Posts by blackcat

Car dealers openly beg Biden to put brakes on electric vehicle drive

Re: From the inside...

The sad part is that they are probably going to make better quality cars than any British MGs in the last 40 years.

Re: rust heaps Vs nothing

Didn't AMC do a right hand drive version of the Pacer (I think, the 'Wayne's world' car) but it still had the asymmetric doors in the LHD arrangement.

Re: And then there is reality.

'Tesla has the best charging infrastructure'

This! I can't remember the publication, I think it was NPR, who sent a journo along with Sec Granholm on her EV road trip earlier this year and the general consensus was if you have a Tesla your life will be relatively easy but if you have any other EV you have to deal with the 3rd party charging network and its basically crap. Broken chargers, multiple apps needed, broken billing systems, not enough chargers...

Found it:

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1187224861/electric-vehicles-evs-cars-chargers-charging-energy-secretary-jennifer-granholm

Re: EVs not selling?

I do similar but dealers are not normally prepared to deep dive into fixing things. They just want to swap an entire module. Thankfully if you are willing to void your warranty there are companies out there which will pull modules apart and go at them with soldering irons.

I saw a video where a rather new F150 was rendered a no-start due to a broken wire on the connector for the front seat massage/lumbar control unit. The actual fix was a few $ (after diagnosis) but you know the dealer would have swapped the seat as the loom is integral.

Re: Just another ranter

I'm looking forward to having a breeder reactor in my car :)

Re: EVs not selling?

Really? I'd hope they could have improved that. I know the Rivian build quality is legendary shite.

The giga casting should be helping to make the chassis even more accurate.

This isn't only related to EVs but the way they are designing modern cars is making them almost impossible to fix after even a minor fender bender. And even fixing something like a headlamp unit or rear light assembly is getting to cost over 1k. ALL the car makers are guilty of this. Everything is CAN, everything is coded to the car and even a minor fault takes out half the car CAN bus.

Re: It’s not just the “mark ups”

Blimey 2:1 in favour of arson??

Now are these fires total loss burnt out shell type fires or 'something in the engine bay is a bit black and crispy now' minor fires?

Re: It’s not just the “mark ups”

Its unlikely that those fires are started by the actual fuel. Most car fires are from crappy wiring, usually under the dash. Once EVs get old enough we will likely see more of this.

Some caveats on those figures, the total number of vehicle fires includes those burnt by arson. They also recorded an alarming number of escooter and ebike fires.

Re: EVs not selling?

I'll admit that I've not looked very closely at a Tesla for a good 5+ years, and I believe they have improved, but they were none too impressive on the build quality.

ICE car makers have long since perfected the art of keeping the various fluids away from each other and manage to keep the dry bits dry and the wet bits wet.

The upside of an ICE car is that if it starts drinking coolant it isn't leaking into a place filled with high voltages :)

I do think that the major issue with modern cars is the software. Too many stories of failed OTA updates killing cars.

Worth a watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjxZ2Eh9GrA

The US car industry, a bit like the UK car industry at the same time, was UTTER CRAP. Quality control was something you did to the tin of quality street, not the car.

Google goes geothermal to power some bitbarns

Re: Hmm

Same reason that a crypto mining firm bought an old coal plant. The more you have under your control the less susceptible you are to outside forces. These companies like predictable long term pricing for things they use a lot of.

Virgin Atlantic flies 'world's first fossil-fuel free' transatlantic commercial flight

Re: Greenwash

It has always surprised me that they've now outlawed the flare towers.

I'm amazed that this doesn't kill more people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsB9OTkepe8

Greenpeace calls out tech giants for carbon footprint fumble

Re: Greenpeace is irrelevant and so is carbon dioxide

'(like not being able to afford EVs with the same range as their previous IC vehicles)'

Sod range, simply same SIZE. The cheaper end of the EV market is mostly ZOE and Leaf. The cheapest says the max range is only 60 miles, at best, for a 10 year old car. Anything reasonably family size is serious money.

Many of these were the second car for a family so size didn't matter.

'Naturally the question everyone's asking is how did we get here?'

Oh its very simple. 2020 summer of love. When BLM rioted and burned cities you likely cheered for 'social justice' etc.. Now when there is unrest after 3 kids and their teacher get randomly stabbed in broad daylight it is suddenly a terrible thing.

