It's not quite that high where I am but it's orders of magnitude more than 1/100, probably 1/10, but growing fast. I was at the Tesla center yesterday and they delivered 90 cars and were scheduled to deliver over 100 today. Considering the average dealership moves about 100 cars/month, that Tesla center is doing 2 months of business in 2 days. Granted the tech said it's not usually that high, but it gives an idea of the velocity of the transition over to EVs, at least for new car buyers.

I know here in America industrial rates, not residential, do factory in amperage or kVA. They still charge for consumption, but the rate is determined by the peak amps they draw in a billing cycle. At least that's the way it was 20 years ago. It goes both ways too, where if the amp draw is too low, penalty rates kick in. I'm surprised they apply this to households in Europe, there's a tiny difference between 100A service at a home and 4000A service at a factory.

Sure, but that's 240V@16A, that's 2x the juice that the standard North American plug which (comparatively) dribbles out 120V@15A. 240V@16A is more than enough to recharge the majority of EVs overnight with the exception of monster 200kWh battery EV trucks like the Lightning, Ram or Hummer. At 240V@16A, we're looking at 3.9kW, so assuming 8 hours, based on current level 2 chargers, one could re-add 120 miles / 200 km. Given the majority of commuters in Europe travel 40 km / day, it's likely most could easily live with charging off a standard 240V@16A socket.

Current assembly lines run tight schedules; shipping components adds significant lead time and risk. Another option is to automate the production lines extensively, which targets the labor cost but doesn't fix the component supply issue. The Chips Act may help, but for now, lead time from suppliers is going to be a challenge and a risk.

There's one big problem with Mexico though, it has nowhere near the population of China and India. It's unclear if Mexico even has large enough population centers (outside of Mexico City) to staff a Foxconn factory. Mexico has a single mega-city and 12 mid-sized cities with populations between 1-2 million. Compared to China and India, these mid-sized cities may simply not have enough workers. China has over 50 cities with populations over 2 million. Shenzhen (Foxconn HQ) has a population of 17 million, which is 90% larger than Mexico City. Trying to relocate a single assembly line from an area with 17 million people to an area with 2 million is going to create staffing challenges. To give a high-level view, Mexico's entire labor force is around 59 million, with a labor participation rate around 70%, so that means 42 million total available workers. Foxconn has approximately 800,000 employees. So if everything moved to Mexico, Apple would (indirectly) employ 2% of Mexico's labor force. Mexico's unemployment rate is currently quite low, so even hiring those employees away from their current employers could be problematic from a cost-advantage perspective.

Insanely high levels of automation (like Musk is trying to achieve within Tesla) are probably the best bet for moving manufacturing out of China and India. If we can get to high-dexterity polyvalent robotics, it's not impossible that these assembly lines could be onshored, but I'm guessing we're still 8-10 years away from assembly robots that can handle miniature component assembly with enough dexterity and complexity to be a viable alternative to human assemblers. Ironically, Apple's disassembly robots could be precursors to future assembly robots, however taking something apart is orders of magnitude easier than assembling something.

The launch date and location will probably not be hard to find out for their competitors. Tracking the spacecraft afterwards can't be that hard I think. You also only need to track it for a few days to calculate the orbital and from that the rough area of its destination.

I was thinking the same, why put this in Albany? No offense to Albany, been there, it has beautiful lakes and hills, and people are friendly, but it's not on any top move-to destinations list in the US. I could say the same about the fabs going into Ohio. If one is building a facility where there is no existing local talent pool, then at a minimum pick a location where people are actively trying to relocate to. I've never heard anyone in tech say "I wish I could to relocate to Albany or Columbus". I get the allure of tax rebates and government kickbacks, but if there's anything to learn from the "it's the next Silicon Valley" hype of the last 20 years, it's that building it does not mean they will come. The smart money builds where people already are or where they're going, building where people aren't and aren't moving to is not a path to success.

"Not sure how crappy they are, but they must be cheaper, as almost all big US companies have IT and development operations outsource/offshored."

Fixed that for you.

EVs have ~20 moving parts, ICEs have ~2000. EVs have no transmission, gears, oil changes, timing belts, head gaskets, etc. The list of things that can go sideways in an ICE vehicle are almost endless. In an EV, it's either the battery, the computer or one of the motors. My experience is that EVs are effectively maintenance free. I've spent over $4K in service and out of warranty repairs for our ICE SUV this year, and that's a Lexus, top of the pile for reliability. Meanwhile I've spent $0 on our Tesla. I understand the pushback against EVs, ICE maintenance and repairs are a reliable revenue stream for dealers and service centers. EVs will only replace a small fraction of that revenue stream. Those with a vested interest in ICE service and repairs have a right to be fearful and angry, but pushing the false narrative that EVs are more complex than ICE vehicles, that's.a blatant falsehood.

I can't get them to deliver to my business during standard business hours... They're the one logistics company that prioritizes delivering to residences during the day and businesses after they close, ensuring that nobody is there in either scenario. No, my business isn't open at 11:34pm. No, leaving it outside in a commercial area at night isn't a good idea either. Hell, they do it during the day when the business is open, too, when they actually show up during business hours.

I got packages delivered today that were supposed to be delivered Friday. The packages that were due today have been rescheduled for "sometime before the 29th." Meanwhile, the deliveries handled by the USPS and UPS from Amazon are almost always delivered on time.

