Don’t they have close ties with Xiaomi?

Edit: sorry didn’t read until the end (of a very short article! My bad). It looks like they aren’t cooperating as in the past, interesting if they really become an independent new player.

I despise SUVs, but purely on looks this latest Leaf is actually the best aka the only one that could be considered pretty

They join forces with the battery companies

This website is absolutely unreadable and requiring to read the article

I mean, downvote as you like, but this Mercedes looks like the most boring vehicle in a long time: 100% backtracking to BMWs successful approach (while BMW switches to pure electric platform, so the other way around) instead of improving what was wrong (ugly design, price point, UX). This is just another compromised vehicle due to ICE underpinnings and wakes no interest whatsoever in EV enthusiasts crowd. My opinion obviously, but who reacts with something else than a yawn could please explain what is exiting about this?

Yawn 🥱

On this topic: German carmakers signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” two months ago to set up a US-free open source platform. Pretty interesting but VW failed pretty hard last time, let’s see how this goes :)

I know Lucid should have good infotainment. Buggy in the beginning but should have improved. Maybe the Midsize platform will bring a good contender!

Working against themselves?

Interesting! Would be nice to have the death rate and not only the absolute values.

To be fair, they announced the CLA already this year.

But I agree nonetheless

I think this is excessive, the concept of ownership is on another level. But I get what you mean.

It’s not just ideological or lack of authority, EU economy is deeply intertwined with US’s one: if your main ally turns his back on you, you’re in deep shit no matter what you do. I agree that harder times could be beneficial (other comment to yours), but try to survive Trumps legislation could also work. In my view, it’s the decades before this that prepared the field for trouble: both with Russia and USA, Europe has made itself too dependent on foreign countries (for energy and defense, core matters with regards to be strong on an international field)

According to Zakharova, the hatred of everything Russian has become “yet another extremist, Nazi… neo-Nazi ideology that kills people both literally and figuratively.” It should be combated just like any other racial or religious hatred, the spokeswoman maintained.

It would be funny if it wasn’t sad.

The poison of Germany was putting too much trust in Russia over the years. But hard to argue with these TASS “expert”, a totally independent news outlet that definitely has a place on a “world news” community! We should start sharing Trumps farts from Truth Social, to raise a bit the level, though

For wallpapers you don’t need high res, 4K is 8MP and 8K is 32MP (your phone should have 50 Megapixel). I don’t think you would see any improvement with cheap cameras, which will always be more burdensome to bring with you than your phone. If you want to open yourself to big step up in quality, go full frame with good used lenses. Crispness is given by the lens, not the sensor. There are new ~1000€ full frame cameras that are really good: Nikon Z5 II (stills focused) and Canon R8 (faster sensor, better for video but other downsides) are the best value. With used lenses you could keep the kit price pretty low.

There are a couple of trolls spamming links, just ignore them long enough and they’ll get bored.

That’s true, but electric drivetrains could mix up things a bit. It appears the single motor CLA has rear wheel drive, something that in combustion cars draw a pretty clear line between lower and upper middle middle class. But dimensions, wheel sizes, suspensions and so forth will probably still make all the difference.

Nice! But those three-pointed stars everywhere give me nausea. Can’t they just make something nice without splattering their logo everywhere? It makes it look so cheap (look at the front: 1 huge logo, 1 small above it and 2 in the headlights… I know German car design has left any dignity some years ago but this is pathetic).

Sorry for the futile rant :D

I didn’t yet read the article, but Tesla are in my view the simplest cars around. Electric vehicles generally, are much simpler than ICEs. The whole thing about cells is just plain wrong… all batteries bigger than 20Wh (a big smartphone) are made up of multiple cells. And the batteries are very well protected from external crashes. Thermal runaway is still something that’s being improved on them, but mainly to increase energy density and reduce the other necessary failsafes.

(Just some napkin math: 1 lithium ion cell has around 4V of voltage, most vehicles have a 400V or 800V architecture, so you need at least 100 cells in series to reach that.)

Edit: checked the article: a good summary of the many shady crashes Tesla is covering up, but it looks like assistive driving features and criminal handle design are the main culprits. Generally EV batteries - Tesla’s included - are really safe. But when they do burn, it’s challenging to stop it. It’s such a huge pity that the huge potential of Tesla is being run to the ground this way…