… When all social media asked What the actual f*ck?!?
looks like a VHS tape rewinder you find at a garage sale https://t.co/hE1hEGo2K0
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) November 7, 2023
And that’s still less embarrassing than last week’s… promo?
War for Ukraine Day 623: EU Something Something
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Elizabelle
Pandas seem to be on the move again. They are taxiing out in Anchorage. Soon to leave US airspace forever.
Safe travels, dear bears.
Lyrebird
The proposed TikTok trend would not be funny because some unfortunate person driving a Neon or some such would get hurt.
But thank you Anne Laurie for once again bringing us the best of the Interwebz! And I know more about steel now, too.
Yarrow
Is Joe Rohan someone I should know? Is it a typo of Joe Rogan?
eclare
The whole thing is just weird. A car that survives being shot at by an arrow? Who gives a fuck? Give me a bulletproof car, that addresses the times we live in.
Brent
@Yarrow: Well that is Rogan but I believe its a play on the Riders of Rohan from Lord of the Rings series. Or it could be just an interesting typo?
eclare
@Elizabelle:
At least we have new cheetah cubs to watch on the Smithsonian cheetah cam!
Alison Rose
In less ridiculous cultural news, today is the 400th anniversary of the first publication of the First Folio. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust posted a great article pondering how different life would be if its publication had never happened. And the Folger Shakespeare Library has a digital reader version of the First Folio that you can flip through. I almost weeped!
pacem appellant
My complaint about the Cybertruck in particular and Tesla in general is that Musk and his acolytes are giving EVs a bad name and reputation. What I love about the Cybertruck is that it’s obviously a commercial loser, so if there is any hunger in the market for an EV truck, the Rivian R1T is going to gobble that up.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Brent:
Just your average Middle-Earth denizen, living in the Riddermark, worrying about the advice Theoden is getting from Wormtongue.
eclare
@pacem appellant:
I saw a Rivian here in Memphis about a month ago, that is a nice looking truck.
prostratedragon
@Alison Rose: Hmm, oddly enough, the current ridiculous culture news reminded me of this moment of translated Shakespeare.
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
Very cool. I think I once read that Oxford had an edition of the First Folio that was accessible by students. Over the centuries, the most read play was Romeo and Juliet.
pacem appellant
@eclare: No argument from me! Here is a picture of the R1T and the Cybertruck side by side.
Chetan Murthy
@pacem appellant: Bob Lefsetz over at The Big Picture (Barry Rithholtz’s place) agrees with you.
https://ritholtz.com/2023/11/electric-cars/
YY_Sima Qian
The abject failures of the CyberTruck & FSD could wreck Tesla.
CaseyL
Rivians are indeed very cool looking. I can’t remember offhand how they rank against Ford’s e-F150 for price, performance, or range.
eclare
@pacem appellant:
Just very surprised to see one here.
Anne Laurie
Yup. IIRC, it was Elon’s typo, and of course led to a predictable spate of Lord-of-the-Rings (movie, not book) jokes on twitter & elsewhere.
I think this stupid arrow stunt may have been Musk’s middle-school-level ‘snapback’ at those jokes, especially after people were so rude about his previous ‘promo’ concerning the cybertruck’s bulletproofing (for very narrowly defined concepts of ‘bulletproof’). Especially the not-exactly-jokes about why a guy who fled his native South Africa when apartheid ended might be fixated on ‘bulletproof’ private transit…
eclare
@CaseyL:
When Ford came out with its pickup that also works as a generator, all the guys that I worked with who were big into hunting, tailgating, etc., were salivating over it. Price be damned.
CaseyL
@eclare: I was salivating, too. But no way in hell could I afford one, and my Scion is still puttering along very nicely. It’s not like I need a new vehicle, but if I could afford an electric I’d get one (and keep the Scion for long road trips).
FelonyGovt
I see lots of Rivians around here and they’re REALLY attractive and I’m not a truck fan normally. They’re also really expensive I think.
