There's talk about this in Australia too, to keep the power companies viable or to maintain their profit margins I'm not sure but I know to which option my opinion leans.
It's a worse deal for people who have spent the capital to reduce their ongoing expenses, and it's a worse deal for people who have very low electricity usage (likely poorer people and those who are naturally frugal). It's possibly a better deal for heavy electricity users, and I'm not sure that's who should be rewarded. No, I am sure: they shouldn't be rewarded.
This may not be entirely appropriate to the reasons behind the article, but it feels tangentially related:
I'd like to say a brief thank you to what the brief, golden period of globalisation was able to bring us.
I hope that that level of international trade and economic cooperation across geographical, ideological, political, and religious boundaries can be achieved again at some point in the future, but it seems the pendulum is swinging the other way for the time being.
I hope that, wherever the current direction ends up, there are lessons that can be learnt about what we had, and somehow fumbled, such that there is motivation enough to get back there.
> I'd like to say a brief thank you to what the brief, golden period of globalisation was able to bring us.
Not everyone benefited. Market globalism wasn't particularly kind to the global south, and the specific mandates that the WTO enacted on countries in latin america / africa (Washington Consensus) greatly increased local wealth disparities despite visibly growing GDP for a time.
America profited handsomely because for most of the past 30 years, it was where the (future) transnational conglomerates were based. These companies stood to benefit from the opening up of international markets. Now that these companies are being out-competed by their asian counterparts, instead of going back to the drawing board and innovating they are playing the "unfair trade practices" card and of course the current administration is on-board with it.
Globalisation is not going anywhere, but America is increasingly alienating itself from allies who it could stand to benefit from.
And "your shit" is spreading further and further, press conference by press conference. In the last hour or two the great man dropped this quote regarding NATO:
"We would have always been there for them, but now, based on their actions, I guess we don't have to be, do we?" Trump told the audience.
"That sounds like a breaking story? Yes, sir. Is that breaking news? I think we just have breaking news, but that's the fact. I've been saying that. Why would we be there for them if they're not there for us? They weren't there for us."
I can't imagine how long it will take to get this shit back together enough that the US can be trusted again by the international community. One responsible government just means that everything that could be built within the four years of their administration could be torn up, burnt, shat on, and buried within two weeks of a new administration.
And yet there seems to be a base 30% support for the current behaviour.
I think the first thing to try and fix is the education system.
It is amazing how you can order so many small sensors from aliexpress, around 1-2€ each, and having in a week or two delivered. I am not sure we will have this for long.
> I hope that that level of international trade and economic cooperation across geographical, ideological, political, and religious boundaries can be achieved again at some point in the future
Me too, but without all the slavery this time please. It'll never work if some actors are willing to abuse their workforces to keep prices low as they do.
And they wouldn't be the types to sign up to face an opponent who is more dangerous than a young mother driving their kids to school or a uni student walking home.
The main thing that worries me about the use of fossil fuels is the heavy machinery where said heavy machinery is used for farming food.
There are service stations in rural Victoria that have run out of petrol[0]. If farmers can't run their machines, I don't want to continue that train of thought. I would hope that governments would obviously prioritise food production and distribution over, kinda everything else, but logic and government seem to have a strange relationship.
What is also true is that media has been saying both:
- Don't panic buy, we've got plenty
- We'll start running out in mid-April.
So, unlike TP during COVID, which can be manufactured locally, there is a dark cloud on the horizon and precious little to encourage any optimism regarding the Strait of Hormuz.
Was looking at EVs last weekend, slightly accelerating a purchase that was going to be made soon anyway and, yep, there is plenty of additional interest as a result of current fuel prices / availability.
EVs were only going to grow in popularity anyway, but this feels like it's jumped the adoption curve up a peg or two immediately.
What I'm interested in seeing is whether infrastructure can scale with the additional interest. And I don't think it will because the the current government is already planning to add an "EV tax" to make up for the fuel excise, and the opposition government (if/when it gets back in) is owned by the fossil fuel lobby, and so they'll be doing whatever they can to slow it down.
The beauty of EVs is that the infrastructure is for most part very decentralized. Anybody with a house can charge at home, using cheap off-peak power at night and/or solar panels during the day.
Obviously there's work to be done on charging in apartments and highways, but this is a more tractable problem than (say) trying to double hydrogen or even gasoline filling stations overnight.
The infrastructure in question is DC fast chargers. Yes, you can charge at home if you have a house, with a parking space reachable with an EVSE, and your commute is short enough that you can fully recharge by the next commute, and nobody needs the car after hours when you'd otherwise be charging it, and you never take road trips or longer-than-usual drives.
Everyone else is, to a greater or lesser extent, at the mercy of the DCFC infrastructure, and it is sorely lacking in many places - even ones you'd expect it to be pretty good.
Your picture is not an accurate picture of what it's like for most people - you frame the exceptions as if it's the normal case.
