Hate to be a nitpicker, but how do they know the remaining unknown large and dangerous objects is only 5%? It's like saying that I know what I do not know.

This story reminds me of what happened when the CEO of Alstom landed in New York. In the end they settled with GE taking half of the company for a pittance, thereby letting the CEO go back to France. There are other similar stories in the world.

This is my situation but with a kicker. I bought an ICE 7 years ago but have only put 29K km on it. In 2019 I switched to commuting by e-bike (50km round trip) and have a clunker for shopping. For intercity travel I use the TGV (live in France). Getting back to cars, I was interested in getting a BEV, but selling the ICE to buy a BEV makes no financial sense for me. Furthermore, I rent my parking spot so I would need to pay for the charging station installation, its monthly rent and metered use to my landlord, making it even more financially unsuitable.

Humm, in the old days all phones had replaceable batteries, before they had touch screens. I never changed my battery. My old laptops were the same way. The only times I would take the batteries out would be to do a hard restart. But I have empathy with what you are saying, if you use a phone a lot and if it is old it will not not last the day. I guess I'm just not the road warrior type. I find durability is really important and not all electronics are not built to last. Hell, my sister still has my Dad's HP35 from 1971 and it still works.

Humm, should not leave out Enron as a past cause!

In terms of increasing capacity, pumped storage hydroelectricity (PSH or PHES) is the way to go. Technologically it is old hat. Of course that requires a valley and two dams. It seems to me this could also be done on a micro scale by some one living on a slope with two tanks.

Personally I find AVAS not noticeable enough: it is continuous, not very loud and not recognizable as a car. Parisian buses, including electric buses, get around this by having a soft bell sound that is activated by the driver just like their horn. It works quite well in gathering a pedestrian’s attention while not being agressive. On my bicycle I exchanged the original bell that gave a single “ding” with an old style “ring ring”. it is more recognizable and more pleasant sounding. In quiet environments I reduce the intensity with my thumb. Perhaps electric cars should also have a soft bell sound that the driver can activate?

In France the government provides a subsidy of 4000 Euros, or 7000 Euros for low income families, which makes them approximately the same price of an ICE car. In car leasing, the BEV/ICE differential for a Citroen C3 is 10 Euros / month. https://www.automobile-magazin...ésentée%20en%20octobre%202023%2C%20la,course%20des%20voitures%20électriques%20abordables. But even with this equality in price, I have not seen a flood of them on the streets. My guess is that it will take five to ten years for a significant change, time for everyone to amortize their ICE car.

I visited the place. The main tourist attraction is the fort on the hill above the town. If I remember correctly, it resisted during the entirety of WW1, becoming an isolated garrison. In the end they had to send someone from Paris to tell them that the war was over and to come back down. Quite impressive in that it is quite small. They had chickens and other animals to keep themselves alive.

This is my first post on slashdot so please bear with me. Some rail/maglev information: - power consumption increases in a non-linear fashon due to air turbulence. After about 350 km/h the curve gets mighty steep so expect to pay a bundel. To get around this problem, the Swiss have toyed with the idea of building a line in a vacum underground crossing the country, but that's a whole other story. - Noise also goes up in a non-linear fashon. After about 320 km/h the aerodynamic noise overtakes the wheel/rail contact noise. - High speed rail lines have a base line cost of about 10 M euros / km. This ratio can easily double (or more!) if a lot of the line is in tunnels or on viaducts. For example, only 20% of the new Taiwan line will be at grade, in contrast to some older high speed lines in other countries at about 90% at grade. Another multiplying factor, which typically is greater than structures, is politics. Not to get down on your local politican, its just that "in the good old days", they big boys just moved inhabitants out of the way and poured the concrete. Now days, it is relatively easy to mobilize the "not in my back yard" types. - The difference between designing a conventional rail line and a high speed one is too great to make any fair comparison. It's like comparing the design of a freeway versus a two lane highway. One thing that can be said though is that if a high speed line is designed correctly, it works like the trunk of a tree: you zip across the country in the trunk at a high speed, then branch off on the conventional rail lines to many different cities, resulting in more fair use of public money. Hope this is of interest.