I've driven some SUVs and trucks, and their comfort is miserable, they are a beast to get parked, they are not exactly cornering well, and don't get me started on the car body moving! No wonder U.S. roads have to be so wide and so straight, because otherwise, trucks would so unwieldy only people urgently need their specific properties would drive them.

Not exactly. If you put traffic on EVs, you don't need to subsidize fossil fuels, because there would be enough for all the other uses.

And if I am so foul, why would my company rather keep me and my colleagues employed, albeit remotely, than just hiring officable people?

And this is true for all my colleagues too? if so, why would there be a hygienic problem at all?

Apparently, I am a high performer (and all my colleagues are), because we are full time remote workers.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Back in 2012, when the first Tesla Model S arrived, it was not clear that battery technology would take this path. It was generally assumed that batteries are fragile, expensive parts with mediocre capacity and low charging speeds - prejudices you find in a lot of Slashdot comments until today.

My dishwasher is a Samsung. Never had any problems with it. It does not have an internet connection either.

I would not keep a refrigerator that old around. They are really power hungry.

Yes and no. It was always a solution based on a lot of ifs. If capacity of EV batteries remains low, and if charging speeds remain low too, it might be a viable solution (and manufacturers like Nio and Tesla at least implemented the possibility). 10 years ago, those ifs were very present.

But both problems are solved now. You can buy a 180 kWh battery for some EVs already, albeit I would not, given the price, but even standard EVs come with 300 miles ranges. And 4C charging (4 times capacity within an hour) is available, and 6C charging is on display for some EV models, which means charging from 10% to 80% within 6 mins. Given that you need fast charging mainly on long distance trips, you will on average spend less time charging your EV than refueling a gasoline car.

This pulls the rug under battery swapping schemes.

I just found the numbers for Germany for November 2025.

• Bestselling Chinese brand is BYD with 1.7% market share.
• Bestselling European brand of Chinese made cars is MG Roewe with 1.0% market share, followed by Tesla with 0.7%.
• Bestselling European brand owned by a Chinese company is Volvo at 1.9% market share.

This flood is often written about, but has not materialized yet. Chinese brands are only 8% of all BEV cares in Europe as of Octoberf 2025, and BEV cars are about 20% of the total car market. And even if we include Chinese made cars for non-Chinese brands (like Tesla sells in Europe), we are at less than 20% of BEVs or 4% of the total car market.

And the main reason for high energy costs in Germany are massive investments into the grid, amounting to a planned total sum of 300 billion euros. If you include local grids, it's 700 billion euros.

The grid investment were planned at a time, when battery storage was not viable, and is by many deemed to be excessive, as the average load of the grid is about 15% of the capacity.

Another quirk is that German regulations are currently paying a renewable energy provider for the potential amount of energy, not for the energy amount actually provided. This means that the provider is notifying the grid about the currently available power, and gets paid for being willing to provide the energy, independently of the grid's capacity to make use of the energy. This disincentivizes the combination of renewables with battery storage, and hence letting available renewable electric energy going to waste, because the surplus energy is not stored, but simply switched off. On the other hand, the amount of battery storage projects applied for is currently 20 times higher than assumed in the energy report from 2023, which means that the money planned for the grid might be freed up when some expansion projects are proven to be unnecessary.

A politician is by definition anyone doing politics. You trying to influence us to agree with you and ideally taking action the way you want it is the very definition of someone doing politics.

You, my friend, are an acting politician.

I wonder why in 2024, 92% (yes, ninety-two) of all power added to the grid worldwide was Wind and Solar, if it has so many disadvantages. And no, this was not mandated by some government. It was people in countries like Kenya or Pakistan buying some solar panels, loading them on their motorcycles and riding to their villages to mount them on roofs to get power independent from the big utilities. That's something you can't do with nuclear or geothermal.

If you want fast and cheap energy added to the grid, go Solar and Wind.

But cats would not be considered obstacles.