the car will last that long.