Zaxxon wrote:Finally, I'm working on becoming more active in advocating for electric vehicles, which have long been an interest of mine. Thus far I'm focused on getting additional public charging stations in my area. We'll see how that goes. Selling the idea of buying equipment that can run five figures installed to people who are largely unaware that EVs are a thing can be... challenging.
BTW, if you're an advocate of coal-powered vehicles, President Trump ought to be right up your alley.
Altering the source of electricity for millions is far easier than altering the purchasing habits of millions. As energy industry changes, it can easily become cleaner and cheaper. As cars age, they become less fuel efficient and more polluting. Which makes more sense to lean on as a method of large scale change?
Personally, the wife and I are planning to make our next car purchases at least Hybrid vehicles. I'm itching to get a Tesla still and abandon gas all together. Additionally, we have an option where we live to determine which electricity source we're buying from. I know, technically, it's all in the same pool - but our funding goes to cleaner energy sources than coal and we gladly pay the difference.
Black Lives Matter
2021-01-20: The first good night's sleep I had in 4 years.
Eventually we'll have some sort of high speed intercity transit with self-driving vehicles covering the last mile and car ownership won't even be a thing anymore. All cars though rely on a limited supply of long-dead animal byproducts and this will be the case until solar, wind, or freshly dead animals (a renewable resource) dominates the energy supply. I understand some people can afford to have multiple cars, with some vehicles serving a particular niche and then there are people like Lawbeef who could go six months on a single 100-mile charge. This is not universally practical however -- I cannot afford another car payment for something that cannot do everything I require a car to do. Even if it can do 95% of what I require, that 5% is still a deal-breaker; it's not something I'd be willing to live without.
Jeff V wrote:This is not universally practical however -- I cannot afford another car payment for something that cannot do everything I require a car to do. Even if it can do 95% of what I require, that 5% is still a deal-breaker; it's not something I'd be willing to live without.
This is what rentals are for. Have you ever moved furniture/house? Do you own a box truck? Because if you don't, your current vehicle is not up to your own standards.
You can own an electric vehicle and occasionally rent a gas-powered car for long trips. You don't need to own a gas car too and have it sit idle in the garage 51 weeks per year. I've done family trips where we've rented the destination vehicles because we didn't need 8 individual cars driving all over the place to the same locations. Two did just fine.
Jeff V wrote:When I can drive from Chicago to Denver in 15 hours driving an electric car, then it will be practical.
I mean, CLEARLY those are the only two options - driving 15 hours from Chicago to Denver, or else it's only good for running short errands. If the electric vehicle can get 250+ miles on a single charge, the practical use case is significantly greater than "running short errands". And you *know* that. Stop being a tool.
Short errands is anything in the metro area. Wake me when I get to the next city.
What percentage of models get 250 miles to the charge anyway? The Nissan Leaf for example is advertising a range of 107 miles meaning it isn't even practical for all errands in the metro area.
A truck is not a car. I rent a truck on average once every 5 years, for a duration of < 50 miles. If 5% of my trips are over 100 miles (or even just 50 miles for the more affordable electric cars), that would 18 rental days per year assuming I use my car an average of just one trip per day (but I average more than one car trip a day, so the rental days would be higher than 18). Add in the cost of topping off the tank each time, and you're getting close to another car payment, which, as stated, I cannot afford.
hepcat wrote:Can I get to the ACLU volunteer site in an electric vehicle of some type?
How many hundreds of miles away do you like to be from your ACLU volunteer sites?
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
And every other race, creed, colour, tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray
The raccoon and the groundhog neatly
Make up bags of change
But the monkey in the corner
Well he's slowly drifting out of range
Contributing to ACLU and SPLC. Also, refinancing my mortgage to 30 years and a lower rate. I will continue to plow every Spain dime into the mortgage, but I want cushion, Incase the First Idiot decides he is going to hose the economy through insanely high tariffs.
Great piece by Zingales in the NYT about how to oppose Trump, with lessons from failed/successful attempts to oppose Berlusconi, probably the closest thing to Trump in recent times.
Luigi Zingales wrote:Mr. Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks to the incompetence of his opposition. It was so rabidly obsessed with his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared; it focused only on personal attacks, the effect of which was to increase Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no different.
