Interoperability in Europe works a lot better - you can even "plug and pay" at most CCS chargers because the networks do cross-billing. So you can (from what I've been told) basically drive up to almost any charger and plug in and charge, and expect it all to work fairly quickly, same experience as Tesla.

In the US, the CCS networks have a 25% failure rate, because they're incredibly badly engineered and badly maintained, on top of which "plug and pay" doesn't work between charge networks, and the charge networks are highly fragmented. When I've used CCS chargers, it's taken multiple attempts (unplug/replug), phone calls to the vendor to troubleshoot, and driving to different locations to try to find a working charger. I've never had to do any of that at Superchargers. The issue isn't just CCS' physical connector (as much as it's not great), it's that the companies running CCS charge networks in the US were (IMO) formed purely as a money grab to collect VW lawsuit money and government grants, not to actually provide great EV charging service.

The SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) is the standards body for NACS, and they're working with Tesla and the US Government to fast track the process. https://www.sae.org/news/press...

Yes, Europe got over the "chicken and egg" issue by picking a single standard, mandating it, and funding both deploying chargers and incentivizing EV sales and thus manufacturing, not just with money but with clear long-term commitments to electrification. So EV adoption in Europe is way ahead of the US, and the chargers are all physically interoperable with all the (recent) cars.

The US didn't do those things, or did them later and with less funding, so the car market is fragmented (CCS1, Tesla, CHAdeMO), the charge networks are fragmented, most of the charge networks suck, etc.

150 kW is slower than 250 kW, so a 15 minute charge stop turns into a 25 minute charge stop, but keep in mind that the large majority of CCS chargers are 50 kW, and compared to that 150 kW is a nice step up - the same charge at 50 kW is perhaps 75 minutes.

Moving from v2 to v3 means a different charger, not just the pedestal, so really you're not reusing anything much, perhaps the case. What I've seen so far is that Tesla just builds out more capacity with v3, extending the row of chargers, so you end up with, for example, 10 v2 chargers and then 10 v3 chargers. There's not much advantage to tearing out chargers that are working fine, they might as well leave them available in case people need them.

The implication of the announcements that next year Ford/GM/Volvo EVs will have access to 12,000 superchargers in North America is that nearly all superchargers will be upgraded to support CCS in addition to CanBus protocols. I don't know whether that'll require a hardware upgrade, or if the controllers already can physically support both encoding mechanisms and it's just a software update.

Of course, adding Magic Docks for CCS physical compatibility is a hardware upgrade, and they've announced 3,500 of those next year.

I wouldn't expect Tesla to stop supporting the CanBus-based protocol in superchargers, as that'd require upgrading most of the Teslas in the field, going back many years, which would be a hassle for perhaps a million Tesla owners, and there's no particular reason to do so.

Typically Tesla just expands the station, as the older Superchargers still work just fine, and it's worth having them available in case all the newer chargers are full. For example, I've see places with 10 v2 superchargers (150 kW) and 10 v3 superchargers (250 kW). There's not much reason for Tesla to tear down working equipment, as both 150 kW and 250 kW are faster than the large majority of CCS chargers, which are 50 kW. And as they're not starting to deploy v4 superchargers and megachargers, I'd imagine Tesla will just add them too. Since only the Semi and Cybertruck can take advantage of the 1mw charging at 1,000v, everyone else should use the v2 and v3 chargers just fine.

Superchargers use the Tesla connector, and support both CCS (NACS) and CanBus-based (original Tesla protocol) control protocols. And recently manufactured Tesla cars also talk both protocols. Using the control protocol used by CCS doesn't mean that NACS is CCS1 - CCS1 specifies a particular physical connector, which is worse than NACS is many ways. NACS was specifically designed to allow CCS manufacturers of both cars and chargers to adopt Tesla's connector and use the Supercharger network, and it's been wildly successful.

The software integration is important, and it's why GM, Ford, Volvo, etc., didn't just adopt the NACS standard, they did a deal with Tesla to give their applications and vehicles access to the APIs so that they can locate chargers for routing, see their status, bill charging to their accounts, etc., using the GM/Ford/Volvo apps instead of needing to run the Tesla app. Or course, any driver can use the Tesla app and charge from Superchargers, once they're opened up. Most of the Superchargers in Europe are open, and they're starting to open up in the US as well. Tesla promises 12,000 Superchargers open to GM/Ford/Volvo (so far) and at least 3,500 open to everyone, meaning that they've got the 'magic dock' CCS adapter on the supercharger.

Perhaps you missed it, but Tesla and the US government are working with the SAE, who will be the host standards body for NACS.

DPReview is an amazing site, incredibly valuable reviews of cameras for an extremely long time, an amazing resource. I'm glad it's staying up and getting a new home!

OpenAI didn't lobby against the regulation. They lobbied for regulation, and they argued that ChatGPT isn't a "high risk" application, because it's not medical, industrial, etc., and they very specifically tell customers not to use it for any high-risk application. So if someone were to integrate GPT into a high risk application, then that application would need to justify how that's safe to do. Which makes sense.

Well written regulations are good for businesses because they have well defined rules to play by. The reason that OpenAI is calling for regulations isn't that regulations make it harder to enter the market, they make it so that everyone has to play by the same, well-defined rules. Without regulations, OpenAI could play by what rules it decides make their services safe (e.g. the porn blocking, etc., that they already do) but others might not, and competition will drive towards the lease controls, so there will be other AI systems with no controls that people can use to do bad things even though OpenAI doesn't, so society as a whole isn't protected.

Their moat isn't regulatory, it's that they invested in building a system and training it at a massive scale, giving them capabilities more advanced than others working on AI.

Right, the means-testing has massive overhead, causing the system to cost more and be less effective, because it costs money to administer all the controls, and it causes many people who should receive the benefits not to receive them due to administrative overhead. In many cases, the cost of controls is more than the actual service - for example, telephone calls cost more than 2x as much as they need to, because of the control and billing costs, which are more than the costs of providing the phone calls.

Yes, well, that's capitalism for you.

Most Americans have no choice in insurer. And their choices are controlled by a powerful cartel that colludes to keep prices high. There is no competition in the health insurance field.

No American gives a rats ass about the "choice" of insurer. They want a choice of doctors and services, but really, and I can not stress this enough, REALLY hate all insurance companies. More than they hate the government even!

And yet, taxes have been cut again and again and again. How do you reconcile that fact with your statement that "Because the people raising taxes will never reach a point when they say "the government has enough money now, let's cut taxes"."

Seems that it's very, very easy for the government to cut taxes, at least for the rich. Why are you afraid of "the people who want to raise taxes" when those people have never actually done so? Seems you are imagining a scenario that is not just unlikely, but counter factual.

No, people want to pay for things with their taxes. The are not, in fact, idiots. They don't want predatory capitalists taking a cut, and figure, correctly, that government is more trustworthy than a man with a profit motive and no morals.

People recognize that certain endeavors are just not well served by a capitalist free market. Health care is a primary one that simply doesn't work unless heavily regulated or run by the government. You do not know what is wrong with you. You do not know how to fix it. You can not shop around for a new liver.

As it is, we are basically running health care like a for profit government, and we are getting the worst of both the public and private worlds. Health insurance amounts to a system of taxation that forces the healthy to pay for the sick, and lets a third party take a huge cut. Replace health insurance with actual government taxation and what have you lost, except for the greedy bastard trying to mark up your heart medications? Nothing.