'actively wanting to destroy the same society they're part of'

These towns and cities in the US where the BLM riots took place are wastelands and shops don't want to be there any more. Parts of LA have never recovered from the 1991 riots.

Re: When was winter ever an issue for wind farms?

Hmm.. numbers show that Spanish and Portuguese wholesale and domestic electricity costs have not really dropped at all from historical averages.

Re: Moving stuff is so unnecessary.

'EPRs are designed by Areva. Not EDF. More mix-ups.'

The EPR is a joint design between Framatome, who WERE part of Areva, and EDF. Areva are not part of this effort any more (2017) and EDF are pretty much running the show. All the design updates come from EDF.

I have no doubt that if I'd said 'Areva can't design reactors' you would have said 'Nu-huh! its designed by EDF!'.

Interconnects still don't generate. There are going to be times when the people at the other end of the wire want their electricity for themselves as you yourself gleefully pointed out about the summer of 2022 when the French nuclear reactors without cooling towers had to be turned down due to lack of cooling.

The UK AGR fleet should all still be running. The standards being applied to them are not based on reality and the AGR has been a workhorse of the nuclear industry. They should run for at least 50-60 years. Like how the German anti-nuclear midwits decided that power stations in the middle of Germany might be subject to a tsunami after Fukushima.

As for these dirt cheap renewables you speak of... hasn't the govt just doubled the offer price? If they were dirt cheap why would that need to be done? Why is Siemens wind turbine business losing huge amounts of money? Vattenfall is stopping work on a wind farm as 'energy costs are now too high'. This 'dirt cheap' electricity generation method you seem to like sure costs a LOT.

Re: Data facts checking

Hinkley point creates electricity, the interconnect only moves it. Somewhere it still needs to be created.

Hinkley point should not be costing what it is costing but due to government ineptitude, EDF being incapable of designing something that can be built and all the middlemen wanting to make lots of profit it is costing a fortune. Long ago we could make these things ourselves...

Yes. They have a lot of people which is why they make a lot of pollution.

Re: Greenpeace is irrelevant and so is carbon dioxide

We DO have cleaner air than even 20-30 years ago (who remembers the acid rain) BUT we do NOT have cheaper power and the reality is that it will not get cheaper.

Re: WTF????

Same with Davos. They like the spectacle and standing on stage in front of a throng of ass kissers.

Oh and the food, booze, hookers and blow!

Remember the Met Gala where AOC was in her Tax the Rich dress (made by the person who didn't pay her staff or pay her taxes, that is another matter) and all the venue staff were wearing masks but the guests were not. Very much the 'us and them'.

Re: WTF?

I was not wrong. They cheaped out on those 2 power plants and those were the ones that had the heat issues last summer.

They've also had issues with Fessenheim in the past, now decommissioned, again no cooling towers.

Re: What the data say

Generally if it is winter in the UK it is winter in a large part of Europe. Brexit didn't cut off the interconnects to the rest of Europe so we still benefit from lots of clean and slightly garlic scented nuclear power from France.

With the advent of HVDC having a synchronous grid has become less of an issue. Heck, the USA doesn't have one (no, its is not because of Texas) and Japan couldn't decide on 50 or 60Hz so uses both.

Re: WTF?

And Saint Alban was one of the affected plants due to the river water temperature.

Bugey was the other affected site and there is this key bit of into about that plant:

"Some of the cooling comes from direct use of the Rhône water (units 2 and 3) while some is done by the use of cooling towers (units 4 and 5)."

Re: Cherry picking

That MIT study is from 2014. Looking at the Oxford numbers 2011 - 2014 the difference they show is in line with the MIT study.

But today is 2023.

Re: Learn PHYSICS and ENGLISH.

Careful, the AC's computer is about to short out from all the frothing.

The issue with the French reactors is they cheaped out and didn't build cooling towers and relied on the rivers for 100% of the cooling. The upside is very little water loss, the downside being a large delta between inlet and outlet.

Re: Mashups and mixups

"Mostly people starving for recognition"

Says the person frothing at the mouth and slinging insults around :)

Re: True...

Actually that data is from Oxford University.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/putting-einstein-theory-relativity-test

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331150-200-cosmic-uncertainty-is-the-speed-of-light-really-constant/

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-15017484

Re: WTF????

