> Using government force against a company that refused a contract is the opposite of democracy
If democracy is working, isn't using the government to express the collective will of the people exactly how it should work? Else why are we bothering to vote in the first place?
Collective will of the people cannot supersede your ownership over your business and its right to engage with anyone it wishes to free of government retaliation. The business is people. Feel free to go to a communist country if you want collective action against companies. What other things do you think the collective vote should permit if the numbers tally? Do you support the collective will of the people to gag your free speech? To vote to shoot you dead in the street? Certain rights supersede voting, at least until somehow people manage to repeal the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment etc.
You seem to have escalated that argument a long ways towards hyperbole. The government refusing to have anything at all to do with a company seems like a perfectly valid position to take, and I expect my representatives to exercise that authority on my behalf. There is some nuance to how much that should extend to companies who themselves do business with the company you are refusing to contract with, but it is not completely wrong.
And I think the governments reaction was driven by trump's thuggery not any real reasons, any reasons given were after the fact. I mentioned those examples because you mentioned the collective voice of people, sometimes one needs reminded that unvarnished collective vote is not permitted to do certain things as rights of free expression and property exist, nothing more nothing less.
> who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent
You can repeat that as often as you want, but it doesn't seem well grounded. He's always had a stutter, and since he left office he has given speeches which suggest his mental faculties remain intact. Is he slowing down? Yeah. He's got quite a long ways to go before he's in McConnell territory.
In any case, what does his choosing to run have to do with process? Did he violate the process? Seems to me he was following it to a tee.
You sent me down a rabbit hole, thank you, reading about the current state of Cascadia HSR, what it would take to make the current 79mph tracks capable of 110mph or 125mph (spoiler, 110mph is barely worthwhile and 125mph is an overt waste of effort), etc. The more I look at the numbers, the more I think the future does not look like HSR in the PNW. Wildly expensive, low ridership.
I wonder if we could not get most of the benefit by doing substantially cheaper options like separating freight from rail on major routes, electrifying parts of it where feasible. And maybe taking specific segments in areas where the track conditions are already favorable and increasing the maximum speeds on those segments. Probably two-thirds of the route between Portland and Salem, for example, is already suitable with modest upgrades to hit 125 mph. And basically all modern trains are capable of that speed already.
Yeah we're flying in aluminum cans with hundreds of pounds of luggage above our heads held in by doors with doors that regularly malfunction. The occasional baby seat that might become a projectile seems low on the list of things likely to impact me, much less change the outcome appreciably in a crash.
> I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's
How do you define piss poor? The stats show that the US minimum standards still reduce fatal injury risks substantially. And your comparison point for 'rest of the world' is a German automobile club, not a government regulation. Would the better comparison be to ECE R129 for the EU?
> something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there
You know that the information is readily available and you could avoid spreading misinformation with a 10 second search, right?
The US regulation, FMVSS 213/213A, does a frontal crash at 30 mph as well as a side crash test at 30 mph. For apples-to-apples comparison, the EU regulation does a 31 mph frontal crash test and a 19 mph side test. All of the governmental tests are done on a standardized test bench. The German auto club test is 40 mph frontal and 31 mph side, done in a regular car.
There are also organizations in the US that do testing and ranking beyond the regulatory minimums.
IMO it's not necessarily unreasonable to use standards/evaluations set by a private industry group for this kind of thing.
US automobile safety ratings/improvements over time are largely driven by IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). It's a private group but is the standard yardstick manufacturers expect to be tested against and fills in a lot of gaps in NHTSA official crash tests.
It wouldn't be strange to see IIIS plus NHTSA criteria used colloquially to describe "US crash standards" when talking about cars even if not fully defined by regulation.
"UL Listed" products or the International Building Code (the base model broadly followed with modifications by each state) are also "national standards" but not set by regulation.
I mean, you're right about side crashes but I'm reading that the NHTSA didn't implement this until 2022. and regardless, if all that were true the infant mortality rates per capita from car crashes would prove your point
so what do those stats say vs Germany, Sweden, the EU average? all very easily searchable, no mechanistic theorycrafting required. how does the US fare? certainly not multiple times worse across the board, right?
