The ~30k 2010 Nissan LEAF had a 23KwH battery, and the ~30k current LEAF has a 40KwH battery. https://www.in2013dollars.com/... says that the 2010 LEAF cost thus around $43k USD in today's money. While the battery is the most expensive component of an EV, not the only one. If you assume the battery is 1/3 of the price of the car, and using the inflation factor referenced above, you were getting around 2.3wH/$ then and you're getting around 4wH/$ now. Yep, not what the article says, though I think that the economies of scale that will come with the recent scaling up of lithium extraction, and all the many marginal additional efficiency gains in manufacturing (i.e.g Wright's Law) should mean that things continue to improve per dollar at a fair rate.

The loss of usable copper and neodymium in a world that is super hungry for those elements is nothing but deplorable. Aluminium (sorry, AU speaker here) much less so, but it still has a lot of embedded energy, and it would be preferable to recycle it also.

If you're a Mac / iCloud user, you can add a library of your favourite swear words to all of your Apple devices using: System Settings => Keyboard => Text Replacements. I spent an amusing 15 minutes doing this once, result, no more *duck*, just the other word.

The quote "Hyundai's smart enough not to try to compete in full-size electric pickup trucks, still the last stronghold for the Detroit 2.5, not least because they're largely unsellable outside North America" has clearly never been to Australia, where they seem to be the new must-have toy for the nation's Tradies (tradespeople).

... where you can't effectively fight emotive but nonsensical arguments with facts - witness the recent Brexit vote, all the Leave arguments were basically lies - but people still believed them, because they'd been convinced that they were "victims" (always a good populist tactic that). You can have all the facts and business and economic experts you like, all saying "Trump would be a disaster" (and I have no doubt that Trump with his I'm-so-smart egocentricity would be a disaster), but the people who are lured by simplistic nonsense like building walls and excluding Muslims won't listen to "elites". Calling him out as a fraudster (Trump University) or as an aggressively unreliable business partner (look for any number of interview on Youtube with poor guys that won a contract to design or carpet or wire up one of his property ventures and got screwed badly) probably has broader relevance, because there are a lot of small business owners and people who have been ripped off out there that might relate better.

I for one have never heard of "Rickey's World Famous Restaurant chain" (Australian living in the U.K.) So it can't be *that* world famous...!

Or perhaps Google are selling a Camry at the price of a Camry, and the other guys who've been peddling Model Ts are now having to get competitive!

"Man has never really built a decent chicken" - Kehlog Albran, The Profit

Newer streetlights are usually orange / yellow light, because (as I understand it) our eyes are more sensitive at those wavelengths.

So why are car headlight beams still white? The idea is to see more, so shouldn't they be the same orange / yellow light as streetlamps?

This.

Murdoch has been seriously wounded in the UK, and cannot now command political power in the way that he previously enjoyed.

So now, despite not actually being Australian any more (he gave up his citizenship to become a US citizen), Australia is pretty much the only place left where he wields significant power, due to News Corp's ownership of the majority of the commercial media in this small market. So now Murdoch has crowned his victory (deposing a decent government whose main flaw was a megalomanical ex-leader after a 3 year smear campaign) by protecting News Corp's cable TV interests as well.

It was always too good to be true - a government program that would really empower people - in an age of neo-liberal so-called free market economics (what we really have is subsidies for corporates and plutocrats - not a "free market"). Once again, the wowsers have won, and Australia can go on with being the backwater dirt factory it has been told it should be.

A pox on Murdoch and the Coalition.

One thing that many who believe that climate change is a "scam" or a "conspiracy" have in common is a political outlook that says that lefties, socialists, hippies, greenies etc. are just plain WRONG about everything, that their entire world view is basically incorrect.

So it really is hard for them to accept that the lefties and the greenies might be RIGHT about something - which seems to lead to ever more bizarre denials.

The corollary of this is that people with this kind of viewpoint tend to believe that climate change is a stalking horse of the left, to de-industrialise the economy, to promote their "business-hating" ideals, etc.

Sometimes it's obvious that you want or need a change. And sometimes it's not.

So when you can't decide about what to do, it's generally a good idea to ask yourself what it is you could be doing where you could make the biggest contribution, help other people the most, and create the most value for *others*.

Once you remove yourself from the centre of the equation, the answer will probably be much clearer.