The Fiat Grande Panda came closer to its official range figure than any other car in carwow's test. It covered 202 miles, 102 percent of the claim, and finished second furthest of the eight. Then, in the last half mile, its driver says stability control and ABS warnings appeared, the car coasted to a halt, and it locked itself in park on a roundabout, under 50 metres from the charger it was aiming for. A passing recovery truck dragged it the rest of the way. The distance was never the problem.
That gap between the number and the outcome runs through the whole day. What separated carwow's eight cars was less how far they went than how they stopped. The Honda Super-N faded gradually and kept its windows and gear selector working. The Dacia Spring was throttled to a crawl and then pushed to a charger by hand, which was possible only because it has no park position. Over on the Outer Banks, Out of Spec ran a Lucid Gravity and a Tesla Model Y L for a couple of days with three dogs and five adults, and reported no charging trouble worth the name. What stranded them overnight was a ferry timetable that thins out after Labor Day.
The same gap shows up where the stakes are higher. The flight in Beta Technologies' CX-300 is the least eventful part of Business Insider's film: it takes off, glides with the motor switched off, lands, and uses about 35 kWh doing it. What keeps aircraft like it out of service, by the video's account, is a certification process it puts at five to nine years and a balance sheet it describes as a little over $35 million of revenue last year against roughly $400 million in operating costs. Slate's bison ranch video has the mirror image of that problem. The truck does every chore asked of it, and the film never mentions a price, a range or a payload, which is the part a working buyer would actually decide on.
Dan Caesar's exit interview applies the test to an entire market. Australian battery-electric sales have been above 20 percent for three months, the interview says, and neither persuasion nor product is what got them there. It puts that down to fuel costs, and Caesar says buyers have told him they brought purchases forward by years. The threat he names is not technological either. The UK first reached 25 percent in December 2021 and sits near 29 percent now, he says, after lobbying weakened its mandate.
What to watch: whether any manufacturer starts publishing how its car behaves at zero percent the way it publishes a range figure, whether Slate puts numbers to the chores before deliveries begin, and whether Australia's efficiency standard comes through the next year intact.
Only Two of Eight Small EVs Beat Their Range Claims
carwow charged eight small electric cars overnight, then drove them at the speed limit with the air conditioning running, on a 33 degree day, until each one stopped. By its tally the Hyundai Inster went furthest at 212 miles, 95 percent of its claim. The Microlino finished last at 115 miles and beat its own figure by a single percent doing it. Only the Fiat Grande Panda did better against the claim, at 202 miles and 102 percent, and the remaining six landed between 85 and 95 percent. The Microlino also recorded the best efficiency at 7.7 miles per kWh, though the video points out it was held to 56 mph while the rest cruised at 70. Among the other cars the BYD Dolphin Surf and Dacia Spring both managed 4.8, and the Citroen e-C3 only 3.3. The endings differed more than the distances. The Honda Super-N, which our Sept 14 edition covered when What Car? measured 127.2 miles against carwow's 121, slowed gradually and held enough power for its windows and gear selector. The Dacia was cut to roughly 20 mph, then 10, then stopped, and its driver pushed it to a charger, which worked because the car has no park position.
A $120,000 Lucid, a $60,000 Tesla and Three Dogs
Out of Spec took a Lucid Gravity and a Tesla Model Y L down the Outer Banks with three dogs and five adults, and the hosts say Lucid and Tesla each supplied a car. They put the Gravity at about $120,000 and the Model Y L at about $60,000. Space is where the Lucid earns the gap. It swallowed the luggage, an extra-large dog bed and a 50 pound sack of food, where the Tesla needed its underfloor bin, its front trunk and a bag wedged behind the folded captain's chairs. The complaints are not about range. Raising the Gravity's second row is manual and, they say, heavy enough that not everyone could manage it, while the Tesla's is powered. They report its dog mode would not pull the cabin below about 68 degrees Fahrenheit on a hot day, and that the halves of a rear indicator fell out of sync. Both hosts still name the Model Y L the better single car. On efficiency the Tesla host reported around 3.7 miles per kWh late in the trip against under 3.0 for the Gravity into a headwind. Our Sept 7 edition had Dirty Tesla measuring 222 watt hours per mile in a Model Y L at a steady 75 mph, better than either figure here, on a very different kind of drive.