We saw this dynamic during the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton was so focused on explaining how bad Mr. Trump was that she too often didn’t promote her own ideas, to make the positive case for voting for her. The news media was so intent on ridiculing Mr. Trump’s behavior that it ended up providing him with free advertising.
Unfortunately, the dynamic has not ended with the election. Shortly after Mr. Trump gave his acceptance speech, protests sprang up all over America. What are these people protesting against? Whether we like it or not, Mr. Trump won legitimately. Denying that only feeds the perception that there are “legitimate” candidates and “illegitimate” ones, and a small elite decides which is which. If that’s true, elections are just a beauty contest among candidates blessed by the Guardian Council of clerics, just like in Iran.
I think we see this bad strategy happening already with the nominees. Don't make the primary criticism about the terrible things they allegedly believe. That's too hard to prove, and it ends up sounding like a denunciation of "thoughtcrime". Make the criticism about the terrible policies they propose and how those policies will hurt America. Not because they are not PC, but because they will have huge negative effects on lots of people who live here in the U.S.
Now we know who holds back the electric car, but thank you for re-railing the discussion.
For those who have free time to spare, you can volunteer for senate candidate Foster Campbell, for example by phone banking from your home.
As a Louisianian, I do not appreciate anyone from another State trying to influence our State election. That would be like Russia trying to influence the Presidential Election for the United States.
I agree with Smutly in the sense that it's seems odd for people in another state to fund a candidate in his state.
Although I would point out that this is common practice with Senators and mega-donors and the party national committees that pour money into state races that matter to the overall party.
But yeah, it does seem unseemly when there is only one race going on and we actually pay attention to it.
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
And every other race, creed, colour, tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray
The raccoon and the groundhog neatly
Make up bags of change
But the monkey in the corner
Well he's slowly drifting out of range
Smutly wrote:
As a Louisianian, I do not appreciate anyone from another State trying to influence our State election. That would be like Russia trying to influence the Presidential Election for the United States.
Oh boo hoo, cry me a river. Maybe you should write to the Koch brothers and express your displeasure in how they mess in state politics all over the U.S...oh wait, they support candidates you actually like, so it's okay then?
Plus, your state is already flat broke, no one candidate at this point can make it any worse. You can thank your previous governor for that.
As someone also from Louisiana I encourage you all to send money to help Foster Campbell. It will be good for the local economy and every dollar you send is one you can't put to good use elsewhere.
He hasn't got a snowballs chance in hell and it amuses me greatly to see the continued arrogance of the left in thinking they can just buy their way to victory.
“A simple democracy is the devil’s own government.”
— Benjamin Rush --
Rip wrote:As someone also from Louisiana I encourage you all to send money to help Foster Campbell. It will be good for the local economy and every dollar you send is one you can't put to good use elsewhere.
He hasn't got a snowballs chance in hell and it amuses me greatly to see the continued arrogance of the left in thinking they can just buy their way to victory.
I retract my previous statement re: subversion of the Louisiana Senate race. Send money.
Now we know who holds back the electric car, but thank you for re-railing the discussion.
For those who have free time to spare, you can volunteer for senate candidate Foster Campbell, for example by phone banking from your home.
As a Louisianian, I do not appreciate anyone from another State trying to influence our State election. That would be like Russia trying to influence the Presidential Election for the United States.
a) I assume you're being ironic and
b) If I want to dump 20 million dollars into an out of state super pac that runs megaphone-equipped trucks through your streets 24/7, you have no right to question my right to free speech because MONEY IS FREE SPEECH DAMMIT!
Control of the House in 2018 will be decided by a handful of Swing Districts, places where the last election was decided by a thin margin. Find your closest Swing District and join its team to learn about actionable opportunities to support progressives—and defeat Republicans—in that district, no matter where you live. We can stop Trump and the GOP agenda by working together NOW.
My wife and I have gotten involved with our local chapter of Indivisible. So, that means calling and writing Congress a lot, with plans for personal visits upcoming.
And guess which Trump valley friend has New Zealand citizenship?
My blog (mostly photos): Fort Ephemera - My Flickr Photostream
“You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn’t waste either.” ―Galen Rowell
Stopped putting off our move to a full EV in our garage... [Note: this is not our garage. ]
She's not a looker, and definitely is no Tesla, but she'll handle her role as our around-town transport. 107-mile range. Thanks to our generous government and to Nissan being scared shitless of upcoming EV competition, we got her for peanuts.