CygnusX-1

On 5/21/2024 at 12:00 PM, billvon said:

-Gas stations take 1,000 kilowatts and a truck could never supply that!

You learn something every day. I did not know that gas stations take 1,000 kW to operate. They must be a real strain on the aging electrical grid. Oh, oh, oh, I know. All we have to do is close down 1 or 2 gas stations per subdivision. That way when we must be forced to buy and charge our EVs all at the same time, we will not be overloading the grid. Problem solved.

Thanks Internet nay-sayers.

On 5/19/2024 at 10:40 AM, SethInMI said:

What about that corner case? 

And you are just seeing FSD (supervised). This is a big step up in performance for those of us who have had FSD for years. I've had it since they just added automatic lane changes on interstates. But that is why I got it so early. I like to see the development of the system and how it gets better - and in some cases worse - with each iteration.

Speaking about corner cases. I was using FSD the other day and in my neighborhood, there was the flatbed truck parked in my lane. The driver was out in a forklift and removing a pallet of sod. The forklift was in the oncoming traffic lane (2-lane road). I thought this would be a good test for FSD so I didn't do anything but of course was ready to take over if it screwed up. My car pulled up behind the flatbed and came to a stop about 2 car lengths back. It sat there and waited for about 2 minutes without doing anything while the forklift driver unloaded the pallet. Pretty much as soon as the forklift cleared the road, the car put on the turn signal and proceeded around the parked flatbed. No inputs from me. Needless to say, I was impressed. It behaved exactly as I would have in that situation (except for the fact that I would not have put on the turn signal as there were no other vehicles around).

28 minutes ago, billvon said:

Predictions:

1. No it didn't
2. Of course it did, that happens all the time, that's nature
3. It was cold in Antarctica last night
4. There's this one glacier in Greenland that is STILL GROWING - explain THAT!
5. I never said the climate wasn't warming, but it has nothing to do with us
6. Al Gore is stupid and you worship him like a god you sicko

Top predictions are 2 and 4.

 

7. What has that glacier ever done for ME? It going away does not affect my life directly, so I'm not changing anything.

I tend to think the firing and rehiring of people is more of a reactionary result and not part of some grand plan. Everything that has come out, I think the actual scenario was:

1. Elon to VP: I need you to reduce your department.
2. VP: We have all good people and more work than we can handle. This department cannot afford to be reduced.
3. Elon: Fine, then you are all fired.
4. Elon -> all other VPs: Don't go against my wishes.
5. Rest of the world gets word of this and starts questioning Tesla, Supercharger network, JS3400 connector, etc. People start publicly questioning their commitment to that standard.
6. Elon realizes he screwed up politically and tries to do damage control by stating Tesla is going to concentrate on reliability. (IMO, this statement is probably questionable.)
7. This doesn't calm fears enough, so he is forced to hire back part of the team and make it sound like everything is back to normal.

From a business standpoint, it doesn't make sense to fire and hire people. There is a bunch of paperwork needed to do that. IDK maybe with as quickly as things turned around, the people "hired back" were never really on paper fired.

18 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

They want to build cutting edge vehicles.

I heard that they fired their whole new products and vehicle development team too. So much for cutting edge vehicles. They only want to focus on FSD, AI, robo-taxi, and Tesla-Bot. Am I wrong? Or was that just anti-Tesla FUD.

21 hours ago, GeorgiaDon said:

In advanced economies children are an expensive luxury.

That is not quite true. In advanced economies, we CHOOSE to make them expensive. We could also choose to make our offspring live like they do in poorer countries. We could build mud huts for them to live in. Give them only 1 pair of good clothes that they wear to school. The rest of the time they would only be shirtless & barefoot working out in the field to help the family. There is no reason for them to have that expensive IPhone, toys, computers, or a college education. These are all choices we make, not the fact that we live in 'advanced economies'.

