Trump

[Dio]

As someone who lives in Wales, where it rains all the time and there's nowhere you can put a ball down without it rolling away from you, you must also see the problem with the bicycle. (But yes, the spectrum of electric bikes and motorbikes should be fertile grounds for improvement).

[F-ZeroOne]

One thing thats always stuck with me that I read some years ago is that although alternatively fuelled vehicles are a partial solution for public transportation, theres still the issue of industrial, agricultural and military vehicles - to the best of my knowledge, although a couple of companies are working on electric lorries, I'm yet to hear of one working on an electric combine harvester... (though one possibility there I guess would be instead of having one large piloted vehicle doing the job, would be to have lots of smaller autonomous ones... ).

[tufty]

I'm yet to hear of one working on an electric combine harvester..

In purely power-rating terms, there's no reason why not, of course. We had a prototype electric piste-grooming machine, the equivalent of a 500hp+ diesel* machine running last year. And electric buses. The main problem is run time to charge time - the electric piste machine ran for something under 3 hours on a charge, but needed 7 hours to charge up. That's no frickin' good if you're needing to run your combine harvester 18hours+ per day.

Personal transportation can afford the "dead time" of charging, as long as you're willing to change the way you travel. Stuff that's used for business, less so. That needs to be running every second possible in order to cover its costs, you can't afford to have an industrial machine offline for 7 hours out of every 10.

* Indeed, it's supposedly the equivalent of the diesel machine we had to use to tow it back to base every 2 days, but that's a whole another issue with electric vehicles in constantly subzero temperatures. This is why we don't have electric buses any more either.

[merman]

China is rapidly developing its fleet of electric buses.

[zip accident]

Has anyone designed an electric turbo-jet yet?

[Cloudane]

Yeah as far as manufacturing goes, the electric car (sic) is well out of the bag now and I don't think even that meddling old reactionary can stop it.

The grids will adapt - the world's not going to all switch to electric cars overnight Don't worry about pricing equalising too quickly - manufacturers will be happy to find plenty of ways to keep prices inflated. Plus people will need to get used to paying for extended warranty or electromechanical breakdown insurance addons as if something goes wrong on an EV it can cost thousands to fix - fewer moving parts but more big expensive proprietary electronic "magic boxes" that have to be coded to the car by the manufacturer.

Journey charging is only really a noticeable issue for those of us with "old" EVs that have piddly little batteries that do 60-100 miles and charge fairly slowly like my mk1 Zoe, and even then it's rarely needed (especially if you make an effort to use the trains for longer journeys) and when it is, there are plenty of us who don't mind a 40 minute coffee break which is a very healthy thing to do on a long journey. But think how many people do hundreds of miles up and down the country on a regular basis, we're really talking sales reps for the most part who already keep rocking up in Teslas at our work and they already have good range and their own private charging network, being kind of the Apple of the EV world. Most people stay within range most of the time - I think the overall average is something like 30-40 miles per day - and simply plug in at home (though a solution needs to be found soon for households without off-street parking) and as for longer journeys - I'd say most are still within a 200 mile round trip in a day for most people. That's the most I've actually done in mine, needed a little patience but wasn't too bad. I really think journey charging will always have a place but largely be a stopgap until 200+ mile batteries are the norm and destination charging is in sufficient car parks to cope with day trips etc.

But yes in the long term we probably have to give up personal cars. And even now, as I'm becoming acutely aware of reaching an age where chance to own a property is actually approaching its end (almost 40, which would put the end of a mortgage towards retirement age), if I did go that route, I'd probably have to drop the car for pure affordability reasons... plus sure as heck wouldn't be able to afford a driveway.

[merman]

Trump says, "No-one can climb over this wall"

Hours later, people climb over the wall.

[everklear]

Trump says, "No-one can climb over this wall"

Hours later, people climb over the wall.

Also cut through it in a matter of minutes and push the long bollards out of the way.
President dumbass wins again.
So much winning.

[merman]

The people of Berlin have shipped a piece of their Wall to the White House.

The White House refused to accept the consignment.

Oh, and Trump fined $2 million for using funds from his charity to pay for his Presidential election campaign. He's also moving to Florida to try and avoid publishing his tax returns (which a judge in New York has ordered him to release before his re-election campaign).

[Rubisco]

The people of Berlin have shipped a piece of their Wall to the White House.

How anti-fascist of them.

[(o)(o)]

Baby Trump lone wolf slasher horror attack.

[PFVA]

Is there a cruise ship out there where he can be placed:

Trump eases pollution rules for cars, setting up showdown with California

https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-worl ... 49081.html

[Harlequin]

Is there a cruise ship out there where he can be placed:

Trump eases pollution rules for cars, setting up showdown with California

https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article241649081.html

It is not just that:

Trump administration allows companies to break pollution laws during coronavirus pandemic

Extraordinary move signals to US companies that they will not face any sanctions for polluting the air or water

[F-ZeroOne]

Reality is a harsh mistress, Mr. President:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52115584

[Harlequin]

Reality is a harsh mistress, Mr. President:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52115584

Is he trying to reduce the emotional impact by describing a minimum further month of mitigation measures as "two weeks", as if they were still due to end by Easter?