Comment Re:Linked article is NOT from the WP (Score 4, Informative) 314
I posted a link to WaPo in my submission. The editor probably changed to a non paywall version.
On shore wind is cheaper than natural gas, solar is getting there. There is very good chance natural gas also will be eliminated someday.
But without EV you are forever committed to burning fossil fuels.
Ideal way to travel, get into the super charger, plug the car in. Get something to eat. Come back to the car, stetch out the seat back and take a power nap for 15 minutes. Go back to freshen up, grab a coffee and return to the car, fully charged for another 300 miles. Hit the road refreshed.
You will arrive after a 500 to 600 mile drive refreshed with some energy left to stay up for a while. What is the big point in driving at break neck speed arrive so bushed that you have to hit the sack and waste rest of the evening?
Grid wont collapse. The grid collapse scenario is pure FUD.
15,000 miles a year works out to 1250 miles a month, 40 miles a day, 10 kWh of charge. From your standard 120V-15Amp outlet you plug your toaster in, it will take 5 hours.
Oh, yeah we have TWO cars per house.
OK, that is keeping your toaster going for 10 hours?
What would happen to the grid if EVERY house in the neighbourhood keeps a toaster going all night long?
The home A/C is 4 kW to 6 kW. The toaster is less than 2 kW. All the homes in the neighborhood runs them at full tilt between 4pm and 7pm. Grid did not collapse. Grid can take it.
OK Grid can deliver it, but can the powerplants generate it?
EV charging at night is when powerplants are currently throttled back from full power of the evenings. We have the generating capacity too.
Gas is a lot cheaper in USA compared to Europe so the incentives are smaller, in the first place.
Lots of European companies leases cars for their executives and managers. It is considered in-kind-compensation and taxed as income tax. The tax bill depends on total cost of ownership. This company cars form a significant market share in C segment (near-luxury in US parlance) cars there. But in USA the sales are driven by sticker price at the dealer, not TOC. This would be another retardant in USA.
Third Big Oil has out size influence in US government. They fight harder to create road blocks.
American auto dealerships get 50% of their profits from servicing, oil change, tune ups etc. All those multi-million credit lines, borrowed money, ordered inventory, inventory risk all them produce just 50% of their profits. Simple investment in the garage and routine repairs rake in profits. EVs have much lower maintenance bills. These dealerships are very well organized, and they have outsize influence in the State and Local governments. Even the Big Auto is not able to reign their abusive practices in, even when they try. They come up with innovative road blocks by unreasonable road tax or registration requirements for EVs or object to charging stations, fight with local zoning regulations etc.
Given all this we can not expect USA to electrify as rapidly as Norway. But, it is inevitable. USA will switch to EVs too, albeit at a slower pace.
They did not bother with LFP. Very much possible their idea of viable battery was full of holes and LFP is indeed a better option for cars.
If enough R&D is thrown in they might make LFP as good as Li-ion.
Li-ion won because of the willingness of cellphone laptop camcorder users to pay upwards of 10,000 $/kwh. For pathetic capacities measured in milli-amp hours. The race for profits there made them too costly to be bought up and bottles. Its possible, if the same amount of R&D went into LFP or nickel metal hydride they too might become as compelling as li-ion.
Toyota, Honda, BMW are all proud of their mechanical engg skills and intellectual properties. Prius transaxle with two motors and an IC engine in one gear set, that allows power to flow from ice-to-wheel, ice-to-mg1, mg1-to-wheel, wheel-to-mg1, mg2-to-wheel smoothly is a marvel... alas its as irrelevant as the ingenious self-winding Rolex chronometer.
They can come back to the forefront. But the technical leadership internally should go from mech engg to electronics people.
About 7 percent of the state’s new car sales were electric vehicles in 2019, and in the first half of this year it’s about 25 percent.
The usual 4 hours to charge FUD.
“Consumers want the same experience as driving an ICE vehicle,” Valdez Streaty said, referring to an internal combustion engine, or gas-powered, vehicle. “When I go to charge, I don’t want to have to wait four hours to charge.”
