I’m not sure I understand. In FDM printing, Z is the only direction where you currently CANNOT have long continuous strands, even if you need them. You always need to sacrifice one direction in which the part is going to suck.

For example, you can easily print an airplane wing with a beautiful, perfectly smooth and continuous airfoil, but you have to include a channel for something like a carbon fiber rod. Without it, the slightest bending force would instantly split the layers apart. Any other orientation will give you a rough surface with steps and a disgusting amount of supports. Being able to add a few strategically placed “columns” (i.e. members in the spanwise direction) could really help this particular usecase.

The ID.3 starts at like 35k USD here in Europe. Škoda Elroq and Enyaq, both under 50k USD.

ID.3 is a MEB car, its production started in Zwickau (Germany) in November 2019, two years before it even arrived to China, and one year before the SOP of ANY MEB car (ID.4 was the first one) in Anting (Shanghai).

I have a friend who's a big Honda fan, amateur racer, a true "petrolhead" but with an intact brain. Runs his own shop. Naturally there was a barrage of jokes when I rolled up in my new Chinese EV, but then we put it up on a lift and there wasn't really much to joke about. The platform looks boring and mature. Things are where you'd expect them, they're the right size and shape, you can tell why they're there.

Obviously, the motor/reducer bearings in my car may fail in a few years (like in the Kona Electric or Škoda Enyaq) or the charging circuitry may fail (like the ICCU in the Ioniq 5) but then we're already comparing it against legacy manufacturers, and that's a pretty good position to be in.

The factory rust protection was maybe a bit on the lighter side, but everything else on it looks completely normal. The drivetrain is simple (no heat exchange mechanism between battery coolant and motor coolant, a slightly whiny motor), but also genuinely competent and modern for a 2022 design (a mature skateboard RWD platform with a thin CTP battery with large cells and generous cell/coolant heat exchange). There are no obvious wtf solutions, nothing that would look too thin or too flimsy. The infotainment and the SW of the car does have the occasional funny moments, but all that is happening on what looks and feels like a solid piece of hardware.

I viscerally hate people who do or seriously suggest this. First, ignoring any strange noise in a car almost always leads to more expensive and stressful repairs down the road. Second, how the hell do people hear a noise and are simply okay with not knowing the source? Not understanding the situation and not being able to make any kind of informed decision?

Okay, today I learnt.

Yes, technically, but note that this entire thing can be anything from crucial to completely worthless depending on the domain.

You need insane scalability for a social network or a streaming service, you don’t need any real scalability for (completely made up) managing a fleet of airplanes or the internal logistics of a zoo.