In what universe did a trillion-dollar company’s legal department approve:
1. Including a “break the law and also demonstrate intent” option, and
2. Apparently enabling it by default?????? https://t.co/WqLYN5p5d1— Quantian (@quantian1) December 28, 2022
Just waiting for the inevitable Unsafe At Any Speed Part II and the results of all those federal investigations to seal the deal for mr. genius over here
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) December 23, 2022
When the stock slides (as a result of stories like this, among other reasons), blame The Deep State(tm)!
If Musk were the CEO of a long-established company with a deep management team and a PE ratio in the teens, his nuttiness at Twitter would have had much less of an impact on his company's stock price. But Tesla is not any of those things as a company.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 27, 2022
Hey a company like Tesla can run on autopilot….OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD https://t.co/D1jZrlcF1z
— Pomodoro (Dad Joke Era) (@ilpomodoro2) December 28, 2022
There is a small chance on any given day that the funniest thing of all time could happen https://t.co/tOdofwrHmF
— Orayn (@brOrayn) December 23, 2022
every time i see this idiot truck, i think about how the honda element had really terrible blind spots the size of icebergs and how the cybertruck makes the element look like it's made out of 360 degree wrap around glass https://t.co/yfnHmuAmfF
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) December 27, 2022
I keep missing the window to post the following thread, so take my word: It’s worth reading the whole thing!
I am watching a movie clips about @elonmusk's Tesla Semi – remember, the truck that was to revolutionize the transport industry when it entered the market 4 years ago ??
And I am going to tell you'all why it is a completely stupid vehicle. And I won't even want to talk about (1)
— Tomasz Orynski (@TOrynski) December 8, 2022
Look how big the Tesla cab is compared to DAF's (which is the biggest in the European market) and how much space is wasted inside Musk's toy. Now I will list everything that's wrong with Tesla's cab: (3)
— Tomasz Oryński (@TOrynski) December 8, 2022
You don’t get it — can’t you see how KEWL this Tesla cabin looks?!?
in front of driver's seat gets dirty. You can kick your boots off there and then walk around the rest of the cab barefoot, as it remains clean. Nope, not in Tesla. Unless you want to change your boots everytime you enter the cab which would be really stupid. (9) pic.twitter.com/BgVwbnhjMh
— Tomasz Oryński (@TOrynski) December 8, 2022
Much more at the link.
Just imagine what a dog’s breakfast Elon would make designing the command module for his purported Mars spaceship!
different-church-lady
Does Tesla have a legal department?
different-church-lady
I’m all for anything that helps me shake my mood.
Baud
This blog is on autopilot!
JML
@different-church-lady: I recommend Texts From Super Heroes. It’s always good for a laugh.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Yes. They go after journalists who give Teslas poor reviews.
bbleh
Gosh, it’s almost like everything he is and has done (apart from the emerald mine thing) has been due to showmanship, and there’s no actual substance behind it!
And, why, now I think about it, I guess it might say something about our economic and media cultures too! It might even extend to politics and national leadership! That would be awful!
WaterGirl
Are all the seasons of Jack Ryan as good as the first one? I have 1.5 episodes left of Season 1 and I’m trying to figure out if I should move right into Season 2 when I’m done with Season 1.
Alison Rose
That truck looks like a jacked up Delorean.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I’m watching Season 3 now. It’s been a while since I watched the first two seasons, but I recall they were similar in quality. 2 is probably not as good as 1 though.
JaneE
In what world are “aggressive” and “assertive” considered good driving practices? Yes, there are drivers who are both, but they are the ones making the decisions, not the car software. Mine would beep like crazy if I did anything like that. It warns me of things I don’t consider problems, but I would rather have it scold me unnecessarily than scare me.
20 Percent over the limit? Maybe even safe if your speed limit is 25, but you better not try it around an elementary school when the school lets out. Or high school, for that matter. It would be easier for me to just set the cruise control for 10, 20, or 30 miles higher than the speed limit. And if the speed limit is 65, 13 miles over the limit? Personally I like to drive at even 5 mph increments, but that may be because the Subaru makes it easy. Maybe in developer’s mode to see if the car can calculate percentages accurately. (that should warrant a /s, but considering it is Elon, maybe not).
WaterGirl
@Baud: Good to know, thanks. I imagine that after Season 1, in Season 2 it’s harder to pull of the “I’m just an analyst that they pulled out of the office and yet I’m the smartest guy in the room who can make all the connections better than the professionals” vibe.
MattF
SpaceX is a genuine achievement, I wouldn’t begrudge that. But everything else appears to be ‘Lookit me, I’m a RW shithead’. Makes me suspicious about SpaceX… but they’ve clearly had real successes there and have good people.
SpaceUnit
At least there isn’t a Tesla airplane.
WaterGirl
@SpaceUnit: I thought the Muskrat recently took over management of Southwest Airlines. //
Amir Khalid
I wonder, how many actual truck drivers were on the team that designed/tested the Tesla Semi truck cab?
As for what Not Just Bikes said, I can’t imagine a vehicle safety agency allowing any self-driving system to have an aggressive-driving or speeding mode. In fact, I would ban systems offering any such modes with extreme prejudice.
patrick II
Ethical decisions by a car’s autopilot is a real problem. If one did a variation of the trolley problem with a Tesla, it might go something like this — If you come around a sharp corner on a mountain road and there are three people walking in front of you, would you run them down or go over the cliff?
Would you buy a car that would choose going over the cliff?
NotMax
Open thread?
Ordered two items from Amazon on the 20th. At that time, accompanying text stated arrival on the 30th.
Well, tempus fugit and here it is the 30th. According to Amazon’s page the package is taking in the sights of California today. According to USPS tracking it’s still languishing in Salt Lake City.
And so it goes.
Alison Rose
Why is it that when I add a new friend on FB, FB thinks I now want to see everything they’ve posted for the past three weeks in my feed. I do not.
Alison Rose
@NotMax:
It’s enjoying the beautiful weather we’re having 😑
Chetan Murthy
@Alison Rose: Do you see those items all at once, all new, or are they merged chronologically into your feed ? I’m guessing you mean the former [but I don’t use FB, so don’t know]. AFAF [I’m designing a Twitter replacement right now, so it’s a relevant question]
different-church-lady
@patrick II: I guess if it’s a Tesla, then stopping wouldn’t be an option.
Geminid
@MattF: The head of NASA says he trusts the person running SpaceX. It’s a woman, though and she is not at risk for X Chromosome Deficiency Disorder.
Musk, on the other hand, has one of the worst cases of XCDD I have ever seen!
Alison Rose
@Chetan Murthy: The dates are random, since no social media site likes chronology. It’ll be like: 3 days ago, 1 week ago, 1 day ago, 2 weeks ago, 6 days ago. They’re mixed in with other posts, but I was scrolling down and it would be like 3 posts from new friend, one post from another friend, one post from a page, 2 posts from new friend, one post from a group, 3 posts from new friend. It’s fucking annoying.
cmorenc
Just be glad Tesla / Elon have not tried to enter the self-flying car market (yet).