Lots of consumer perception survey results. Some balance and de-FUD
One of the largest benefits of driving an electric vehicle — the low cost of recharging — is less well known. Just over 4 in 10, 42 percent of Americans think that electric cars are cheaper to recharge than gas-powered cars. An analysis by the progressive think tank Energy Innovation found that when charging at home, “filling up” an EV is cheaper than gas in all 50 states; fast charging can occasionally be more expensive than gas in certain areas.
My personal view: Gas is not as expensive in USA compared to Europe. Europe D segment cars are provided by companies for the managers. The deemed income is based on TOC, not just the initial price. US Oil industry fights harder through lobbying. Dealerships are also throwing stumbling blocks. This the adoption rate in USA is likely to be more drawn out and less rapid compared to Europe.
Wondering Why?
Its not a bug, its a feature. They want it that way.
This sets up a high barrier to entry. Unless you are big enough to eat millions of dollars in losses, unless you reach volumes of billions of dollars to make these losses a flea bite, you can't compete with them. No private equity, no bank however large, no one can fund a new credit card company to take on the duopoly.
What we see as loss, they see it as moat, a protection for their castle raking in 2 to 5% transaction fee on every sale in USA!
Elon Musk said Friday that the block function will be greatly limited on X, formerly known as Twitter, stripping the social media platform of a feature long seen a protection against harassment.
Musk said in multiple tweets that the block function “makes no sense” and that it will be “deleted as a ‘feature,’ except for DMs.” He was responding to a tweet by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, an account representing a club of Tesla owners, which asked whether there was difference between blocking and muting.
Slashdot old timers could recall what a disaster soc.men and soc.women newsgroups were back in the 1990s. And how anyone could have posted or followed any thread without kill files.
Wondering what happens when freedom of speech is bundled without the freedom to close one's ears.
\rm -rf twitter
As I was imagining how I was going splurge on the new found wealth, his professor showed up and said, "nah, it is just some cheap imitation, much more recent, probably 1600 CE. Not worth anything". Thus I lost probably 2 million dollars in one day.
The Adyen investors too imagined what they had was worth N billion, turns out it is definitely less than (N - 2) billion, might even be less valuable than a dilapidated chair from Chola ruins dating back to mere 1600s.
The fossil fuel share of the energy market has been stuck in the 80% to 85% band for the last 30 years
All the additional global energy use in the last three decades, including the rapid industrialization of China came from non fossil fuels. You set up an unrealistic target that fossil fuel share should go down and lament there is no progress.
It will remain static for very long time, and when the market share loss happens it will happen rapidly. The writing will be on the wall. The companies will cut back on investment in exploration (already happening) moth ball expensive projects (like deep sea offshore drilling) cut back on maintenance of infrastructure (pipelines, refineries, tanker ships). When demand spike happens, there is no additional capacity on tap, price shoots through the roof. Incentivizing the switch away from fossils.
You could see the genes as a the way for organisms to make more copies of themselves in the next generation. But you could also see the organisms as mere means of genes making more copies of themselves in the next generation
Of course it is a stretch to attribute motive, planning and action to something so inanimate as a section of a long molecule. So it takes a whole book to explain how it could appear as though they do.
Crux of the solution is, not all organisms make perfect copies of themselves,. Those who do, the ones using asexual reproduction, are not the real dominant ones. But genes that survive pass on unchanged and survive in the next generation. Since we see genes that have survived for millions of years, we need to conclude, yes it is the genes that are selfish, the organisms they manipulate are simple expendable by product.
Seen from this point of view, the selfish gene does not care the organisms they create and manipulate suffer dementia or live in constant fear of predators or they die painful death...
From gene point of view, they dont care. If they are offered a choice, more copies of yourself in the next generation, in exchange of heart breaking diseases for the organisms in the old age. They will opt to make us all suffer horrible diseases in the old age.
The genes are selfish. We are mere carriers to be used and discarded.
"No matter where you go, there you are..." -- Buckaroo Banzai
