Or this... Probably exaggerated, no details, re. what kind of windmill, how big, how windy an alley is it in, how big a train etc. But OK, we get the point... It was 6 years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/10/dutch-trains-100-percent-wind-powered-ns
Darn, Just when Bat was getting ready to order a new Cyber Truck from Elmo https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/1...problems-than-gas-cars-says-consumer-reports/ Guess I'm struck with The RAM TRX
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/revolutionary-flying-sports-car-completes-its-maiden-flight Gas first but Samson Sky also provides a unique hybrid electric propulsion system specifically for flying cars that sets up its ability to transition to full electric operations as soon as battery technology allows.
Over a number of decades of life I remember so many times that somebody stated they had designed a private automobile that could also be used in a flight mode. But to my knowledge one still needs to pass a flight physical and then a given nation's FAA sort of testing system. I guess what I am trying to point out is to my mind a car is a car and a chopper or fixed wing is only just that. Sure, if you can fold up the wings of a fixed wing and then drive it on a highway, then it is a kind of car, but that has to be a seriously expensive piece of equipment and some awful trouble to pre-flight before using it in a flight mode. Actually, for the sake of safety one should also post-flight the equipment. And you have to keep some seriously correct maintenance records. I suppose my main point with this post is that I really can't see any advantage to having a flight control system that can be used in a ground movement role on a standard/common highway when that system is going to be amazingly expensive. Of course, if you're wealthy and want to look cool, maybe that makes sense. I remember when I was kid in Miami many, many years ago a big deal was a car that could be used as a boat. But even then you had to pass some sort of test for operating a boat. Maybe it was over a certain size of boat required passing a test. Obviously, a row boat for like fishing didn't require a license. Oh yes, and another thing; that bird in that image looks really light and really light can pose some serious problems sometimes. Oh well, at my advanced age my flying days are long over. In fact, I got medically grounded at an age when I could still have had a few more years of flying. Called a dislocation of the chain and that was before they were any good at fixing that problem. Seemed like an excellent time to just give it up. I'd had many hours of flight time and so didn't mind so much just quitting.
It's not the first flying car I remember seeing My medical was pulled 40+/- years ago as well for diabetes, sleep problems and narcotics taken for chronic pain. This one is classified as experimental and will have a N number so anyone with a single engine fixed wing VFR rating can pilot it. If I were Younger and extremely rich it'd be perfect for me to travel from Island to Island in the Philippines. I could always remove the seats and claim I got the weight down to Ultralight. Otherwise I 'm only expecting to see them user in Movie Chase scenes
Global Warming seem to be putting an end to the Electric Car Hype . Who knew You had to pre-charge your battery to condition it Before trying to charge your battery (Bat did, those chargers are useless and aggravating) Not a Good Look Elmo Musk . https://www.foxbusiness.com/technol...freezing-cold-a-bunch-of-dead-robots-out-here
https://www.extremetech.com/cars/teslas-are-dying-en-masse-amid-midwests-freezing-temperatures Says it all...
theyre good if you live in a bigger town and are just traveling work home work shopping home. electric cars are over 120 years old. back when they were invented they could do 100miles on a single charge 120 years passed they can do now 300miles. in early 1900 30% of all vehicles on the road were electric I'm talking about America yet dumped in favour of gas powered cars later on. future is electric but future haven't arrived yet i wont be here but by 2050 2070 every vehicle on the road will be electric. in 1900 people had exaclty the same dilemma they're having now. buy electric or gas powered car.
They still have a lot of problems with the battery's and discarding them and every once in a while they have fire, the thing is if you live up north what do you do with it when its cold ? park it all winter ? its still not developed enough and won't be for a number years ! at this stage that its in now i wouldn't buy one and i know people that bought one that wish they didnt, in the future it may be a good thing but not now .
Only in small number of cases - most people commute and shop, go out a bit and that's it. They don't discard the batteries but recycle them... Up to 95%! https://search.brave.com/search?q=recycling EV batteries&source=web And yes, improvements are being worked on all the time... https://search.brave.com/search?q=ongoing battery research and development&source=desktop The fire incidents are way fewer than the ICE vehicles... https://search.brave.com/search?q=vehicle fire comparison ICE v. EVs&source=desktop If they work in Finland, they work in the USofA... https://search.brave.com/search?q=finish taxi driver tesla km&source=desktop Lots of fossil fuel industry's myths there...
