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Comment Re:True genius is to replace gas pumps, slowly. (Score 1) 83

You are making assumptions about means, risk tolerance, concerns, circumstances, etc that will result in many of these people not acting like early adopters of EVs. The product market fit that works for early adopters does not work for the main market. EVs need multiple product market fits for different market segments. This is what makes introducing a new technology so difficult, and take so long.

Cell phones and Smart phones actually spread pretty dang quick.

And we have a number of EV "product market fits". We have everything from the Nissan Leaf to the Cybertruck, for example. Do we need even more models? Probably.

But I'd argue that a single "Tesla Diner" is more a market test than a serious effort to spread the concept. Also, that just replacing gas station pumps with EV chargers also doesn't acknowledge the very real differences between charging vs refueling.

You're probably going to want more dwell time for charging.
I tend to generate a generic priority list for charging:
1. Home
2. Work
3. Convenient spot they already spend some time at
4. Inconvenient spot that they can at least find something else to do.
5. Inconvenient spot that they can't find something else to do in.

Worst case, businesses can always put in a couple EV chargers and check use. With solar power, there's actually arguments for increased daytime charging, so put in enough for employees + some percentage of customers. Check to see how often customers are using them. If it goes over some usage level, install more.
One can also figure that the chargers will have a lifetime - build enough to satisfy demand during that lifetime, maybe, figuring on assessing expansion options when time to replace the overall system comes up.

Comment Re:True genius is to replace gas pumps, slowly. (Score 1) 83

Slightly over half the population live in SFD and can thus be assumed to be able to charge at home. Even then, charging options at both apartments and work centers is expanding.

That a "build it and they will come sort of wishfulness". Its guesswork.

I'd argue that it isn't any more guesswork than building a new McDonalds or Chick-fil-a. Wawa is a known successful model. Heck, the one closest to me also has a line of Tesla chargers.

Restaurants may not be the spur of the moment decision you are hoping for.

Doesn't need to be "spur of the moment". People get hungry, want food. Many older people also want out of the car for a while. Combining those two with the third - get the car charged back up, is effectively getting paid three times.
And yes, a few chargers at pretty much anyplace people park for a bit is a good idea.
Just consider the "expected stay duration"
Motels expect ~8 hours. So they're good with level-2 charging, but you're going to want enough to cover at least the percentage of the clients you expect to be in EVs.
Movie theaters ~2 hours. A low end level-3 DC charger is good here. Only issue is that you can expect them to show up in batches.
Sit down restaurants ~1 hour - basic superchargers.
Fast food - 30 minutes - modern superchargers
Convenience store - 5-15 minutes: The highest power superchargers.

Comment Re:How much power? (Score 1) 83

Question is, do they really have to be? We all know ISPs oversell their backhaul, for example. That gigabit connection won't be a gigabit if everybody in the area is trying to download at full speed at the same time.

Same deal with charging EVs, I think. Put more chargers in, preferably capable of full speed individually, but what are the odds that you'd get 80 cars in during the exact same 15 minutes? That every single one of them would be properly preconditioned for a full speed charge?

If you have a few cars that have been there for 10-15 minutes already, their charging rate slows down naturally, the station can coordinate with the cars and driver's plans to ensure that the power is divided up in a equitable fashion.

As for the solar panels over the parking - I know it's not going to make a huge dent in providing all the necessary energy for charging the cars, but putting a structure over the top to shield them from the sun and rain is still very nice, at which point they might as well be solar panels.

A station that has 80 charging spots but normally only sees 3 of them being used at a time might still be able to satisfy most of their demand via the solar panels.

I have to agree with thegarbz - I think it is highly unlikely for a supercharger station to experience perfectly steady demand. At this point Tesla should have plenty of multiple yearlong examples to figure out likely usage patterns.
I'd expect, given food establishment (but no breakfast?) to see peaks around lunch and dinner periods: 11 am to 2 pm, 5 pm to 8 pm. A trickle of cars otherwise. Add good breakfast, add a peak at 6 am to 9 am. (8am would be when the retirees mostly show up).

Comment Re:True genius is to replace gas pumps, slowly. (Score 1) 83

All we really need to do is take existing gas stations and slowly convert gas pumps to charging stations, in proportion to the local market's transition to EVs. Today? Maybe convert one pump at stations with 12 pumps.

True Genius would take it a step or two past that. For example, it is a rare exception for somebody to be able to fuel an ICE at home, mostly restricted to a few farmers. But "most" EV owners can easily do so.

This means that the optimal recharging locations and optimal refueling stations are actually somewhat different. Especially if you go from ~5 minutes attended fueling to ~15 minutes unattended charging.

The latter gives businesses a much better opportunity to sell EV owners more stuff when they stop by for charging. It's why I figure that the "quick stop" gas stations with a microscopic building for smokes and drinks wouldn't be as popular as the expanded food options available at expanded gas stations like Wawa. Note: Not endorsing, just giving as an example.

