Yeah. Even here in Iceland, which isn't exactly a solar paradise, these would be really useful in some places. Though realistically your best option would be a mix of solar and wind.

I think we're forgetting the other two possibilities in this grid: "solar mine" and "strip farm".

The... trees?

If you're annoyed by jet skis, I would strongly recommend not living on the shores of Lake Havasu. Also, yes, it does take way more energy to get there than it does to jet ski around while you're there. Also, there are electric jet skis.

Do you drive long distances without stopping to get food and drinks?

If so: please stop that.

My language does reflect the new reality. By your own admission EVs are a minority.

Would you say that white people should be called "normal people" in front of a bunch of black people in the US, because the black people are a minority?

You talk about EVs like they're some obscure just-invented thing. They're not esoteric.

We're not talking weight, we're talking wind resistance.

You very much are talking both. For an extreme case, with freight trucks, aero is only like 1/3rd to 1/2 of aero losses. And they have aerodynamically awful shapes and are on very low rolling resistance tyres (though also have very heavy cargos... but also very large frontal areas).

For a passenger vehicle / truck towing a trailer, it will really depend a lot on the vehicle and trailer. It's not even some simple additive process, the aerodynamics is complex; it's actually possible to even lower Cd by towing a trailer in some cases (though not usually). And if by definition of the topic at hand (discussion was of a "big" trailer), then you're talking something like similar to the vehicle's mass (F-150 can tow up to 3 times its mass). Which - if on the same tyres - then doubling your mass equals doubling the rolling resistance. The ratio between rolling and aero resistance at highway speeds varies on speed, vehicle, tyres, weather, etc, but saying 60:40 aero:rolling is probably reasonable at normal "towing" speeds (somewhat lower than drivers without trailers) and averaging across weather conditions. Doubling the rolling drag increases the total drag by 40%. If your cross-section stays the same (again, this depends on the vehicle and the trailer), the Cd would need to rise by 67% to keep the ratio between rolling and aero the same. Which is a really big Cd rise. Now, if you're starting with a very aero vehicle and have a very unaero trailer, sure, you might pull that off and then some (but remember that it's not additive, the airflow is complex). Or if it's a low car and a high trailer, again, same story. But to treat rolling as negligible is just not right. Trailers add a lot of rolling drag, amounts that very much are relevant.

First off, "normal car", please. 20% of all new cars sold worldwide are EVs now. Update your language to reflect the new reality.

Secondly, that's just not true. Towing a heavy trailer with a truck will see its MPG drop by like half. The rule of thumb is that every 100 pounds you have a truck tow drops its fuel economy by about 2%. 2500lbs = 50%. That's a very rough rule, but it gives a sense of what's normal.

You won't be "hanging out" - your car will be ready to leave before you are. By the time you go in, use the restroom, buy a drink or a snack, and get back to your car, you'll have already added the range you need to go to the next site.

Unless you need to get really full because you're in a charging desert (charging slows near the upper end), it basically is this way already, if you have a fast-charging EV and a powerful charger. And speeds just keep rising.

You sure? Plugshare says Goffs has a 16kW NACS.

A Model 3, not towing anything (US ones don't come with a tow hitch, right?), arrive with 2%? I assume you're kidding. ABRP shows a 2024 Tesla Model 3 LR with 18" aero wheels leaving Barstow at 100% arrives at Needles at 55%. This is with seasonal weather enabled, and battery degradation of 5%. Switching to the SR, it arrives at 42%.

Let's see how bad conditions I have to choose to get it as low as you're saying. Let's try some random things.

SR: Going 10% over the speed limit. It's 50C (122F) - about 20F over the July average - and there's a 10 m/s wind (22 mph) - double the average - that the car is unlucky enough to be driving into head-on. That arrives with 1%

LR: Going 25% over the speed limit. It's 57C (135F) - as hot as the Death Valley record - and there's a 20 m/s wind (45 mph) - quadruple the average - that the car is again driving into head-on. That arrives with 4%.

Of course, if the SR just drops its speed to the speed limit it arrives with 10% remaining, and if the LR drops its speed to the speed limit, it arrives with a no-stress 27%. Even in these conditions. Both cars are, again, assumed to have 5% degradation.

