Posts by John Robson

Tesla owners win legal fight after software update crippled older Model S batteries

Re: Carbon neutral

Yes - cash where there is a retail store would be good - but the plethora of incompatible apps and special RFID cards is a mess that shouldn't be there.

Re: Carbon neutral

Motability lease - can't do that.

Re: Carbon neutral

three or four long range tanks in a day?

I will assume that a long range tank takes more gas than a standard tank - so we're looking at 600+ miles per tank.

That's 1800-2400 miles in a day - or an average speed of 75 to 100 mph even at the low end of that range.

I don't believe it.

Re: Carbon neutral

So how many times a week *do* you fill up the fuel tank?

Re: Carbon neutral

Fuel is cheap when you aren't being taxed based on the damage it does.

Low grade fuel (diesel) is even cheaper than a high grade fuel (petrol), doesn't burn as cleanly, but it's still very dense and since it's low grade, it's cheap.

Re: Carbon neutral

No idea, I don't keep track of chargers on a continent that is thousands of miles away.

There is no reason there shouldn't be chargers there - and they will get installed.

Re: Carbon neutral

No - I'm suggesting one possible alternative, and one that I enjoyed the last time I did it. I used to enjoy driving as well*, but that doesn't mean I couldn't also enjoy letting the train do all the work for a good portion of it.

Another option would be to plan that route and stop off at interesting places along the way... where's the fun in just sitting on a motorway for 24 hours straight anyway.

* Disability is a bitch - it's now much too hard work to be enjoyable.

Re: Carbon neutral

The tragedy of the commons in action.

You might be perfectly happy with your fleet - but I'd wager that a little thought would allow at least some of the fleet to be electrified.

How many vehicles does it take to be called a fleet?

Re: Carbon neutral

> Charging either at home or work is the obvious solution for the vast majority

But charging at home isn't an option for a *lot* of people. If your parking is on-street, rather than drive (or, better, garage), then the fact you've got 240v at home really doesn't matter - you can't connect the car into it.

Having on-street only parking isn't exactly uncommon (flats, some terraced houses, even some semis) either, so you'd need on-street charging points, or the amount of car-park chargers you need has to increase significantly because those car parks are going to become the new fuel stations.

I did use the word *OR*

When I have lived in flats we have always had a small car park, no good for plugging an extension cable in, but no reason not to have charge points there.

When I lived in terraced housing I could usually park near a lamppost (i.e. electricity was never far away), although I obviously couldn't choose which one - or even which street.

I now have off street parking at home, which is a luxury - but not as stupendously rare as you seem to think it is. Indeed analysis suggests that's only 25% of households in the UK.

That was from a report that was trying to make that figure as big as possible, and they topped out at "a staggering 24.6%". But 23.9% of UK households don't have a car at all.

[London is the outlier here - where 45% of households don't have (or need) a car - but the rest of the country still gets 20% without.]

Average UK milage (based on aggregate MOT data) shows that each car travels on average less than 8k miles/year. That requires ~2MWh/year or an average of 230W, call it 750W for 8 hours a day.

"As someone else said further up - it's not that it's not do-able, but any claim that it's nearly there (or that we're in anyway ready to try and push consumers off ICE over to EV) is just bluster."

We're not there yet, but we're also not as far off as you make out...

75% of UK households have available parking, 25% don't need to change to an EV at all - those aren't strictly additive, but the overlap will be better than random (since low income households are likely to fall into the "no parking space" and "no car" camps). If the distribution is random then we've covered 82% of households. Given that it won't be, I guess we're somewhere between 85% and 90% before we even start looking at the workplace.

Re: Carbon neutral

I figure that when EVs hit about 10% of the vehicle fleet things will start breaking badly and the National Grid will be the entity screaming the loudest

And yet they don't have an issue at all - I know who I think is better placed to determine if it's a problem.

Re: Carbon neutral

I did read your reply - I didn't say that it had already happened, I said it was what was enabled.

