I disagree. I used to listen to NPR a lot, but finally got tired of it and quit because the majority of the stories are about some minority interest group angle. Story after story, hammering home the same narratives over and over. I think they're just doing what they think is right, but most of their stories are on social issues and all of their commentators have the exact same mindset.

If I had such a great solution to getting perfect information from crowdsourcing I suppose I'd be a rich man.

I experienced the same as others, I tried to contribute to stack exchange but was rejected, never met some criteria and never bothered to figure out how to do so.

Gatekeeping (quality assurance) is their only value-add. It is the essential problem with crowdsourcing (if you manage to draw a crowd in the first place).

The overall average debt for bachelor's grads is $30K. It's not nothing. It's a car. But it's not enough to justify becoming an electrician instead of an electrical engineer.

I think they'll get here, just later than everywhere else due to tariffs. Then we'll see if Americans actually buy them.

I own a 2024 EV Mini Cooper which is a really nice car with a really short range - about 100 miles. It fit how we used our previous gas Mini (mainly my wife's commuter) and she just likes how Minis handle and are easy to park. But it was never a big seller, most people expect more range for the money.

I don't know about 'wealthy.' How many households in the US do not have multiple cars? Making one of them an EV is kind of a no-brainer, especially now that you can get one used for cheap.

That is all true except PG&E's EV2 plan has off-peak energy at 28.5 cents per kWh, which should cover most of the needs of people who charge at home. That rate makes it competitive with the Prius, even before you consider oil changes.

Really the two are close enough that the balance could easily change during the life of the car due to shifting prices for gas, electricity, or a mileage-based tax on EV's to pay for roads.

A plugin hybrid can run in pure EV mode if you want. Yes it's slower, 0-60 is 10 seconds for a Prius Plugin Hybrid for example. But for driving around on city streets where you top out at about 50, I wonder how bad it would really be.

I have a pure EV (cooper mini) that isn't very fast in the upper ranges of horsepower, e.g. freeway passing, but it's very quick around town.

It stands to reason that hybrids would be more complex and therefore failure-prone, but it's just not the case. In fact, currently, it's the opposite - hybrids are the most reliable and pure EV's the least reliable:

https://www.consumerreports.or...

The hybrid is the most complicated but apparently that is swamped by other factors that matter more, maybe that Toyota is the leading maker of hybrids.

I wouldn't bet my life on the qualify of this CR ranking as to which is the absolute best, but they clearly are doing fine and the Prius did a great job blazing the trail. They're the most popular model of car for taxis and those guys know their business.

I'm a little surprised battery swapping didn't work out to be the better option for Semis. The trucks are a fresh design, charging will require substantial infrastructure anyways, and the budget for a semi tractor is larger than for a car. I guess they have calculated everything and they have their reasons.

Mapping out every intersection, sign, and signal

Before our Waymo Driver begins operating in a new area, we first map the territory with incredible detail, from lane markers to stop signs to curbs and crosswalks. Then, instead of relying solely on external data such as GPS which can lose signal strength, the Waymo Driver uses these highly detailed custom maps, matched with real-time sensor data and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine its exact road location at all times.

https://waymo.com/waymo-driver...

This electric tractor might make it 500 miles on its own. Add the trailer and cargo and likely not even 200 miles.

You're just being unserious, you haven't even bothered to do a quick google on this.

It amazes me because we haven't bothered to go past L1 for our Mini EV, just don't need to. That's 1.1 kW. So this is 1,000 times faster! Not that you would expect them to be close, but 1000 is the average capacity of a Walmart Supercenter parking lot, totally full. Going into 1 semi tractor.

It's a lot easier to imagine at a distribution center for Amazon/UPS/Walmart though, isn't it? A lot like a lights-out warehouse.

How so? Once you discover something about physics, or e.g. a rocket design that works, physics won't actively change its behavior to thwart you and make your rocket stop working.

Although there is an element of that in medicine, since we are often combating other living organisms that can evolve to survive.