Elon Musk. Twitter. Babylon Bee.

[temporal1]

RIVIAN
“Inside Rivian’s year from hell:
How the EV-truck maker stumbled despite billions in cash, Amazon’s backing, and the 6th-largest IPO in U.S. history”

P.7 / Automotive ..
http://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php ... 56#p177156

It took years+years for microwaves to be accepted, cost-effective, etc., before they were in “everyone’s” homes and workplaces.
In the late 1970’s a computer prof i worked for bought an early PC - $10,000!


Dec 2022 / EVs in the Snow: Will Your EV Leave You Stranded?
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/evs-in-the ... -stranded/

[Ken]

I would enjoy owning an EV, but a few things have to happen. They have to get cheaper. They have to have service centers near me. We need more charging stations everywhere.

In some circumstances they make a lot of sense, especially if you live in an urban/suburban area and most of your driving is local or regional. And you have your own garage or driveway where you can install a charger. No one I know who owns an EV ever charges it anywhere but home unless they happen to be on a rare long-distance trip like Portland to Seattle in which case they are driving on the main interstate in the Northwest and there are oodles of chargers everywhere. If you do a lot of long-distance driving in rural or wilderness areas they would not be the ideal vehicle.

I'm planning for our next car to be an EV but I'm also hoping to get a lot more years out of our current cars first and by then I expect there will be lots of new options that don't even exist today. Every year the technology improves and the options increase. At some point we should start seeing a flood of cheap small EVs out of countries like India and China since the technology is actually simpler than IC vehicles with far fewer moving parts. Kind of like how computers plummeted in price. The very first Macintosh computers that came out in 1984 were $2500 and they were little more than a keyboard, processor, and small grayscale CRT display. Didn't even have a hard drive. That would be $7,163.40 in today's dollars. Today you can buy a $150 Chromebook that does infinitely more.

[mike]

I would enjoy owning an EV, but a few things have to happen. They have to get cheaper. They have to have service centers near me. We need more charging stations everywhere.

In some circumstances they make a lot of sense, especially if you live in an urban/suburban area and most of your driving is local or regional. And you have your own garage or driveway where you can install a charger. No one I know who owns an EV ever charges it anywhere but home unless they happen to be on a rare long-distance trip like Portland to Seattle in which case they are driving on the main interstate in the Northwest and there are oodles of chargers everywhere. If you do a lot of long-distance driving in rural or wilderness areas they would not be the ideal vehicle.

I'm planning for our next car to be an EV but I'm also hoping to get a lot more years out of our current cars first and by then I expect there will be lots of new options that don't even exist today. Every year the technology improves and the options increase. At some point we should start seeing a flood of cheap small EVs out of countries like India and China since the technology is actually simpler than IC vehicles with far fewer moving parts. Kind of like how computers plummeted in price. The very first Macintosh computers that came out in 1984 were $2500 and they were little more than a keyboard, processor, and small grayscale CRT display. Didn't even have a hard drive. That would be $7,163.40 in today's dollars. Today you can buy a $150 Chromebook that does infinitely more.

Yes, I absolutely would have a charger at my house.

[temporal1]

In my lifetime ..
cars in my childhood (U.S. made and proud) - would get rusty, noisy, blow blue exhaust smoke - these were common on every street.
eventually, Japanese brands were showing up - very unwanted by many, WWII was too fresh in memories.

But the products were so much better! eventually, they could not be resisted. MARKET COMPETITION+DEMAND.

Today, government is pushing EVs with all kinds of problems - yet, trying to do the opposite of market competition+demand,
because that’s what government can do. Gov doesn’t have to be accountable.

Gov doesn’t have to build a better mousetrap.

Today’s gov picks winners+losers - thru gov funding.

[Robert]

What Elon is doing is turning the ordinary purchase and ownership of a Tesla into a political statement since people now link Tesla to Elon's right-wing political views.

What right wing political views? Elon Musk is not right wing at all. He supports abortion and many other left wing issues. He believes in human caused climate change too. I do not see him as right wing.

[ohio jones]

What Elon is doing is turning the ordinary purchase and ownership of a Tesla into a political statement since people now link Tesla to Elon's right-wing political views.

Were sales of the Model T affected by Henry's antisemitism and Nazi-friendly political views?

[Ken]

What Elon is doing is turning the ordinary purchase and ownership of a Tesla into a political statement since people now link Tesla to Elon's right-wing political views.

Were sales of the Model T affected by Henry's antisemitism and Nazi-friendly political views?

Different time. People weren't on social media Henry Ford also didn't buy up the 1920s equivalent of Twitter to project his views to a world-wide audience. Had he done so and turned buying a Model T into a political act or badge of support for his ideas then sales probably would have suffered.

[ohio jones]

Different time. People weren't on social media Henry Ford also didn't buy up the 1920s equivalent of Twitter to project his views to a world-wide audience.

He most certainly did do the 1920s equivalent; he bought the Dearborn newspaper, and required all Ford dealers to distribute it.

[Bootstrap]

What Elon is doing is turning the ordinary purchase and ownership of a Tesla into a political statement since people now link Tesla to Elon's right-wing political views.

Were sales of the Model T affected by Henry's antisemitism and Nazi-friendly political views?

Elon Musk ran a Twitter poll and asked Twitter users if he should resign as CEO. 57.5 percent said “Yes,” he should step down, 42.5 percent said “No,” he should stay in the CEO role. After that poll, he said he would resign as CEO as soon as he could find a replacement. As long as Musk is the owner, I'm not sure how much of a difference that will make in practice. But it does tell you how Twitter users feel. And of course, Twitter's advertisers have been fleeing, advertising and selling user's data are the main revenue streams for Twitter, so that's not a good thing. Twitter is no longer a publicly traded company, it would be really interesting to see their current stock price if it continued as a public company.

I think Twitter is a little different from cars and space and defense contracting. But there are plenty of news articles indicating that Tesla investors and board members think they need a lot more of Musk's attention than they are getting right now.

[Ken]

Different time. People weren't on social media Henry Ford also didn't buy up the 1920s equivalent of Twitter to project his views to a world-wide audience.

He most certainly did do the 1920s equivalent; he bought the Dearborn newspaper, and required all Ford dealers to distribute it.

Maybe his sales were hurt. He started distributing the Dearborn Independent at his dealerships in the early 1920s and circulation peaked in 1925. He closed it in 1927. 1926 was the year that GM passed Ford in sales and then never looked back.