[poniko]

Yea that's the thing right, the battery is so very much of the weight that optimizing the other parts are "meh" at this point. What is cool is that the 600Wh/kg solid state batteries seems like they are really finally here soon :) i.e removing 200-300kg from a car in one go will be a game changer.

[b112]

No wonder electrics don't sell well in the US. People weigh more, you're basically saying that leaving grandma at home, is a "game changer".

[throw-qqqqq]

>> removing 200-300kg from a car in one go will be a game changer

> No wonder electrics don't sell well in the US. People weigh more, you're basically saying that leaving grandma at home, is a "game changer".

Even in the US, your average grandma weighs less than 2-300kg :D

[mort96]

Range being worse with a fully loaded car than with a lightly loaded car isn't exactly news, and not exactly limited to electric cars. I can clearly feel my old diesel struggling more when I'm driving 3 friends and with loads of heavy stuff in the back than when I'm alone. That makes the gas bill more expensive.

[xandrius]

That's true only if your very large "grandma" must at all cost sit on your batteries at all times.

If we could indeed leave "grandma" home, that would make things better.

And they don't sell well in the US because of oil lobbying and think tanks whose sole goal is to make you buy more oil.

[eru]

Well, the world's most popular electric car brand (BYD) is also virtually banned in the US. That doesn't help with adoption.

[infogulch]

True! If only grandma wouldn't insist on bringing 250kg of weapons and ammunition with her everywhere I'd get much better range in my EV, but alas this is the USA.

[klabb3]

Manufacturers may just keep the battery size and market the improved range instead? Smaller cars in urban and suburban environments have always had lots of benefits, but since many of them are collective in nature, it has largely fallen on tragedy of the commons, and we got larger cars with larger hoods instead.

[Qwertious]

They might, but so far they don't. Manufacturers are largely switching to LFP (although to be fair they tend to offer a long-range option which ships NMC instead) and the main benefit of LFP is cost. The range of electric cars on the market is largely capped at 500KM/300miles. They could offer more, but they don't.

[DennisP]

Why not both? For a two-car family, having a good road-tripper and a light sporty car can work out pretty nicely.

[davedx]

Not true. Tesla themselves said the way they got the Model 3 to be so efficient was by optimising every single part exhaustively. It’s expensive at design stage but results in the most efficiency gains across the fleet - so worth it (especially something like the motors)