For as long as EVs have been sold, most battery numbers have been self-reported. A company announces a charge time or an energy density, the figure gets repeated until it feels settled, and nobody outside the building has touched the cell. Two of today's stories break that habit with an outside lab's result. The other three show how much still rests on the old arrangement, and what it looks like when an owner does the checking himself.
The cleanest case is BYD's Blade 2.0. According to Ben Alexxander, a German battery engineering firm reproduced BYD's claim that the cell charges from 10 to 70 percent in five minutes, in its own laboratory. What makes the report credible is the boundary the host draws around it: BYD's more widely shared figure, 10 to 97 percent in nine minutes, was not part of the test and remains BYD's claim. Ziroth's visit to About Energy works the same way. The lab has confirmed an anode-free cell passing 500 Wh/kg, which the host believes is the first independently verified result above that line. It also shows why a verified figure needs its conditions attached. In the lab's data, the energy available at a hard 8C discharge shifts by around 15 percent between 10 and 20 °C.
The rest of the day sits further from a lab bench. Out of Spec's drive of the production Tesla Semi is full of confident impressions, and the 500-mile figure for the Long Range truck is described in the video as a real-world number rather than the result of a standard test cycle. When the host asked how much regen the truck has,, a Tesla representative said he could not give figures. Slate offers an odometer instead: 3,130 miles on a demo truck driven west from Texas, with no efficiency or charging figures in the video. We noted the same gap when Slate's crew filmed an earlier road trip.
The most useful number of the day came from an owner. Everyday Chris camped in his R2, which has no camp mode yet to track energy use, and read the battery percentage off the screen through the evening and morning. His log shows 10 percent lost overnight with the climate running. His own summary figure, about 31 percent over roughly 20 hours, does not quite match those readings, which is a fair argument for letting software keep the books.
What to watch: whether BYD puts its nine-minute figure in front of the same kind of lab, and whether anyone outside China can test it on real hardware, since Ben Alexxander says megawatt-class chargers remain rare elsewhere. For the Semi, the regen and loaded-efficiency numbers Tesla held back are the first things a fleet buyer will ask for. Those answers will come from customers' trucks, not from launch days.
Out of Spec Drives the Production Tesla Semi, Empty and Then Loaded
Out of Spec's Kyle drove what he calls the second-generation Tesla Semi at Tesla's truck plant in Sparks, Nevada, following the factory coverage we ran on September 20. Tesla gives the Long Range truck 500 miles loaded at 82,000 lb gross combined weight. The host estimates its battery at about 820 kWh and the Standard Range at roughly 540 to 550 kWh, and puts consumption around 1.6 to 1.7 kWh per mile. Charging runs through an MCS connector at up to 1.2 MW, and he watched two trucks charge side by side at around 600 kW near 75 percent. The truck is a 6x4. A single-motor rear axle does most of the work, while the forward drive axle uses a clutch disconnect and joins in for launches and grades. From the center seat, the host found the electric steering light and quick, at about five turns lock to lock. Tesla says pedal response is mapped to the load, so a full truck should feel like an empty one. The caveat for buyers is who drove what. The host's own time was unladen. The loaded impressions, at about 65,000 lb, came from Joe, the driver on that run, who says he has driven for 25 years and that regen alone held the truck on a downhill.
A German Lab Reproduces BYD's Five-Minute Blade 2.0 Charge, but Not the Nine-Minute One
Ben Alexxander reports that a German battery engineering firm tested and tore down BYD's Blade 2.0 cell and reproduced BYD's claim of a 10 to 70 percent charge in five minutes. The same lab measured 456.5 Wh from a single cell and peak power just under 2.96 kW in its five-minute power test, according to the video. The chemistry is still lithium iron phosphate, with no solid electrolyte. The gain, per the firm's findings, comes from the cell's shape. Blade 2.0 cells are considerably shorter than the original Blade's long cells, and there are more of them, which the video says shortens the path current travels inside each cell and lowers internal resistance. A separate Chinese teardown of a full pack, cited in the video, reported 170 cells in series and a structure so integrated that taking it apart took roughly eight hours, after the pack had been frozen for 40. The host sees a recycling problem in that. He is also skeptical of the approach itself, arguing that a smaller battery refilled quickly leaves drivers more exposed to public charging prices. Today's other battery story sits at the opposite corner of the trade-off: a cell Ziroth says has roughly double the energy density of most EV batteries, but lasts 100 to 200 cycles.