Do you really need a study to understand that, even in the worst scenario, of electricity supplied from a fuel powered power plant an electric car is immensely more efficient and less polluting? A bit of common sense should be enough. A fuel engine in the best (theoretical) scenario produces 75% heat and 25% mechanical power. A modern power plant has efficiency in the 90% ballpark. An electric motor (even a 100 years old one) is virtually eternal, and has very very high efficiency. Speaking of pollution a fuel power plant has external combustion, which means almost perfect combustion, a combustion engine is internal combustion, which means that a lot of gas is not burnt correctly, which means you need a catalytic converter (that lowers further the ridiculous efficiency) to mitigate the problem. Even taking in account the loss of power in the transformers and transmission lines, there is no freaking way that a electric car is less efficient or less polluting than a old school wheeled heater. And speaking about shifting the pollution around, even if a fueled power plant was producing the same amount of pollutants as the sum of the replaced ICEs (which obviously isn't the case), wasn't that alone enough to prefer the electric way? Do you prefer to have pollution in the middle of your town, or in the middle of nowhere, were usually the power plants are built? And that's assuming the electricity is totally produced using fossil fuels. \i don't even start talking about renewables....
Absolutely!!! Typically, an ICE vehicle converts only 20% of energy it uses (at most 40% in very expensive ICE vehicles). Typically, an EV vehicle uses 80% of the energy stored in the batteries (at best 97% of it, in very expensive EV vehicles). On the other hand... We know asthma cases in kids have been on a huge increase especially since the advent of diesel ICE vehicles. And we are placing our children's schools very, very close to major arteries in cities and towns (much cheaper to buy a plot there - ever asked yourself why?!?). We are sometimes utterly moronic, it seems to me... Stop repeating the fossil fuel industry's talking points and promoting their interests - they are opposite to your interests, especially in the long run, to the following generations!!! We must remove the worldwide yearly fossil fuel industry's subsidies of around $1.9 trillion and put it into R&D, renewables, sustainability, FCOL!!! Stop being the billionaires' and millionaires' useful fools!!!
GUI could "fix" it, even in Capitalism... Guaranteed Universal Income for all, regardless of blah-blah-blah.... Nowadays we have the resources, the machinery, the know-how and the riches produced are such that - provided we didn't have billionaires, to begin with - we could feed, clothe, house, heal etc. EVERYBODY!!! Workers could easily work only 4-5 hours a day, 4 days a week, the machines can do most of the nasty, dangerous, toxic stuff and the heavy lifting would not be a problem anymore... But oh, no, some just have to be "a tad" more equal than others... And then we have what we have - an adversarial society where loads of people are on drugs, legal or not... Oh, plus NO MORE WAR!!! Imagine all those resources aimed at eradicating poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance, dependence... Imagine those huge war machines no longer polluting our only homeland, the Earth...
Well that part isn't that simple, it was simpler in 1970. Now they have most of big names of fossil fuels that are investing $$$ in renewables, nuclear and research. The problem is more about everyone realized that the transition to electric cars will inevitably lead to the destruction of a once well oiled (pun intended) economy. Electric cars, are virtually immortal, are deadly simple to maintain, are deadly simple to build, which means that 90% of the workforce and economy will be destroyed. Here in Italy FIAT used to have around 200.000 workers directly employed and millions of indirect workers/subcontractors/car sellers/mechanics and so on... Let alone the other Italian car makers, let alone, the chain of imported cars. Those millions of people earned a salary, and used (a good share of) it to buy a car, and to replace it each few years, closing the circle. Capitalism, again Building a car that "never breaks", and that requires way less components, services, workforce, is a wrench thrown inside the well oiled mechanism mentioned above. That was pretty clear to the involved parties since the beginning of 1900, that's why gasoline car prevailed. That's why electric cars were a taboo for a century albeit perfectly feasible. Then someone like Musk happened to have enough money and enough power to push the electric cars again, and the rest is recent story. This will lead to further geopolitical troubles, in short aside the loss of jobs, it means that those jobs are mainly lost in Europe and created in the US and China and we are already seeing what geopolitical troubles are. In short it's way more complicate than a bunch of oil tycoons trying to maintain their status. Last but not least all workers who lost their work, or who are going to loose it, and shareholders of Oil companies, tend both to vote to the right, where politicians, who do stupid stings "by design", use that rage to fuel (pun intended again) their power. The only answer is what you already wrote, we MUST democratize the innovations. Innovations must be targeted to work less not to reduce salaries and number of jobs. If we fail to do so a WW3 is around the corner, and electrical cars v.s. ICEs will be our lesser problem.