Brachiator
I will semi-defend Musk and future EV vehicle makers on a couple of points. I get tired of auto and truck enthusiasts waxing euphoric over the capabilities of the vehicle industry just because they have decades of experience designing cars and trucks. Big. Fucking. Deal. Early autos were based on wagons because manufacturers had centuries of tradition in making carriages behind them.
I recently watched a video review of a Ford EV where the driver admitted that the basic design was a modified internal combustion engine vehicle because Ford didn’t want to do any retooling. Too expensive. And this is reasonable. But the car had dummy vents for vehicle exhaust and dummy tail pipes and other features that were pointless on an electronic vehicle.
Musk may not know what he is doing, but a lot of the past experience of auto makers don’t matter. You need fresh insights for EVs.
However, Musk is full of crap when it comes to the senseless and dangerous marketing of auto pilot, or whatever. I thought that American and European auto agencies told him that he had to stop using his sexy dangerous marketing of self driving modes.
ETA: I don’t totally understand the details of this, but I was watching an episode of a tech podcast that was talking about the need for consistency and transparency in letting rescue agencies know how to disable certain electronic components in EVs to make sure that passengers and rescuers can be safe in the case of a serious car crash. You just can’t use the “jaws of life” as you can when extracting people from a traditional vehicle.
NotMax
@Alison Rose
One of the items is a spiffy set of upgraded casters for the trusty desk chair. Not crucial, but necessary. Two of the old ones plumb wore out earlier this month after only about 15 years. Currently those two legs are sitting on a folded up old area rug, which means I can’t roll anywhere, only swivel.
;)
trnc
@WaterGirl: I liked season 2. Not as good as 1, but pretty close IMHO. I’m 2 episodes into season 3 and not super excited so far.
WaterGirl
@trnc: Oh, good. About season 2. Maybe season 3 is just a slow starter? (fingers crossed)
I guess season 4 is supposed to be the last one.
Sister Golden Bear
@different-church-lady: I believe the entire Legal Department committed seppuku at His Galactic Lordship’s command.
@MattF: I don’t know about SpaceX, but a friend once dated a senior exec at Tesla, whose main job was to keep Elon away from any of the actual day-to-day work.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Related, I saw this post on r/realtesla, a subreddit that takes the piss out of Tesla, Musk, and his fan boys on the regular. There’s a few on there that appear to be skeptical of BEVs in general.
This post is an example: 2023 VW ID.4 gets price bump, even for reservation holders.
What do you guys think of this? Is there any validity to what these redditors say about EVs?
oatler
autopilot:
“This is your Captain speaking
Your Captain is dead”
NotMax
Three disparate things which caught the eye today, all found at the same place.
1) The reporter who watched America lose its mind
2) Journalists tricked ‘patriotic’ Russian TikTokers to post absurd pro-Kremlin content for money
3) Speak Welsh? Patagonia needs more teachers
.
Short but informative reads, all.
ColoradoGuy
I strongly suspect most of the value of Tesla is in the patent portfolio, not the actual cars or even projected future sales. From what I’ve read, the battery management systems and electric motors are state of the art, while the rest of the car is a mess. So the real value is signing deals with Toyota, Honda, VW, Ford or GM, or getting them made cheaply in China.
But it’s all pie-in-the-sky until any of that happens. From that perspective, sales of current model Teslas are simply a way to keep the lights on until the Really Big Deals are signed. (This isn’t as weird as it sounds. For decades, most of RCA’s profits were from licensing arrangements with US and Japanese TV manufacturers, not the sale of RCA-branded TVs. Part of the reason SECAM and PAL color TV were developed in Europe was to avoid paying RCA licensing fees.)
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I doubt it: IIRC a number of well-respected academics have come out positive on BEVs for climate change, and for net carbon footprint being negative, even when including all the carbon used to make the machine.
I could be misremembering.
Reddit is a fine place to find rumors. But not so much for facts. Think of it as ChatGPT with worse grammar. As you know, ChatGPT doesn’t actually know what it’s saying and whether it’s true or not. It simulates the sentiment of enormous confidence, and aside from that, just stitches together text.
I’ve tried various specialized technical queries (in CS) and gotten back hilariously wrong answers. Like: “what’s the difference between Paxos and Fast Paxos?” ChatGPT got the difference *backwards*. Ha!
These Reddit bros aren’t that different.
bbleh
@ColoradoGuy: interesting perspective. Could be verified by poking around USPTO database, but I’ll leave that to someone else. If true though, how long before he has to start fire-sale-ing it?
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
LOL. Reddit: Like AI, only dumber.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Interesting. Any thoughts on this? This OP also linked to a news article:
Canada secured a piece of the EV revolution in 2022, but with a multi-billion-dollar price to taxpayers. Before this year, Canada’s auto industry looked poised to lose ground, but billions of taxpayer dollars paid to subsidize new plants appears to have turned the tide. Was it worth it?
Wasn’t one of the big selling points of the IRA that it was trying to source EV parts to the US? It seems China could be an obstacle to this
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: Reddit and ChatGPT have similar problems: there’s no way to assess expertise in either. And heck, that’s the same for the Internet, and for publications. schrodingers_cat posted a link to a WSJ survey of voters, with some distressing results, a few posts ago. She *also* posted some details of the survey design, and from those it seemed somewhat possible that the WSJ had, y’know, put their thumb on the scale by how they designed the survey.
How are we supposed to assess these things, when we’re not experts in the area? The answer is: the same way scientists to: look to the conclusions/consensus of experts *in* the area. And that is something neither Reddit nor ChatGPT have any way of doing.
I mean, how is ChatGPT going to tell apart Linus Pauling’s “Vitamin C can cure cancer” from “metformin can stave off Long Covid” ? It’s hard to do, and involves analyzing entire communities of researchers, not mere textual statistics.
Sister Golden Bear
@Brachiator:
Agreed, but speaking as a professional user experience/product designer,* you also have to be grounded in reality — which the Tesla Semi is absolutely not. It’s user experience disaster, undoubtedly because Elon’s gee-whiz demands stomped over people who actually know something about how actual truckers work.
As for Ford, retooling manufacturing is expensive and takes a long time. So I’m not surprised they didn’t want to go there immediately.
Another factor is that a number of car makers have deliberately kept the designs of their EVs similar to their existing ICE best-selling models to increase the odds of customers switching to EVs. My brother got an electric Ford truck and he loves it, in part because it’s familiar.
That’s one reason why you see more experimental designs from new, smaller EV companies — which also sell luxury cars, that are in part status symbols — think Lucid, Rivian, Polestar, etc. I don’t remember which one of them has some very umm…. distinctive (and fugly)…. headlights, but part of that it to make clear to the plebeians that you’re driving an expensive brand of car.
But yeah, fake vents and tail pipes is pretty weird and useless.
