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Comment Re: Don't Panic (Score 1) 535

You get to vote directly for the people with the power to invest and dismiss the Commission, just like you can vote for MPs with the same powers towards the Cabinet. Being a member of the House of Commons is not a requirement for being appointed to the Cabinet, so you haven't necessarily voted for the Cabinet member either. (Non-MPs can, and have recently been, named peers to join the Cabinet.) In other countries being a member of the national assembly is not a requirement to join the Government, so you can't expect the entire EU to follow something that may only be done in the UK.

Finally, commissioners are appointed by their respective governments (who answer to their respective parliaments). If you want the commissioners to be drawn from the EU Parliament, EU would have to change from being a cooperation between sovereign European states primarily represented by their governments (as is usual in international affairs) to a European federated state where final power rests in the federal EU Parliament. That may be viewed as more democratic (I don't agree, though), but I think few Europeans want to go that far now.

Comment Re: Does This Make Sense? (Score 1) 318

You do realize that the mere existence of the Model S, with an AC motor directly coupled to the wheels and doing 0-60 in a little over 3s, proves that you have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about? Seriously, find any graph of torque curves for AC motors.

Even my humble Leaf is faster than most cars I meet from standstill since it has instant torque from 0 rpm.

Comment Re:Good short term, bad long term. (Score 1) 192

No oil in Sweden, and they are doing quite well. Not much oil in Denmark either (but some), and they are doing well too. It's very possible to run a modern welfare state (i.e. what you call "semi-socialist") without going bankrupt or have exceptional incomes to support it. The real world may not operate exactly like your ideology tells you it should.

Comment Re:I call bullshit (Score 1) 476

By connector I mean the plug that goes into the wall as that is what the post I replied to assumed. This is the same. The UMC, the small box on the charging cable that is not a charger at all, is supposed to be designed specifically for Norway to accept the strange grounding (as in finding 0 V between any wire and ground is a very bad sign!). Obviously, they didn't quite succeed. However, reports from the Norwegian EV-forums seem to indicate that a firmware update of the car itself has solved the problem for most people.

Comment Re:If you live in Norway, stick with proven tech (Score 4, Informative) 476

My Nissan Leaf works perfectly during the Norwegian winter, and the Tesla owners I know here in Norway are very satisfied with their cars. They have had some charging problems, though. This has nothing to do with the connectors (which are the same as in Germany and France), and everything to do with the strange grounding system used here. In short: Both wires are live, we have 230 V between the phases (all three), and ground is, well, somewhere, who knows really. This is what seems to confuse the Tesla charging cable as it believes it has detected a ground fault and shuts down. As third party charging cables work perfectly, Tesla probably needs to redesign the charging cable in Norway and give a new one to every customer.

Perhaps you shouldn't give such strong advice on topics you are not that familiar with?

Comment Re:I call bullshit (Score 5, Informative) 476

The Norwegian power system is actually very different from the rest of Europe. The three phase system in Europe has 400 V between the phases and 230 V between each phase and the neutral wire which is grounded. Such a system is called a TN system (Terra Neutral).

Norway, on the other hand, has 230 V between the phases and is completely isolated from the ground. With a perfectly balanced load you can expect ~127 V ground-phase, but the voltage can stray far away from that. This is an IT system (Insulated Terra). The Tesla charging cable is quite picky with the grounding, so it isn't working as it should.

This has nothing to do with the connectors, which are the same in Norway as in Germany or France.

Comment Re:Electric cars are *not* more energy efficient (Score 1) 327

No. Depth of discharge is significant for battery wear. Going 80 % -30 % twice is not the same as going 100 % - 0 % once. Note that laboratory tests on batteries are based on 100-0 % cycles that are deeper than what the car allows. An "empty" battery is not at 0 % SOC. There is a buffer in the bottom and probably at the top too. Look here.

Comment Re:surprise (Score 1) 232

An impact with enough force to punch through the armour protecting the battery can not be classed as "fairly minor". According to Tesla, the force was 25 tons (which means 250 kN), which is a lot. Most likely, the results would have been much worse if had happened to any other car without the extra protection under the floor.

Comment Re:1.4 million?? (Score 3, Informative) 202

The present city border is completely arbitrary. The municipality and county of Oslo has 623,966 residents (or so), but in most directions from the city centre, it is imposssible to guess when you cross into the neighbouring county of Akershus. The figure of 1.4 million is for the Oslo metropolitan area which at least I think gives a better idea of the city's size.
Communications

British Regulator Investigated Over Low 4G Auction Revenue 116

judgecorp writes "Ofcom, the British telecom regulator, raised £2.3 billion in the 4G spectrum auction when the government had hoped for £3.5 billion. Now Ofcom's auction is being investigated by the National Audit Office over whether it provided value for money for the British taxpayer. Ironically, the auction resulted in a low price but spread the bandwidth amongst rival firms, and so provided better value than if the auction had created a partial monopoly or (as happened in the 3G auctions in 2000) gouged as much money as possible from the operators leaving them unable to actually build a network."

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