The transition

[Mr. Coffee]

Current off-grid systems run about $15k, and an enterprising DIYer can often manage one for half the price. So I dunno where this $50k price comes from unless you are buying it all at Niemann-Marcus and having it installed by lawyers. Or maybe that is the price in miniature Australian dollars.

In the Real World, you only want/need an off grid system if the cost of running power lines to your house is too danged high or just plain not possible. And in that case you should expect to pay a serious premium when you pour concrete or put in a well and water line. Oh, and you'll want your building site to have enough of a hill that your water system into the house is gravity fed and you fill up the water tank when the sun is shining.

If you have a grid-tied system you can get away with much smaller batteries to ride out power outages. You might ask, "but what happens if there is some natural disaster and the power is out for two weeks?" My answer is that if the power is out for much longer than 48 hours usually the lack of electricity at home is the least of your problems.

 

[kevinmccune]

Total offgrid systems are Great! If you have $50,000 to pay for them and another equivalent inflation adjusted amount in 20 years time. 10 years for the battery no doubt. It's like Dental implant bridges, they cost $50,000 too and are a hell of a lot better than old loose dentures, better than natural teeth I recon, but you need $50k upfront. Of course it's all just the leveraging of energy, Oil, from beginning to end. Here is a great article that explains where we are and how we got here. It discusses faith in progress too, the de facto established religion of our societies.

Peak Oil: Specter and Substance

It’s been a long time now since peak oil dropped off the radar screens of public consciousness. Mention it these days and the reaction you’ll get from the few people who remember it at all amounts …

ecosophia.net

There is a lot of chatter on forums about 'amazing' energy tech but many can't even afford a quality car or bicycle. It reminds me of the poor people who watch the foodie shows on TV and put what meager disposable income they have into ingredients for nice meals. It's a form of denial really, an ego boost so they don't feel as poor as they really are. It would be smarter to shepherd what resources they have for the future and eat simpler more basic meals. No thought of tomorrow though, not a good strategy seeing that the western world is getting poorer in aggregate and inflation is rampant.

I'm singularly unimpressed by most of the modern tech myself, I have seen too many broken promises. Solar thermal plants that were supposed to provide cheap electricity, sodium batteries that were supposed to be much more efficient than Lipos. Yet here we are 1/4 of a century after the introduction of the lipo battery and still with nothing ground-breaking to replace it. Just tweaks and more promises from companies who often vanish into obscurity after the product fails to deliver. They are cashing in on Hopium, the desire people have to see a better world. If you want a better world for yourself you have to make it, it won't come delivered on a plate like it did last century. There is nothing wrong with Lipo tech, it's really quite amazing compared to NiMH or NiCad stuff from 2005 and before. And if something genuinely better comes along and proves itself I'll transition over, But we have to remember that new battery tech usually means all new appliances too. Hardly any of the old NiMH devices were compatible with Lipo when it took over.

Sodium will have a place,heck old homesteaders have had great success with the "immortal" Iron Edison battery,its surprising but"hands on Pb systems will even work if you are willing to put in the work keeping them going

Current off-grid systems run about $15k, and an enterprising DIYer can often manage one for half the price. So I dunno where this $50k price comes from unless you are buying it all at Niemann-Marcus and having it installed by lawyers. Or maybe that is the price in miniature Australian dollars.

In the Real World, you only want/need an off grid system if the cost of running power lines to your house is too danged high or just plain not possible. And in that case you should expect to pay a serious premium when you pour concrete or put in a well and water line. Oh, and you'll want your building site to have enough of a hill that your water system into the house is gravity fed and you fill up the water tank when the sun is shining.