So I'm not sure what you're talking about with your Model 3 claims. But I'll totally buy that towing something big and heavy will make that route non-viable. Towing dramatically increases vehicle energy consumption (not just EVs, either - all vehicles), like double the drain. Though I'm a bit surprised about jet skis being that much of an increase, as mentioned earlier.

I find that surprising - I wouldn't think a jet ski would reduce range that much (to 144mi). A big trailer like a caravan or large boat, sure, that'll double your energy consumption / halve your range, but jet skis are pretty small. What version of X do you have, what sort of range reduction do you see when towing a jet ski, and how does your speed impact it? I'm quite curious.

I would have suggested "use a 3rd party charger", but then I remembered you're in the US and 3rd party charging infrastructure sucks :P There's only a single 3rd party charger on that entire route and it's CCS1/ChaDeMo, not NACS. There's not even a slow charger, unless you count Goffs, which is a bit of a detour.

Just for fun I decided to add the fuel mass in. Let's say it averages 70% full corresponding to a mean fillup at 40% full (probably ~25-30% on the meter). The 2020 Camry had a 15,8 gal gas tank, while the 2025 has a 13 gal gas tank. Gasoline is about 6 lbs/gal (God I hate US units....), thus altogether the mean added weight for the 2020 Camry is 66lbs, and for the 2025 Camrys (Camries?) is 55lbs. Full tank is 95lbs and 78lbs, respectively. Putting it all together:

Camrys with empty tanks:
Toyota Camry 2020 LE (FWD, non-hybrid): 3,241 lbs, 7.9s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2020 XSE (AWD, non-hybrid): 3,395 lbs, 7.8s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2025 LE (FWD): 3,594 lbs, 6.9s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2025 XSE (AWD): 3,774 lbs, 6.8s 0-60

Camrys with mean tanks:
Toyota Camry 2020 LE (FWD, non-hybrid): 3,307 lbs, 7.9s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2020 XSE (AWD, non-hybrid): 3,461 lbs, 7.8s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2025 LE (FWD): 3,649 lbs, 6.9s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2025 XSE (AWD): 3,829 lbs, 6.8s 0-60

Camrys with full tanks:
Toyota Camry 2020 LE (FWD, non-hybrid): 3,336 lbs, 7.9s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2020 XSE (AWD, non-hybrid): 3,490 lbs, 7.8s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2025 LE (FWD): 3,672 lbs, 6.9s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2025 XSE (AWD): 3,852 lbs, 6.8s 0-60

Model 3s (more space than a Camry, vastly higher performance):
Tesla Model 3 2025 SR (RWD): 3,880 lbs, 4.6s 0-60
Tesla Model 3 2025 LR (AWD): 4,019 lbs, 4.2s 0-60
Tesla Model 3 2025 Performance (AWD): 4,080 lbs, 2.8s 0-60

Model Ys (far more space than a Camry, still vastly higher performance):
Tesla Model Y 2025 LR (RWD): 4,235 lbs, 5.6s 0-60
Tesla Model Y 2025 LR (AWD): 4,392 lbs, 4.6s 0-60
Tesla Model Y 2025 Performance (AWD): 4,392 lbs, 3.5s 0-60

Is the massive 1700 pound weight difference between EVs of the same class in the room with us right now?

The solar, for a farm of this size in this location, maybe $1,20/W installed to be a bit pessimistic? But hmm, there's no AC conversion or grid connection, so maybe more like $1/W? Again, probably pessimistic, but let's go with it. 11MW = $11M

Tesla's calculator for 38,5MWh of Megapacks is $9,7M. Reduce the cost to get Tesla's internal cost, but increase it back to an even $10M for installation.

So total we're probably in the ballpark of $20M. Divided across 168 stall, that puts our capital cost in the ballpark of $120k per stall. V4 Superchargers are $40k per stall, so that's a total of $160k.

Assuming 20% capacity factor, there's a mean solar production of 2,2MW (call it 2MW after losses). So there's a mean power per stall of 11,9kW (not mean charge speed, as most of the time, any given stall is idle) - let's round to 12kW. If the cost is say $0,45/kWh, then each stall is earning a mean of $5,40/hr, or ~$47k, yielding a mean payback time of 3,4y.