*Who has colleagues working as user experience designers at several EV companies.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I scanned it quickly Who can tell? The question of the *carbon footprint* of EV manufacture and maintenance vs *total carbon consumption* of EVs vs ICVs is …. completely different from the economics of car manufacture in particular locations.
The first is question of physics and engineering; the second a question of politics and economics.
Nicole
@Brachiator:
That’s equal parts interesting and terrifying.
dmsilev
@Brachiator: Do you mean the EV version of the F-150? There’s a few factors at work. One is that yes, parts commonality with the ICE version saves a lot of money on tooling. But also, Ford has sold a shit-ton of the things over the last few decades and the buyers KNOW what the truck SHOULD look like, so the designers are also trying not to upset/surprise their market base. Also, too, there’s a huge market for third-party add-ons for the ICE trucks, and maintaining compatibility with those is a nontrivial selling point.
In short, yes Ford is saving costs but they also know their market.
ColoradoGuy
@bbleh: One of the Tesla developments is an array of computers that manage subgroups of batteries at a very fine-grained level. Teslas use thousands of generic LiON batteries, unlike specialized auto-only batteries used by other automakers.
The trick with battery arrays is they drift apart on charge/discharge cycles, resulting in more powerful batteries blowing up their neighbors. This is where micro-management at the cell-by-cell level comes in, as an integral part of battery design. It’s also a tech used by SpaceX to manage rocket motor arrays … very fast automated control of each engine, so it can’t damage its neighbors.
The motors apparently combine rare earth magnets with an unusual design that is very light and powerful, more so than any other car-builder. But lightweight motor design and battery controller tech are very fast moving fields, the financial rewards for the market-leading product are in the hundreds of billions, so Tesla will not keep its lead forever.
Sister Golden Bear
@ColoradoGuy: Tesla undoubted has some IP value. But the biggest value Tesla had was selling carbon offset credit to the big car companies. Which is one reason they’re fucked in the long-term without major changes, because as the major car companies start making more and more EV, they won’t need to buy carbon credits from Tesla.
I suspect the most likely outcome is that one of the major car companies will eventually buy Tesla at a fire sale price for its IP and its charging networks (one other major area of profit). Also, potentially for Tesla’s build-on-demand sales model, which would free them from dealerships.
At least that would be the likely scenario if Tesla’s board wasn’t stacked with Elon’s relatives and yes-men. But a shareholder lawsuit might force their hand if there’s an actual offer on the table. And/or a hostile takeover isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Whether Tesla as a brand would survive after a buy-out is debatable this point.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
I guess these people seem to be casting doubt on the mass adoption of EVs in general.
If I might ask, what do you think of the last point in the first comment, that the fact that these price increases even hit existing reservation holders for the VW ID4 suggest that VW is “desperate” and to “expect more of these”? And that the F150 Lightning is an example of this?
I’d hate to see EVs be the new ethanol
Another Scott
@bbleh: He made a big deal in 2014 of “opening up” Tesla’s patents. They’re probably worth less than meets the eye.
(IANAL, but as I read it, he promises not to sue anyone who uses Tesla’s patents on electric cars, as long as they don’t sue Tesla. And there’s language about the policy not being changeable.)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): A socratic question: why is ethanol bad ?
ETA: obvs. I mean “ethanol in ICV fuel”
Sister Golden Bear
@dmsilev: Exactly. My brother, who’s a contractor, knew what he was getting, and knew he could get necessary after-market add-ons as needed.
Another big plus is being able to use the F-150 as a back-up power source, both on sites where there’s no power, and if the power goes out after a storm. He lives in the NE and usually loses power after ice storms every few year. He tells me the F-150 has a big enough battery to run his house for up to a week.
Would’ve been a smart move for Tesla to have built in the same capability — but they didn’t because that would’ve undercut their Tesla Wall business.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
I can understand how this can be frustrating. Hope you get your delivery soon.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Sister Golden Bear:
Sounds really convenient to have your car double as a backup electric generator
geg6
His spaceship design might be frightening but I shudder with terror at the thought that this dickhead wants to put implants in people’s brains and had a company developing this shit. This guy needs to be brought down.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Tbh, I don’t know. I assume because it was a disappointment? I vaguely recall it was supposed to help with fuel consumption? Cause cleaner emissions?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@geg6:
The madman probably thinks he can use them for mind control or something. Or mass surveillance
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: No, fundamentally an EV is a car.
Tarragon
@Alison Rose:
I saw it described as a “Man-Delorian”
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The “climate change” argument against corn ethanol (which doesn’t apply to ethanol from sugar cane in Brazil) is that the inputs required to make it are carbon-intensive enough (e.g. fertilizer) that it isn’t a net win, carbon-wise.
At least, that’s what I remember. Now that’s got *nothing* to do with whether it’s economical: the Feds subsidize it so it *is* economical, and of course, the extra oxygenation means cleaner-burning cars, and that’s worth something, too.
But my point is, it isn’t about the *economics* that makes people think it’s a bad idea to subsidize corn ethanol: it’s the *carbon footprint*.
Now go back to that Reddit thread, and see if they talk about the carbon footprint of EVs, and where they do, check if they do so using renewable electricity for all inputs where possible (including, of course, the electricity to charge the battery).
ETA: “cleaner-burning” as in “less tailpipe pollution *other* than CO2”
Kelly
@Chetan Murthy: Raising corn and processing it into ethanol fuel probably doesn’t result in a net energy gain after accounting for farming and processing inputs. You have to cook the ethanol off of the mash. It’s also somewhat problematic since it tends to draw moisture so takes a great deal of care for transport and storage.
HumboldtBlue
The thing that pisses me off the most about this clown is that he ruined Twitter (and I suspect that was his remit), it was a great aggregator and everyone worth following was active. Now, everyone decent is either gone or has drastically cut back on tweeting.
rikyrah
PhD in Criminology?
What kind of Criminal Minds stuff is this?🤔🤔🤔
Why am I getting ROPE vibes from this? ( the Jimmy Stewart movie)
Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) tweeted at 11:25 AM on Fri, Dec 30, 2022:
BREAKING | NBC News: Bryan Christopher Kohberger born 11/21/1994 was arrested this morning in connection with the homicides of 4 University of Idaho students and is awaiting extradition according to court documents and four senior law enforcement officials briefed on the case.
(https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1608876898494615553?s=02)
Ohsuzanna (@ohiosue) tweeted at 11:30 AM on Fri, Dec 30, 2022:
He is a PhD student in Criminology at Washington State-Pullman (about 15 minutes away from Idaho school).
Another Scott
Speaking of the USPS, GovExec has a long story on the good and bad of DeJoy’s tenure.
Worth a click.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Am way past letting the small stuff rankle. Just somewhat tired of aspirational delivery schedules. It’ll get here when it arrives.
And not a moment sooner.
:)
Repatriated
@Chetan Murthy
It also replaces MTBE as an oxygenation additive. (A toxic and persistent groundwater pollutant if it leaks from storage tanks or spills.)
It does have drawbacks aside from the cost of subsidies, though.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Thanks for the explanation
NotMax
FYI.