You then decided that "A small EV needs a number of hours charging every 100 or so miles." 100 miles is probably 25kWh, or half an hour on a fast charger, or four on a slow charger... but the point is that you don't need to wait to empty the battery - with regular access to an easy to use slow charger there is basically no time required to charge the car - you plug in as you get to work, and unplug when you leave. Maybe we should have a standard downward facing port that can auto connect when we park, but I think that's probably excessive engineering.

That's why slow chargers need to be ubiquitous - plug in at the supermarket for 30 minutes, that's 14 miles, which will cover the journey to and from the supermarket and some more for the vast majority of people.

Charging either at home or work is the obvious solution for the vast majority, and places of work should be strongly encouraged to install numerous slow chargers, and solar panels to contribute to the load as well.

The public charging network is OK, but it's really not good enough that ecotricity have a monopoly on service stations, and don't have 24/7 phone support. It's not good enough that they aren't expanding the count of "pumps" or providing more that support the UK charging standard rather than the japanese standard. It's not good enough that some chargers end up out of action for weeks at a time. But there are improvements coming all the time. Ionity might well be expensive (nearly as expensive as petrol for the end of any journey that needs them), but they are putting in very high speed chargers (350kW is 1400 miles an hour) in sensible numbers, and are supporting them.

Re: Carbon neutral

50+kW chargers have a place, but the current assumption is that it's the only charger that makes sense - when that isn't the case.

The model for filling up an EV is fundamentally different from that of a ICE.

I am not saying that there should *only* be 7kW chargers (that would be as barmy as saying that there should only be 50+kW chargers), but that for many destinations 7kW is sufficient, and not wanting to move the car after 45 minutes can even be an advantage.

Currently there are very few places installing multiple low power chargers - and that number should increase.

They are substantially cheaper than the large units, and should therefore be much easier to have plenty of them installed.

Re: Carbon neutral

"New car sales are dropping and people are buying second hand"

Yep - but the path of cars from new to scrap doesn't change significantly - those ICE cars will still be driven into the ground. The EV market has a second hand stream which is only just picking up, and you seem surprised that it contains older EVs?

"A round trip needs to have spare mileage to account for diversions, putting on your heating and having several people/luggage in the car, and to take the opportunity to 'just pop down the road to the shops' - this is stunningly obvious and I didn't feel i had to spell it out."

Yes - and 20 miles is plenty for a diversion, heating actually makes very little difference to range, particularly on such a short run. The reason I said 140 was realistic was that it included the family and stuff in the car.

Ideally we'd have heat pumps in all EVs, but even resistive heating doesn't actually put a serious dent in the battery (certainly not in the UK).

"I'm sure EV will get there eventually, but not when it means having to change your lifestyle to accommodate something that's more expensive and less convenient. The whole reason most people bought cars in the first place was to make their life more flexible and convenient, not less."

Erm - nope, they are less expensive in terms of TCO (I save ~£2000 a year on fuel costs alone), and did you really find it a challenge to change from a phone with a battery that lasted all week to one which you charge daily? The EV is no less flexible and convenient than an ICE - in fact I never have to go to a petrol station at all - so it's more convenient if anything.

Re: Carbon neutral

It's already been done by enthusiasts... A flat bed trailer with a second hand car battery does add significantly to range - and of course you can put things on the trailer as well, even another battery if you really need it.

It's an interesting option, and if you could add a 'skirt' to couple a trailer to the car in aero terms then the range increase could be substantial. Obviously you end up having to go slightly slower, because the speed limit for towing vehicles is lower, but that gives you a further range boost as well.

You don't need the car to do the overrun braking - the first stage of the overrun system should be on board regen on the trailer, with mechanical brakes kicking in slightly further down the travel of the overrun system.

Just running the batteries in parallel seems like a good idea, but you really want to be able to preferentially use the trailer battery. So use the car for the first 20% (to give decent regen capacity), then pull from the trailer (which can do it's own regen), then you still have car range when you get somewhere and can unhitch the trailer.

Re: Carbon neutral

"That's very expensive compared to a second hand car/wanting to own the car yourself."

