Government contracts of the size that Boeing gets (~30% of annual revenue) do NOT in any way reward mediocrity- they reward predictability of performance, and try to make costs predictable, but performance is paramount. No company in the production stage gets a contract that is not already well reviewed for the costs involved (except, perhaps when bribery is involved) and that it can be done at that level, though not everything is so predictable. I worked in government contracting, and we had 2 types "firm fixed price" and "cost plus" - it was far more difficult to get a cost plus contract, as they were more open ended.

As to "Government Insiders" and pet projects, IME those were all elected officials or served at the whim of elected officials.

Expensive, yes (Platinum, mostly). Rare earth, No. From the Congo? No (AFAICT).

Very hard to use an ICE forklift in an air conditioned area. Guidelines I've read suggest an air exchange of 5,000 cubic feet per minute per propane forklift, 8,000 per gasoline forklift. Considering the carp that Amazon has gone through with reports of high temperatures in their facilities, It would be pretty hard to have "climate controlled" facilities (their words) and combustion forklifts (and these forklifts are fuel cell).

TIL hydrogen prevents (slows) methane from degrading. Still, hydrogen doesn't stick around in the atmosphere long- about 2 years (typ) before it eventually gets stripped from the atmosphere by the sun's radiation. Methane sticks around until broken down- which takes (typ) 12 years.

The article is not accurate when it mentions "combustion" - these are fuel cell forklifts. Hydrogen and Oxygen from the air in, water + electricity (and some heat) out.

Fuel cells are a pretty decent option (when you're not generating the Hydrogen from fossil fuels), since the working temperatures are far lower than combustion. When you burn a fuel in air, the high temperatures lead to reactions with the Nitrogen, producing NOX gasses.

It isn't ignition- the article is not accurate when it mentions "combustion" - these are fuel cell forklifts. Hydrogen and oxygen from the air in, water + electricity (and some heat) out.

To the point of flammability, Hydrogen is way less dense than those other flammable gasses, and dissipates (goes up) far faster. It is easy to ignite, but it does not sink and pool.

If you are using air as the oxidizer (~80% Nitrogen), you get emissions- NOX- the levels depending on the combustion temperature. They are touting higher compression, so higher temperatures.

The speeds involved kinda make the "module" idea impossible. The interconnect winds up being far larger and expensive than everything else. High speed connectors that can reliably plug and unplug many times are really difficult to make.

The $2000 radio of 20 years ago would have been much more expensive, larger, and power hungry, if it was built with interchangeable parts.

I worked at Dell at the time (and employee discounts were limited and NOT great, so this was *my* money)- the 420SC, PowerEdge "value line" of servers (internal code names for that generation were Ford cars, imagine the cheapest Ford in the early 2000s). The server was mostly a rebadged desktop, to make it a very inexpensive machine, but ended up being quite different from the desktop. Still, the design was to put good, but inexpensive, parts together. Minimize the initial BOM price, but also minimize the add on service "tax" that warranty implies.[***]

My job was in the server networking group- mostly hardware related, making reference designs, testing to the IEEE spec, etc. I was impressed that this was the first of the "cheap" servers that would do "wire speed" on gigabit Ethernet. Since it was PCIe, the bus could actually handle everything the network could throw at it (process it... maybe?). Add to that, it was capable of running ECC DRAM.

Ran it as my home network server- NFS/SAMBA, local DNS, DHCP, and even as a public web/DNS/SMTP/Majordomo server for a time (when I could get a static IP) for my personal domain until 2012 (?) or so. Stopped when it just got to be too much work and expense (and cloud hosting services got somewhat reasonably priced), and SQUIRREL!

I was quite impressed by the uptime- I am 100% sure that having ECC was the largest influence on reliability. Had a few drives fail, and maybe a DRAM stick. Same processor, fans, and PSU for the entire time. I decommissioned it when I realized a Raspberry Pi (when you could actually get one!) would do as much/more. If only that architecture supported ECC DRAM.

[***]: when calculating the price for any product with a warranty, the expected cost is added to the overall price-tag. The warranty is NEVER "free."

OK, here goes: the US consumed 8.7e6 barrels/day in Oct 2022. Each barrel is 42 gallons, and a gallon of gas has the heat equivalent of 33.7kWh. 12e9 kWh usage per day. In the US, found an estimate that the annual total miles driven is 3.2e12, so the daily is about 8.8e9 miles. So, from that- the average energy usage (assuming all the miles were gasoline driven) - 1.4kWh per mile.

The main reason we have EVs today is that they are massively more efficient typically in the range of 0.25kWh/mile - so the same miles all driven on an electric fleet takes less than 20% of the energy. If all vehicles were electric, an additional 2.4e9 kWh per day

The US grid has a capacity of 1.2e9W - or 28.8e9kWh per day.

In Conclusion: FULL electrification of the US fleet of vehicles would require less than a 10% increase in the grid capacity.

Using some rough calculations- if the fleet of 45 vehicles was swapped to electric- going by another post that said the average mileage of USPS routes is 24 miles per day. Lots of stop and go, but not a lot of high speed, so make a generous rough estimate of 500Wh/mile. 540KWh per night. Assume 12 hours, and the charging is spread evenly over those 12 hours- 45KW - 187A. Close to the edge for a household circuit, which in the US is most often 200A service. With the assumption that a post office is likely in a "business area" which has higher current capacity, and likely even 3 phase- all very possible.

Lots of FUD around EVs and what they will do to the infrastructure, really ignoring the advantages- fewer gasoline tankers, and the ability for more reliable transportation "fuel" deliveries to remote areas- no need to rely on roads.

Class action suits are important avenues to hold companies to their obligations. Every suit Iv'e been a part of (and seen) only benefit the lawyers behind it. What I would really want to see is that the legal counsel gets a specific fraction of what the declared "class" receives. Every check not cashed reduces the legal compensation. The lawyers need their compensation, but the bonus and referral system leads to things like the awful spam we get. I also want to see that that every law firm is responsible for the spam sent.

And not everyone wants to PAY for a thick arse cable.

They do. Cable max speed is only tied to higher power for long cables. To get the max speed (80Gbps) out of a longer cable, the cable has to have active (powered) electronics in it- at both ends. High speeds require more power. To support a long cable without the electronics requires more expensive transceivers at both host and device. The idea, as I get it, most applications use shorter cables. The few applications that need long, high speed, cables, should be able to take the burden of the more expensive cable.