Of course, I'm not going to give Elon/Tesla any "Genius" points for implementing something I was suggesting years ago. Back when a fullish charge was closer to an hour than 15 minutes, I felt that placing EV chargers next to restaurants made very good sense. Even today, while 15 minute charges are a bit fast for a sit down place, more suited for fast food or even a convenience store, the ability to either charge more fully or slowly to help conserve the battery might be good.

Comment Re:Or maybe (Score 1) 54

It binds more strongly than O2 or CO2, but not permanently. Just time removed from the source will clear it. Providing supplemental O2 will speed that up while supporting life functions if they got a larger dose.
Basically, CO will win most fights with O2 for hemoglobin, but when it is experiencing a few hundred per trip through the lungs...

Comment Re:Morbo Voice: (Score 1) 190

Even if the AC would have infinite efficiency (instead of typical values of 2-3), you are increasing temperature out-of-the-house by reducing temperature in-house

So then, you can just shut off your AC and just have it permanently cooler inside, right?

Wait, no you can't?

That's right, because heat leaks back into the house from the outside - warming your house, and cooling the exterior. And the amount it cools the exterior is approximately equal to the amount you're pumping out. Only the energy used by the AC is actually changing the outdoor temperature. But it's utterly dwarfed by the impact of the sun.

(I stress "approximately because there's some slight radiative balance changes - the heat outflow is a point source while the inflows are diffuse, and thermal radiation is proportional to the temperature to the fourth power - but it remains a trivial factor in practice)

Comment Re:Wait, what? (Score 1) 190

Physically, we're non-continental. There is no "continental shelf" here. We're not on continental crust. We're a part of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, the Atlantic seafloor, that protrudes above sea level. We're MORB, not granitic crust. Tectonic plates != continents. The North American plate for example contains large amounts of both continental and oceanic crust.

And yes, geopolitically, we're entirely European.

Comment Re:Wait, what? (Score 1) 190

** Of the places I've visited on the mainland. Ireland, England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, Austria, Czechia... wait, I do remember that my hotel in Paris didn't have AC, and I was utterly miserable there. Czechia and Austria were in the winter / early spring so one wouldn't notice. But I'd think I'd remember if the others had it or didn't...

Comment Morbo Voice: (Score 4, Informative) 190

French Energy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher countered that large-scale air conditioning would heat streets with exhaust, worsening heat waves.

"HEAT FLOW DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!"

(For anyone who's unclear: all the heat that you're pumping out of houses is basically perfectly offbalanced by the heat penetrating into them. Only the energy to run the AC creates new heat, same as running any electrical appliance, but vs. the sun which - when overhead on a clear day - deposits about 1kW of energy per square meter, it's an utter irrelevance)

Comment A reminder that... (Score 1) 34

just because you "got over" a disease, it doesn't mean you're "better". Not all damage just goes away. It seems every month brings a new discovery about some disease is brought about or greatly increased in likelihood from past infection. For example, my mother suffers greatly from Sjögren's (incl. neuropathy where it feels like her skin is on fire). There's now increasing evidence pointing to it and related diseases as being at least in part triggered by Epstein-Barr, and my mother has strong diagnostic indicators of EBV reactivation. Even Alzheimers' research is pointing at past infection (combined with genetic susceptibility) as being a potential case, as amyloid beta and tau appear to be part of the brain's innate immune system, with accumulation as a result of inflammatory processes in the CNS.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is frankly nonsense. What doesn't kill you can leave you crippled, brain-damaged, with cancer, or any number of other things. Sequelae and postviral illnesses aren't some sort of a joke. I think one of the main lessons of COVID is to take sequelae and postviral illnesses in general more seriously - COVID brought them to attention because so many people got sick from a new virus at once, many severely ill (vs. say influenza, where only 5-15% contract it per year, and more often mild cases), but in no way is COVID unique to causing sequelae and postviral illnesses.

Comment Re: Covid-19 infection affects small blood vessels (Score 2) 34

I'll personally never get over how surprised people are to hear that COVID affects the cardiovascular system. The spike protein literally targets ACE2. That's its point of entry. ACE2 is a blood-pressure regulatory surface protein (Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 - angiotensin is a vasoconstrictor), expressed by cells that need to modulate the cardiovascular system. Pulmonary-related deaths were the #1 cause of death from COVID, but cardiovascular-related deaths were #2 or #3 (depending on whether you count respiratory or multi-organ failure in the same category), not a trivial fraction, and with much greater potential for having been missed (as the pulmonary-related conditions were so characteristic and readily diagnosed, as well as being so much better known). Corresponding with the clinical data from known COVID cases, general-case cardiovascular deaths also spiked during COVID waves.

It's IMHO quite the irony that all the antivaxxers were freaking out about typically mild myocarditis from vaccines when COVID itself causes a much more severe myocarditis progression, much more often, and that's just a lesser one of its many cardiovascular complications.

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