That cybertruck, in addition to being ugly, would NOT work in LA. We do get lots of rain sometimes. Leaky and rusty.
eclare
@CaseyL:
I still putter around happily in my 2018 Honda CRV.
mrmoshpotato
Re: rain
Car wash 1
Cybertrash 0 (flooded, but at least the outside (AND INSIDE!) is clean!)
N M
@Lacuna Synecdoche: Grima (“Wormtongue” – what a disgusting epithet!) is an “excellent diplomat, experienced spy and master of courtly intrigue”[1]. I would not hear him besmirched as some sort of “soothsayer!” /snark
[1] The Last Ringbearer, Chapter 5. Definitely worth a read if you want to turn everything you *thought* you knew about the end of the Third Age on its head!
Randal Sexton
Errrm, I just got my Lightning Truck. Now measuring how good it is at powering my living space. If anyone is curious about how I am going about the entire thing I am happy to detail.
Kent
@eclare: Yes, my neighbor has one in a very pretty forest green. The Rivian is, indeed, a very nice truck. And actual normal truck dimensions. I’d get one if I had the slightest need for a new vehicle and new truck, which I don’t
https://rivian.com/r1t
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Regarding the car being eaten away by road salt in northern climes: I see Musk’s glass as half-full here. It was the custom of some people in the northern clime I grew up in, to keep a “winter rat”, a beat-up old car whose body had already rotted away, the kind you could see the ground through the floors of the passenger seat.
So Cybertrucks are a natural for the winter-rat segment of the market.
JaneE
I was passed by the Rivian SUV a couple of weeks ago. It was very nice looking, but too large for my taste.
Mai Naem mobile
@eclare: i ended up parked next to a Rivian truck a couple of years ago and talking to the owner. He said he loved it. He sounded like he was used to having people asking him about it. IiRC he said he said he’d paid around $80K. The Rivian SUV looks really nice. It looks like a regular sized SUV unlike most of the other electric SUVs which tend to be on the smaller side. Its crazy expensive though ~$100K.
pacem appellant
@CaseyL: Much more expensive, more range, extremely performant. @Mai Naem mobile said is correct for the price point.
Splitting Image
@Alison Rose:
The main difference is that fucking Oxfordians would be saying that Edward de Vere wrote Ben Jonson’s plays.
And Kenneth Branagh would have made a name for himself adapting George Bernard Shaw.
pacem appellant
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: At their price point, I wonder how viable having a ‘beater’ Cybertruck makes sense.
Martin
When I went up to rural Oregon last year to help my dad after his heart attack, the small hospital there had 3 Rivians in the small parking lot. The Rivian HQ is 3 miles from my house and I see them all the time, but never 3 in the same place. But this place in the weeds had a bunch of them.
Chetan Murthy
@pacem appellant: Gotta wonder what all that corrosion is gonna do to the batteries when it eats into ’em.
NotMax
So far as non-behemoth EV pick-up trucks go the upcoming Fisker Alaska checks off a lot of positive boxes. As will (if the company everfinds its footing) the Canoo pick-up.
Rivian truck weighs in at a curb weight of around 8000 pounds, which is redonkulous.
pacem appellant
@Martin: Irvine or Palo Alto?
pacem appellant
@Chetan Murthy: It’s a Tesla, it’ll probably catch fire, which I guess is one way to stay warm in a midwest winter, by burning one’s car.
eclare
@pacem appellant:
Hahaha….
CaseyL
@pacem appellant: My (2008) Scion was $4600 when I bought it used in 2019, bless its little heart. There is no way I could afford a six-figure vehicle, and I’m too frugal to pay that kind of money even if I could afford to. In fact, I’ve never bought a new car; I’ve always thought that was nuts.
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of used-car deals one could get for a Rivian or an eF150 a few years from now.
danielx
The Cybertruck was designed by people who don’t know diddlyshit about what pickups are used for or who buys them.
dmsilev
The Rivian and Ford vehicles look, you know, normal. Tesla’s …thing, not so much.
