Posts by John Robson

Re: Thank god for small favors

"Ah yes, but given the lack of chargers it is highly likely that you may spend as much time queueing as you will charging if you managed to arrive just when all chargers filled up. In other words, you then spend time watching for people trying to jump the queue."

Ah - someone who doesn't have an EV making up situations again. If I arrive somewhere and the chargers are all in use I'll probably carry on to the next charger, at the second one I'll check how long the vehicle in front is likely to be and make a judgement call (based on the state of the bladders in the car), only at the third will I usually wait.

Of course this hasn't happened in a very long while, because it's already pretty rare, and getting consistently rarer with public chargers becoming both more numerous and faster.

And it's only ever something you ever need to think about on relatively rare long journeys - because 98% of the mileage is done without ever touching the public charging network. Whereas an ICE vehicle is always looking at the next fuel station, even when you are only doing typical (and inherently inefficient) short journeys.

Not everyone can charge off road, but the vast majority can (24% of households don't have off street parking, but 23% of households don't have a car - those groups won't perfectly overlap, but I suspect there will be a correlation that is substantially better than random).

I often see queues at dino juice stations, and remember them being common as well. The queues might only take 5-10 minutes but this affects ICE owners for every mile they do, not so for EV owners.

Re: Thank god for small favors

"I think the key question here is how much that costs in terms of energy and range"

Well, actually it costs some energy, and *improves* range - because the batteries spend very little time at the less efficient lower temperatures. Of course if you are plugged in overnight then the batteries can be prewarmed from the mains, so the range is unaffected (though the electricity cost will still exist).

"Personally I prefer a PHEV - best of both worlds."

Or the worst of both worlds, carrying around multiple basically independent power trains...

A modern 350kW charger (in a car that will take it) will give you enough juice to do your next 2 hours of motorway driving in less time than it takes you to relieve yourself of your previous drink (6 minutes provides 35kWh, which is about 140 miles or two hours on the motorway).

It takes easily that long to pump liquid fuel (and pay for it), although you probably need to do it less often, but comfort breaks are a safety thing as well as a comfort thing - and you can't take a break whilst you fill up, because you have to supervise the pump.

Long journey in Australia as an example.

Re: Thank god for small favors

Well - since deisel will be significantly gelled at that temoperature... you might find that even ten miles will beat an ICE.

Or you could look at actual behaviour... Let's pick norway, since they have pretty cold winters. Teslas are well used as well - because they manage their battery temperature.

So it's not inevitable that an EV range suffers any more than an ICE does.

Re: Thank god for small favors

And physics is why decent EVs thermally manage their batteries.

I read it as the common accusation that the heater was to blame... If you drive an ICE vehicle that gets 50mpg you lose about 8 miles an hour of range idling the engine.

In an EV if you assume that you are going to use a 4kW heater constantly (which strikes me as rather unlikely) then you give up ~16 miles an hour.

Yes, in percentage terms it's worse, but I've been very generous to the ICE here. My last ICE vehicle was meant to get 50mpg, I used to get ~35-36 on a good day (worse in the cold) - so that was probably losing 11-12 miles of range an hour.

An EV heater should be a heat pump, and shouldn't need a constant 4kW (being in a small box with four single bar electric heaters seems like it would get quite warm quite fast, so even 4kW heat required seems overkill). If you drop to 2kW heating load you're already down to 8 miles an hour range - if you can lower that load using a heat pump then, hang on I was already losing less range than my ICE vehicle.

Re: Thank god for small favors

You could get a vehicle with a decent heat pump :p

Re: Turbo Pascal - Missing Semi-Colon at line 454

If you know the code is missing a semi colon, and you know exactly where it is missing a semi colon... then just assume one is there...

You accidentally hit the n key...

"Modern tag lie" is presumably what you meant to type

Re: Ah, the old moving goalposts

"AV are not up to human standards"

I think you overestimate the standards of human drivers.

