You said "Open Source development." Which in the grand scheme of things is pretty small.

You might want to read up on how current hybrid vehicles actually work, 'cause it seems you have more than one misconception going on.

I have. For instance, my latest vehicle is the Ford F-159 XLT,, the full-hybrid model of the F-series pickup truck line. Power train is:
  - 6 cylinder dual-turbo engine. (runs low power but approoximately doubles output when a lot is needed.)
  - 47 HP motor-generator "pancake" on the engine side of the ttransmission, to scavenge / return power to./from a 1.5 kWhr lithium battery.
  - 10-speed automatic transmission, working with the lithium battery;s main alternator to fine-tune match the engine/mogen to the current driving situation. Max power of engine plus hybrid mogen; 430 hp.
  - full four wheel drive.

So it's primarily a gas-engine power train with an electric-car motor mechanically coupled to the engine shaft. Many other hybrids, from the venerable prius onward, are similar, with plug-in variants having a big scavaging/peaking battery good for pure electric operation of tens of miles rather than a minute or so and a wall-powered charger added.

What I'm looking for is essentially a pure electric - totally electronic "transmission" consisting of alternator(s) between the batteries and the motor(s), plus a tiny engine-generator able to burn gas and feed some teens of KW of charging power into the batteries when running down the road or parked near it.
 

Do the Waymo batteries use one of the lithium chemistries including cobalt, or a non-cobalt chemistry such as lithium iron phosphate?

Cobalt chemistries have a higher power/weight and energy/weight ratio, which made them the go-to chemistries for vehicle batteries. But they also produce oxygen when the cells overheat, leading to an unextinguishable runaway fire hazard: A burning cell makes enough heat to ignite the adjacent cells, so the whole assembly of them goes. Bad enough when it's a car's worth, but a disaster if it's a shipping-container sized module of a utility energy storage site. (And even worse when the site is a building full of racks, which someone had "protected" from fire with water-spraying, equipment-shorting system, so the whole site burns up, as happened recently with one in California creating a toxic mess.)

That's why purpose-built stationary lithium energy systems use non-cobalt chemistries - heavier, but a shorted cell just kills itself without getting hot enough to light off its neighbors.

I think the possible adverse impacts to society would not be outweighed by something that small.

I want to see inexpensive plugin hybrids.

But not like the current ones, which are primarily an engine/tranny powertrain with a motor/generator + small battery for scavenging downhill/braking energy for later accelleration/uphill/cruise/power-boost.

I want ones that are primarily a battery-electric with a small aux engine-generator (say 15-20 HP range), big enough to power crusing with a bit left over for gradually charging. That would let you range-extend by the size of your gas tank plus fillups (i.e. indefinitely if only gas is available) or go from battery empty to back on the road in a couple tens of minutes.

The backup engine would only run at max-efficiency speed and could use an atkins-like cycle (see "liquid piston engine") to get the max power out of the fuel. Most operation would use power-grid charging (when available and cheaper than fuel).

I think that these are all just adult album alternative format stations that keep playing that one Wilco record.

If your goal is the cheapest Mac, the cheapest way to get a new computer in that ecosystem, then they're comparable in that they are both Macintosh computers, and the Neo is significantly cheaper. If your goal is the cheapest Mac laptop, then the Mini isn't relevant regardless of the price.

...1080 pixel monitors...

And you think you're going to be a tech journalist? Yeah, I guess that tracks.

Are you replying to the right person? The grandparent said you shouldn't buy a neo because a mac mini costs the same. And I pointed out that it doesn't cost the same, they discontinued the cheaper model. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

Ehh, I liked Universe a lot, and I never could get into the main Stargate series.

Actually, *this* is capitalism. Deere tried to assert control over their machines in a way farmers didn't like. So somebody else is providing machines that don't include that control, and people who like that feature are buying his instead. Capitalism in its purest form.

The MacBook Neo at $599 is $200 cheaper than the entry-level Mac Mini at $799. They discontinued the cheaper Mini.

Build quality on the Dell is good, but from hands-ons, not *as* good. Touchscreen is not something most people want on a laptop, I think (I know a niche loves them, but most people don't), but it's 120 Hz, which is a major advantage over the Neo (and Air for that matter). The touchpad is not as good. The CPU is much slower (at least in bursty tasks). I'll speculate that speakers and battery life are much worse. Connectivity is a wash (faster second USB port, but no headphone jack). The backlit keyboard is nice. The entry price point is $100 higher. Worst of all, it comes with Windows 11.

Of course this is just based on specsheets, very brief hands-on previews, and speculation, we'll need to see what real reviews show.

Call me when it works with all phone apps and all SMS apps and all contacts apps.

I will, but will you take the call?