Chetan Murthy
@Repatriated: Yes, that’s what I was alluding to, re: reduction of pollution. But that’s a different question from the net carbon balance of corn ethanol as a fuel, and I think that that is the most relevant thing to compare EVs with. B/c if EVs don’t make sense carbon-wise, then there’s no point, regardless of how cheaply they can be made. And if they are carbon-negative, then it *does* make sense to work to make economically manufacturable.
Obviously, I believe the latter is the case, and I think that so do the majority of scientific experts.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’d like to suggest: when you find a technical subject being discussed on Reddit (or Twitter for that matter), try to find experts in the field and see what they say. B/c (as I’m sure you know)
Nobody knows you’re a dog on Reddit.
Inventor
So an asshole CEO destroys a social networking app by being an asshole. Therefore, only gasoline powered cars are worthwhile.
That makes fucking sense.
Anoniminous
@MattF:
Elon is a figurehead at SpaceX:
Omnes Omnibus
@Inventor:
No one said that, Elon.
NeenerNeener
@NotMax: I’m having the same difficulties with muffins I ordered from Wolferman’s. They shipped on the 21st and were supposed to be delivered by Fed Ex on the 24th. They spent the 21st thru the 26th at Fed Ex depots in Georgia, then two days in North Carolina, then a day in West Virginia, and now they going to spend New Years Eve and New Years Day in PA. They will be moldy and/or stale if they ever get delivered up here to the North West part of NYS.
Inventor
@Omnes Omnibus: Electric trucks can’t work because you’ll track dirt into them. It’s just science.
BTW, not a Tesla stock holder. I’m an engineer in the oil and gas business.
coin operated
@Sister Golden Bear:
My dad, who drove big rigs for 30+ years, agrees with you. First words out of his mouth after looking over Musk’s new semi was “they obviously didn’t talk to any drivers when they designed that cab.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Inventor:
No, people have been saying that Tesla is not really good at making cars because they know fuck all about cars. Or trucks.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
It was worth a read. The leader for the main union for USPS admits that Dejoy is an improvement over past Postmaster Generals, who apparently weren’t very flexible. Plus, he helped get rid of prefunding for the pension. The rate increases aren’t so great, and some PO stakeholders fear that these rate increases could make the Postal Service irrelevant by driving more people away.
I thought the observation on DeJoy not taking the USPS’ role as public service/public good seriously was a good point. Public mail delivery, IIRC, is explicitly written into the Constitution as a role of the federal government
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Inventor:
Can’t you track dirt into other types of EVs? I’m not sure what your point is? It sounded like you were defending EVs in your first comment
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: I tried to be snarky, but wasn’t able to meet the need. Ah, well. You’re absolutely right, and the evidence is in things like mechanical defect rates, recall rates, fit-and-finish problem rates. Tesla is just much worse than other makers on these critical things that are all about “how to make cars”.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve read horror stories about the quality on Tesla’s being shit. Imagine paying luxury car prices for this:
patrick II
@different-church-lady:
Even a Tesla might hit the brakes. Anyhow, it’s just a scenario. In real, live driving I have been put in the position where a car was sliding towards me and I pulled to the shoulder and let the car in front of me take the hit. It was all instinct, but people make quick choices to save themselves — would an AI have that responsibility.?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Good advice!
MagdaInBlack
@Inventor: That’s your clever take-away, huh? Wow.
Gvg
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):The world economy is still in a supply chain shortage caused by Covid disruptions and labor shortage same which is causing inflation we aren’t used to seeing but historically used to be more common. For decades, costs have been more predictable, and companies didn’t get surprised as much. Now, they are. One of the problems with setting prices in the future is you are competing for customers with other companies and you are dealing with what your customers think your prices should be. If you set a price that you think is realistic but your competitors set a lower one even if they are lying and know the same as you, that it will cost more by then AND your customers are used to lower prices, they will pick your competitors even if they like your product better. That’s even if one or both companies realized the price would go up. Now that the future is here, the customers have seen all the costs go up, all the companies raise their prices, and most of them will accept the price increase.
when I was younger, people would have expected a bigger price increase for the next year in the first place. We were used to it.
China is going to have some Covid disruptions now that will also cause supply chain ripples. I think we are going to have some permanent ones because I think we have hit a demographic labor shortage that will take awhile to adjust to. People blame Covid, but I think it’s the bottom of the baby boom. We don’t manufacture as much any more but stuff still has to be transported and sold and people have to be hired and paid.
Some inflation higher than the tiny amount we have had for the last few decades is going to be the new normal and everyone is going to have to get used to it.
Kent
Honest to God I don’t think Elon and Tesla ever really cared very much about making a self-driving Tesla.
What it actually is is an excuse to charge rich buyers over the past 10 years an additional $15,000 on top of the already excessive price of a Tesla for a feature that is always just “6-months away”. Self-driving Teslas are the Friedman Unit of vehicles.
20% over the speed limit? That is truly insane for an actual self-driving car. What is going to happen if say a blind person or someone elderly who can’t drive anymore buys a self-driving Tesla and the car runs over a child on a bike while going 20% over the speed limit. Who is going to be at fault there? The person who doesn’t have a drivers license and isn’t actually a driver? Or the company that programmed the car to exceed the speed limit by 20% in a residential area.
Lawyers will eat that shit up for breakfast.
NotMax
@NeenerNeener
Far more dire a circumstance than my little rant. Hoping you can get a replacement order without tsuris.
I strive never to use FedEx for anything anymore. Their quality of reliability and accuracy has gone so far downhill over the years they’re practically below sea level.
Kent
Why in God’s name are you mail ordering muffins? I can think of 25 places within 10 minutes of my house that sell muffins.
For that matter they are easy as hell to make from scratch since they are not yeast-based.
Inventor
He basically is at Tesla too. He didn’t found the company, he was an early investor and forced the founders out. The “Master Plan” that Musk used to tout was the founders’ plan, not his. As long as Tesla stayed on-mission they were OK. Now, with all the silliness of “Tesla Bot” and the snake oil of F.S.D. among other things, they are straying seriously.
Technologically, the focus has always been on batteries. Other things matter as well, but battery tech is the reason steam, then I.C.E.s beat out electric cars more than a century ago and has always been the limiting factor for E.V.s.
One of the things that make me hate Musk so much is that he ALWAYS takes credit for any advancement made by ANYBODY at Tesla. He also never takes responsibility for his own fuck-ups. Nevertheless Tesla has the best battery tech in the world right now. Others are closing the gap, however. An electric motor is >90% efficient, an I.C.E. is 35% at BEST. Once batteries get good enough for an application, that application will go electric.
One of the many things Musk didn’t anticipate is that people don’t work themselves into an early grave at Tesla and Space X because of him personally. They do it for the mission. He really seemed to think people at Twitter would work 80 to 100+ hour weeks just to be near him.
I hope Musk has to sell enough Tesla stock to allow for the board to kick him out for the good of the company.