Well that's no surprise, you can't expect a new car to be cheaper than a second hand one (although mine actually is almost exactly the same cost when I account for depreciation / replacement costs over the last fifteen years of second hand car ownership - that's the benefit of motability rather than anything else though).

"140 miles isn't enough. I don't want to spend forty minutes recharging my car when driving sixty miles away, that's a large chunk of the time to drive one way."

Erm ?

driving 60 miles away that's a round trip of 120 miles which is easily under 140, so you wouldn't need to spend any time charging, because that happened overnight.

If you're tired and hungry then a charge stop is exactly what you need - grab a cup of coffee, and resume your journey with a fresh head rather than driving tired.

It's a different style of journey, but having had one... I'm not going back to internal combustion.

Re: Carbon neutral

"That still seems to be some years away."

Oh no - this solution isn't already completely rolled out so it can't possibly be worked towards.

Yes, it's not all there yet, and the thing that annoys me is the assumption that a public charger has to be 50kW or more to be any use. I'd rather car parks were equipped to charge 7 cars at 7kW a piece than 1 at 50.

Service stations are the obvious exception to this rule, but "destination" chargers should be ubiquitous, and generally slow.

But then they should also all be contactless enabled...

Re: Carbon neutral

Or maybe take a different approach to your holiday.

I remember putting the car on the train to go across europe, that was great fun.

Re: Carbon neutral

Why would you sit around for several hours? Those long journey charges are where the rapid charges come in - generally 40-45 minutes for 80%+ fill (not usually much point in trying to rapid charge the last 20%). Enough time to grab a cup of coffee, relax after having been driving for the previous two to three hours and journey on refreshed.

Re: Carbon neutral

"The only passenger cars of this sort that I've seen are exotics."

Vauxhall Ampera, Chevy Volt... Hardly exotic.

You could, but really - do you need to add the complexity of an ICE to the mix?

There are two trains of thought (if you'll excuse the pun):

- Range extender.

A reasonably sized battery pack paired with a dinky little engine and generator combo (e.g. Vauxhall Ampera)

- Battery augmented ICE

A little battery to help get the most out of a little engine (think F1, but on far fewer steroids) (e.g. Outlander PHEV)

Both get many of the disadvantages of both drivetrains - with stagnant fuel being a real issue for at least one couple I know with an RE vehicle.

If you want an interesting hybrid drive train then the Volt had a *series* hybrid, and that was an interesting drivetrain in terms of design and efficiency. Technology Connections did a rather good YT video about it.

I could use a range extension (or public chargers) maybe half a dozen times a year... That's it.

It would be interesting to have a rear bumper mounted generator that you just ran on the motorway - one way rentals would keep them available for general use much of the time.

Or since you like trains... maybe a catenary over certain sections of the motorway, obviously not at junctions (but you don't need it to be constant).

Given the potential densities of solid state batteries it might be something that's incredibly rare in not all that long.

How much power do we need anyway?

Just pre-covid a study showed that in the UK: "the average commute time in the UK is now 62 minutes a day, with 15% of workers commuting for 102 minutes or more. 23 miles is the average round trip, while 14% of commuters travel over 42 miles a day."

So that's 86% of people needing less than 12kWh/day (that's assuming a pretty poor 3.5 m/kwh) - most of those needing much less (the overall average is 6.5kWh/day). Assuming an eight hour working day and/or eight hours of sleep at home that's sub 1kW per parking space at a workplace *or* at home...

50kW+ chargers aren't needed everywhere, they're really useful for the occasional long journey, but the vast majority of even "public" charging should be done at places like the office, or the supermarket, or....

At <1kW needed during the day, and a typical car parking space being over 10 square metres... that would only need a 10% efficient panel - so with current panels being ~20% efficient that takes care of quite a bit of the demand (I've deliberately ignored seasons and weather, hopefully a factor of two will help significantly).

It's not the only source of energy they'll ever need, but it's certainly one they could use - and the advantage of doing it at work is that that's usually when the sun is out. The weekend is when it rains in my experience.