Alison Rose
@Brachiator: See, if I’d been able to go to England when they had it on display at SBT, I’d have just stared at the first page of Hamlet for an hour or two before someone forcibly dragged me away.
Sasha
Honestly, I’m here for it. It’s like something out of an awesome ’80s sci-fi flick.
But so long as Elon = Tesla …
Alison Rose
@Splitting Image: Oh, don’t get me started on anti-Stratfordians. I don’t believe in torture but I’d strap them all to the rack myself.
danielx
From WaPo:
Because of the immense success enjoyed by both pols in national contests, no doubt. Or perhaps these advisers possess as-yet undisplayed but extraordinary talent in ratfucking.
Hey, it could happen.
mrmoshpotato
@pacem appellant: LOL!
Burnspbesq
@FelonyGovt:
Base model R1T is $73k. It’s easy to get a F-series or Silverado into that neighborhood if you option it heavily.
And R1T doesn’t look like the designer drew inspiration from the Pontiac Aztek.
CaseyL
@danielx: Not just losers. In Sanders’ case, a very sore loser who spent most of the campaign undermining the eventual nominee (Hillary).
Poe Larity
David Brooks is on tour. I was thinking of dressing up in Applebees regalia but can’t find a salad bar cart light enough to push around.
StringOnAStick
Tying this in to a previous post, the changing of the economy from cheap money, energy, etc. are the kind of paradigm shifts that in retrospect have some apparent harbingers. Things like at the height of the 1990’s stock market boom even cabbies had hot stock tips, right up until the bubble burst in 2000. I think Elmo paying $44 billion for twitter, a company that never made any money, is going to be one of those things that seem so obvious in retrospect.
I also think we’ll be laughing at the Cybertruck as a really obvious at the time too, but in way more like how society laughed at the amphibious car. Except the amphibious car was a fun, silly 1960’s thing; Cybertruck is as fucking ugly as Elmo’s withered soul.
Yutsano
Since the thread be open…
JD Vance haz a sad over the abortion loss for the Republicans in Ohio. I’d almost feel sorry for him until I got to the last line in the article. Then I was like fuck that guy. There’s no way they can win that war or this country will literally become Gilead.
frosty
@Chetan Murthy: Good story. Word of mouth is how people figure out what to buy and Musk killed word of mouth for Tesla. The analogy of my gas car with a Nikon SLR is good, too. Another one of those “things change gradually then suddenly”.
My 2014 Mazda 3 hatchback (manual tranny!) just hit 90,000 miles. It’s good for at least 250,000, by which time the kids will take away my keys. Consistent 37-38mpg, can’t complain.
And spark plugs, tuneups? Those are things of the past. I get my annual PA inspection but it’s never needed either of these things. Engines got much much better in the last 20 years. It’s not like resetting the distributor, filing the points, and adjusting the carbs on my old Triumph TR-3 EVERY TWO WEEKS!!!!
StringOnAStick
@Poe Larity: He must have a new book out. Perhaps he’s expanded his culinary adventures and feels we simply must hear his take on class markers vs fish tacos.
karen marie
Remember when Musk was showing off the unbreakable window and the window broke?
You’d think he wouldn’t want people to be reminded.
Alison Rose
@Poe Larity: Wear a hamburger costume with a giant $78 price tag stuck to it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
OT:
Since alt history is being discussed, I have some really cool videos to share I came across the last month or so, based on the events of Valve’s Half-Life series, being blended with real life history. A favorite past time of Half-Life fans, aside from trying to predict when Half-Life 3 will happen, is trying to pin down exact date when the events of the main story are meant to take place. Official sources only say that it took place sometime in the 2000s. One of the most popular is May 16th, 2003 for the date the fictional Black Mesa Incident happened. Neinfeld was able to piece together the date of the events based on in-game calendars that appear (December) and even the phase of the moon used in the game’s skybox, which roughly matches what it was in December 2000. They specifically narrowed it down to December 5th, 2000.