Gvg
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): because it was a way to pay the corn farmers but wasn’t actually the best way to produce less global warming. Producing ethanol from …some cheap tropical plant grown outside the US would have helped combat global warming. I think it was sugar cane. But the way we did it just gives money to corn farmers in the US and I think is either less efficient or not even carbon neutral /increases heat. It’s been awhile since I read about it. And the car companies are required to make their cars able to use it and gas companies to use the US ethanol…without helping global warming, it’s supposed purpose and paid for with our taxes.
TheTruffle
It’s open thread time, so…I was thinking…
As someone who has done text banking, sent postcards, and donated to Beto and other Texas races, I think the Democrats need to let Texas go. It’s a deep red state with Austin and maybe one or two other blue bubbles. One editorial suggested that the party should direct its energy to flippable Texas districts (if there are any) but otherwise save their money and energy for other races where there might be a better chance. The editorial rightly pointed out that the money going to Beto could have gone instead to swing states and districts where the money could have made a difference. Arizona and Georgia are getting more purple. There is no evidence that Texas is–or ever will–do the same. Despite a handful of liberal cities, it’s a deep red state like Idaho or Utah. IMO, it’s time for Dems and liberals as a whole to accept this fact, make peace with it, and look elsewhere.
Sister Golden Bear
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That’s obviously unacceptable, but I’ve only had a minor problem with my Tesla 3. The cover for the door pillars is only held in by a clip — not screwed down — and it only takes about 70 pounds of pressure to knock it loose, according the Tesla tech who came out to fix it. He’s apparently had numerous service calls about it, although that’s more of a design flaw than a manufacturing flaw. I have heard build quality has been declining over the years.
Actually, make that two minor problems. One of the rear panels has gotten a little bit out of position recently, but that may have been due to me forcing the trunk closed. Still shouldn’t happen.
To be clear, I’m not defending Tesla’s build quality because they do fit-and-finish issues, and both Car & Driver and Consumer Reports have criticized Tesla for quality issues. But stories like the one you cited are on the more extreme end of the scale.
OTOH, my Mazda 3 had such known headlight problems that it was excluded from the warranty. It made for a very expensive repair when I had to replace it. (The headlight swiveled when you turned, so it wasn’t as simple replacement.) But otherwise it was a fun car, and I keep hoping Mazda eventually releases an EV.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Also, I think it’s important to keep in mind what is being optimized, when looking at economic or industrial activity. We all have a tendency to look at things in terms of money, and only money. But that’s not the only relevant measure. For instance, I remember back around when Deepwater Horizon blew, I was following a blog called The Oil Drum and was introduced to the concept of E(nergy)R(eturn)O(n)E(nergy)I(nvestment) EROEI. Instead of ROI. The idea was, for some of these really hard-to-get-to oil, or hard-to-process (e.g. tar sands), it can take a *lot* of energy to get usable energy out. For instance: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19022013/oil-sands-mining-tar-sands-alberta-canada-energy-return-on-investment-eroi-natural-gas-in-situ-dilbit-bitumen/#:~:text=Tar%20sands%20retrieved%20by%20surface,of%20just%202.9%20to%201.
The lower that number is, the more CO2 you put into the atmosphere, for each unit of usable energy.
What I’m saying is: if what you care about is climate change, then before you look at the economics, you have to look at carbon footprint. And only if the carbon footprint is sufficiently negative, can you even bother to look at economics.
A lot of people will just ignore carbon footprint, and focus on the money.
Anotherlurker
@NotMax: I canceled an order for just this situation. Ordered on the 20th. Promised delivery on the 26th. No show on the 29th and no update after the 27th.
I should have gone to the local shoe store.
NotMax
@Sister Golden Bear
It’s too bad Mazda ditched it because it was such fun to say Wankel.
:)
NotMax
Oh my. Barbara (“What kind of tree would you be”) Walters has died at 93.
Chetan Murthy
@Kent: @NeenerNeener: Those there must be some *primo* muffins (I see online that they’re English muffins). Primo stuff, to be worth mailing.
Anoniminous
@Gvg:
With 3D printing we’re at the early baby stages of another revolution in manufacturing. The technology is now at the point where people can have their own bespoke manufacturing plant sitting in the garage. Car and other repair shops won’t have to order parts they will be able to make them. Planned obsolesce will become a thing of the past since broken part(s) will easily manufactured. Mass manufacturing One Size Fits Nobody products, e.g., furniture, will dwindle when a One Size Fits You product is the same price and availability.
Mai Naem mobile
Just saw on the news Baba Wawa passed away. Definitely a trailblazer.
TheTruffle
@Mai Naem mobile: Aw. How sad. And yes, she left a great legacy.
Anoniminous
Speaking of Mazda and the Wankel engine ….
70s Mazda Parody
Alison Rose
@NotMax: I had no idea she was that old. I mean, I know she’s been around forever, but I still imagined her to be like maybe early 80s at the most.
Chetan Murthy
@TheTruffle: A long and great legacy. Look at all the things she pioneered. I mean, besides being a woman anchor on a nationwide news program. Her interviews with world leaders, the entire one-on-one interview format. The View. I’m sure I’m leaving out stuff.
A trailblazer. Backwards and in heels.
NotMax
@NotMax
Per Wikpedia, a predecessor, former Today Show co-host J. Fred Muggs is still among us, however.
:)
Alison Rose
@Chetan Murthy: Plus all of the women she influenced and opened doors for! I’d bet a lot of women in the generation after hers who went into the news business would cite her as an inspiration.
Also, you mentioned heels, permit me a moment of shallowness: Check out the second photo on the NYT piece, from 1973, where she’s sitting in a desk chair — that suit and those shoes!! Love it. Chic AF.
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
I was unaware of these murders till this afternoon when a friend who’s been following the story hour by hour told me about the arrest.
I’m getting Leopold & Loeb vibes.
NB – With respect & affection, it’s an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
SiubhanDuinne
Just saw that Barbara Walters has died, age 93. Rest in the peace you have earned.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kent:
A blind person of someone who’s had their license revoked (whether for age or other reasons) would be liable regardless. Tesla does make it clear that you’re still expected to pay attention to the road in self-driving mode. But there were a number of well-publicized cases of drivers abusing (one Tesla driver was arrested on the Bay Bridge because he in the back seat). As a result, Tesla now requires to have your hands on the wheel (apparently sensors can detect that). If you repeatedly abuse it, it will eventually lock you from using it.
I definitely don’t use auto-mode myself, but with cruise control it will nag you at first and eventually disengage if you don’t put your hands back on the wheel.
That said, as a user experience designer, I think Tesla’s auto-mode is inherently problematic because you do need to stay alert to driving, but auto-mode as implemented lulls one into inattention. One reason I still keep my foot over the brake when using cruise control, and also increase the following distance because it may take me longer to react.
Chetan Murthy
@Alison Rose: paywall, can’t breach it. ah, well.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alison Rose:
So perfect with the little Chanel suit.
CaseyL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): …and if your Tesla has to go into the shop for repairs, be prepared to not get it back for a month or more.
