 Seen some distinctly odd toots appearing from accounts in the western US (since roughly start of waking hours in California) saying "battery-electric vehicles are a dead end, the future is [OH LOOK A WOOKIE]". Not people I've ever engaged with previously. I suspect the petrochemical industry astroturf bot farms have finally reached Mastodon ... 72 comments
@Infoseepage @cstross If they don’t push hard to convert to BEV’s, they’ll stop existing, the Chinese manufacturers will take over.  That’s a VERY short time frame, if Acapulco is an indication of what our future is - and I have no reason to doubt it is. @Infoseepage @cstross Well, Toyota makes it clear: They want to sell hybrids, where all the parts of a gas driven car can break as well as those of the EV, with a few added unique parts. Much better than an EV that needs few repairs  @Giliell @Infoseepage @cstross you are incorrect there. Toyota has been in multi year proving of EV only vehicles as they used them extensivly during the Olympics in Tokyo. Toyota doesnt rush into the markt without proven commodity. hence the prius is so proven they know how long battery will last etc. toyota has 1 EV with 5 more coming within 2 yrs. they prefer the hybrid to help those with rang anxiety. but as batteries & charge times improve they are puhing EV @Giliell @Infoseepage @cstross Also I'd like to add that in the past I was employed in the corporate offices of GM and GMH (Australia) in various senior management positions). GM's first edition EV not available to public was with the help of the technical prowess of Toyota as we had a long standing partnership deal with them. Toyota never missed any boat. Toyota will not rush to build anything it cant do right. oh and the entire industry runs on JIT (lean) thanks to Toyota @Junco Yeah, like that! (RTGs; 50 watts of endless power ... from a 50kg package that costs $50M. Only deep space missions out past Jupiter need apply!)  @graydon @cstross @Junco Your vehicle should not have "repeat the Lia accident" as a failure mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident @michael_w_busch @Junco @cstross The space-rated ones wound up with a "direct lunar return velocity into a steel mill" spec. Which didn't happen (though it would have been an interesting report from the night shift about the hole in the roof...) but Apollo 13 did, and as I recall they fished those out of the Pacific and flew them again. Which does seem like "sufficiently sturdy" was achieved. @graydon @Junco @cstross Apollo 13's RTG was never recovered - it was deliberately dropped in 10 km of water. The RTG from the Nimbus B launch failure in 1968 was recovered from a few hundred meters down - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbus_B . The redesign was after the Transit 5BN-3 launch failure in 1964, where the older RTG disintegrated on re-entry. @michael_w_busch @Junco @cstross Thank you! I do find it kinda silly to be paralytically worried about 4 kilos of Pu in the atmosphere given the amount scattered about by weapons testing. @michael_w_busch @graydon @cstross @Junco So has anybody actually checked a Tesla for radiation sources? It would be a bit unlikely for power but the computers might need some sort of RTG back-up. So... funny story. Tesla has already lost at least one source... and maybe three of them. THIS YEAR ALONE. @michael_w_busch @graydon @cstross @Junco totally coincidentally, I went along the highway on the other side of that valley in 2014 on the way to Mestia ... was a definite "huh" moment when I read about the accident earlier this year ...  @cstross Yes. I would expect an astroturf campaign to be a bit more circumspect, though. BMW at least is on the record with only lukewarm enthusiasm for BEV and continued support for ICE vehicles. There are more than enough billionaire-funded crazy-„news“ orgs and channels around to serve as good amplifiers, and the conventional press, especially Springer (BILD, Welt) will jump on the bandwagon at the right moment. It will appear as part of their long-running anti-Green campaign.  There was a Jalopnik article stating that Toyota are laughing all the way to the bank as EVs aren't selling in the US but hybrids and PHEVs are super in-demand that got surfaced to me via various algorithms and seems to get quoted as inconvertible truth in comment threads. Wonder if its coincidence or part of an anti EV push aiming to overturn or weaken the laws being considered to ban sales of fossil fuel vehicles around 2035? @RojCowles @scott @cstross I mean, right now it makes sense for those who can to hedge their bets re infrastructure, right? That stops being the case in event of a ban on fossil fuel vehicles.  @RojCowles @scott @cstross Europe is well-equipped with infrastructure, and that makes all the difference. @RojCowles @scott @cstross a result of politics and infrastructure, of course, as has always been the case with cars @RojCowles @scott @cstross Sorry, that sounded like I shared that voiced EV pessimism - I don't at all. I just feel like the level of obstruction is much worse in the US. @cstross Haven't seen them here... @cstross A lot of urbanist/transit advocates sincerely hate battery-electric vehicles because they see them as an inferior alternative to, and a distraction from, mass transit-- they want to eliminate personal vehicles (apart from bicycles). But that doesn't look like what's happening here. I still want to know how these urbanists are carrying home 100+ pounds of bottled water every weekend. Tap water isn't safe in most of America. @argv_minus_one @mattmcirvin @cstross Bottled water is just somebody else's tap water with a lot of nanoplastics and petrochemical degredation products added. Tap water is safe in the vast majority of America, although bottled water companies spend a lot to try to get people to believe otherwise. Where it's not entirely safe, it could be fixed for way, way, way less than the insane price and inconvenience of bottled water. > Bottled water is just somebody else's tap water Only if you buy bottled water marked “from a municipal source” or similar. Don't buy that bottled water; it's a scam. > with a lot of nanoplastics and petrochemical degredation products added. That stuff's in tap water, too. Bottled water, at least, lacks lead, chlorine, or any of the other fun stuff that ends up in tap water. > Tap water is safe in the vast majority of America I assume this is some kind of joke. 1/2 > Where it's not entirely safe, it could be fixed for way, way, way less than the insane price and inconvenience of bottled water. Yes, of course it could. But it won't. This is America; charging people exorbitant amounts of money in exchange for not poisoning them is a time-honored tradition around here. 2/2  @JackEric You're talking about trolley buses. Quick question; how much do you think maintaining, repairing, and retensioning the overhead wires costs? And what happens if something snags and tears down the wires? Pay special attention to passing pedestrians and bicycles dealing with the 600 volt unshielded power ... @cstross Trolley buses, trams, suburban rail, high-speed rail. There is not the street capacity to sustain personal-car-as-the-norm. Not aware that the OLE is a particular hazard, and the installation and maintenance cost of OLE rapidly breaks even vs the cost of sustaining and maintaining an on-board power supply on every vehicle  @cstross Looks like it. The 'solar panels are toxic' and the 'heat pumps only work on the equator' bunch too @etchedpixels @cstross I'll try and remember to be cold and understand why my heating bills have gone down then.  @etchedpixels @cstross Are there really people claiming heat pumps only work at the equator? Because I'm in Manitoba, there's snow on the ground already, and our heat pump's been keeping the house warm (and cool, in the summer) for like 15 years now. @pjohanneson @cstross Uk targetting petrol/gas smogheads insist that heatpumps don't work in the UK as it's too cold and solar because it's too far North. I guess the trolls tailor to their audience ? @etchedpixels @pjohanneson Solar *is* problematic here in Scotland; in midwinter we get 6 hours of light out of every 24, so would be reliant on storage and need far more area under PV to make it work. (And we tend to live in dense apartments, so less roof area per person. And power consumption maxes out on winter nights for heating, not summer daytime for air conditioning.) However we're a world leader for wind farms, which currently provide 94% of our power.  @cstross @etchedpixels @pjohanneson here in Ayrshire we saved approx 60% of our electricity bill ( cooking, washing, lighting) last year thanks to solar and battery. But the house still uses gas for heating though. https://www.workshopshed.com/2023/10/solar-install-a-year-in-review/  @cstross @etchedpixels @pjohanneson The most north I’ve been in Scotland is Ullapool, and that is still south of Stockholm. Here we have quite a lot of solar power, and I believe it’s quite popular even further north, but totally relying on it is difficult, as you say. Even if dense apartments mean less roof space, they leak less heat, so that’s an advantage.  @etchedpixels @cstross  @cstross Weird because it is so easy to consciously not see many kinds of things on here. I suppose it happens when you venture out into the federated timeline? @hakirsch @cstross Detroit seems stuck in ICE thinking. With ICEs bigger cars are more profitable than smaller ones because they don't cost that much more to build. But BEV cost goes up pretty linearly with size because the battery has to be proportionate. Detroit still thinks its path is to sell $70,000 F150s, and they're going to get squashed by $17,000 BYDs if they don't pivot fast. OH A WOOKIE! battery-electric vehicles are a dead end. there is no further progression or evolution the above statement is not representative of my opinion nor of my employers. (hollywood) @cstross If they were talking about a hydrogen fuel option, they might be somewhat believable. @RojCowles we have local companies doing conversions on big rig transport trucks quite successfully, so some of the hurdles have been addressed. Japan is going all in on hydrogen now.  @cstross hmmm, odd. Personally, I am entirely convinced by electric drive trains, and not at all by the energy storage technology we use to power them.  @cstross @lisamelton Ok, let me try: Electric cars are a dead end, the future is bikes, walking and public transportation😁That’s what they want, right? @cstross ...because cars and car centric infrastructure is a dead end. The future belongs to walkable infrastructure supported by train supremacy. |
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@cstross It appears to be a full court press. I've seen a few articles like this in recent days:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/10/27/2140250/auto-execs-are-coming-clean-evs-arent-working?sbsrc=md
What the industry really doesn't want is inexpensive vehicles with little markup, which is where the technology is driving the market. They want to make big trucks and SUVs for as long as humanly possible.