The Aftermath of the Black Mesa Incident by Neinfeld
It’s a specific timeline of events that occur both in the actual Half-Life 1 as well as in the lore of the series, spaning from the morning of December 5th when the resonance cascade occurs, to January 2nd, 2001 when the Seven Hour War breaks out and the Combine conquers Earth. My favorite thing about Neinfeld’s work is how detailed it is, and really goes into the nitty gritty of how the world would react, detailing the actions of government agencies, etc
A Youtube user by the name of macdrown, has been doing a series of AI voiced acted videos based on Neinfeld’s work, through reconstructed newscasts reporting on the BMI, the Portal Storms, and the resulting chaos they would bring. They really capture how news broadcasts sounded in the late 90s/2000. The AI voices, while still noticeably robotic, are incredibly uncanny. I highly recommend them and they’re all only a few minutes long. It’s a look into a pre-9/11 world that is shattered by the unthinkable, something 1000x worse than 9/11 itself.
The Black Mesa Incident- Archival Footage NBC
Black Mesa Incident News Coverage: Eyewitness Interview from Evacuation Site
Freak Weather Events Suspected to be Linked to Black Mesa- NBC News Coverage
“Portal” Storm Precipitates Unknown Wildlife; World Leaders Urge Defensive Measures
Congressional Committee Holds Trial; Black Mesa’s Former Adminstrator Testifies
StringOnAStick
@frosty: I owned a series of Fiats in the TR 3 era; I recognise your pain. One had a whole 850cc engine!
I think you and I discussed surfing recently. I took a lesson last week and stood up on my first try and 98% of the rest; I think I’m hooked. Too bad we live 3 hours from the ocean.
Pete Downunder
@StringOnAStick: Back in the dark ages I had a 57 Austin Healy Bn4. Two hours under it for every hour in it. Don’t get me started on SU carbs or Lucas electricals. I have an EV now with essentially zero maintenance. It’s more, shall we say, age appropriate.
danielx
@Burnspbesq:
The Aztek! That’s what I was trying to remember – the vehicle that single-handedly killed the Pontiac Division.
Chetan Murthy
@Pete Downunder: @StringOnAStick: sometime in the late ’80s i read an article arguing that in the future people would transfer the fetishism that they had previously focused on their cars, to their computers. Just as they had tricked out their cars, they would do so to their computers. If we update that to mobile phones, it certainly seems to have come true. And of course even in computers the way some people talk about their gaming rigs is positively obscene.
danielx
@Chetan Murthy:
Not to mention that tricking out cars hasn’t exactly gone out of style.
frosty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I didn’t click your links sorry-ish). I find it fascinating how people can do such a deep dive into something they find interesting, and this certainly fits the bill. No judgement, no worries. I’m now a beginning birder and starting to see where it might lead: “Costa Rica!!! You know how many new birds you can see there???”
frosty
@StringOnAStick: My dad had a Nash Metropolitan he used to commute 90 miles to Penn in Philly a day or two a week for his PhD. My brother and I convinced him to buy us a Bugeye Sprite. 948 thrashing cc’s!!!
Except only one cylinder worked all the time, two sometimes, one never. The three of us learned how to rebuild an engine that winter.
StringOnAStick
@frosty: Costa Rica is a fun country to visit, you should go!
@Pete Downunder: Ah, even I knew to avoid British cars due to their electronics. However the fact that I owned not one but three different Fiats means I was an idiot anyway.
StringOnAStick
@frosty: I helped my dad rebuild the Fiat 124 Spyder after the oil pump fell off and the engine seized. Learned a lot! I’ll never forget the sound an engine makes as it becomes a brick.
frosty
@StringOnAStick: This is going to kill you … In the 70s I lived for a year in a cheap apartment in Huntington Beach ($160/month, converted garage) a block from the water. I went in the ocean ONCE. And I had the longboard I bought from my college roomie. Still have it, actually.
But the Pacific is so cold!! If only I would have bought a wetsuit. If only that would have been customary way back then!!
