10 October

What I like about Tesla vehicles is that they reclaim motoring from kidult car enthusiasts, often adults whose identity as teens focused heavily around their cars. The need for EVs to focus on efficiency, to preserve battery life, takes us back to a time when engineers drove car evolution, not car fanboys. Tesla is releasing long range versions of its Model 3 and Model Y that do well over 700km on a single charge. That’s the range ‘problem’ solved, folks. No more reason to reject an EV because of range. And that’s just with current batteries, range will get even greater over time. With these you can drive Sydney-Melbourne with only one stop to charge. But it’s HOW Tesla did it that goes to my original point. They let engineers design the cars, not car fanboys. Amazingly much of it is in the wheels, smaller wheels use MUCH less energy, and are actually far more comfortable because you get thicker tyres. But also these Tesla vehicles are light, lighter than their petrol and diesel equivalents. Genius engineering at work here. For much of the past century we knew this, wheels were much smaller. Then the car fanboys took control, giving us much larger wheels purely for the look of them (i.e. a wank), and smaller sidewalls to allow them to drive around corners faster. Which made the cars less comfortable, more bumpy and much more thirsty. We drive on public roads, not racetracks. I buy cars designed by engineers, not car fanboys, sad adult men and women whose very identity as human beings is in their specd-up toys. Shown by their love of the noise their cars make too. Teenagers like making lots of noises. For engineers, it’s a symptom of appalling design.