If you have a grid-tied system you can get away with much smaller batteries to ride out power outages. You might ask, "but what happens if there is some natural disaster and the power is out for two weeks?" My answer is that if the power is out for much longer than 48 hours usually the lack of electricity at home is the least of your problems.zombies

so true,when the zombies of"lack of preppers" come you had better have a strong like minded neighborhood surrounding you( pray for peace! we are losing the world competition due to the plutocrats and oligarchs)

 

[kevinmccune]

Total offgrid systems are Great! If you have $50,000 to pay for them and another equivalent inflation adjusted amount in 20 years time. 10 years for the battery no doubt. It's like Dental implant bridges, they cost $50,000 too and are a hell of a lot better than old loose dentures, better than natural teeth I recon, but you need $50k upfront. Of course it's all just the leveraging of energy, Oil, from beginning to end. Here is a great article that explains where we are and how we got here. It discusses faith in progress too, the de facto established religion of our societies.

Peak Oil: Specter and Substance

It’s been a long time now since peak oil dropped off the radar screens of public consciousness. Mention it these days and the reaction you’ll get from the few people who remember it at all amounts …

ecosophia.net

There is a lot of chatter on forums about 'amazing' energy tech but many can't even afford a quality car or bicycle. It reminds me of the poor people who watch the foodie shows on TV and put what meager disposable income they have into ingredients for nice meals. It's a form of denial really, an ego boost so they don't feel as poor as they really are. It would be smarter to shepherd what resources they have for the future and eat simpler more basic meals. No thought of tomorrow though, not a good strategy seeing that the western world is getting poorer in aggregate and inflation is rampant.

I'm singularly unimpressed by most of the modern tech myself, I have seen too many broken promises. Solar thermal plants that were supposed to provide cheap electricity, sodium batteries that were supposed to be much more efficient than Lipos. Yet here we are 1/4 of a century after the introduction of the lipo battery and still with nothing ground-breaking to replace it. Just tweaks and more promises from companies who often vanish into obscurity after the product fails to deliver. They are cashing in on Hopium, the desire people have to see a better world. If you want a better world for yourself you have to make it, it won't come delivered on a plate like it did last century. There is nothing wrong with Lipo tech, it's really quite amazing compared to NiMH or NiCad stuff from 2005 and before. And if something genuinely better comes along and proves itself I'll transition over, But we have to remember that new battery tech usually means all new appliances too. Hardly any of the old NiMH devices were compatible with Lipo when it took over.

get a flywheel and nickle iron batteries,that should see you through most outages,now with the advent of vertical solar collectors things can get very interesting

 

[kevinmccune]

Current off-grid systems run about $15k, and an enterprising DIYer can often manage one for half the price. So I dunno where this $50k price comes from unless you are buying it all at Niemann-Marcus and having it installed by lawyers. Or maybe that is the price in miniature Australian dollars.

In the Real World, you only want/need an off grid system if the cost of running power lines to your house is too danged high or just plain not possible. And in that case you should expect to pay a serious premium when you pour concrete or put in a well and water line. Oh, and you'll want your building site to have enough of a hill that your water system into the house is gravity fed and you fill up the water tank when the sun is shining.

If you have a grid-tied system you can get away with much smaller batteries to ride out power outages. You might ask, "but what happens if there is some natural disaster and the power is out for two weeks?" My answer is that if the power is out for much longer than 48 hours usually the lack of electricity at home is the least of your problems.

I know of one in these parts,the grid was 50K so he elected to go solar at last check it was seamless,knew another guy who for 10 years was total off grid,then the batteries failed and he elected to hook unto the "grid"( I think partly because of cost and he was trying to sell the property.A ex airline pilot pretty interesting fellow)

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Extinction event incoming.

Leapmotor is a Chinese EV startup which is moving into Mexico and (soon) Canada.

There top-tier B10 Compact SUV runs approximately $18000 (US). Which is less than half of what a comparable vehicle from a US manufacturer, or for that matter Korea or Japan, can manage.

Their other products have a comparable cost advantage.

Their very base model Micro EV (T03) costs about $7300.

At those prices, who is going to buy a dinosaur-burner from a legacy automaker?

