frezik

That's the real kicker. Gets especially hard if you don't want a Tesla.

Many of the conservatives who cite heaviness of EVs as a problem didn't say shit as ICE cars got heavier and they bought F150s to go to Walmart.

There's no reason to think that will last. The kwh/kg of batteries improves by 5-8% per year, and we've been in the higher end of that range the last few years. Meanwhile, EVs are about 30% heavier. It will take a few years of improvement to make up that gap, but there's every reason to expect this trend to continue.

Also, it takes a few years for new batteries to find their way into existing models. 1.08^4 = 1.36, which means improvements in batteries since 2020 could have made up this gap already.

And those cheaper batteries may not be as compromising as people think. In terms of kwh/kg, the sodium-ion batteries coming on the market now are about where lithium poly batteries were about 4 years ago. It takes a few years before new batteries make their way into EVs, which means EVs being purchased right now have batteries with a similar kwh/kg of the new sodium-ion batteries. Those batteries are around 30% cheaper and don't have the same level of fire hazards as some lithium chemistries.

So if EVs on the market today have adequate range for your use, you'll probably be just fine with a future sodium-ion EV.

If you do the math, the common standard plugs simply can't do the charging rates that would be required here. You'd need a whole new plug design on top of all new chargers.

It's also silly and unnecessary. We should focus on getting more chargers out there, not chasing a fast charge time goal. If you plan your route out a bit, 20-30 minute charge times every 2-4 hours are fine for the vast majority of people.

https://wumpus-cave.net/post/2024/03/2024-03-30-ten-minute-ev-charging-wont-happen/index.html

Their batteries are usually top notch. If you're hunting around for 18650 cells--which are notoriously bad for fake claims on Amazon and Aliexpress ("80,000mAh!!!!" when the best 18650 cells are closer to 3,500mAh)--a genuine Samsung cell is a safe bet.

Plus, short sellers make money when the price goes down. If they're not classified as investors, then who is ever making the price go up?

GNU HURD remains ignored.

Line must go up. If line doesn't go up, it's dead. It can't go down, and it can't level off, either.

It's an unhealthy approach to anything. Things will level off eventually. Palworld's initial hype was never going to last, but if it settled into a nice plateau that let the devs pay their bills, that's fine. The giants of the industry consider such a thing to be failure, but fuck them. Players shouldn't buy into that mindset.

Maybe they could, like, put good switches in their high end mice? And building them in a modular, repairable way?

I had a G903 with the wireless charging pad. The switches starting going bad within a year. I tried replacing those switches with higher quality ones, but a ribbon cable broke while getting it apart. The ribbon cable had one end sealed inside a module, so you have the replace that whole thing. Ended up writing the whole thing off and bought a Glorious (which are quite nice).

Won't touch their high end mouses anymore. Their cheap wireless mice are still pretty good and will run on a single AA battery forever (how? I don't know). Why do they cut corners on the high end of the market?

Libertarian Socialism has little to do with US libertarians. The term was openly stolen for the Right. The intellectual history is completely separate.

Murray Rothbard: "One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over... "

While it's true that lots of libertarians prefer Linux, the first ancap I met in an online forum was a Romanian-born Christian living in the US, was so fundamentalist that he was actively looking for a church where men and women sat on different sides of the pews, loved Microsoft, and hated Linux. He also had a habit of changing the definition of words in the middle of debates. People found him completely infuriating.

Creating a FOSS EV is all do-able right now with off the shelf motors and batteries. Welding a frame would take some skill. How to title it would depend on the local government rules; many states in the US have a kit car designation for this sort of thing, but not all do.

If it's built rigid like a race car with a roll cage, four-point harness, and at least a DOT rated helmet for everyone inside (if not Snell), it could be safer then most cars on the road. If it's not very large, then it's probably safer for pedestrians and bicycles, too.

I don't expect air bags to be viable. It takes a lot of tuning to get them right, and they can be worse than nothing if not done right (they're basically a controlled explosion). However, the race car-like design above, plus helmets, would keep you safer than any air bag. Road cars converted to track cars often disable or remove the air bags. The rules of the event may even require it. They're counterproductive dead weight when you're packed in this way.

Other creature comforts are going to be what you put into it, but keep in mind that many of the things we take for granted in modern cars--A/C, stereos, padded seats, etc.--add a whole lot of weight.

What also adds weight is how many passengers you want to carry at once. Two passengers won't add much weight, but four or more would. All that extra frame material adds up.

Building a traditional frame would take some welding skills. I have just enough welding skills to make some shelves, but anything structural (which my tutor defined as "anything where somebody's life depends on the weld holding") is not something I'm comfortable doing. That is to say, it'll take more than a quick tutorial and a little practice.

However, one interesting possibility is epoxy. Lotus did this for the Elise, and I once tracked down the epoxy manufacturer they use (I'd have to search around to find it again, though). The instructions for it didn't seem to need anything particularly out of reach for a hobbyist (doesn't need a big autoclave or anything like that). Lotus did reinforce certain sections with bolts/rivets. It will take some knowledge to design a frame around this, but it's one time design work by an engineer and then everyone can copy it.

One advantage Lotus had over a welded frame was thinner material. A weld itself is very strong, but it weakens the metal around it (meaning you usually get breaks around the weld, not on it). You have to use thicker metal to compensate for that. Since Lotus was using an epoxy, they could use thinner material for less weight, and it was stronger in the end.

Since it's also getting rid of a whole lot of weight around the frame, the range you get out of those batteries could be extreme. It could also be extremely quick with a modest motor.

This is basically all to say that you can have any three: safe, creature comforts, enough space for passengers, range.