I soured on Teslas before it was cool, because I temped at a car body repair place certified to fix Teslas. This was back in December 2019. I got to see what was under the skin. I got to see what happens if you get the code wrong to just get into the gd car. And I got to hear a lot of customers asking plaintively when they’d get their car back, if ever.
I was gobsmacked at how awful Teslas were, and never again thought about getting one.
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
No. This was a passenger vehicle. I deleted my original notes. Using the basic body type of a conventional vehicle is totally understandable, but dummy intake and exhaust grills, and tail pipes are just stupid.
A similar logic held for some early automobiles that were made to look like wagons and carriages. People wanted cars that resembled vehicles that they were familiar with. But after a while, designers had to change their focus.
And trucks have to be able to store, hail and pull stuff, but even here it is possible to think about an EV in new ways. At some point, all EVs must be built from the ground up based on the possibilities of what an EV should and can be.
Great point when it comes to trucks and other types of vehicles. It will be interesting to see how this develops over time.
Something related. Early private party buyers of Teslas didn’t realize that they were not automatically buying rights to future software upgrades. This created problems that might not yet be totally resolved. The transition to EV is a brave new world.
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: I remember an article in the New Yorker (maybe by Langewiesche (sp?)) about an airliner crash, where the culprit was identified as pilot inattention and lack of experience, due to over-reliance on autopilot. Langewiesche pointed out that this was a well-known phenomenon: as more and more of the boring bits of flying were automated, pilots got less and less experience with the controls, and when the shit hit the fan, their reflexes just weren’t there.
And people died as a result. The entire idea of an “autopilot” that still requires the driver to pay attention and retake control is fundamentally flawed, and the idea that a driver who doesn’t retake control is at fault …. should be laughed out of court.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chetan Murthy:
Here, have a gift link.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Inventor Oil Bro couldn’t manage to read down to
But then, you know, hot takes.
Chetan Murthy
@SiubhanDuinne: Molto grazie. She’s very chic in that pic. I wonder if she enjoyed riding with Stallone on his motorcycle.
Chetan Murthy
@scav: https://twitter.com/TOrynski/status/1600978542891630592
This one looks like a Transformer!
Sister Golden Bear
@NotMax: Hey now, don’t go Elon-humor on me. Even jackals have self-respect.,
mvr
@Gvg: By driving up demand for corn, Ethanol also encourages the growing of corn in places it shouldn’t be grown. Some of that is just increasing the percentage of space on a farm where crops are grown. Many of the edges of farm fields as well as land put into CRP because they aren’t all that productive and the government will pay you for letting it be are good habitat for wildlife. When corn prices go up it becomes less attractive not to plant it.
Adding to the general thread:
I believe it can also cause corn to be grown where other crops would actually be better suited.
I believe that growing corn is also somewhat more suited to corporate farming and consolidation.
(I’m not an expert here, but I am repeating what I’ve heard. So pretend I am a chat bot or that this is Reddit and double check.)
Betsy
Electric cars are just part of the fantasy that we can keep the suburban car-oriented boondoggle/pyramid scheme going for another 60 years and not really have to make any fundamental alterations to car-dependency. They aren’t scalable to our current transportation system, and don’t really help with any environmental problems other than localized severe exceedances of tailpipe emissions, which they *are* good at reducing.
Electric cars are not a significantly useful solution to carbon emissions, and worse, are a huge distraction from the real solutions.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: Because Twitter…
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Chetan Murthy:
I believe that was one of the factors in the Air France 447 crash.
Jeffro
We just watched “Glass Onion” here at the Fro household, and the billionaire “genius” character (and related karma) not have been more timely.
Disco Inferno, Elon! “burn baby burn”
Frankensteinbeck
@Kent:
Some companies have used strategies like that, but in Elon’s case, I very much think he cares about self-driving cars. Look at how he’s handling the Twitter thing. Look at his other projects. Musk thinks he’s making science fiction reality. He may even have been smart enough to use strategies like that long ago, but narcissism has taken over and he believes his own hype now.
I put to you this piece of evidence: The cybertruck reveal. If his promises were calculated strategy, he would not have broken the window. He would have limited the demonstration to things he actually knew it could do, so as not to break the illusion of what it supposedly will be.
Personally, I think he tells a deliberate lie, then believes it because he’s convinced of his own genius. That model explains everything he’s doing at Twitter.
scav
@Chetan Murthy: That windshield wiper so gets my vote.
Betsy
@Chetan Murthy: Because growing crops to burn for fuel costs more in carbon inputs than it reduces in outputs. Ethanol increases overall carbon emissions.
It’s only viable economically because it’s massively subsidized.
It’s only viable politically because Iowa caucus.
It’s not viable environmentally at all.
Kent
@Sister Golden Bear: Yes, but that isn’t fully self-driving.
Tesla keeps promising a fully self-driving car such that people who aren’t licensed drivers could buy it and have it take them places. Or you could send it to and from school with your 2nd grader. I don’t see how they sell a fully self-driving car that breaks the law deliberately.
gene108
@geg6:
Lots of research going on with brain implants as a means to control epilepsy episodes, and other conditions.
It’s going to be interesting to see what this technology turns into.
Chetan Murthy
@Betsy:
Can only agree: trains and buses are where we need to go. But given the built plant of the USA (full disclosure: the last time I lived in a non-dense-city was 1991, and for all of those years, even when I owned a car I used it basically for trips to the grocery store, using mass transit for all other trips) if we don’t deploy EVs we’ll never get close to carbon neutrality. We simply can’t wait for all the houses to get ripped-up and rebuilt in dense urban plans, even if the population would sit still for it.
And I’m a person who’d simply go *mad*, *barking mad* in the burbs. So when I say this, I’m not talking about *me*, but about *them*.
Kent
@gene108: Also cochlear implants and technology to assist the blind.
Chetan Murthy
@James E Powell: IIRC, that was the crash Langewiesche was reporting on.
Skepticat
Hearing that Barbara Waters has left the building, I’m feeling older than ever.
mvr
Am I a bad person if I don’t get nostalgic for someone who dated Henry Kissinger?
NotMax
Okay, tech heads, 19 Inventions that will Save your Life! (Eccentric capitalization in original.)
Kent
@Chetan Murthy: The real future in urban areas is the middle tier of small electric vehicles as opposed to full-size cars.
I bought a high-end Specialized e-bike last spring for bike commuting and used it for a comfortable 25-mile round trip commute to work all fall cruising comfortably at about 25 mph which is basically Tour de France average speed. Complete game changer.
We have only scratched the surface on potential for small electric vehicles. The new electric Vespas look super cool, for example. https://www.vespa.com/en_EN/models/elettrica/ And I expect we will eventually see all manner of enclosed small 3-wheel vehicles and such. Basically fast golf carts. Perhaps not at first in the US but certainly across the developing world.
What we need is expanded space for this sort of thing on US streets. Basically bike lanes on steroids for all small electric vehicles.