Most people who have a driveway or garage where they can install an EVSE (or an apartment complex where the parking has chargers) don't even need to charge every day. Depending on the commute it could even be just two or three times a week. It would usually only be when your only option is trickle charging out of a standard wall outlet that you are in the 'might not be able to charge in time for the next drive' territory, not with EVSE where you can get 7 kW single phase or 11 kW three-phase with most cars (some cars can do up to 22 kW with three phase but that's rare for them to support that on AC charging and it would be rare to have an EVSE that could do that power at home).
I'm not making any representation of how common this is - just saying that unless all those conditions apply to you, you will eventually have cause to care about the quality, availability, and reliability of public DC charging infrastructure.
Anecdotally, I have 5+ friends with EVs, and every single one of them charges theirs from a standard 15A wall outlet. (I have an EV, but I also have a real charger.) Sure, most of the time it's fine - but when it's not, then you have to really care about whether that nearby EVgo pedestal is working today.
But furthermore: most apartment dwellers, many renters, people in multifamily homes/complexes where their parking spaces are not near their personally-metered power, those who have to street park - many more people than you may think have difficulty charging at home. I wish it weren't the case, and I'd love to see better solutions here.
A 2kW socket for ten hours over night will give you a hundred kilometers of range or so. A regular 11kW wall box can fully charge your car over night. How long is the typical commute you're thinking about? Fast charging is pretty much irrelevant day-to-day for people who can plug in at home or at work. The only time these people need fast chargers is during road trips.
I'm in the privileged position that I have solar panels and can charge in the garage. I only just had a conversation with someone who was considering an EV, but their 'housing configuration' doesn't support it, it just wasn't feasible purely from a charging perspective in their situation.
More public infrastructure, and knowledge of the presence of said infrastructure would open up EVs to a wider set of use cases. It's almost the 'confidence' in the suitability of EVs that needs to be worked on.
This is absolutely true, but IMO also a much smaller problem than some people are making it out to be.
Without any special car-charging equipment, just with a regular outlet, I'm able to get over 100 miles of range every night (charging only from 11pm to 7am).
This is enough for a pretty long daily commute and it doesn't block car use during normal hours.
Big disclaimer - I'm from Europe, which helps my case because of shorter commutes and faster home charging with 220 volts.
But at the end of the day I think the solution lies in equipping all parking spaces at home and at work with power outlets. DCFC is definitely needed, but should be viewed as a solution for exceptional cases (i.e. roadtrip that exceeds your range), not a gas station for EVs.
It’s hilarious that the greenies who live in dense urban areas have a harder time charging their EV than folks who live in the burbs. I’m thinking of putting in a second EV charger so I can charge two cars at once.
Hah, yes, of course, I'm falling into the FUD trap.
What I meant to say was the kind of infrastructure that defeats some of the FUD around EVs, such as chargers at rest stops along highways, in parking lots, hotel/motel car parks, etc. Chargers could/should become a value-add for businesses that survive on servicing road-trip transient customers.
> Anybody with a house can charge at home, using cheap off-peak power at night and/or solar panels during the day.
Yes! This is decentralised, existing infrastructure, and that should neither be forgotten nor understated: the ubiquity of 'the lowly power point' is greater than that of the fuel nozzle (in complete awareness of the relatively large disparity between charging time and refueling time, which is a whole can of worms on its own).
Thousands and thousands of miles of high voltage cables transformers and super expensive chargers sounds easy to you?
A gas station just needs a tank and a pump. You can put it anywhere and can operate with a small generator if 110V electricity is not available. Even as a country you don’t need infra. Just some trucks to import from the closest refinery/ port
Yes, if you're rolling it out for a single charger in the middle of nowhere.
My understanding is that much of the grid already exists if there is a town or even just a rest stop present, it likely has grid power. I will grant that this doesn't speak to the suitability of said existing infrastructure for running one or a number of a high voltage / high speed chargers.
> Just some trucks to import from the closest refinery/ port
Vehicles will be visiting the gas station anyway ? Aka the road-like infrastructure will need to be there.
I do not try to claim that trucking fuel over long distances is efficient. Just stating that gas stations themselves need no additional infrastructure.
I mean, if you consider "building the whole gas station" to be the infrastructure, then sure, but building a gas station requires significantly more complex infrastructure than installing an EV charger or two.
You need to install several specialized sealed tanks underground, and the pumps that will get the gas & diesel (and sometimes kerosene) in them up to the cars.
You then need to be able to make secure, safe deliveries of highly flammable liquids to the site regularly, forever.
Once an EV charger has been installed, it'll need occasional maintenance, and if some yahoos vandalize it it might need repair or replacement, but otherwise it's pretty much good to go, potentially for decades.
It's a worse deal for people who have spent the capital to reduce their ongoing expenses, and it's a worse deal for people who have very low electricity usage (likely poorer people and those who are naturally frugal). It's possibly a better deal for heavy electricity users, and I'm not sure that's who should be rewarded. No, I am sure: they shouldn't be rewarded.
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