I totally agree that it seems way pre-mature, if the goal is to transition to other networks taking over. Especially since they announced version 4 of the supercharger. I can't say for everywhere, but around here, when the transition went from V2 to V3, Tesla did not upgrade V2 stalls. They just built all new V3 stations. That IMO doesn't bode well for V4 stalls. Especially with them announcing that new stations will be very much reduced.

That doesn't mean that they could change to now upgrading the existing stations to V4. But I've seen no mention of that in any press.

My guess is soon, someone is going to announce that they are leaving Tesla and start up a business of installing superchargers. Kind of like JB Straubel did with Redwood Meterials. Otherwise, I have to agree. It makes zero sense to reduce that portion of Tesla.

I haven't seen the actual details, did the entire organization get eliminated or it was just reduced in size and the media is misrepresenting the facts with click bait headlines.

I hope everyone bought Tesla stock when Brent predicted demise (again).  Up 37% this past week.

News Flash to no one except for Brent - Tesla has been a very volatile stock ever since they started making waves in the auto industry:

I guess I could rewrite your narrative as, "Tesla stock now up 9,705 percent!"

Shall we compare that to say Ford over the same time period? (Sorry for the two different graphs from different websites, but I don't feel like spending the time searching the web for the exact pretty graph to post in a nonsense forum topic.)

I'm not saying that this is the reason, but maybe - just maybe the reason is that in 2023 it was announced that the US would transition over to NACS as a charging standard. If American's have a bias for Tesla for whatever reason, there is no reason for them to want to purchase a substandard car from another manufacturer with a connection method that would require an adapter. Why would anyone do that? I personally would not want to purchase a vehicle were I would need to have an adapter for the next 10+ years. Then after that, the resale value would tank because NO ONE would want a CCS car 10 years from now. If my choices are CCS car now or gas, I think I'm taking gas or better yet hybrid. Not that I wouldn't rather have an electric vehicle. I just don't want to have one with all the problems of CCS. I'm not buying a movie in VHS when I could buy it now in DVD for cheap and in a year or two and get a UHD 4k BLU-Ray version.

3 hours ago, lippy said:

How often you gotta replace them regenerative 'break' pads?  

 

4 hours ago, brenthutch said:

“The Journal was highlighting a study from 2022 that, naturally, was ignored by the mainstream press at the time. What the study found was that “brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution compared to modern tailpipes.”

Why? Because EVs are as much as 30% heavier than gas-powered cars, which means more stress on their “regenerative” breaks...

 

I mean seriously Brent, do you even read/comprehend what you write?

I can only talk about myself here, but before I got an EV, I had a stick shift and I would down shift and use "engine braking" as much as I could. But even doing that it is in no comparison to what an EV does with regenerative braking. Typically, with my EV I do not even have to hit the brakes until I am at 5 MPH. Tesla Model 3/Y and maybe even new S/X can come to a complete stop without touching the brakes.

By you posting that "study" shows you know nothing about the functionality of an electric vehicle. It also shows how little the author of the study knows. That is probably why it was ignored by the "media" except for those with an agenda.

As far as tire wear goes, that has more to do with the way you drive than the weight of a car. My personal experience is that I can get the same wear on tires as my previous gas cars by taking it easy. But most of the time it is just too fun to take corners fast and accelerate fast so I accept the added tire wear. But even with that I'm averaging 40,000 mile tire replacement with summer "sport" tires.

But that is just one data point. I have not done a study of hundreds of people to get any additional data - other than being part of the EV community and seeing their stated performance.

On 3/6/2024 at 5:52 PM, ryoder said:

I assume by "muscle car" they are referring to the likes of Mustangs, Camaros, etc, which is silly since all the muscle cars have come with a variety of engines from economy to high performance. Examples I have owned:

1965 & 1966 Mustangs. 6 cylinders, 3-speeds. Not muscle cars.

