So, TikTok, not Roblox! C’mon.

There was absolutely nothing in that article about Roblox usage. It talked about browsing websites.

You mentioned Tesla only, and you talked about "if" everyone had their thumb on the scale, rather than the fact that they do. And you didn't explain why Chinese OEMs should be obliged to enter the market unsubsidized while US OEMs have, by your own admission, received subsidies.

It’s crazy! Here in London, UK, there’s a massive jumble of cars, everything from a Citroen Ami (very rare) or Smart car (pretty common) through to superminis (ten-a-penny), saloons and a bunch of SUVs of varying sizes. But the largest we have is something like a Range Rover, and the smallest SUVs are things like my own car, a Mercedes EQA, which is only 4.4m long. Pickup trucks are super-rare.

Yes to all of that!

But instead we have a 100+ comments focused on bullshit about engine reliability which affects a small % of people, as opposed to the costs of poor fuel economy, which affect many more.

The demand is all coming from AI data centres. We had data centres being built for years without this massive spike in demand.

It boggles my mind that no policy maker seems able to turn the AI demand for energy into an opportunity. Historically, where there's a surge in demand from wealthy industrial customers for a service, governments have been able to extract additional value. The obvious thing to do is to turn to the data centres owners and say "we are happy to give you grid connections, but we're going to charge you at twice the current market rate to fund infrastructure and lower bills for householders". It's such an obvious populist move, I don't understand why it's not being pursued, at least in the UK where we don't have the complete batshittery of US politics.

I'm one of the 18 people in the world who don't live in the US.

So frigging annoying that almost every post on here just accepts the ridiculous framing that Sinij has been pushing, that the most significant effect of this change will be to cut costs because vehicles will become more reliable. Obviously, the two most significant effects will be:
- Vehicles will cost more to operate, because they will need more fuel per mile
- Vehicles will spew more pollutants per mile, damaging the environment and hurting the health of people (and animals)

But because of the framing, no one has talked about this

He never has and he never will. It's all just a bollixy old story he tells himself, like the one about who Slashdot readers are, because he absolutely will not countenance that this is about points on a scale and supporting modal shifts for as many journeys as possible, rather than just trying to stop the use of cars / trucks altogether:
Active transport > electrified public transport > ICE public transport > EV private transport >>> ICE private transport.

That is a very convoluted explanation of how this is going to cost Americans money, just like the stuff about how vehicles are going to be magically more reliable is a convoluted explanation of how this is going to mean Americans spend less.

The blindingly obvious truth is that the operating costs for vehicles is going to increase, because they will use more fuel per mile in the future. And that is the direct and clear reason that this is going to cost Americans money. The other obvious reason is that it is going to be just another way in which US OEMs will diverge from global secular market trends, and thus lose out on economies of scale.

Incredible that this is what you post as an example of a small vehicle in Europe, rather than, say, this:
https://www.renault.co.uk/new-...

Ar3 you just going to ... ignore the gigantic bailouts that US OEMs received? Not to mention the costs of the various wars fought to keep the fuel flowing, the unfunded externalities, etc? So you're going to count some subsidies (the ones in China) but ignore others (the ones in the US)? Seems like a lot of motivated reasoning to me.

It's hilarious that you think Tesla makes small cars. An actual small car is something like a Fiat 500e or a Hyundai Inster, not a frigging Model 3.

Your statement and your sig seem very much at odds with each other