Recent content by Mr. Coffee

TMI. Weirdest thread ever.

Except when you don't hear about it. In the Untied States 99 percent of lead is recycled, mostly from 12V car batteries. Worldwide about half of lead consumption is recycled. That example gives you a good idea of what is possible if we need to do it.

The world crude oil market right now:

Well, the cost of "$800-$1300" is typical installed cost. Replacing just the batteries is usually less than half that. Nearly all residential solar batteries sold in the states in 2026 have ten year warranties. Which tells me that if the companies want to stay in business that the average...

I do agree that a lot of it comes down to people who are poorly informed or economic self-interest. Can't say anything about your grandchildren, though. There is also a lot of vicious disinformation that a lot of people naively think is correct. At the same time technology is changing with...

Undersea power transmission cables have been in common and reliable use since the 1950s.

The average home consumes about 30kwh per day, so if that was all smoothed out and uniform somehow that would power fifty homes. So a very little town, The reality is that electricity consumption is never smoothed out and uniform and in practice peak demand can be on the order of 10kw to 15kw...

I don't know why you think you can assume that. The bigger challenge is individual variance. And things such as ambient temperature and humidity impacts how well the human part of the system works, and quantifying that is measurably different for each person. The thing is even a 9-year-old...

Nothing is wrong with integrating the motor and gearbox. My problem is with the claimed benefits and the assumptions behind them. The first thing is that human beings aren't like electric motors, and finding the optimum place in the efficiency curve is pretty hard to figure out without being...

Sometimes I question exactly what problems people are trying to solve when they do stuff like this.

Can you show us where the bad Road Bikers hurt you? Just saying, but I've had 100x times as many d-bag encounters with motor vehicle operators than any group of cyclist.

Yes, that is true that observing and learning from others is part of the process of gaining new knowledge. But it isn't the only part. Otherwise the world would be full of martial arts experts who learned their craft by watching Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. A lot of things in the real world...

I think there is a big difference between someone who owned and operated an EV and found out that it didn't work for them and why and someone who has never even driven one who argues about why they are awful and can't work. Some also easily see the tradeoffs and drawbacks of them but can't see...

What country, exactly, are you living in? This is a capitalist, free enterprise society. Of course money is going to be the dominant factor. How much money you have and how you spend it is directly correlated to how long you live and how healthy you are. Yeah, money can't buy happiness. But...

What I see is that the people doing actual Truck Things almost never are driving any truck made after about 2010. What I also see is a large class of suburbanites who "identify" as rural people who drive silly, overpriced pickup trucks as a kind of cultural identification. Which of course they...