In other news, AI isn't going to kill humans off using an army of terminators. It'll happen because of the crap we burn in order to power AI.

Series-Parallel PHEVs like the RAV4 Prime are more efficient at highway speeds that pure series PHEVs like the i3 Range Extender. Given that Canadians and Americans tend to drive much farther and typically at higher average speeds than their European counterparts, one could argue that series-parallel PHEVs might be a better fit for much of the North American market for now.

One of the greatest obstacles to this is cost. Someone will need to pay for the stations, the swap machines, and all that battery stock. And you'll need to do this at both high traffic and low traffic locations. Next issue is with that standardization. The industry is still in flux, with multiple voltages, cell types, C-rates, and capacities. So those stations will need to carry a fair bit of stock and the swap machines will need to be versatile enough to handle it all. And in the future, you'll need to keep stock around for older vehicles using legacy tech, which hopefully isn't deprecated and abandoned. Third issue is that nobody wants to swap their brand new battery for a much older one that may be degraded.

And last issue is that charging is getting fast enough that the window where swapping might make sense for light duty vehicles is closing. If I can charge my BEV from 10% to 80% in 15 minutes, that's good enough for the rare time that I need to charge away from home or work.

Not everything that pollutes can be moved out of California. And as other states and countries adopt similar systems, polluters will find it more difficult to relocate to somewhere less regulated. And depending on the activity, the cost to bring the product back to California may be high enough to negate the savings from not having to pay the tax.

And as you note, nothing says that the US can't pass a carbon import tariff in the future.

When I bought a one-year-old Toyota from a Toyota dealer, I was able to opt out of their data sharing. But it required creating a profile, downloading their app, and navigating to some buried preference settings. It was not intuitive. And I only knew about the problem because I also own a fairly new Chevrolet that had the same data sharing issue (and required similar opt-out steps).

And that is a problem. It should be an opt-in process that is presented when the vehicle ownership changes hands. And it shouldn't be something that a salesperson can just agree to with a two second explanation to the new owner.

You could power devices such as media hubs (ie, Fire Stick), cable boxes, game consoles, etc...

Depending on which direction(s) the power goes, you could also power monitors. One less cable. (eyes the trio of cables running into my monitor)

It makes a difference if you have a time-of-use energy plan. If you head to work or to bed, you can delay the start until an off-peak period kicks in.

Unfortunately, they're capacitance buttons. I found them terribly annoying to use. Same problem in the Kia EV6. You have to keep your eyes off the road for longer to ensure that you're pressing the button correctly.

Depends on how badly Stellantis continues to mess up the Jeep brand. Might be an opening for them in that market segment.

That's partly due to how NEVI categorized under-served communities. There were multiple qualifiers for such areas, and it was quite common for an under-served community to qualify for several. If being a tribal community was eliminated as a metric for being too "woke", there is a good chance that it might still qualify under the rural and low income metrics.

Such "bring your own" policies are limited to Level 2 AC charging where maximum current is limited to 63A (IEC 62196) or 80A (SAE J1772) and 400V.

The cable requirements for fast DC charging are much more demanding, where voltages can exceed 800V, current can exceed 300A, and where active cooling solutions may be utilized.

While the thought of an organized theft ring buying access to my family's Rosey and using it to scope my home out, surveil our comings and goings, and then disarming the alarm is rather terrifying, the more mundane issue is worrying that my $10K purchase turns into a brick in six months when the manufacturer goes bankrupt and their control servers go down.

"The underlying purpose of AI is to allow the wealthy to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth."

And we are paying the price of building our replacements through higher electricity bills, greater amounts of pollution, and general enshittification of the world.

That true to some degree for all new cars. Took me about a week to get used to the idiosyncrasies of my Bolt.

Can't rely on engine noises with a CVT, either.

That could just be a Tesla issue. Also, some EVs allow you to set the level of regenerative breaking. On my Bolt, with one pedal drive disabled, breaking is very similar to an ICE vehicle.

That's actually a legitimate complaint with public chargers. I hate sites that don't accept a payment card or that require an app on your phone. There is an industry standard called plug & charge that allows you to associate a payment card with your vehicle and everything is done on the back end, but it isn't ubiquitous yet.

That's on your rental company. Most folks who own an EV keep an adapter in the glove box or trunk.

Both Tesla issues. My Bolt just beeps if I open the door while in drive.

There are national security and economic interests in moving away from internal combustion engine vehicles. Look at the mess that happened when we involved ourselves in the Gulf War to protect our supply of oil. Look at the spike in inflation during the 1970s oil crisis and the 2022 energy crisis. Look at how climate change is affecting the cost of building and property insurance. Look at the blowback from Iran because the USA and the UK supported a coup against a democratically elected government that wanted to nationalize the country's oil sector.

Our dependency on oil has a destabilizing effect on the country and the world. It is in our interest to get off of oil as soon as possible. Which is why subsidies for electric vehicles are a good thing (and massive subsidies we currently give to the fossil fuel industry are not).