Re: Carbon neutral

Yes, because we haven't gone from 50 Wh/kg to 250Wh/kg in the last couple of decades... Oh, wait - we *have* done that.

Battery tech has advanced a long way in the last twenty years, but there is still a long way for it to improve, and the current level of R&D is genuinely exciting. Not everything will work, that's why it's R&D, but some of it will, and will bring significant improvements to the market.

Re: Carbon neutral

By under the truck I don't mean in the ground clearance...

There is plenty of space currently taken up by the gaps between deep section structural members. You don't get to use it because it would be an awkward load area.

Current EVs can replace the vast majority of current cars.

In fact it's even more true than it was when cars were 15 years old, and people complained they didn't run on oats, and you couldn't just swap one out at your local inn to keep going.

The economic problem isn't... the new EV isn't a replacement for a 20 year old Honda... in twenty years time it will be.

There isn't a particularly large proportion of car owners who don't have an electricity supply.

Cars spend the vast majority of their time parked somewhere... whether that enables charging at work or at the supermarket... I don't know anyone with a petrol pump at home, however will car drivers manage.

Re: The overwhelming majority of the ongoing maintenance cost and effort is ... the ICE itself

Sorry - but other than regular brake changes (which are less frequent on an EV because most of thee braking is by regen) the vast majority of the issues I've had on my vehicles over the last twenty years have been engine/gearbox related.

I did have one suspension spring fail, but that was the exception rather than the rule. Gasket leaks, turbo issues, timing belts, fuel contamination, gearbox failure, clutch failure.

None of those apply to an EV.

Things like suspension linkages are all fairly robust...

"The drivetrain in an ICE vehicle contains 2,000+ moving parts typically, whereas the drivetrain in an EV contains around 20." (first google link on the question - Forbes)

That's an awful lot of additional components

Re: Carbon neutral

I'll reiterate my previous comment (though it's clear we agree):

"The fact that it isn't currently available doesn't mean it can't be made..."

It really irritates me the the vehicle I have has an ICE equivalent, which is rated for towing, but the EV isn't. Even just towing a teeny domestic trailer the couple of miles to the dump is useful - but can't be done legally.

The whole back end of the car is basically identical (since all the power stuff is at the front of both versions), so whilst there isn't an exhaust pipe coming through I'd be marginally surprised if the tunnel for it wasn't there.

Yes, it would affect the range of the vehicle, as it does for an ICE vehicle, but so what - that's what the battery gauge is for.

Re: Carbon neutral

Certified towing weight and actual towing capacity are completely different things.

Milage reduction will depend in large part on what the hell you are towing. Is it aerodynamic, does that complement the vehicle aero, or does it actively break up the aero design.

What's the mass being towed, how many hills (since trailers of any significant mass have overrun brakes you can't regen from them, so it makes more difference than it would normally)

So -exactly how long is this piece of string?

Re: Fuel is the least of the cost in the total life of the car

Absolutely - fuel is the dominant factor in vehicle life emissions. Yes, there is a sunk cost in manufacture, but fuel fairly quickly dominates.

Re: Carbon neutral

Pickup trucks tend to already weigh an absolute ton... their engines are not exactly light weight, and there is a huge amount of room underneath the floor and in front of the driver.

The fact that it isn't currently available doesn't mean it can't be made...

There are promised advances in battery tech which are likely to make a significant difference, the ICE has had a century of refinement, and with hybrid assistance the best engines in the world are just about breaking 50% efficiency... We've not come all that far with batteries yet.

EVs are the future, even if they come with a fuel cell, or a thorium reactor, on board to act as a constant trickle charge, so the (now pretty small) battery is continually topped up from the fuel cell, and the energy is deployed for climbing, accelerating, etc.

Re: Carbon neutral

Your 22 year old car won't get very far id you never fill it up either.

Re: Carbon neutral

You want torque for your off road truck?

You want torque for towing?

Electric will give you all you could ever want.

The fact that noone has yet made the vehicle you claim to want doesn't mean that the power source isn't appropriate.

A pickup could easily have a very significant battery pack very easily, it's not as if space/weight are important (else you wouldn't be driving a pickup).