For appropriate roads (and here motorways are pretty much the ideal case) AV can already do two things:

- Navigate the motorway better than a meatsack

- Hand back to a relatively fresh meatsack at the far end

- Thus improving the safety of roads it's not used on

Meh - it depends on *how* they disengage...

It might turn out that it's better to stop than just stop controlling stuff...

Re: I'd be amazed if they intend to power them with coal.

I'll take that as an "I didn't bother counting external costs because they're inconvenient".

There is no doubt that a large scale burn can be better controlled than lots of small burns - and EVs take advantage of that brilliantly. But they also allow for significantly cleaner methods of energy harvesting.

The fact that you think that solar panels have a 10 year lifespan and then have to go to landfill is the killer though - solar panels are easily recycled, and the volume of them coming to the end of their life is starting to grow, which will make this an easier process still.

Re: I'd be amazed if they intend to power them with coal.

"Actual real-world all-in costs."

So you've included illnesses and deaths from pollution, the costs of climate change...

What value did you put on death or on long term lung disease?

Re: I'd be amazed if they intend to power them with coal.

"Coal remains very much the cheapest large scale energy source on genuine all-in whole-of-life basis."

Assuming you ignore all the costs you don't like

Re: What I learned from the Pandemic

"There's nothing inane about freedom."

"Freedom" to not wear a piece of fabric is inane.

Freedom to leave your house is important.

The refusal of people to wear a small amount of fabric prevents many others from leaving their house...

Therefore the "freedom" to not wear at least a small piece of fabric is not - people claiming it are doing a massive disservice to the concept of freedom.

Re: Two mutually exclusive options here

No IP addresses aren't hugely reliable, but they are a reasonable first effort, and will deal with the vast majority of issues.

The fact that we don't even try to prosecute any of them is the problem, not that we can't catch the tech savvy few percent.

Re: Two mutually exclusive options here

And the vast majority of those people could be easily traced - simply get the IP address used to post the offensive material and follow the ISP.

What we need is police, and courts, willing to act on such hate crimes. Not the compulsion to spaff your real address everywhere, making doxing even easier.

Re: Two mutually exclusive options here

Why does anonymity prevent security?

Re: It's ID cards again isn't it?

Simple - it could be a signed certificate.

Government creates a CA, then an issuing cert - this signs the certs of local authorities who then sign your ID without ever having to store the details.

Re: "the next evolution in delivery technology"

You only need emergency drugs to be kept cold for the flight though - if it's not needed in the next thirty minutes it's not an emergency delivery.

A relatively small pack of dry ice in an insulated container is likely to be more than is needed.

One of my medications needs to be kept refrigerated, but it is always warmed to room temperature before use (since very cold injections aren't all that fun). I presume the same is the case with insulin (just checked - 28 day lifetime at reasonable temperatures), which would probably mean that you don't even need to actively cool it, maybe wrap it in a little bubble wrap if you live in a very hot part of the world...

Re: "the next evolution in delivery technology"

There are very few places where the roads are not going to be maintained anyway, and the carbon footprint of the person is not tied to their job.

A failure in tracking isn't a reason not to use a delivery - you'll end up with exactly the same problem with any delivery mechanism.

If you *must* have nuggets at 3 in the morning then I question your choices - but I'd suggest that a fleet of drones shouldn't be operating at 3 in the morning anyway. A simple bike is almost certainly the better choice.

If you need an AED at 3 in the morning then absolutely send a drone, or maybe just don't - since you seem to think that the drone would then be responsible for the rest of that person's lifetime carbon emissions (at least you attribute those to the trike).

In the context of the planet it's renewable - because it it constantly being renewed by the sun.

In the context of the universe then we don't even exist as a rounding error on the least significant bit of any reasonable representation of the energy in play.

Re: Cost

Yep - and they now *know* a condition that they can't get away with.

Far better than a "we're not quite sure".

Re: Read the damn weather forcast

If I am reading it correctly - those 9 sats had already raised their orbits when the storm hit (and brought the atmosphere up to meet the other 40)

Re: Insured?

And?

How much does a launch, let alone the hardware, cost for a conventional rocket customer?

That's a worthwhile test.