Amazon Logistics has been so awful, they're supposed to be deprioritized on my account, but this year, it seems like they're (mis)handling at least a third of my packages again. I absolutely despise and detest when I see that they're the ones "delivering" my packages.

I couldn't find out from the linked articles if they're using modulation or pulsed. I have to assume it's pulsed since space "detritus" would impact modulation more than pulses. The other thing that's puzzling is how diffraction is handled, the beam should be insanely wide at 10 million miles, even with special focusing lenses. Unless that's a feature, so you don't need to hit the bullseye while hurtling through space, but then that's hogging bandwidth from anything else in the same direction from the receiver. In any event, glad to see NASA is pushing the envelope with this, could lead to interesting stuff. The other benefit is that since they're in the photon game with this, they're also in the parking lot of the ballpark of quantum communication.

This has pork written all over it. A list of tech hubs that don't include a single tech hub, with the possible exception of Massachusetts and Miami if you squint hard enough. No, this is money that will simply get siphoned off into someone's pockets.

First off, $40M buys absolutely nothing, maybe a mid-sized office building or 20 top-tier engineers with materials and supporting staff for a year.

If Silicon Valley has shown anything it's that concentration of skills wins. Want to create a hub? Invest BIG in a specific area, $600M-$1B sounds ballpark, and ensure a core group of world class experts are in that area to draw from. Then you just have to hope the experts agree to go, that some kind of synergy develops, and that the timing is just right.

You can't just anoint North Haverbrook a tech hub because they're getting a monorail. This is just burning tax payer money to back pat some politicians.

Can this be tuned to the frequency of my personal eyes? I want to see the stars too.

Failing that, can the streetlights just be turned off? They aren't necessary after let's say 23:00 or even 22:00. If late night city street dwellers want to see better in the middle of the night, they can carry a flashlight with them.

The problem isn't demand, it's that Ford will happily sell you a fully loaded 4x4 V8 F150 Lariat for $60K. However, for a similarly spaced out Lightning Lariat the want $80K. That's.a 33% premium, which paired with a 7% financing offer, leaves only those comfortable with a $1425/month car payment to buy their EV truck.

The GM Silverado EV is even more whacko with a BASE price of $80K.

The addressable market for EV trucks at >$75K is tiny. Another problem with hyper-expensive EV versions of gas trucks with $35K base models is that people spending >$75K on a truck don't want to be lopped in the same Venn diagram as a $35K truck.

Tesla's best selling model is a sub $50K all wheel drive SUV with 300 miles of range that doesn't even have cloth seats as an option. The cheapest Ford option with all wheel drive and a 300 mile range is $70K, and you can only get cloth seats at that price.

So it's all whiney nonsense, Ford and GM don't WANT to sell a $50K EV truck people want. They're in the "nobody wants these" phase, while ignoring the "for a 33% premium over our gas models". There's a non-zero chance they will get hollowed out by the Cybertruck *if* Tesla manages to deliver a $50K 4x4 with 300 miles of range that (gasp) has seats that aren't cloth.

If you think the taxes are primarily going to support infrastructure, you're wrong. The vast majority of federal money goes to the military and social programs, the former of which is loved by Republicans as well as many rich Democrats (that are in on the military industrial complex) and the latter of which is overwhelmingly mandated by the Democrats.

The Republicans don't know how to balance budgets, but neither do the Democrats. Again, pick NYS as a whole or pick any city in NYS - they're all run by Democrats and they're all severely in the hole. The problem is too much spending all around.

The red states can support themselves when they aren't busy dealing with mandates imposed by the blue states. Here in NY, the state mandates determine 95%+ of local budgets by doing things like passing the cost of Medicaid onto the county governments (which is why NY has a high income tax, property tax, and sales tax, all of which remain within the state and not passed on to the federal government, not to mention plenty of high use taxes like the Thruway tolls).

What's that? You think we should mandate social spending like Universal Heathcare? So you're opposed to people actually having the freedom to choose for themselves and don't want to give them the opportunity to NOT pay for it? In red areas, even though they collect from such programs, most people don't want them. Then you get to whack them with the stick for telling them that they aren't supporting themselves. Nothing like pushing learned helplessness on people and depriving them of their desire to support themselves. I'm sure you have everything in your life running perfectly as you tell everyone else how they have to run their life, right?

Economic liberty is just as important as social liberty and the Democrats are just as authoritarian and tyrannical as the Republicans, just over different issues.

Part of the problem is mandates imposed on those states by the blue states, which the red states don't want and can't afford to fund.

Democrats arrogantly believe their way is the only way and that everyone that disagrees with them is too stupid to know better, so they must impose their ideas on everyone by federal dictate. They believe in economic freedom as much as the right believes in religious freedom. Both parties want to own you because you're too stupid to be left to decide things for yourself.

Keep your ideas within your own state borders and you'll keep your tax money to use within your own state and/or to lower the cost of living there.

California also has their fair share of people building in places they shouldn't, while your wildfires say hello.

Living in New York is a nightmare, especially outside of NYC. We have high taxation and little to no representation at the federal or state level. Like California, more new mandates and more new taxes. We make California look fiscally responsible though, especially once you realize that the 700+ government authorities (operating as quasi-private, government owned companies) owe hundreds of billions on top of NY's insane debt load. I love where I live, but I can't wait for the day I get to leave because of the oppressive government and economy here.