Milage quotes are always unladen, that's how milage is quoted in any vehicle (probable exception for a real truck - an HGV)

And what is that - fleet operators are lining up for the tesla semi? Why, because it's cheaper and simpler to operate...

Re: Carbon neutral

FUD much?

"Too expensive, limited battery life, difficult repairs, meddling manufacturers."

Too expensive - only way I could afford a new car was because it was an EV, not dino juice powered. Teslas are fairly expensive, but that's like saying that ICE cars are too expensive because I can't afford a Jaguar... (Car being on a motability lease means that operational cost savings are very significant in terms of how much you can spend on the car itself, never bought a new car before).

Limited battery life - How much battery life do you need on a regular basis?

Relatively few people need seriously long range, my current vehicle has a WLTP of 160, realistically that's 140. I only charge once a week normally, and it makes our semi regular "long" journey a whopping 40 minutes longer over a six hour journey. It's rather nice having a break and stretching one's legs after a couple of hours of driving. But even my longest, completely insane, commute would have been covered - and it would have taken all of 10 extra seconds a day (to plug in as I got home, unplug as I left for work).

Difficult repairs - Less so than an ICE vehicle. Let's face it both are basically computers on wheels nowadays, and the EV does have a significant advantage, a much lower part count.

Meddling manufacturers - Manufacturer of my vehicle hasn't touched it since I took delivery. And I'll probably ask for the latest update when it goes in for a service. Tesla have over the air updates, which are generally well received because they are improvements to the vehicle systems.

In this case it seems a safety update has lowered the performance of the battery system, which is really not good - but that's as much a failure of communication as anything else.

As for carbon neutral - I'm nowhere near. I'm closer than I was with an ICE car, but unlike Norway our grid is not 96% hydro powered (which is pretty darned close to carbon neutral).

Former IT manager from Essex pleads guilty to defrauding the NHS of £800k

Re: Promotion to the Cabinet chumocracy

Yep - of course the difference is merely the amount they can sign off..

What do they say, if you owe the bank a thousand pounds it's your problem, if you owe them a million pounds it's theirs.

AWS Free Tier, where's your spending limit? 'I thought I deleted everything but I have been charged $200'

For you it's a small amount, but for the potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of customers they are doing this to - that's alot of money for them

Unfixable Apple M1 chip bug enables cross-process chatter, breaking OS security model

Re: Major security risk

Given that I've been locked down since early March last year, that's 15 months so far.

OK - In the last 8 months I have left the house to exercise outdoors on my own - but the previous seven I left the house for three shielded blood testing clinics.

So yes - 5 months feels pretty short to me.

Re: Major security risk

There is a wide gulf between "close all the borders completely" and "actually implement a quarantine"

Yes, we'd still need food (and other) deliveries, but it is technically possible to switch trailers between trucks (not easy in terms of space, but technically possible) such that even the haulage doesn't need to present a significant ingress route.

What we actually did was open our borders completely, stop any checks at them and not bother with quarantine at all (and as far as I can tell we still don't have anything approaching quarantine).

We're an island, and should have been able to take advantage of that fact. We didn't - at all. We didn't even try to.

Re: Major security risk

Do try to keep up - "Both vaccines...."

And the trick is to realise that with "Pile the corpses high" de pfeffel in charge the indian variant, due to the increased transmission, will rapidly become the dominant form,

Re: Major security risk

Difference is that the UK have killed off 130 thousand people by not locking down until far too late, and Australia haven't even got to one thousand yet.

That's what rapid, short, lockdowns can acheive.

USB-C levels up and powers up to deliver 240W in upgraded power delivery spec

Re: I predict excitement

"I have not touched any live part for decades now without first testing for live current. Somewhat OCD I even do that with power down, but I figured it's a good enough habit not to break it for the sake of appearances"

Not OCD at all...

How do you know that you.ve powered down the right circuit without testing for live *before* you turn the circuit off, and then again afterwards?