Another Scott
@Kent: +1 This is one of Martin’s hobby-horses as well, for good reason.
People love the freedom of personal transportation and aren’t going to want to give that up. And without massive expansion of public transit (and/or housing and workplaces on transit corridors), people aren’t going to want to take the bus or train even if they’re substantially cheaper.
Driving to work is about 20 minutes door-to-door for me. Bike would be about 70 minutes. Bus+subway would be nearly 3 hours.
I’ve been looking at electric bikes, off and on, for a while. Though the county has far more dedicated (painted) bike lanes than a few years ago, and there are paved hike-and-bike paths along the way, there are still lots of places where cars are far too close…
Technological transitions are disruptive and stressful. Finding ways to give people the option of personal mobility for commuting that doesn’t require a 2-3 ton box and all the hardware that goes along with it could be highly beneficial if done right. Mixtures of machine sizes isn’t ideal.
Cheers,
Scott.
Joseph Patrick Lurker
@mvr:
No.
Betsy
@Chetan Murthy: Agree on almost everything; I’d just caveat that carbon-neutrality is a huge lie for a lot of “renewable” electricity generation. Like, where I live, hundreds of thousands of acres of mature hardwood forests are being clear-cut, chewed up into pellets/sawdust, and shipped to Europe for “green”, “carbon-neutral” electricity generation so Europeans can pretend to meet their climate goals.
Hacking down entire forests to be burnt for electricity is “carbon-neutral” on a 50-100 year time frame, and only if the forests are replanted one for one. We don’t have that many years before climate collapse, and we don’t have that much planet to replant.
Ruckus
@Sister Golden Bear:
For someone who doesn’t need to drive around in a full sized pickup the Tesla wall or other home battery systems will in the future be likely important. First even if you have solar, you need electric when there is no sun. Second, if you have solar and an EV, the cost offset for fuel likely will pay the difference to the cost of the vehicle, but depending on your daily drive a home battery may be needed to work out the charging cycles for both. But even commercial charging costs about 1/2 of current gas prices, which here in SoCal can be just under $4/gal.
Betsy
@Another Scott:
This is very true! and not only that, they (we) won’t even tolerate the prospect of losing the 4:1 public subsidies for their (our) car-based lifestyles! which is, sadly, why we won’t be successful in addressing the car problem until the climate doesn’t support life any more.
gene108
@Kent:
Cars are a status symbol. If a person can afford it they want to buy a car they think they’ll look good in. I’m not talking super high end cars, even someone deciding between a used Toyota Camry and Honda Accord will factor appearance into the purchasing decision.
You’d have to make these three-wheelers sexy enough to fuck, if you want to sell a lot of them. Even in developing countries, people want the status symbol of having a quality vehicle.
One thing Tesla did was make sharp looking sports car EV’s, when I think most people thought EV’s would be boring.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Funny you mention that. The MSNBC video obit included a clip of her saying that she asked that question exactly once—to Katharine Hepburn—and after that everyone always brought it up as a way to trivialize her.
Some of her interviews were cringeworthy, and her style was generally not to my taste, but there was a lot of substance in her career.
livewyre
@Betsy: Despair is a weapon in the hands of fossil concerns. I wouldn’t want to know how much they spend in using it. So, more important than ever in my opinion to keep pushing for the things that topple to be the ones that need it. The Musk myth might be a good start.
Betsy
@Another Scott: Interesting observations. With regard to painted dedicated bike lanes, it’s funny because these are not regarded as state-of-the-practice anywhere that has a significant bike modal share.
The US still struggles to put in negligible miles of painted bike lanes here and there, while places that really want to make biking a realistic option have long since moved to physically protected bike lanes (“protected” meaning literally protected, as innthere are hard bollards or vertical barriers such that drivers cannot get into the bike lane even if they try to. Flexiposts don’t count.)
But of course, we have become a backward country in so many things.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t remember it myself, but…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Didn’t she also pretend to date Roy Cohn?
Can’t remember which obit I was reading that when interviewing trump and whichever wife she referred to them as “America’s Royal Family”. But I remember she used to show up on Letterman and she had a good sense of humor, didn’t take herself too seriously.
Brachiator
@mvr:
I give Walters bonus points for having an affair with Senator Edward Brooke.
LeftCoastYankee
People don’t appreciate the Musks. Elon’s great-grandfather Neon was a tremendous ship designer of the greatest ship of its day, the Titanic (don’t believe the woke iceberg loving haters). And his great-granduncle Zeon built hydrogen dirigibles honoring a certain pre-Nazi German Chancellor.
And his dad who got rich off of near slave labor and ended up impregnating his step-daughter.
Ok, fake Neon and Zeon suddenly sound much better…..
mvr
@Brachiator: But then there’s Alan Greenspan. And some websites say Roy Cohn (as JIm Foolish Literalist confirms). It isn’t like this sort of thing didn’t effect the actual work she did as a reporter.
kindness
Is it just me? I don’t have any trust in an autopilot that cars might have at this point in time. I would never switch the option on if a car I was driving had it. Parking assist? Yea, OK. I’d trust that. Street or highway driving though? Absolutely not.
Who are these people that use this stuff? What is going through their heads?
mvr
@kindness: I know people who work on this (though not well). They say the problems are much harder than people think and there is no way that this is there yet.
eclare
@gene108: My issue is not looks but safety, where I live has one of the highest pedestrian death rates in the country (it may be the highest, can’t remember). About a decade ago, I was in three wrecks, none of which were my fault, one serious, within a five year span. I don’t feel safe on the streets in my CRV, I would be terrified in a mini car or bike.
Until drivers here get better, which I do not see as likely, I will stay in my car. Not because of looks, because of safety.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Given mention because instantly from that point forward it became an extreme chore to take her seriously.
What came before was in a multitude of ways laudable. After, not so much.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Been meaning to ask if you are aware the actor who played Paul Drake in Perry Mason was the son of actress turned notorious gossip columnist Hedda Hopper*. I wasn’t until recently.
*whose own birth name was, I kid you not, Elda Furry
;)
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I did know that William Hopper was Hedda Hopper’s son. And the son of Barbara Hale (Della Street), William Katt, played Paul Drake Jr. in the somewhat mediocre Perry Mason TV movies of the ’80s. Circle of life or something.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Spike Jones lampoons Hedda.
:)
Another Scott
@Betsy:
My county, one of the richest in the country, has no protected bike lanes. Part of the reason is that protected bike lanes are considered roadway and are thus a state transportation department responsibility. So even if a progressive locality wants to do that, they’re constrained by state bureaucracy and priorities. Painted lanes are a start, even if all they do is raise awareness…
Transitions are always difficult, but we’re not doomed.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
RIP, Ms. Walters🙏🏿😢
cain
@Amir Khalid: Couple that with American stupidity. A recipe for disaster. These folks will be busy doing god knows what if it is on AI cruise control.
Geminid
I do not buy the argument that electric vehicles are not good because they undercut a transition to more efficient housing and work patterns, that the fewer CO2 emissions from transportation we introduce into the atmosphere the less wisdom about our physical infrastructure we introduce into our minds.