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Neat. I’ll look at this more.
One of our holiday traditions is watching Freeman’s Mind and now HalfLife VR but the AI is Self Aware.
This is what we watch instead of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ We are a strange family.
Chetan Murthy
@StringOnAStick: if I may ask, about the surfing, in what general area was this?
Frankensteinbeck
@Martin:
What, no Full Life Consequences?
frosty
@Pete Downunder: Do you know all the Lucas jokes? My favorite:
Q: Why do the English drink their beer warm?
A: Lucas made the refrigerators.
Alison Rose
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s called death.
frosty
Tink? (As all the melted metal solidifies). Thankfully, not something I ever had to hear!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
I haven’t had the chance to watch HLVRAI, but I came across this clip where Benrey interrupts G-Man and it was hilarious
Pete Downunder
@frosty: Sounds right. You’d think a British company in a wet climate could design electricals that would work in wet weather. But no. Where I could I replaced things like the fuel pump with good old ACDelco.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@frosty:
It really is : ) and no worries. Costa Rica sounds like fun
moops
Well, Tesla is the number one selling car brand in California. They’re nice cars, and the price is better now and it is competitive. I’ve had mine 5 years and literally the most reliable and well-built car I’ve ever owned, and I drove my old Jetta for 18 years.
But the Cybertruck is an Edsel. A handful of innovations, and a mountain of design and build flaws. I laugh when I hear about how hard they are trying to make their factory capable of cranking out 200,000 of these trucks a year. Hey gang! don’t sweat it. If you sell 10,000 a year it will be a miracle, and everyone one of them is going to cost you more to make and service under warranty than you will ever be able of selling them for. There are thousands and thousands of pre-sale people that are going to test drive this machine and turn to Tesla and say “gimme my $100 back”.
NotMax
@moops
That Cybertruck unibrow windshield wiper is laughable.
Major Major Major Major
Say what you will about the cybertruck, you have to admit, it’s tremendous content.
Martin
@Frankensteinbeck: Were unaware of that one…
Freeman’s Mind has been on our holiday rotation since it was still being made.
Fair Economist
The CyberTruck is, I think, another example of how Musk’s concept of “cool” got stuck around 2000. Then, everything was “X” X-Files, X-Treme, x-etera. And “cyber-” was cool too. Plus the Cybertruck looks like a prop from a Robocop movie.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The whole thing is a riot. My wife, who is not a gamer, has to put up with this stuff, and it took her a while just to wrap her head around what was going on, but she loves it now.
Freeman’s Mind is still my favorite, because one of my degrees is physics and I worked in academia, and he really nails a good subset of the physics community.
moops
I’d like a mod that puts a red LED lamp along the whole giant front wiper, so it looks like a Cylon.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: I watched Freeman’s Mind until the point where he talks about the squirrel getting fried and …. SMDH, don’t get it. But it’s OK: de gustibus and all that.
Martin
@Pete Downunder: My dad had a 73 MGB as a primary vehicle for quite a few years when I was a kid. The only thing on the dash that actually worked was the tachometer. Not the speedometer or the fuel gauge. My job was to work out on camping trips (yes, we went camping for *weeks* in that thing) when we’d need to stop for gas based on a rough calculation of how far we’d gone on the map, in which gear, at which RPM. Very proud to say in thousands and thousands of miles of trips, we never ran out. The 8-track did work, though.
It was always kind of fun pulling up to a campsite next to some big fuck-off RV in the MG and doing the clown car routine as we pulled out a tent, and cooler, and stove, etc. Lot of good memories there. Hailstorms were unfun, though.
otmar
I’m pretty sure the Cybertruck violates a number of EU regulations regarding pedestrian stafety, so we’re not likely to see them of the road here in Austria.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I’m also a fan of Emergency Alert System scenario mockups. Black Mesa, the fan-made remake of Half-Life 1, included 3 EAS messages for atmospheric storytelling.
