Please someone answer this. I think there are no articles at all, but my understanding of Korean is way basic.

Have these guys never been in a cab in Korea?

Korea way better maps software than google maps and has had it for years. Every single good-sized building in Seoul is laid out in 3D on the map, so you can identify it -- and you need that because you have to navigate to Jangmi Castle 11D, which is one of 13 building which all look basically alike in a cluster. The Korean navigation software is SWEET and makes you envious -- we could really use that stuff in the US.

I suspect Google will come in, offer their stuff, and then be mystified as to why nobody uses it except western visitors (of which yes, there are a good number).

Yep, we should grow our own Cacao, create our own French cheeses, and not export anything we make.

Globalization is not about product movement. It's about finding cheap labor. And that can be targeted much, much more intelligently than via tariffs.

Tariffs are ALMOST always a bad idea. Can we not just always go to black and white?

The current round of tariffs are insanity, yes. We should have tariffs in the bag of tools, used only when they actually make sense, which is rare.

Economics does rule the day, which is why we have such resistance. You need to remember that the only economics which matter in this situation are how much the executives are making. And the more it all costs, the more money is in the system, and the more money that can be skimmed. If they make the system cheaper, they make less personally.

This will be the case some day, with perhaps some renewables we don't even think of right now thrown in. But in the next 20 years or so, it's definitely solar, wind, then gas (yes, I hate that too, but it's WAY better than coal or wood, etc) plus batteries.

The real limit here is batteries. When we have enough batteries, we can start retiring the gas. But it's going to be an economic decision. At some point it will cost 1 cent more to keep a gas system running than to set up enough batteries to handle things, and on that day it'll flip. But when it's 1 cent cheaper to have gas, they'll keep gas. And making that 1 cent judgment has to include costs you wouldn't even think of -- like buying votes, cleaning land after gas generator removal, and free publicity. Remember the gas systems are built already, staffed already (and the staff in those places is more than at battery sites and votes for what their bosses tell them to), and have defined risks that no one sued them for last year, making the chances that they'll win any new lawsuit higher, etc. It's complex.

(Note that in general, gas, which has a whole supply chain from drilling to refining to moving it around to burning it requires people -- and those people can be used as leverage when getting things from the government. Example: AT&T/Bell was famous for not automating in Illinois to keep head-count high. "Give us this rate hike/loan/stock grant for executives easement, or we'll put X of your voters out of work.")

The movement towards renewables + batteries with no gas is not really stoppable. But it's going to take time. And while we fight for it, we need to attack complex realities, not just "Well, DUH!" even though that's now clearly fundamentally right.

The terrible news which is actually good news is that the people running these systems do not give a damn about profits after they leave. At some point, giving them a golden parachute to do the right thing can accomplish this. They won't care that the leverage and obscene profits will dry up, if they are personally set.

HAHAH! PG&E wasn't going to invest in new lines. What you should have said was

'PG&E was forced to invest into "green energy" and their lines weren't upgraded -- we should have forced them to upgrade their lines long ago.'

There is a reason our interconnect and general transmission lines are in the state they are all over the country. Power companies are putting money into the buckets which put money in their pockets -- upgrading lines over time does not do that as profitably as other placements of cash. Repeating such behavior over the long-term doesn't have a negative affect on them, because letting something decay up to the point that it's an emergency allows them to get approval to raise rates. Win-win.

Hybrids are the worst of both worlds, not the best. EREVs you could argue are the BOBW, hybrids are high-complexity and lower efficiency for a less punchy/quiet/low-cost result.

#2 and #3 are spot on.

#1 is a nice-to have but not vital. Most EV owners, unless they are road-tripping, never, EVER use a for-pay charger. I own 2 EVs and have never paid for non-home electrons except to test plug and software compatibility for a just-in-case scenario. Not once. Even on vacation, driving an EV around a national park, the hotel provided free charging and the national park provided free charging.

Now IF you got #2 and #3, you'd start to need #1, because more people would use them.

Agreed hybrids are just a bad idea. If you really need the gas range, you want an EREV, not a hybrid. Good luck finding what you want in one of those right now, though.

The core reality here is both depressing and true. But it's not really the majority. It feels like it is, if you live in a city, but 9 out of 10 of truck owners are not in dense urban areas.

That said, in a dense urban area, I suspect 90% or greater of all pickup trucks are just expensive testicle extensions.

I live in the near-city suburbs. Most of the pickups I see are bought as a statement and never used for cargo. The lightning, which goes fast yes, was perfect for those guys, assuming they owned a home.

If you want a really useful truck, you should import a bongo truck. I am amazed when people (other than perhaps gardeners) profess to me that their 4-foot beds are someone useful. I can get a longer 2x4 in my hatchback than they can in their truck. I was car shopping just last week, looking at the PV5. The guy I was with was drooling over it, because it could hold way, WAY more stuff than his 4ft bed pickup.

A friend of mine in Montana had precisely this experience, after buying a PHEV RAV4.

However, he's an intelligent person who notices things.

If you cannot charge at home, their cost per mile goes up to the same as a gas car's or more.

Right now, if you don't own your home, or are not sure you'll be in a house for a long time, buying an EV is foolish.

But I think the right answer here is not to mistakenly downgrade EVs -- we should be making sure parking lots provide 120v plugs. 120v is all more than half of the US needs to handle their day-to-day driving, and is cheap to install. Remember -- EVs never, ever draw more than a $30 space heater on a 120v circuit -- 1500 watts.

Agreed.