> if all that were true the infant mortality rates per capita from car crashes would prove your point
Would it? How much of the statistics are attributable to a difference in standards vs the higher average speed and larger average vehicles in the US? Physics is a harsh mistress, both of those factors have a lot of effect on crash energy.
An EREV is basically the worst of almost all worlds. It's a BEV with a motor tacked on. It ends up with a battery not a lot smaller than a pure BEV, so no real reduction in the cost of an expensive component, plus an engine and generator along with associated maintenance headaches. Not to mention the almost certain loss of cargo capacity.
I can't see myself ever wanting a Lightning EREV, for example, because of this exact issue. If I needed to tow, that would be the sole situation where it might hold enough of an advantage to matter. Aside from that, it will have (most likely) about 75% of the battery the BEV Lightning has, and it will lose the frunk, which is one of my favorite features. Plus, unlike my Lightning with it's 200K mile first required maintenance work, the EREV will probably have to be serviced every 10-20K miles. Ugh.
Yes, towing is a big potential case for EREV. A 600 mile EV truck (300 when towing) would need a 250kWh+ battery pack.
An EREV version could get by with 50-100kWh, which is also a lot less weight to carry. And would give plenty of power for driving EV-only for shorter trips when not towing.
> An EREV version could get by with 50-100kWh, which is also a lot less weight to carry.
It would most likely be closer to the top of that than the bottom. The standard range Lightning has a 98 kWh battery. So you can see what I mean, the battery would only be slightly smaller. Slightly less expensive, and slightly lighter -- but remember that you also have to add back in the weight of the engine and generator.
The Chevrolet Volt is a representative EREV. Its battery is 1/3 the size of a Model 3's -- that's a lot smaller than a pure BEV. 50 mile electric range, 45 mpg on gas. These cars are now 10 years old (approaching 15 for the first generation), and out of the 3 known common issues for Gen 2 only one has anything to do with the gasoline engine.
The Volt is not an EREV, it is a plug-in hybrid. GM wanted to make it a series hybrid (EREV) but due to the inefficiency at highway speeds it does engage the engine mechanically to drive the wheels.
(Interestingly, the wikipedia page for EREV incorrectly cites the Volt as an example of an EREV, but the actual page for the Volt correctly identifies it as a plug-in hybrid.)
As an unrelated aside, it also has been abandoned altogether by GM and the only way to fix the battery is to find a third-party repair shop to work on it. Batteries are not available, and for the cars remaining under warranty coverage a battery failure results in GM buying back the car since they cannot fix it. Caveat emptor; IMO the resale value right now is much too high given that risk.
Off the top of my head, the only example I can think of for an EREV that actually reached production status (in the US at least, China excepted) is the BMW i3.
> can't say I LOVE the car... removing turn signals, wiper controls and ability to physically shift into reverse seem like brain-dead moves. Otherwise though? It's a lovely care to drive.
I feel similarly. When I use the touchscreen to reverse direction, I grimace every time at the silly design. Or when the wipers do a dry wipe on a bright sunny day. But when I drive, it's all smiles, especially when I punch it (I have an M3P, and while it is no Plaid, it is fast enough to make people giggle).
The build quality has improved significantly, though I would not put them on the level of a Toyota or anything. Maybe Ford.
The software is mostly quite a lot better, the quality of the infotainment exceeds almost anything else you can buy. The remote control ability is also exceptional. But they have glaring omissions like a refusal to support CarPlay. Or a persistent need to prove that vision can replace a bog standard IR rain sensor (it still cannot).
They do get some things right that for whatever reason seem difficult to get from other makers (like a simple climate hold when you park, or dog mode). And love it or hate it, FSD is light years ahead of anything else you can buy as a consumer. I won't pay for it, because I like to drive, but it now exceeds any expectation I ever had for it. I would wager that if I put grandma's house in the nav system and told the car to drive all the way there (about 175 miles distant), it would most probably take me all the way from my garage to grandma's driveway (and park) without me doing anything other than putting it in drive and hitting start.
I loathe Elon and this was a pretty big consideration, but I do not make purchases based on single factors, and overall the value proposition was impossible to ignore. Partly this is because there is basically zero competition for an M3P.
If democracy is working, isn't using the government to express the collective will of the people exactly how it should work? Else why are we bothering to vote in the first place?
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