Here’s 2 fan-made EAS mockups based on the BMI, I found good. I liked how one included period-appropriate commercials and the other had an accurate DirecTV bumper for the era
Local Alert During Black Mesa Incident
Black Mesa EAS Alert
Major Major Major Major
@otmar: you poor dears.
ColoradoGuy
Here in suburban Colorado I’ve yet to see a CyberTruck, but I’ve seen several Rivians. Not a truck or SUV guy, but the Rivian is attractive in an understated way. The interior is definitely minimal, just a few screens, but not that silly center screen of the Tesla cars. As for interiors, looks like the Ioniq 6 wins that one, with twin large-format screens and actual physical controls for the HVAC system.
BellyCat
@Martin: Fun to imagine your MGB camping adventures with your Dad.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Yep. I had an old 78 Ford Fairmont that was my winter rat. Crooked hood held down by a bungee cord and bumper bent from hitting a telephone pole plus a carburetor held on by ty-wraps, but I got it for $100 and it ran like a top (carb notwithstanding). People stayed the fuck away from me because I looked like an accident looking for a place to happen. Drove the crap out of it for three winters and sold it to a bud for $250 when we moved away from Spokane (and snow).
You keep the good car for sunny days! Speaking of sunny days, the reflections from that immense flat windshield on that piece of Musk truck is going to blind people and cause accidents.
Chris T.
Rivians seem kind of popular here in the Pacific Northwet, north of Seattle (and I’ve seen one charging away at a store in Redmond as well when I was down there charging my own EV after a thing). Lots of Teslas, a number of Leafs (Leaves?), very few Jaguar I-Paces.
Morfydd
@Randal Sexton: I’m interested! How do you like it overall?
p.a.
Isn’t Rogan more suited to the Wormtongue character?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I see Teslas here and there in Athens, though I’m not sure where they’re getting charged up. One place they’re not going to have much penetration in the near future is the Greek islands. To date, I think I’ve only seen one pure EV on an island (not a Tesla, but the new Honda EV) – the problem is that most islands don’t have, and probably can’t support, the sort of high-power charging infrastructure that pure EVs need. Keeping up with gasoline and diesel is difficult enough, and there’s a distinct surcharge for them – pump prices are in the ten-dollar-a-gallon range on the islands – but in a lot of cases, there just isn’t enough room. Heck, there’s already not enough room for the cars that come to the islands in the summer.
I understand the underlying thinking behind banning ICE-powered cars, but absent a lot of work building the infrastructure for what’s hopefully supposed to replace them, I see it taking several undesirable turns. And there has to be thought given to places that can’t support that infrastructure at all.
lowtechcyclist
@Yutsano:
Vance: “We need people to see us as the pro-life party, not just the anti-abortion party.”
Yeah, good luck with that. Is the fetus a person? Who knows. But there are eight billion people on this planet who are unquestionably people, and the GOP gives a damn about their lives approximately never. War is good, guns are good, vaccines and masking up are bad. The GOP is unquestionably the anti-life party. Fuck ’em.
Another Scott
@StringOnAStick: My favorite uncle had an MG Midget that somehow died and he decided to rebuild the engine. He wanted to do it “right” so he bought new bolts for the head and crank and … “Hey, these bolts seem a little tight, oh well, they go in with some persuasion with the ratchet…”
The threads were Whitworth (British), not SAE UNC or UNF. Just a tiny bit different even though they were the same diameter.
Whoops. :-/
I don’t think he ever finished it. He got an Opel 1900 Sport Wagon shortly thereafter.
Cheers,
Scott.
BellyCat
@Another Scott: That was a terrible, no good day. Ack!
TerryC
@Elizabelle: This is said. A friend of mine, Yi Chen, was part of the initial negotiations to bring pandas over to the US. RIP, my friend.
StringOnAStick
@frosty: Wetsuits changed everything. My recent surf experience was warm water on Maui; I’ve spent plenty of time on the CA coast and barely touched the water because it was so cold and I was afraid of it. I’ve worked through my water phobia but the CA/OR coastal waters are still really cold! I’m considering getting a wetsuit…
If you’ve still got that springboard it probably has value as a (large) wall decoration.
