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 ...
Infoseepage #StopGazaGenocide
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •It appears to be a full court press. I've seen a few articles like this in recent days:
tech.slashdot.org/story/23/10/…
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.
Auto Execs Are Coming Clean: EVs Aren't Working - Slashdot
tech.slashdot.orgJunco
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Junco • • •Graydon
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Michael Busch
Als Antwort auf Graydon • • •2001, country of Georgia, 3 injured, 1 dead
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Junco
Als Antwort auf Michael Busch • • •Michael Busch
Als Antwort auf Junco • • •@Junco @graydon Plutonium RTGs do not have that particular problem, since they emit alphas rather than betas.
But engineers only figured out how to make them sufficiently sturdy after a kilo of plutonium got scattered across the landscape.
Linza
Als Antwort auf Michael Busch • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Linza • • •Michael Busch
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Mario
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Helge Wilker
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Helge Wilker • • •Helge Wilker
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Philippa Cowderoy
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •scott
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross hat dies geteilt.
RojCowles
Als Antwort auf scott • • •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?
Mike Ferdinando
Als Antwort auf RojCowles • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Mike Ferdinando • • •Mike Ferdinando
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Matt McIrvin
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •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.
argv minus one
Als Antwort auf Matt McIrvin • • •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.
Major Denis Bloodnok
Als Antwort auf argv minus one • • •If I wanted to, I'd put it in my bicycle trailer. Use the big one and I'd still have another 50kg or so of capacity.
argv minus one
Als Antwort auf Major Denis Bloodnok • • •That works if you're thin enough to ride a bike and strong enough to carry that much load, but a lot of people (myself included) are far too out-of-shape/old/disabled for such a feat.
Major Denis Bloodnok
Als Antwort auf argv minus one • • •Charlie Stross
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •The Penguin of Evil
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross hat dies geteilt.
Patrick Johanneson 🚀
Als Antwort auf The Penguin of Evil • • •The Penguin of Evil
Als Antwort auf Patrick Johanneson 🚀 • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf The Penguin of Evil • • •@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.
Workshopshed
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •@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.
workshopshed.com/2023/10/solar…
Solar install a year in review - Workshopshed
Andy from Workshopshed (Workshopshed)Magnus Ahltorp
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •@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.
Billy Smith
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •@etchedpixels @pjohanneson
Have you seen this design of direct heating via windmill?
solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019…
Heat your House with a Mechanical Windmill
LOW←TECH MAGAZINEMark Stoneman 🦣
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •jack
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf jack • • •HawkWolf (H. A. Kirsch)
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •I was reading an arstechnica article's comment section (I think it was on the post about toyota's ev concepts they make not make) and there was a back and forth between "the numbers show that electric cars are sitting on lots!" and “are you nuts more and more EVs are selling constantly, look at these numbers"
I think it settled on the first someone trying to extrapolate from the F-150 Lightning's relative struggle to sell, which might possibly be due to the ones you can actually buy being the ones that start at $70,000. vs the actual sales numbers, which are going up.
Plus there's the confounding factor that car prices in general are becoming massively inflated due to [choose your reason].
Tallawk
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •dr2chase
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Charlie Stross
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Giliell
Als Antwort auf dr2chase • • •RealSolo
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •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)
Evan Hunt
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Jaddy
Als Antwort auf jack • •@jack is inside your PHONE
You surely have visited rural areas, right? Like, e.g. villages of ~2000 people, miles from each other and many more to the next city. Vehicles without any kind of stored power on board won’t work there. Not even trolley buses.
And then, there're lot and lots of service and delivery vehicles. Mail and stuff, work vehicles also collecting trash. Now, what about farm and forest work? Maintenance of PV and wind farms?
The odd fringes are much bigger than they might appear.
I guess there will be no silver bullet tech solution, once again.
@Charlie Stross
Raven Onthill
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Ferrichrome
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Ferrichrome • • •Curt Thomas
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Electric cars are a dead end...
...because cars and car centric infrastructure is a dead end. The future belongs to walkable infrastructure supported by train supremacy.
Giliell
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •fflavio
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Giliell • • •Giliell
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Raven Onthill
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Raven Onthill • • •Jon
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf Jon • • •janlouzel
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross hat dies geteilt.
alberta is a hoax
Als Antwort auf janlouzel • • •@janlouzel I don't get it, but it does seem to be in alignment with a bunch of "EVs R BAD" pushing to the front of the line on YouToob.
The more it shouts at me not to go EV, the more I wonder if that's the way to go going forward. What is the shouting all about?
Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf alberta is a hoax • • •alberta is a hoax
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •@janlouzel mmmmmmhmmm. I mean, I drive maybe 450 miles a month. My extremely efficient ICE car scares 'em...
But the 40mpg lineup of hybrids of all sizes Toyota has must be freaking them out.
Charlie Stross
Als Antwort auf alberta is a hoax • • •@palkyrie @janlouzel I got rid of my diesel car 18 months ago. (It did 45mpg and could hold 7 adults.) 40mpg hybrids are disgustingly inefficient—or ridiculously over-sized compared to my old Volvo V70 estate.
(I ditched it after discovering that during COVID I drove less than 200 miles a year.)
Nefarious Celt
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Driving 300 miles a week I have no issues driving around in an EV. Although I do have off street parking.
It has been from Cambridgeshire to Portmerion, Lincoln and even down to Brighton.
It was the range of my bladder that dictated when the car was charged.
The real range issues I have is finding a model to carry either a mobility scooter or electric wheelchair.
RealGene ☣️
Als Antwort auf janlouzel • • •@janlouzel
My yahoo.com regularly runs articles from the Telegraph about how heat pumps don't work in the UK.
It's like they want to reopen all the coal mines or something.
C.W. Williams
Als Antwort auf RealGene ☣️ • • •To me, this has all the hallmarks of the social engineering component of a multi-front propaganda campaign, likely orchestrated and financed by the petro companies. Expect to see contrarian scientific studies by little known researchers published online and cited in the WSJ and NYT soon.
It's a well worn strategy pioneered by the US tobacco companies. They always use it because it always works.
Here's the all too familiar reference material:
npr.org/2023/10/17/1183551603/…
Jered Floyd
Als Antwort auf C.W. Williams • • •Oggie
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Just got cross linked an article that used as a premise that EV sales are going poorly because the year over year increase in sales velocity was only 49%, while it was over 60% last year.
So not the number of sales ( vastly up), not the increase in sales ( vastly up), but the % increase in the increase. But it was also in an absolute number.... because it turns out sales were down in the specific metrics they were looking at so even that was false. Was something else.
Timothy Clark
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •Kevin Karhan :verified:
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •ROFLMAO!
Cuz no lobbyist would pay me.enough to sell my sould for that lost cause.
mstdn.social/@kkarhan/11132108…
Kevin Karhan :verified:
2023-10-30 00:17:01
Tryst 🏴 :ms_asexual_flag: :ms_cat_grin:
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •mjfgates
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •mjfgates
Als Antwort auf Raven Onthill • • •Raven Onthill
Als Antwort auf mjfgates • • •Charlie Stross
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •@scott @ravenonthill @mjfgates @mjj @RojCowles I think he's questioning the likely footfall at the charging-equipped motels—would it be sufficient to sustain a business.
(I'm postulating to a future where Americans refuse to give up driving but don't build out high speed rail and have to reduce their flying significantly when I propose a need for supercharger-equpped motels.)
scott
Als Antwort auf Raven Onthill • • •mjfgates
Als Antwort auf Charlie Stross • • •