I fear that end of life considerations often get missed from contract negotiations. Farmers in the US are miffed that the companies who rent their land for wind turbines are not removing the concrete foundations. They should have hired better lawyers and not just focused on the $$$.

My guess would be the offshore piles end up like the old oil rig supports, left to rot.

Re: Internal contraditions

Those are legitimate and serious issues but we focus on just one gas. And there is also plastic and microplastics.

We still work on a victorian mindset when it comes to rubbish and sewerage. Even with recycling. Out of sight, out of mind. And we go from knee-jerk reaction to knee-jerk reaction. Paper bags have a higher CO2 footprint than plastic (and are no good when you're cleaning up hairballs). Paper straws are more toxic than plastic straws. Oft the proposed solution is worse as the people screaming 'we must do something' are not very smart and they are asking people who are really very dumb (politicians) to do the 'something'.

Stopping the dumping of raw sewerage into the sea is a must. We're not living in 1850s London. And we could make biogas from it too.

Re: Goto economy-101

As I said in an earlier post, China's CO2 export is only about 9% of their total. 91% of the CO2 they produce is from local consumption. Even without all the exports they would still be a HUGE CO2 producer.

The simple fact is that as a species we have become incredibly energy reliant. If you think back to 1990 how many TVs did the average household have? Very few people had computers. Heck even offices didn't have that many computers. There was no internet as we know it. Certainly no streaming services. No 'always on constantly connected' life.

The fact that we have massively electrified our lives AND (in the UK at least) halved our per capita CO2 is good going.

Re: WTF????

The biggest issue of oil in turbines is what has gone into the resin used for the blades. At least you can recover the gearbox oil, assuming it hasn't leaked or caught fire :)

My major gripe with wind turbines is that they have been made into a disposable device. Blade leading edges worn, scrap the whole thing. Bearings nearing end of life, scrap the whole thing.

Part of this is the subsidies system. After a certain time it makes more financial sense to build a new one as then the subsidies restart.

So both sides take money from the fossil fuel industry, oh great shock :)

The upside being they are not taking money from the rooskies.

Re: WTF????

Consensus does not make it fact.

The earth was flat by consensus until it was discovered to be a sphere.

The earth was the centre of the universe by consensus and they even had beautiful mathematical models that proved it, until it was discovered that it wasn't.

And the speed of light is actually a disputed issue.

Then send your iphone back :)

China is a net exporter of emissions by about 9%. About the same as Canada in % terms. It isn't as bad as is being made out.

Re: Stop last century pro-nuclear ideology

Sorry, more climate misinformation.

Bangladesh is building 2 nuclear power plants.

Egypt is building 3

India has 19 and building 8

Pakistan has 6, building another 1

Mexico has 2

South Africa has a couple.

Iran has one although that is controversial :)

Nuclear power is not limited to the rich nations.

We HAVE cut CO2 emissions.

The UK is about 50% of the per capita amount from 1990. Germany about 40% down on 1990. France only down about 25% but they had a low starting point.

Canada not so good, maybe 20% down. Heck even the USA is 25% down. Shocking, I know!

China is 4x their 1990 level.

China is at an estimated 250 billion tonnes of CO2 total. The UK is 78 billion and the US 400 billion. As China is defined as being in the 'global south' it likely rates as a developing nation.

China has produced more CO2 than France, Germany, Canada and the UK combined and they are busy catching the USA.

We have developed the technologies but the Luddites don't want us to use them.

Re: re: Greenpeace are one of the organisations most responsible for climate change

No, by advocating for policies that have done more harm that good.

Sadly the plan appears to be 'just spend MORE money'. It is all very short termist and we have to endure such claptrap as wood pellets shipped across the Atlantic as 'green'. Carbon cap and trade just created a way to extract short term profit and hasn't done anything long term. The 'dash for gas' again went for short term 'we must do something NOW' and has left us exposed longer term. The billions spent on renewables has mostly ended up in China.

The reality is that in Europe we have reduced energy usage per head quite dramatically over the last 30 years and reduced the CO2 output of that energy as well, so a win-win. However we have lost our ability to actually do stuff and offshored a lot of pollution to the far east.