Baud
@StringOnAStick:
Nominated!
Steve in the ATL
That twitter thread is GOLD!
Peke Daddy
@eclare: Why not go all the way?
https://youtu.be/YQCyOIgVWGw?si=qwtO2bWeXR9k9SeZ
Randal Sexton
@Morfydd: So far like it okay. Its very new, less than 1000 miles. Has a much different handling feel than other trucks: the low center of gravity of all that battery mass makes it stay much flatter in curves. I got the XLT trim so that I could get the 7.2 KW inverter, which also requires the extended battery. My wife, who was an electrician, put in a 50 amp 240 circuit and plug to charge it, makes it so it will charge at about 15 miles an hour. Where I live at 12 cents per kwh, costs about 16$ to fill it from zero up to its full range of 315 miles. It is a well appointed car . It is pretty large though ( I used to drive a mini-cooper). We also made it so that we can use the 240 power outlet to back feed our circuit panel, and power our house with the truck, we did this NOT by using the SUNRUN system – and will see how effective this is over the winter, where we do get some power outages. We did this by doing some ‘tricks’ to manage the ‘ground neutral bonding’ issue. When the power goes out we have to do some manual stuff — plugging in , throwing interlock switch, turning off water heater ect. Hope you get this reply, and that this thread is not too dead
Paul in KY
@Yarrow: I think he’s a distant descendent of Theoden II
Paul in KY
@danielx: One of the ugliest cars ever made.
Paul in KY
@StringOnAStick: Fix It Again, Tony (but you knew that)
Paul in KY
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Friend of mine just got back from there. Said it was awesome.
Paul in KY
I’m not even sure the Cybertruck is an actual truck. To be one, the bed has to be decoupled from the cab, so it can flex in different ways when a big load is in the bed. It’s more like an El Camino (to me).
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Randal Sexton
A notion I have wrt EV and electric grid infrastructure: EV’s that allow their batteries to be used bi-directionally – as in charging AND a power source – could be very important in the transition to a green power grid. Having large batteries around make it so that electric energy can FINALLY be stored, not just used immediately, and having a bi-directional capability make it so that that stored energy becomes very convenient and very distributed, this can have a big change on the design of electric grids , types and number of power plants and other stuff. This bi-directional capability has a few names: Vehicle to House, Vehicle to Building, Vehicle to Grid, ect. Many issues with this of course: AC-DC conversion efficiency, complexity of house/car wiring, utility pricing models …. The Ford Lightning truck is one of the only cars that supports this , maybe the only one ? I am being a damned early adopter on this stuff, and I will see how this works out. We will build out some solar panels too and so then my house will be its own little micro-grid. Panels to generate electricity, Truck to capture and store the electricty, and supply my coffee grinding with power ! Its possible that our utility company will start allowing differential pricing — I will be able to sell my power back at a higher cost and charge my batteries at a lower cost. Anyways, I would be interested to hear if anyone else is doing this.
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
Even the windows were bullet proof.
If shot at by a .22 from 5 miles away….
And seeing as how I’ve been driving for 59 yrs and have never seen a vehicle shot at in person, I’d bet that is not really an actual selling point for an extremely large percentage of the driving population. Of course if one didn’t like elon, one might not like to see someone pay him to own/drive one of those extremely ugly, rather useless things.
And then I look at it, just as a vehicle and there is only a few words that I can think of. NO – I would not, for any amount of money they PAID me, drive that. And I like money. Nor just sit in it either.
Ruckus
@danielx:
I worked in pro sports when the POS Aztek came out and one venue was sponsored by GM and they had one on site. That was one ugly, useless, waste of materials, time and effort, POS. I believe when I saw one in person, my first response was “That’s one fucking ugly POS.” Normally I would have shortened that to FUGLY but really that adjective absolutely needed to be out there properly, in full bloom.