 

[Mr. Coffee]

And another grift that was too good to last, lolz.

https://www.investopedia.com/trump-linked-freedom-fuel-gas-was-too-good-to-last-12014494

 

[Roamers]

At those prices, who is going to buy a dinosaur-burner from a legacy automaker

People in the States where these are not available.

Anyone that has determined the EV thing doesn't match their lifestyle.

Same people that haven't been buying EVs so far for whatever reason

Anyone that doesn't like sitting in a small vehicle.

 

[Chargeride]

Diesel in the UK is nearly 11 dollars a gallon, we arent even complaining at the moment.

 

[Chargeride]

So the EUs 'chat 1.0' legislation managed to survive a vote to finish it off.
Its basically a push for every single communication to be scanned client side on every platform and device under the guise of detecting naughty kiddie stuff.
Literally AI scanning of every email, text message, whatsapp, every post anywhere....everything.
Im pretty sure they mostly do anyway, but now it will include every word typed.

So we can get a clearer picture of why they want data centres.

And people will use AI to circumvent it, and the AI will start learning how to decipher its own encryption.
And then....
The world is going to the bonkers that was just waiting there to happen.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

People in the States where these are not available.

Anyone that has determined the EV thing doesn't match their lifestyle.

Same people that haven't been buying EVs so far for whatever reason

Anyone that doesn't like sitting in a small vehicle.

How long, realistically, do you think it will be before Chinese vehicles hit the US market? This ain't North Korea or Albania. Yet.

Preferences can change. Sometimes very rapidly. A lot of people in the 1970s assumed that Japanese automakers would never get a big slice of the US market and that nobody except hippies and weirdos would want one of those cheap Japanese cars.

Chinese companies are also making full sized SUVs and pickup trucks. Again at about half the price of their competition here. You can't even seriously make an argument that legacy products have superior quality. In the worst case it is a choice between cheap junky cars and expensive and overpriced junky cars.

The average new car payment in the US is now at $770 per month. The math is brutal and unforgiving and in the end I think most people will realize they can't win an argument with math. Oh, and that average is for all vehicles, not just electrics.

You also can't win an argument with the wind. And it is pretty damned clear which way it is blowing.

 

[DaveMatthews]

How long, realistically, do you think it will be before Chinese vehicles hit the US market? This ain't North Korea or Albania. Yet.

Not a fan... yet... maybe never.
I dislike the full on automated/electronics laden/subscription based BS.
Just gimme a car, with a radio, bluetooth, and some standard toys.

 

[Roamers]

How long, realistically, do you think it will be before Chinese vehicles hit the US market?

As long as we have national leadership with balls.

The math is brutal and unforgiving and in the end I think most people will realize they can't win an argument with math.

Obviously with a $770 average payment, it's not about the math for many people. Those that "it's about the math" are buying used cars.

You also can't win an argument with the wind. And it is pretty damned clear which way it is blowing.

If one can believe an AI summary, 1st quarter EV sales were down over 25%. Which is the direction I thought the wind was blowing. I can only speculate that if the federal incentive had not been available, many fewer would have been purchased in the past.

To each their own; I really don't care what people drive. I hope our ban on Chines automobiles remains. Buy American! (my Japanese car was made in Indiana.)

 

[Gionnirocket]

Balls with without brains is all we got now.
And I'd even question the balls as it's much easier to have them when it's other's lives affected/destroyed.
Take this Iran shit_show.... It's far from over and currently far less than the agreement that was shredded.
I wonder if Ai can tell us how many times it's been declared over and won so far?

 

[DaveMatthews]

Balls with without brains is all we got now.
And I'd even question the balls as it's much easier to have them when it's other's lives affected/destroyed.
Take this Iran shit_show.... It's far from over and currently far less than the agreement that was shredded.
I wonder if Ai can tell us how many times it's been declared over and won so far?

