Great news: someone lied to you... BEVs didn't need battery replacement every seven years.
As it happens, my daily driver is a seven year old BEV, a Tesla Model S. Its estimated range was 335 miles when new and is 315 miles now. Assuming we can trust the car's estimate (I, for one, do trust it) my car still has 94% battery capacity after seven years.
My car is far from worthless, but it's not for sale. I like it and I am keeping it.
Ford has always been the 'more bling than sense' option, at least as long as I've been alive. Some are very nice vehicles, and their interiors are top notch for an American vehicle (vs like, a Land Rover), and they're often the vehicle most purchased by people who aren't smart enough to connect the dots or pay attention to their environment enough to not buy a vehicle which is obviously not well built. Case in point - middle aged Karens buying gutless Mustangs. Their reliability is even worse than VW.
No, Ford is bad at it. They're bad at it because FOrd isn't good at making reliable vehicles. Ask anyone who's had to get work done on their Ford's, or a Ford mechanic.
The engineering culture at Ford is such taht they design things to be sold, not maintained. This is true for all Fords, with things like having to completely disassemble large parts of the vehicle to do basic maintenance being commonplace, even on ICE. Little things change sometimes multiple times per year on the same model year, so you're never sure if you need parts from one year or the other until you try to fit them. This leads to some really horrible QC, with vehicles often failing straight off the lot. I've known 2 people in the last several years to have their brand new Ford have major mechanical failure, and heard a number of other anecdotal stories from others.
If you need more anecdotes, just hop over to Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist and look at the used price and condition of Fords vs comparable Chevy, etc. vehicles. Pick one - Ford trucks, midsize/small cars, SUVs, hatchbacks. You'll pay significantly less for the Ford, which will likely be in "better condition" with fewer miles, than the comparable vehicle for this very reason. Case in point: old Broncos vs Ramchargers or K5 Blazers, or trucks in general. There's a definite pecking order and it is largely based on the reality of overall vehicle quality. A 25 year old rusted out Toyota with 250k+ would go for 8k, where a similar truck from Chevy S10 $4k, but the Ford Ranger - which may not be rusted out or have any visible issues - sits around at $1500-2000 for months unsold. (I say this as someone who buys, repairs, and flips old vehicles.)
Now imagine those problems when you add software computing parts to every component in the operation of the vehicle...
Economies at scale don't work when you're operating at a loss - as all EV production has until very recently (to the exception of some Tesla models). Every other manufacturer has to subsidize their production with increased costs for their other models.
"New" at it? Do you consider the fact that Ford produced one of the first commercial EVs over 100 years ago, or that they've been in continuous commercial production of EV and hybrid vehicles since 2011 - likely designing them for many years prior to that (probably around 2008, like every other automaker, when the gov't started pushing massive subsidies in that directioN)?
Tell me, do you consider a "tech startup" that's 13 years into funding and on Class K funding to be "new at it"? Come on.
Most of the EV vehicle costs are material costs - the batteries, copper for the motors and wiring, and so on, are a huge part of this cost disparity. The bulk of the vehicle weight is in rare earth minerals, and that weight is not insubstantial.
How many decades does a technology get a free pass for being 'new'? Tesla is 20 years old. There other motor vehicle companies which have come and gone. The industry as a whole (EV vehicles) have massive governmental subsidies at every stage of production, and regulatory burdens are almost completely absent. There is every financial incentive to succeed.
If Ford (5th biggest automaker in the world) can't make it happen, and Toyota can't and won't make it happen (#2), and VW (#1) clearly can't make it happen (link), and the ones who ARE making it happen are still struggling financially even with these subsidies after 20 years, there's either a larger economic problem at play, or the technology simply isn't suitable for mass production of consumer cars.
Can you imagine Chrysler, Ford, Chevy, etc. having these kinds of problems in the 1930s and 1940s, 20+ years after the beginning of mass production of a technology, competing against horse drawn carriages? Just silly.
Fundamentally, EVs won't be cost effective or desirable for most people until they solve the energy efficency problems, the capacity problems, and the endurance problems. That boils down to finding a better energy "source" than lithium charged by diesel-powered Superchargers, at a minimum.
This is like saying that the car that slows down after crossing the finishline first, is slowest.
Apple has US phone market dominance, the only thing that's decreased is the percentage of new activations. That means they're reaching market saturation, if anything.
Add to that the fact that 5-8 year old iPhones are still perfectly functional and useful, in most cases, in contrast to Android devices which are lucky to get updates after the first year or two...