I can understand idea that the first phenomenon enables the second but it seems valid in the abstract and not in practical terms.
Geminid
@Geminid: And I gotta say, the fake grills vents, tailpipes etc. reported on EVs can be amusing, but they seem very inconsequential. These anachronisms will disappear before too long, and people’s miles-per-watt will increase by some trivial amount because of this.
livewyre
@Geminid: Right, for me that’s the key thing – it’s too early to call defeat on electric cars as a concept before they’re even fully defined as one. As pointed out earlier, there are so many possibilities once we get past the hopefully brief extinction burst of huge combustion-equivalent highway vehicles – bikes, scooters, neighborhood cars, all manner of ranges and wheel configurations and battery chemistries, and wherever they evolve from there to meet always-changing expectations and needs.
It was never going to be something we had one big shot to get perfectly right or else there was no point in trying anything else. That’s like giving up on any kind of progress outside of the colonial sense of always-growing extraction.
Scarcity trains us to equate accumulation with opportunity, as if hoarding resources makes us freer. I’m glad we’re getting a look at how pathetic it gets to be insulated from critique by money. Maybe we’ll stop envying it.
Chris T.
@Brachiator:
OK, the basic problem here is simple. An EV has a big honkin electric motor that makes it go. A big honkin motor requires a big honkin battery: hundreds of Li-ion phone/laptop/whatever batteries, all strung up together. These put out a lot of power.
Now, if you short-circuit the wires coming from the batteries, all that power goes into, well, the wires. You know what an electric home heater is, right? It’s just some wires, that get hot, wrapped around ceramic and usually with a fan to blow air over them. The wires get really hot. That’s because they’re burning power. Some power always turns into heat when you use it; an efficient electric motor turns most of it into “make car go” with a tiny percentage leaking away as heat, but dumping all the power into the wire short circuit turns 100% of the power into heat.
The result is: things get hot and catch fire.
The fix is simple: don’t short circuit the wires.
Now, the Jaws of Life are simple too: you poke ’em into a suitable hole in the car and crank up the hydraulics and, screech, the car’s metal and plastic parts rip and tear and the hole is now big enough to haul someone out.
In car powered by the highly flammable and explosive liquid known as “gasoline” or “petrol”, everyone knows that the fuel tank is over here (point to your fuel tank, everyone) and the pipe that takes the flammable liquid to the engine runs along here … well, OK, not everyone knows this one, but guess what, the firefighters and ambulance EMT guys know, and it’s standardized, so it’s always where they know it is. So they don’t rip up a hole there and squirt flaming liquid everywhere.
The wires coming out of the battery in the EV, though … where do those go? Anyone? Bueller?
Yeah. That’s the problem. There’s no standard, everyone does whatever the hell they wanted, so where do we poke the hole to drag you out safely while not setting things on fire?
And that’s all there is to it. It’s not hard. It just takes a few years of killing people before someone finally writes a law that says “there must be a known standard for this so we don’t kill people”. That law, like all safety regulations, has to be written in blood. Nobody could possibly foresee the problem and address it before then, no sirree!
Chris T.
@Chetan Murthy:
Mmph, this one is messy and complicated. There are pluses and minuses on all sides of the ethanol-in-gasoline debate. But it’s true that if one cuts out all the BS parts, it’s kind of a wash environmentally and economically depending on the source of the ethanol, and corn—which is the chief US source—is clearly one of the worst sources. Brazil uses sugar cane, with bagasse (leftover sugar cane bits) burned for heat and electricity, and overall that’s pretty good.
One thing that held up ethanol introduction here was the fact that a lot of the older parts in carbureted vehicles (pre-EFI) were intolerant of ethanol, too. But we probably shouldn’t be making our EtOH additives from corn.
Citizen Alan
@Kent: I have never for 1 second believe in the future of the self driving car simply because I don’t believe it will ever be possible to get auto insurance coverage for one.
Geminid
@Chris T.: The subsidy (actually a mandate) for ethanol in fuel is a legacy of the mid-1970s “oil crisis.” I think it’s here to stay, though if only because of the inordinate power of farm-state Senators. But it can be contained, and to some extent supplanted by other more efficient modes of produceng transport fuels from plants. And in the longer run, the use of ethanol will decline as the demand for internal combustion fuel declines, which I think will happen by the end of this decade and continue from there.
Betsy
@Another Scott: That’s amazing and too bad.
But there’s also a fifth column at work, which is that a lot of the most passionate advocates for “cycling” (as opposed to “people who use bikes”) are Vehicular Cycling advocates, who insist that everyone needs to get comfortable riding in traffic. Bike paths are anathema to them.
But something close to 80% of people are never going to be willing (or able) to do that, for good reason.
Betsy
@Geminid: I don’t know if you’re replying to me, but that isn’t an accurate rephrase of my argument, at least.
However, it is partly accurate in itself: more efficient cars DO entrench and exacerbate commitment to car-centric develepment and road patterns.
You may have already heard of a thing called “Jevon’s Paradox” or another thing called “induced demand.”
These phenomena are
why the lower cost of driving EVs could very well erase any carbon-output improvements they bring.
Betsy
@Kent: We already don’t hold *real* drivers responsible for pedestrian or bicyclist deaths they cause, so I don’t really buy that reasoning.
Geminid
@Betsy: I did not tag you in my reply because I was making a general argument against a prevalent idea that several people here have expressed.
If I had tagged you then I might have mischaracterized the particular argument you made. I don’t like this when it is sometimes done to me and I don’t want to do it to other people.
But now that you mention it, I have not heard of “Jevon’s Parodox.” I bet I could understand it though if it were described in simple terms.
NeenerNeener
@Kent: No place in my neighborhood sells Sourdough English Muffins and I’m not about to try to make them myself.
WaterGirl
@Nicole:
Yes and yes.
cleek
@Sister Golden Bear:
my model 3 experience is similar. that pillar cover was loose, i pushed it back on.
it’s not a plush interior. that’s fine with me. if i wanted plush, i would have bought some squishy Japanese thing. i wanted an EV. and as an EV, it’s really great. it does everything an EV should, and then some.
Musk is an asshole. but he didn’t build my car, or the company. he’s just the biggest shareholder, which gives him the right to make a lot of noise. i probably won’t buy another, unless he’s gone. but i’m not selling it early, either.
Another Scott
@Geminid:
I’m pretty sure most of us here are just having a stream of consciousness conversation. Typing in real time, especially on small screens, invites quick (and often dirty) shortcuts.
Unless someone starts the reply with YOU ARE WRONG AND A POOPY HEAD AND HERE’S WHY, they are likely just giving their views and maybe making a tangential comment. Not trying to convince you of the error of your ways.
That’s my take, and my reply philosophy anyway.
Cheers,
Scott.
brantl
@Chetan Murthy: It takes as much or more energy to produce, as it delivers. At very least, it is not an energy gain.