The Epic vs Apple trial is wrapping up, but the battle has just begun

Re: Are Apple doing a good job at securing the iStore

But also have the most trusted developers - probably ones they talk to regularly.

Nature is healing: Shhh. It's a lesser spotted Pi Bork nesting behind the bushes at IKEA

Can you black box the OS off either the network or a USB drive for the more recent versions which support said boot modes directly?

You mean with the dual video outputs on the Pi4?

Or you mean driving a video wall?

I imagine that's pretty niche for any OS... and isn't really digital signage any more.

Apple patches macOS flaw exploited by malware to secretly snap screenshots

Derp - completely misread what you'd actually said... my bad.

"The other is still more secure than any other desktop system."

I think that's a stretch.

In a default home user configuration I suspect macOS is less likely to be compromised than a similar windows box.

That's partly due to default home user settings, and partly due to the prevalence and therefore attack surface.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander set to ride a SpaceX Falcon 9 to the Moon

Re: Dies at night?

You need to keep various items significantly above absolute zero, and since the lunar night involves exposure to the vacuum of space (the moon has insufficient atmosphere to make a difference) for over 300 hours without any solar input... Typical night time temperatures will be in the double digit kelvin range, that's properly cold.

That's a significant amount of heating required.

Specifically I don't think batteries like being that cold - but I am sure three are other components which would object as well.

Blue Origin sets its price: $1.4m minimum for trip into space

Re: "One wonders what good that money could do"

Trains are far and away the most efficient, although it's somewhat challenging to build out the network...

But I didn't choose the "best" to compare planes with, just one of the more common alternatives.

Flying places that would take a very long time to drive - yes, the time is a saving, but at what cost to the world?

But there are plenty of flights where you spend far longer in the airport than on the plane.

Re: "One wonders what good that money could do"

There are two other effects worth noting.

Pollution, particularly particulate pollution, is more costly in terms of health effects in cities.

Various pollution released at high altitude has more of an effect on the climate than the same pollutants at lower altitude...

ASUS baffles customer by telling them thermal pad thickness is proprietary

Re: what a pile of drivel

Do you clean the dust off the heatsink at the same time?

Re: what a pile of drivel

"If they are properly bolted down they will not move."

I have less faith in various manufacturers than you ;)

I also remember lugging computers with ruddy great heavy and tall* heatsinks to and from university, the jolts received in transport can be quite significant.

"The space shuttle issue had nothing to do with moving. The o-rings ... could not expand fast enough"

It was precisely because of the vibration and motion of the joints (which were there for congressional rather than technical reasons) that the elasticity of the o rings was needed, and which couldn't (due to the cold) move into the gap being (temporarily) created in the join.

The mechanical forces on heatsinks are nowhere near as large, but they are exposed to repeated forces over a longer period.

Not something I have looked at in a very long time though.

* Although todays heatsinks are about as tall, but mine were basically solid copper for a good while and then radiating fins - this was in the days before heatpipes. One set of mine were sufficiently bulky and heavy that the fans were mounted on brackets off the case rather than adding even more load to the plastic tabs on the socket.

Re: what a pile of drivel

All good assuming there are no thermal or mechanical forces which might move the heatsink and the cooled component even a small amount relative to each other...

The space shuttle booster was perfectly sealed by the rubber O rings, until it was cold and the o ring couldn't move to keep the seal against the vibration of launch.

Yes, the vibrations there are massive, but thermal cycling and differential expansion has a good chance of gently moving things against each other, that's where having the flexibility of a relatively new pad would be wanted.

It's not something I've ever really looked at, I can't recall having used a thermal pad in several decades...

Singapore orders social media to correct Indian politician’s allegation of local COVID-19 variant

Re: So evolution is real then

"Evolution, real, provably, not just a theory"

Micro evolution is real, provably.

Macro evolution is still a reasonable hypothesis for the variety of life we see on the planet, but it is rather difficult to _prove_ that it is the mechanism by which it occurred without a time machine.

Beyond video to interactive, personalised content: BBC is experimenting with rebuilding its iPlayer in WebAssembly

Re: WOT??

vwoorp