About Energy Verifies an Anode-Free Battery Cell Past 500 Wh/kg
Ziroth visited About Energy in London, which has been independently testing cells from an anode-free lithium metal design. The lab completed tests on a cell that reached 451 Wh/kg, and the host later added that a second cell had passed 500 Wh/kg, which he says is roughly double the energy density of the batteries in most EVs. The cathode is a familiar NMC type, and the liquid electrolyte and separator are conventional. What changes is the anode: the cell is built without one, and a thin layer of lithium metal forms on the first charge. That design risks dendrites, needle-like growths that can short a cell internally. The maker's answer, per the video, is a coating that guides the lithium into a flatter, more stable layer. About Energy controls cell temperature with Peltier devices and copper mounts around each cell rather than relying on air in a thermal chamber, and its data shows why that matters: at an 8C discharge, available energy moves by around 15 percent between 10 and 20 °C. The catch is life. The video puts cells in this class at 100 to 200 cycles, against thousands for conventional lithium-ion, which is why the early buyers are drone and defense programs. For scale, 200 full cycles in a car with 300 miles of range would add up to about 60,000 miles.
Slate's Demo Truck Reaches California With 3,130 Miles on the Clock
Slate's latest tour video follows a demo truck from Texas to the company's Studio West design studio in Carson, California. Mike, who drove it from Dallas, says he covered 1,665 miles through several states, altitudes and temperatures, sometimes with the air conditioning on and sometimes not. The crew says Oklahoma and Texas ran above 100 °F, charged in Williams, Arizona, drove part of the old Route 66, and reached Joshua Tree with more range left than expected. To viewers who suspected the truck was trailered, the video answers that the van following it carried camera gear. The odometer read 3,130 miles on arrival, and Slate says this truck will join its demo ride tour, so riders can check the mileage themselves. At the studio, Slate showed a welded high-strength steel body-in-white, a Squareback SUV build with 17-inch accessory wheels, all-terrain tires, a spare tire carrier and a roof rack, and a Fastback with 20-inch wheels and aero covers. As in the Slate road-trip video we covered on September 24, there are no efficiency or charging-time figures.
Everyday Chris Camps in a Rivian R2 Without Camp Mode and Logs the Battery Cost
Everyday Chris spent a night camping with a Rivian R2, a rooftop tent from a Rivian collaboration that he borrowed for the trip, and a portable power station. The R2 has no camp mode or auto-leveling yet, the host notes, and its passive entry kept unlocking the car during the night. His on-screen readings: 77 percent on arrival at 2 p.m., 73 percent at 6 p.m., 70 percent at 8 p.m., 60 percent in the morning with the climate running all night, and 58 percent after cooking breakfast from the truck. That is 10 percent overnight, the same loss he recorded in an R1S on an earlier trip, which he notes has the bigger battery. His headline figure of about 31 percent over 20 hours appears to count from the 90 percent charge he started with rather than from his arrival. The test also flatters the car somewhat. The power station, not the R2, ran the fridge, cooked dinner and powered an air conditioner in the tent all night, and still had 34 percent left in the morning. Chris says the tent added only 3 to 4 dB of noise on the drive, and Everyday Jan, who slept in the R2 with the family dog, found its flat floor comfortable. His wish list is short: a dedicated camp mode in a future software update.
Bottom line: BYD's result is the one that matters to car buyers. A cheaper chemistry, independently shown to add 60 percent in five minutes, is worth more than an exotic cell that lasts 200 cycles, however striking the lab number. On this evidence the Semi is a pleasant truck to drive, but fleets should wait for loaded efficiency and regen figures from customers rather than launch-day demos. Slate should publish a range number. And Rivian should ship camp mode, because owners are doing its arithmetic by hand and getting it slightly wrong.
Commentary on third-party videos. Figures and claims are as presented in the sources and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.