Entrapment has a very specific definition, and this ain’t it.
It might still be an illegal speed limit change, but that’s going to depend on an awful lot of details. It’s certainly bad design, but the locals probably like it for the money it brings in.
She probably used it earlier, but not necessarily. She might not have a good place to set her phone in her car.
She might have used it earlier, at a time where it was legal. For instance, setting navigation or music before driving. Or (depending on local laws) while stopped at a light.
I’m a sane world, removing the brake pedal (etc) would only occur after extended disuse. When the technology is mature enough and so reliable that it’s a wasted feature that never gets used, and hasn’t been used in a long time.
Not when the technology is brand new and this is something still needed on a regular basis.
How did they get to unveiling without anyone reviewing the design? Or did everyone inside Ferrari sign off on it as being acceptable?
Huge is subjective, but there are many solar farms today running on just a few acres. Some quick googling says that community-based and commercial farms typically run on 10-40 acres, generating between 50-200 megawatts. If you consider 40 acres to be a huge farm, then sure. But it doesn’t make much sense to run these in a decent populated area anyway. This is no different than coal, gas, or other power plants today, albeit for different reasons.
As for huge batteries, yes, we will need them once solar power capacity reaches a point where generation in the day exceeds the demand. As it stands, many places still have off-peak pricing at night. Solar would need to counterbalance that completely before we need huge batteries for solar.
“solar-powered cars” have been tried many times because it’s a great headline, but the math never works. Cars simply don’t have enough surface area to capture a lot of solar power. The amount of energy is low enough to not be worthwhile, except in the most extreme edge cases.
It can be, and traditionally has been. But how fast do you think you can bring a solar farm online? Securing the land and zoning is probably the biggest delay, followed by running lines to the grid.
It’s 12 amps even. It’s the 80% rule for continuous draw, defined as expected use to run for 3 hours or more. That’s why a space heater is 1500 watts, but a hairdryer is 1800.
That sounds a lot like Lordstown, which collapsed incredibly soon after beginning production. Part of the issue was that their target audience (fleets with basic work trucks) isn’t so fond of relying on a small, unestablished startup.
The agent is a local, usually small business, and acts as a buyer on your behalf. They guide you on coverage to get, and the options available to you.
Those quotes come from the major insurance companies you always see advertised. They are the ones underwriting your coverage. These are almost invariably faceless corporations, with decisions by faceless computers.
The local agent can’t do anything but recommend coverage elsewhere.
The start button (or app, or whatever) absolutely does something, and to say otherwise leads me to think you need to dive in deeper to how they work.
The button closes the contactors, activating the high voltage battery pack. To do otherwise is a massive safety risk. It also verifies the key (to prevent theft, and required by law) and on some models launches the parts of software needed for driving.
I’m not familiar with Tesla’s design, but it should be easy enough to set the code to run this process whenever the door closes. Whether that’s what people want is a different question entirely.
5 years is a very long time in this field right now. 3 years ago, Aging Wheels made a video about how Tesla Superchargers were the only real option for a road trip. A few months ago, they released a video where they avoided superchargers because they were outdated technology.
I just checked, and it’s very doable on most EVs. There aren’t a lot of good options from Amarillo to Wichita Falls, but most can cross that gap anyway.
Road trips are certainly a weak point for EVs. If you go on more than 3 or 4 per year, EVs are not (and probably won’t be for a while) a good option.
But I do at least see it getting better in the next future. All of the pieces are there, just not in one place. When taking a long trip, you’re already supposed to stop every 2 hours to stand up and walk around for a bit. You or your passengers probably also need to use the restroom. Every 2-3 of these, you need to stop for food.
Currently, it’s a PITA to link these with fast charging. You should be able to pull into a truck stop (etc), easily and conveniently, and plug in while you do the rest. Except the fast chargers aren’t usually at truck stops, and apps like ABRP don’t have an option to set stops by time.
If this all lined up, and you have a car with reasonably fast charging (like the Ioniq 5), I don’t think you’d have to wait on charging very much at all.
To own an EV, you basically have to be able to AC charge at home or at work. The good news is that all of the new 5-over-1 apartment buildings (at left around here) are being built with a handful of chargers right from the beginning. As they become more popular, it’s pretty easy to add more.
But you can also get creative. My local chain grocery store has level 2 chargers in the parking lot. These don’t make much sense to use while shopping, but they’re convenient enough for all of the older apartments nearby. Most universities have AC chargers, but it’s probably not convenient and you’d have to move your car the next day.
What state(s) would that be? I just checked PlugShare, and it shows plenty of fast charging stations even through rural states like Kansas and Montana.
I guess Alaska would count, but even that’s pretty well covered from Anchorage to Fairbanks
If you’re looking at fast charging (1 hour or less) on a regular basis, you’re doing it wrong. The vast majority of charging should happen while the car is already parked, using level 2 AC charging. This means when you park at home, with, etc, you take just a few seconds to connect a charger, then walk away. When you come back ~8 hours later, you take a few seconds to unplug before leaving. This approach, believe it or not, means I spend less time dealing with fuel than if I had a gas car.
Plus, AC charging is much cheaper, and more reliable. These chargers are very simple devices, that just do a bit of monitoring and negotiation. They deliver raw 240v to the car, which has its own AC-DC converter.
DC fast charging is much more expensive - $14 for a full DC charge is very unlikely. That’s because DCFC stations are very big, complex installations. As such, they also have parts fail on a regular basis. DCFC is often more expensive than gas, but again should only be used on rare occasions.
As for batteries failing, it’s about as often as a gas engine fails. IOW, it’s extremely rare until the car is EOL anyway. Battery degradation is typically 85-90% health remaining at 100k miles.
Reduced maintenance, yes. But I haven’t (yet) found an independent mechanic that can work on my Bolt, so the little maintenance I need has to be done at the dealer.
I still took that deal, but it has room for improvement.
Part of the challenge here is that Bambu is a Chinese company. Which means you would have to sue them in China, with predictable results.
You could try to sue them in e.g. the US, then use that victory to secure things like import bans, but that’s a very long, slow, and expensive process.
It also becomes a giant red flag to any potential applicants.
“Why is this position open?”
“We had the previous employee imprisoned for complaining too hard about how little we were paying him”
Not that it can’t happen, and similar things continue to happen, but most (and certainly the best) candidates will avoid that place for many years, and demand extremely high pay from the beginning.
I wouldn’t worry about the battery. Any potential harm comes in before it gets to the battery, and there’s likely a DC-DC converter before that anyway.
The first thing to validate is the listed specs. If your laptop expects 12v (usually listed on a sticker on the device), don’t connect a 19v brick. Same for center-positive/center-negative. USB-C bypasses all of that, since it negotiates a matching spec before charging.
The second thing is how well it adheres to the specs it lists. This isn’t something that you can really test yourself. It would require a lot of specialized equipment and skills, since the answer can change in different circumstances. It might work fine for a while, but eventually deliver rich, chunky volts. This will (likely) fry the motherboard, and maybe more than that. USB-C does NOT bypass this. Some of the worst chargers on the market are USB-C.
The only realistic way to avoid the second is to get a quality charger from a trustworthy source. Many will only recommend OEM, but you also have to be careful about counterfeits on eBay or scAmazon. You can use aftermarket, but only if it’s a trustworthy brand like Anker.