Well something that looks promising in mice is far from a miracle cure.

Honestly I look for a couple of things in these stories. First is the story in a reputable publication? Are the people doing the work at a reputable institution? What experience and background do they have? And what do the researchers themselves say about the finding (since the media sometimes gets stuff wrong).

In this case, I see no red flags. They are applying to the FDA to start human trials in a month or two, and testing could take a year. That's the kind of timeframe that everyone else who is working on a vaccine is saying.

This is the sort of job that modern-day telephone sanitizers would do.

Let me know when you start seeing people throw garbage out the window of a plane.

The whole thing is rotten to the core.

His next project will be to 3d print a girlfriend.

Hard to say much more since we don't know much about the actual vulnerability. I guess we will know more later today.

Normally a Kona EV has this electronic chord sounding thing, where the pitch varies with your speed. Some people object to the sound - it doesn't bother me that much however. But there is someone modified the thing to sound like a diesel locomotive.

Having a voice would just be weird.

Personally I would like to see a Jetsons option. Which got me wondering how they made the sound for the old cartoon, and the story I found was that they used a pop gun in a cider jug to make the basic noise which they then repeated.

If I had mod points, I would mod this up.

There are several chemistries that are out there:

https://batteryuniversity.com/...

But Lithium-iron isn't the one that is used for EVs. It is the NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) that is commonly used for EVs these days.

Solar power isn't free - you still have to buy the panels and the associated cabling/inverters.

It gets close to free if you just use the sun to produce salt by evaporating seawater.

The main breakthroughs have been in the area of reducing manufacturing costs.

They are still quite expensive. That's part of the reason that there isn't much movement in this area.

It also implies something like 600kW charging rates or higher. The fastest charging stations that are out there now are 350kW, but to achieve this they supply 800V. Most EVs out there now use 400V charging, but there is talk of moving to 800V to support faster charging (without melting the cables).

I would add that utilities *really* do not like loads this large switching on and off.

OK, that's fair. But we all know about things that look promising in the lab but for one reason or another just don't make the cut.

In particular, they need to test the living crap out of the things. Thousands of charge/discharge cycles at various charge/discharge rates. At both cold and hot temperatures. Does the performance degrade, and if so, how fast? Is the capacity reduced in extremely cold temperatures (think some place like Winnipeg)? If so, how much? What about extremely hot climates (think Phoenix in August)? Can the batteries tolerate those temperatures without damage? They need to work out the maximum charge that can be safely added without damaging the battery. What about deep discharges - if you run the thing all the way to 0, does it damage the battery?

In most EVs, they taper charging as you get close to full, or in extremely cold or warm temperatures. This is basically done to protect the battery and prevent damage. They would need to work out what the tapering curves should look like for the new battery, and they need to have enough confidence in it that they would be willing to put a warranty on the battery.

I can top that - I drive an EV. So unless I want junk food or to use the bathroom, I have no need to go to a gas station.