This is of course a gross oversimplification - doesn't include maintenance, construction costs of other things at the site, other site revenue (convenience stores / cafes / etc), on and on and on. And per the article they also have a 1,5MW grid link, so it's not truly offgrid (just *mainly* offgrid). But the ballpark number makes this look very viable.

And it's a meta-analysis paper, according to the description, and they described the correlation as somewhat questionable. I automatically assume that meta-analysis papers are going to be weak.

So not all of the original studies adjusted for income.

So basically, it sounds like nowhere near all studies adjusted for income, and they think they took that into account, but because this is a meta-analysis, there's a certain degree of garbage-in-garbage-out involved. The only way to really be sure is to exclude studies that don't adjust for everything you care about.

Also, because this is a meta-analysis, the papers you exclude are also kind of important.

I'm not sure why "not outcome of interest" excluded both 45 and 54 papers, but that sort of discrepancy raises some red flags, particularly when there are only 16 included studies.

But the real red flag for me is the confidence interval. If I'm understanding this correctly, without compensating for heterogeneity, the effect on colorectal cancer and heart disease are statistically indistinguishable from zero. This intuitively feels like the sort of study where after a few more studies, you'll see regression to the mean.

And type 2 diabetes tends to be strongly correlated with obesity, and there's no mention of the original studies having adjusted for that. If obese people are more likely to eat processed meat because of it being a quick way to get the calories that they need, then it is also possible that the correlation with type 2 diabetes is entirely spurious.

I'm not seeing a whole lot of actual evidence to go from "we combined a bunch of studies with weak-to-zero correlation and got weak-to-zero correlation" to "eating processed meat likely causes an increase in these conditions".

Agree with all your points.

It's possible I might have missed these, but they're also major considerations with COVID:

1. It causes scarring of tissue, especially heart tissue. That's why COVID sufferers often had severe blood clots in their bloodstream. Scarring of the heart increases risk of heart attacks, but there's obviously not much data on by how much, from COVID. Yet.

2. It causes brain damage in all who have been infected. Again, we have very little idea of how much, but from what I've read, there may be an increased risk of strokes in later life.

3. Viral load is known to cause fossil viruses in DNA to reactivate silenced portions. This can lead to cancer. Viral load has also been linked to multiple sclerosis and chronic fatigue, but it's possible COVID was the wrong sort of virus. These things can take decades to develop.

I would expect a drop in life expectancy, sometimes in the 2040-2050 timeframe, from life-shortening damage from COVID, but the probability depends on how much damage even mild sufferers sustained and what medicine can do to mitigate it by then. The first, as far as I know, has not been looked at nearly as much as long COVID has - which is fair. The second is obviously unknowable.

I'm hoping I'm being overly anxious, my worry is that I might not be anxious enough.

ED: Last time I looked (when the tech was brand new) I couldn't find any studies on plants, but there apparently are now, and... yeah, it's what I expected. In fact, it's even worse than I expected: because all the energy is absorbed in such a short distance (the (living) epidermal layer), it does a lot more damage in that (critical) layer.

That said, apparently at lower doses you can still kill fungal pathogens without hurting the plants, and is much more effective at doing so, there is that.

I wonder if we should be exploring even shorter frequencies for plants. If you go shorter, bacteria are going to be able to escape harm, but you'll still be able to kill viruses and maybe still kill e.g. fungal condia.

Hmm. New thought (re: 222 / 233nm): as a pesticide.

Insect exoskeletons tend to be proportional to the insect's size. A big beetle's exoskeleton might be up to a couple hundred microns thick, while an aphid's only a several microns, and a spider mite's cuticle is just like 1-2 microns thick. And even with insects with exoskeletons too thick to kill, they typically moult, and after moulting, the new soft cuticle is initially far thinner. Also, with winged pets, the cuticle is often far thinner than on body regions (to keep them light and enable fast movement).

I bet far-UV would really do a number on small pests & winged pests. And... hmm... I guess that means we can go back away from the world of plants and back to the world of humans: surely it will kill skin mites, lice, etc... anything not hidden by clothes / hair / etc.