No, they haven't. No Democrat has been "screeching" about "stolen" elections. None.
While "screeching" is certainly hyperbole, how about Hillary Rodham Clinton?
“There was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level,” Clinton said during an interview for the latest episode of The Atlantic’s politics podcast, The Ticket. “We still don’t know what really happened.”
“There’s just a lot that I think will be revealed. History will discover,” the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee continued. “But you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, ‘Whoa, something’s not right here.’ That was a deep sense of unease.”
Maybe you think that's not a direct enough claim? How about this one:
"I think it's also critical to understand that, as I've been telling candidates who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,"
Or maybe Jimmy Carter is more your speed?
"There’s no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election, and I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf."
Maybe the 11 Democrats who objected to the electoral vote certification on January 6, 2017?
No, sir. No allegations of stolen elections from Democrats, none at all.
Just because people are useless they won't lie down and die quietly.
Twice so in a country that has more guns than people.
I used to think that way. Not so much anymore. Each person suffers individually. You can't feel my suffering. I can't feel the homeless guys suffering.
So what happens? We end up shooting each other because we don't have a target to shoot at. This is why school shootings by non-students happen.
There will be no revolution this time. We will silently, more or less, just fuck off and die. I am incredibly saddened by this state of affairs.
I realize that we need some laws to prevent the distribution of harmful content, but we absolutely need something better than this.
What would harmful content be? Sharing personal details about me at the wrong time to the wrong audience could be considered harmful to me, but those details are shared widely already...
Sharing details about how to make a nerve toxin could be considered harmful...
I dunno man. Defining harmful content seems pretty impossible. Just saying "fuck you" could be considered harmful by some. *shrug*
Until you can clearly define the term 'harmful content', it is better to err on the side of caution. Sexual images are generally not harmful.
Seems like our society has focused on who they can fleece for the most instead of building something to be proud of. Unfortunately we as a nation are going to continue to decline until the C suite class of people decide they want to focus on making something to be proud of instead of focusing on how big of a yacht they own.
Heroin addicts rarely quit, even when faced with insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes, they are lucky, and something REALLY bad happens to them and they manage to survive it. It is at THAT point, that they MIGHT reconsider their behavior. Since most do not reconsider, even after catastrophe, I don't imagine any of the CEOs or other power players will reconsider their behaviors. Their addiction is money, not heroin.
If you worked in IT until 2000 and have since been unable to work in IT... You failed to adapt in an industry where you should be retraining annually.
Dude. Really? He "failed to adapt"? What exactly was he supposed to adapt to? Not getting paid properly? Having his professional opinion discounted? He helped CREATE many of the technologies that you are using right now. What makes you think he couldn't still be creating if he was paid and respected?
What is funny is that this is how all of us will be treated. Something bad happened to you? YOU failed to adapt. YOU failed to try hard enough. YOU YOU YOU. It is never the manager that refuses to respect you. It is never the CEO who refuses to pay you reasonably. No. It is a YOU problem. And dying is a YOU problem as well, so go have fun dying while the rest of us party on like nothing has changed and everything is fine.
Whatever. TFS, the summary, tells you how to turn it off. Nobody with an ounce of intelligence lives with ads in Windows 11.
Umm... how long do you think the ability to turn it off will be available? This is Microsoft putting their toes in the water. They learned from Palladium that you can't just wholeheartedly force such evilness upon people. You have to do it slowly.
Now, every computer has Palladium but Microsoft lost a key part of it: They are not the sole entity allowed to specify the certificates. They will not make the same mistake with the ads. The money is too important.
DeBeers, etc, deserve every bad thing they have coming to them. If synthetic diamonds put them out of business tomorrow, it will be a great step forward for western society.
The owners of DeBeers changed a few years ago. I assume they saw the writing on the wall and sold off to some naive idiots who were eager to get into the exploitation game like their predecessors.
What a stupid way to legislate. Every bill ought to gave a single, specified purpose.
Eh? Why would we want to make corruption more difficult? This is the only way to pass bad law with any sort of regularity. Why would you want to stop that? Are you not one of the beneficiaries of such policies? Stop whining about your bad luck if you are not.
Why should the United States not do the same to social media companies from Communist China?
Tit for tat behavior will ensure that equilibrium is never reached. Go away with such primitive ideas.
That being said, Tik Tok is indeed a threat to the social order of the USA... but, so is Facebook and Reddit and and and. No other company that is a threat is being dismantled; therefore, this legislation is bad and must be rescinded. Any law that is made regarding this must apply equally to ALL actors, both foreign and domestic.
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.