Slate's Ranch Video Shows the Work and Skips the Numbers
Slate Auto took its truck to Cross Timbers Bison Ranch in southern Oklahoma for the latest stop on a tour the company films itself, starting early because of the heat. Our Sept 9 and Sept 11 editions covered two earlier entries, a 103 mile move and a Chicago tour stop, and this one uses the same method: give the truck a job and film what happens. The rancher, Dusty, leads a herd rotation to fresh pasture using feed cubes, and the group tops up a mineral trough and collects hay, with a water crossing along the way. The people on camera call the truck quiet and smooth, point out its midgate, and say it passed both the ranch test and the bison toughness test. Dusty also explains why he keeps bison rather than cattle, describing an American icon he is helping bring back. What a day on a working ranch never produces is a price, a range, a payload or a word about charging. Those are the figures a rancher would need before any of the chores prove much.
The Electric Plane Flies. The Business Is the Hard Part.
Business Insider's The Limit flies in Beta Technologies' CX-300 and finds the aircraft is the part that already works. Weight is the first obstacle it names: a kilogram of jet fuel carries around 50 times the energy of the best batteries, narrowing to roughly 20 to 1 once the efficiency of electric motors is counted, and the aircraft hauls almost 3,000 pounds of batteries to cover over 300 nautical miles, a trip the video says would take about 50 pounds of jet fuel. Energy density is improving around 3 percent a year, which it says makes a nine-seater roughly the ceiling today. Our Aug 21 edition, One Is the Easy Part, made a related point about an electric airliner that had already flown. The flight here is uneventful: the pilot estimated 25 kWh and about a dollar of electricity beforehand, then put it nearer 35 kWh over some 20 minutes. The obstacles sit elsewhere. Certifying an aircraft in an existing category takes the FAA five to nine years, the video says, and rules for certifying vertical takeoff aircraft arrived only in 2024. It reports Beta taking in a little over $35 million last year against about $400 million in operating expenses, and puts the slice of the aviation market these aircraft can address at about 0.2 percent.
Dan Caesar's Parting Advice for Australia: Keep Going
Dan Caesar's last Everything Electric show as the person running the business was the Sydney one, his 26th since the first Fully Charged Live in 2018, and he tells Electrify This he expects to be back next September in some capacity. On Australia he says competition is fiercer than in the UK, that Chinese brands treat the country as a test bed for right-hand-drive models, and that after three trips to China in 18 months he finds the quality of the cars far ahead of the myth about them. The interview puts battery-electric cars above 20 percent of new sales for three months so far, and Caesar cites New South Wales government work suggesting that, once commercial vehicles are taken out, passenger EVs run above 40 percent. What moved the market was not argument. He ties the spike to energy costs, says Australia depends on imported diesel for about 90 percent of its supply, and reports buyers telling him they pulled purchases forward by years. Our Sept 4 edition found the same mechanism in Kenya, where a 50 percent petrol rise moved taxi drivers. His warning is about what follows: the UK first passed 25 percent in December 2021 and sits near 29 percent now, he says, after lobbying weakened its mandate, and he says he has heard of lobbying against Australia's new vehicle efficiency standard.
Bottom line: How a car behaves in its last five miles belongs on the spec sheet beside the range figure, and nothing here suggests it is coming. On carwow's numbers the Fiat beat its claim and the Honda did not, and I would still rather be in the Honda when the battery goes. The Model Y L remains the easier recommendation at half the Gravity's price. Slate should publish a payload figure before it publishes another ranch video. And electric aviation's obstacle is a spreadsheet, not a battery.
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