So when I get home from a 200 mile round trip to the desert on Sunday night, I have roughly 20 miles of range on the Bolt. If I can add 40 miles of range to my car overnight (10 hours of charging at 4mph), that gives me 60 miles of range to do a 20 mile round trip commute. But what if I want to go to the Dodgers game after work? Or if I need to run a bunch of errands after work that I skipped while in the desert? People want their car to be able to go places when they want to go places.

You are talking to me as if you think I didn’t own multiple full EVs as my only car for over 6 years. I lived with a 90mile range Toyota Rav4 EV without DC fast charging and took it on road trips. I also lived with that car without L2 charging for a month. That month was miserable, and I would have never kept that car if I didn’t upgrade to L2.

If you have a second car, then you don’t need a 300 mile range EV and also don’t need L2. If you have a very short commute and don’t do anything after work or on the weekends, then you don’t need L2.

This is incredibly chilling.

That depends on what is meant by usually. You seem to think it means “most daily situations,” but I think it means “most house installations.” Yes, a usual day in a person’s life does not require L2. But the usual person does require L2 if they want to use their car like most people prefer to use their car. Once a week I need L2 charging because of all the stuff I do that isn’t commuting. That is 1 day in a 7 day week, so usually I don’t need L2. But I would not be able to have an EV if I didn’t have L2 unless I had a second car (which I don’t have). I think most people fall into this category, so the usual person needs L2 even if they don’t usually need L2.

Congrats on finding a solution that works for you. I have a short commute (16 miles round trip) and was OK to use L1 charging on a “usually” basis. However, I do more things in my life than just going to work and back. After work I might drive another 90 miles round trip to meet some friends at a brewery. Or I might drive only a couple miles to a buddy’s house and not get home until 11pm, so I now only have 7 hours to charge at L1 instead of 12 hours. And on weekends when I’m maybe driving a couple hours to hike in the desert and come back, I now have 16 hours to charge for work on Monday after driving 210 miles round trip.

Switching from L1 to L2 charging at home made driving an EV go from a daily chore to something I almost never thought about.

It’s so annoying if you AREN’T there to take a picture of it. We were in Paris last year and went to the Musee d’Orsay but didn’t go to the Louvre. We like to stand and appreciate the artwork, taking in the beauty of them. It was so hard to do with any painting even remotely famous, since there were lines of people pushing to the front to take the best possible picture of it (which has already been taken by pro photographers). They weren’t even looking at the painting, just their phone’s screen as they took the picture then walked away. I’m just standing still looking forward, and they would shoulder me aside to get a better photo then walk away. Other paintings just as pretty? Who cares, not famous.

That pissed me off so much back then. I was a big Palm/WebOS fan, having a Treo 600 and 650, then a Pre and a FrankenPre 2 (the Pre 2 didn’t come out on Sprint, only Verizon, so I had to buy the Verizon version and swap out the Sprint radio from my Pre 1 and sideload custom OS modules). I also bought the TouchPad on day 1 and loved the shit out of it.

After HP killed WebOS, I sideloaded Android onto the TouchPad and kept using it for a couple more years.

My company only buys HP laptops, so I’ve had quite a few. Each one has lasted me longer than the company mandated refresh cycle of 3 years. My last two HP laptops lasted 4 years before I was forced to get new machines. I’m not saying HP is perfect, but anecdotes are only anecdotes.

If you are unable to save up $2000 over the course of a year, then you are either not middle class or are very conservative with your money (not a bad thing). The definition of middle class is also location dependent. Making $50k/year in Alabama is VERY different from making $50k in NYC. Making $100k in Indianapolis is very different from making $100k in San Francisco. Hell, you can make $200k/year and not be able to afford even a small house in Los Angeles.

Travel was much different for your parents. European travel was actually much more expensive for them, adjusted for inflation. Back then, only rich people casually traveled to Europe (or young kids who stayed in hostels backpacking around). My first trip to Europe was when I was 30, and the cities I visited on that trip are FAR more crowded with tourists now than back then. When I was in college I took a trip to India with a friend who lived there, staying with his family for free and eating cheaply when not at their houses. That flight to India costs the same now as it did 20 years ago, not adjusted for inflation (meaning it is actually much cheaper now).

Going to Europe now is so commonplace for normal people that quaint little towns are overrun with tourists. I have seen flights from LA to Europe for cheaper than flights from LA to Indianapolis.

Conversely, for your parents travel within the US and to Mexico was cheaper then. You could get a flight from Indianapolis to Cancun for $150, with hotels being dirt cheap. Flights to Florida were $100, and nice hotels were $100/night. Nowadays, those flights are 3 times more expensive and the hotels are 5 times more expensive. When I was fresh out of college and middle class, I could travel around the US and to Mexico and Costa Rica pretty cheaply. Nowadays, I can go to Europe for about the same price as going to New York.

Finally, back then people had vacation savings accounts to pay for travel. They would save up all year to take vacations. They would save their Christmas bonuses (which aren’t a thing anymore). They didn’t have cell phones and rationed out long-distance phone calls. They might only have one car instead of three. They didn’t pay for internet. They paid for basic cable, not 5 streaming packages. Their house cost a tenth of what houses cost now. They didn’t buy as many new clothes as people do now.

Over the weekend at least one car drove through a No Kings protest (in NC I think), at least one person was killed in a shooting at a protest (in UT), two Democratic politicians were shot in MN (one killed). This is more than just talk.

Monkey’s Paw: Congress puts up a memorial to the brave invaders.

If by simulators and closed tracks you mean city streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin… then you are correct??

No.

These are at normal ride-share hours throughout the city in all conditions. I’ve been in one during the day going through LA traffic and one at night with no traffic up to around 45 mph. They are allowed to drive on LA’s 405 freeway, which has a speed limit of 65mph, but I haven’t done that yet.

This is pretty amazing.

That is WILDLY narrow-focused when considering what is actually required to get this to work as a system of systems. Yes, parts of the system already exist. Getting them all working together with all of the kill-chains closed in an automated “dome” system is a completely different story. And that is ignoring that new satellites and ground systems are needed, which will all need to be defined, acquired, designed, built, tested, and deployed. Building a single GPS III satellite from an already existing design that has already been acquired, built, and tested 10 times would take longer than 3 years. Hell, just the requirements definition and acquisition will take 3 years for a program this big in scope.

He’s lying through his teeth when he says it will ONLY cost $125 billion and take 3 years. It will likely take $500 billion and take 10 years if it even survives the budget of the next president. This is going to be such a massive, massive waste of time and money that the US will be actually vulnerable to the perceived enemies that we aren’t vulnerable to now. He’s going to kill useful programs in order to pay for this thing that will never work.

Sorry, best we can do is having the audience dodge roll every scene.

It seems to be mostly a euro thing. BMW stopped using oil dipsticks nearly 2 decades ago.

I was about to make this joke: “That’s just not true. My 2008 BMW had a… holy shit, that car is nearly 2 decades old now.” Then I went to confirm, and that car did NOT have a dipstick. The car came with 5 years of “free” service and never gave me a day of trouble, so I never realized it didn’t have a dipstick. That’s probably a major reason it was removed, since even a DIYer like me who likes to work on things myself never even tried to use the dipstick in 4 years.

Those of us who paid attention knew Musk and his companies were awful at least as early as 2014. All these Tesla bumper stickers that say, “I bought this before he went insane” or whatever are bullshit. He was an insane asshole 10 years ago, but you weren’t paying attention.

It’s wild how predictable it is. How can a city that is home to such a vibrant punk scene and surf culture be a bastion of fascist-dick suckers?