Also... AI is nothing more than a faster/more efficient version of Wikipedia.
All of it is a scrape up of everything we have all contributed to on the internet.
That means that a certain percentage of the results are complete BS.
Anyone who depends on AI to give them the truth 100% of the time, or allows it to guide their life/behaviour is a fool...

 

[Roamers]

Balls with without brains is all we got now.

Better than the no balls, no brain it replaced. A step to B with B.

Anyone who depends on AI to give them the truth 100% of the time, or allows it to guide their life/behaviour is a fool..

Thus the preface "if one can believe AI". I don't seek answers from AI on anything that is important.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

As long as we have national leadership with balls.


Obviously with a $770 average payment, it's not about the math for many people. Those that "it's about the math" are buying used cars.


If one can believe an AI summary, 1st quarter EV sales were down over 25%. Which is the direction I thought the wind was blowing. I can only speculate that if the federal incentive had not been available, many fewer would have been purchased in the past.

To each their own; I really don't care what people drive. I hope our ban on Chines automobiles remains. Buy American! (my Japanese car was made in Indiana.)

If one can believe AI summaries, the worldwide EV market is up approximately 25 percent while in the Untied States it is down 25 percent. It doesn't take balls to figure out why.

And also when you mention "balls" you seem to imply that we need to implement North Korean-style juche. In order to protect innocent Americans from someone selling a product at a lower price, I guess. In some parts of America we still believe in Capitalism.

Bluntly the problem with the American auto industry is that it hasn't been ran by people who actually build cars since the Eisenhower years. And you won't fix that problem with protectionism. You'll just make it worse.

 

[kevinmccune]

So the EUs 'chat 1.0' legislation managed to survive a vote to finish it off.
Its basically a push for every single communication to be scanned client side on every platform and device under the guise of detecting naughty kiddie stuff.
Literally AI scanning of every email, text message, whatsapp, every post anywhere....everything.
Im pretty sure they mostly do anyway, but now it will include every word typed.

So we can get a clearer picture of why they want data centres.

And people will use AI to circumvent it, and the AI will start learning how to decipher its own encryption.
And then....
The world is going to the bonkers that was just waiting there to happen.

it has been going on for decades here,I think they called it"Cobra" it worked rather simply-a key word,like "ANFO" for instance would trigger something and the program would scrutinize the rest of the correspondence,I stopped triggering Gov't firewalls a long time ago( didn't figure it was worth the hassle ) and as a friend( who probably was in a position to get juicy info said"Stop going into dark places".

 

[DaveMatthews]

80 year old balls are worthless.
TWSS

 

[Roamers]

And you won't fix that problem with protectionism. You'll just make it worse.

Consider an alternate perspective: It is tough for US manufacturers to compete with a foreign product that is subsidized by their government. If we allow these products in, damage our industry, more power to China in the US. That is a bad thing by the way, no balls need to analyze, just a brain.

Do you support cutting auto workers wages down to that of chinese auto worker to reduce US product cost?

 

[kevinmccune]

As long as we have national leadership with balls.


Obviously with a $770 average payment, it's not about the math for many people. Those that "it's about the math" are buying used cars.


If one can believe an AI summary, 1st quarter EV sales were down over 25%. Which is the direction I thought the wind was blowing. I can only speculate that if the federal incentive had not been available, many fewer would have been purchased in the past.

To each their own; I really don't care what people drive. I hope our ban on Chines automobiles remains. Buy American! (my Japanese car was made in Indiana.)

the bankers created the new "meth" to keep everyone beholden to a seemingly affordable 7 yr or longer year payment schedule for something that would be hard pressed to last that long ,my daughters 08 Honda Civic has 270K miles on it and still runs great.( proof that American cars can be good-what? you say its Japanese! well no it was made in America and probably better then the foreign made domestics( for petes sake somebody start firing these lame ass CEOs. I believe Ms Barra is going to sink GM.