A stupid example being the steel for the offshore windfarms around the UK. The UK steel makers are uncompetitive as they have to comply with pollution requirements so the steel comes from Poland as they are not beholden to the same regulations. The reality is that the total pollution is the same (maybe slightly worse from the Polish factories) so offshoring the production to Poland has not resulted in cleaner steel production.

Rather than fixate on westeners (ok, maybe the on the yanks) we need to work on getting clean power to the emerging economies as they are consuming more and don't give two hoots about CO2.

Lets just leave this here

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/19/russia-secretly-working-with-environmentalists-to-oppose-fracking

Binance and CEO admit financial crimes, billions coughed up to US govt

Re: Where's the $10 billion coming from?

Wow! That is a pretty low value. You can understand why they get away with it as taking them to court will cost 10-100x that.

Some of the stories are just crazy. I can't believe that they are allowed to get away with it but qualified immunity and friendly (paid off?) judges are key aspects.

Re: Where's the $10 billion coming from?

And some call it legalised robbery.

If the authorities came along and decided that you have nice stuff and just took it you would probably be rather miffed.

Re: Where's the $10 billion coming from?

Watch this channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@stevelehto

In some states the money/assets taken can be kept by the police department. So absolutely no incentive to take as much as you can...

Even at a federal level. In 2021 (I think) the FBI raided a bank in LA and seized the contents of every safety deposit box. So far they've not been able to show that any criminal activity had taken place at the bank but have pretty much kept everything, which is estimated to be ~$100M in value.

The FBI has pretty much said if you can't prove that everything in the box belongs to you and that you were in possession of the items legally then you can't have them back. Judges have supported the FBI as well.

X's legal eagles swoop on Media Matters over antisemitic content row

Re: Venue Change

The whole US system is gamed like that. With the deliberate separation of state laws and limitations on federal laws. This is why so many companies are incorporated in Delaware as they are VERY business friendly.

Its like Ireland and Luxemburg when it comes to EU tax.

The internet basically ruins everything as where is harm done and who did the harm? Something exists on a server in country A, the traffic travels via a router in country B to you in country C. Just like Sideshow Bob shooting Bart in 5 different states :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ijyVl1RSkk

Re: Venue Change

Venue shopping is very common in the USA. Patent trolls have been doing it for ages.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/why-do-patent-trolls-go-texas-its-not-bbq

Although SCOTUS did rule on this in 2017

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/334548-supreme-court-limits-venue-shopping-for-patent-cases/

Washington pours $3B into silicon smackdown to outpackage Asia

Re: The EU will be chuffed.

One thing that is overlooked is that all this new $$ is going in to nice new shiny small node processes or exotics like silicon carbide. TSMC and the like still produce a vast array of the legacy node sizes (60nm, 20nm etc.) which won't be covered by this investment in US and EU fabs. We will still be reliant on Taiwan, China etc. for microcontrollers, logic chips and a lot of the glue that makes things work.

You're not going to make micros for washing machines or car electronics modules in a 10B$ 3nm fab.

Onshoring skills back to the US/EU/UK is no bad thing.

Re: The EU will be chuffed.

Its not like these companies can't afford to do this, they would just rather the taxpayer coughs up so as to not risk their bottom line.

Trump was all for onshoring.

White House hopes to power up American battery factories with $3.5B fund

Re: Not oppossed, but ...

"ANY improvement in battery technology is probably a good thing"

This is funding for manufacture, not research. So more of the current stuff.

When did we go from companies coming up with 'next big thing', getting it to market ahead of the competition and making money to companies sitting around whining about lack of govt handouts?

Use AI to accelerate adoption of central bank digital currencies, says IMF head

Re: We've left port and are now on the high seas

Cos they know the right people. As George Carlin said, its a club and you're not invited!

Re: We've left port and are now on the high seas

It feels like they had a checklist of words to use in this and they managed to fit them all in.

I'm pretty sure I've seen reports on el-reg and elsewhere saying that every time someone has used 'AI' to try and eliminate some sort of bias it has actually made it worse. Didn't various companies try AI for recruitment and it was even more biased than humans?

Looking at Kristalina Georgieva's history she is from a politically connected family, has a long stint in academia followed by the World Bank, the European Commission and then IMF. Unlikely to have ever worked a minimum wage job or had a bad credit rating.