At least now when the Baby Daddy says he's going out for a pack of smokes and doesn't come home for Days
It'd be good if you shared sources for this assertion that those corporations are investing in R&D To my mind, only the state has resources for real R&D, strategically oriented towards a novum, a true future, not a re-painted present. These corps are only interested in short to mid-term profits and the utilitarian approach is "it" for them. Their greed is blinding, their immediate profit-counting incentives and imperatives are mirrored in the fact they have quarterly reviews and if there are no growing numbers - out you are, on yer arse, especially in the Anglo-American business model... Musk would have been nowhere without the political will and true, independent scientists warning of an impending disaster and the need to fundamentally change! The corps were actively burying the reports made by their own scientist about global warming, with startling predictions, accurate beyond imagination, for a scientist, decades ago! He was close to a disaster at many turning points. Without the state - forget it... Tax breaks, grants, subsidies to buyers, you name it... (Not to mention Daddy's money to start with, of course...) Many new jobs will be created, since you are not mentioning it, in the emerging renewables industry. Well paid, skilled jobs, jobs that will require knowledge, as well. So, lots of people will have to develop much more than they did so far, I gather, similar to 100 years ago... The knowledge economy will change everything, so those who can't/won't will be either in services or on GUI and that's it, basically - get out of the way, that is how Capitalism is developing... Mazzucato, she has an excellent book about the entrepreneurial state, the only actor that does the true strategic research - you can forget the corps, that's peanuts by comparison... But what will it do with the innovations, will the state give them away yet again to 5-6 corps and let them fleece everybody or will it be emancipatory this time? Remains to be seen...
Once something becomes a business, corporations (at least a part of them) will pour money in anything they feel helps such business. And big corps are so entangled each other that is hard to track where their money, go but be sure that most of the traditional oil companies, stopped to ask if the transition will happen, and started to ask WHEN. That said there are companies that made bolder moves, is little known even in Italy what happened to the ERG company (which used to be one of the largest Italian oil player) after their gasoline station changed owner. Well they sold, in a small timeframe, all the oil related assets and started to invest in wind turbines, hydroelectric and alike Yes that's mostly true, but it's truer for more dynamic companies, like high tech ones. Other ones that based the business on one single thing can't overlook that IF that single thing disappears, they are screwed. See, for example, what happened to the original Philip Morris company, when they realized that smoking stopped to be trendy.... It's easy to gain political support when a business model bring money to your country. It's true for Apple, MS, Goggle, Facebook, it's true for Tesla as well. They keep the USA economy afloat, they gain political support. Pretty simple. Be sure that no one would have supported Tesla if Detroit was the same Detroit it was in 1960s, and Musk threatened the US economy itself rather than threatening the European/Japanese/Korean ones. Well, I'm afraid that there is no way that new tech can create as many skilled jobs, as the destroyed less skilled ones. A single AI program can kill "overnight" hundreds of thousand of jobs, and isn't matter of low level positions in call centers anymore, we are talking even of journalist, coders, actors and so on. The switch to electric cars will disrupt a lot of jobs, but that's nothing if compared to AI, advanced robotics and automation. The only way out of what are going to face, is to introduce a new model globally, a Start Trek like world to put it simple, or a big war that destroy most of what we already have, to allow to reboot the mechanism. (perhaps a war that in Star Trek narrative happened). I'm afraid we will take the second option...
So, basically, these are mostly your impressions... OK, I can see the confusion but I understand it, as contradictions are the very heart of Capitalism, so no wonder... A few points to that end... Well, Tesla was supported before it became a worldwide known brand and sold loadsa cars around the globe. Why? Political paradigm, the USofA strategy has changed. Had he come earlier - he would have been out on his ear... Similarly, https://www.theguardian.com/comment...profit-green-renewables-fossil-fuels-net-zero - they must be pushed, punished, cajoled, titillated, threatened, encouraged, bribed - because they can only count, here and now - profits first, second, third... Ergo, it's down to the strategists, the politicians, the real power-brokers, partly led by scientists and fundamental research and development (which only the political state can do, as Mazzucato aptly demonstrated in the book mentioned above) - whereas big businesses (esp. in the Anglo-American world) are short to mid-term at best (and that's stretching it!). See Hutton's "The state we're in" for example... On the other hand, the elites have fundamentally changed the system which was open to failure at the beginning of Liberalism. Nowadays, not so much (as it killed its own legitimacy by not allowing failed capitalists to become proletarians!!!): https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...-income-taxes-for-10-of-past-15-years-report/ This might help, I hope: Therein lies the role of the state... Strategy! Most economists are bonkers!!! Businessmen are even worse! That's prof. Wolff's point from the video... One point that I made and you missed about GUI (Guaranteed Universal Income, which is one way out of this conundrum, if given regardless of anything) - creating wealth at a price of reducing jobs or working time is fine, as they now have a "way out" IF it pays out to the bosses (the billionaires pulling the strings behind the scenes, using their wealth). But here's a pearl: if the state guarantees billionaires' survival regardless of the stupidity of their often highly speculative "investments" (prof. Harvey's point from the video), then it can also do the other side of the coin and use the taxes to recreate the kind of economy we'll have ==> high tech, very productive, mostly highly educated people running it, short working hours, fewer days a week, fewer people employed... Of course, this is just one way of dealing with the enormous surpluses the late Capitalism is producing. Another one would be to try to establish a Nazi-Fascist dictatorship and not share the wealth we all create but only allow a few to keep amassing it... (whatever for?!?) And this is how history develops - through its contradictions...