1967 Camaro. 327 2-barrel carb. 2-speed Powerglide. Not a muscle car.

1970 Mustang Boss 302. 4-barrel carb, 4-speed. Muscle car.

1970 Barracuda. 6 cylinder, 3-speed. Not a muscle car.

I think they mean muscle car the same way as gun nuts/nazi/etc. talk about assault rifles. Does it "look" like one? It has nothing to do with the actual functionality.

The problem with this is that even if Thomas leaves the court, since it is so close to an election, the republicans will block any attempt to seat a new judge until after the election because the people will not have a voice in who is elected to pick the next judge.

On 1/9/2024 at 9:41 PM, Phil1111 said:

"Think of it, magnets," Trump said. "Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets." is the actual quote. His rambling nonsense is getting worse and worse during his campaign speeches.

Well, you have to admit. Trump isn't wrong there. Given a sufficiently large enough glass of water, you could drop it onto a thin magnet and it could shatter the magnet into a bunch of tiny pieces therefore ending the usefulness of the magnet and "end[ing] the magnet". 

You just have to understand the way people who are 'like a smart person' talk. This is all part of the genius that is Trump.

1 hour ago, tkhayes said:

well at least you admit that under the Democrats and Biden, gas and oil expansion is not under ANY threat and is in fact, expanding.

And so are renewable energy projects across the country.  You managed to find a tidbit to claim a 'disaster'.

Not to be Mr. Obvious here but sometimes I wonder if it actually has to be said to get the point across. This (the OP narrative) isn't a D or R issue. It is a corruption issue and BOTH parties are corrupt. The loss of jobs probably has more to do with the changes in Net Metering than any outright subsidy given by the government/taxpayers.

1 hour ago, SkyDekker said:

Best way to get there is kill off anybody over 65 who really isn't contributing to society anymore. You ready to go?

Again Logan's Run had it right. Maybe not that actual age - that can be up for discussion. But the sentiment was correct. Need to start embedding those crystals.

17 hours ago, nigel99 said:

I believe there is some truth to what Cygnus said. While they are not the same, I believe it is a legitimate concern having 2 candidates in their 80's. 

I would think the Democrats would have a couple of strong candidates that are younger than Biden and by removing the legitimate concern of a president who would be mid 80's at the end of his 2nd term the likelihood of beating Trump would be increased. Trump is evil and it is worth doing whatever it takes to ensure that he is crushed at the polls.

Not that I'm replying to nigel directly, it is just the last post that referenced my previous one.

Of course Trump and Biden are not the same person with the same traits. That is not what I mean by "being the same". What is the same is both political parties. Both want their form of dictator. Just look what has happened here in Florida where we no longer will have a primary - only one choice on the ballot. It is not about Biden's age. Here is the problem with Biden:

(How Popular Is Joe Biden? | FiveThirtyEight)

You are telling me that the D party could not come up with anyone who could beat these numbers? The dems don't even what to find out apparently. Make Biden stand up, grab some balls, and shout out his accomplishments and stand behind them. But he won't do that in fear of offending his good close republican friends.

The problem isn't solely on the Republicans. This also will lay directly on the Democrats hands if that happens. This outcome could easily be adverted if the Dems put someone up that could easily beat Trump. But they won't, so we have the same problem on both sides of the isle. And then people wonder why we say that we do not have a 2-party system, but instead they are all the same.

I think that is a smart and excellent move by the Republicans. That way we can have an out - not wanting to 'defund the IRS' so that we can stop sending money to that state sponsored terrorism regime.

16 minutes ago, olofscience said:

it's not a myth. Did you see the Guardian link?

Oh, come on. The Guardian was talking about UK subsidies. Those people are not even part of this world. Don't you know that the earth ends at the borders of the continental US? Just remember his argument about F150 sales and only willing to look at US sales and not world-wide sales of vehicles.

9 hours ago, jakee said:

That just looks like a proper lifestyle to me. Although it really highlights the difference between average and median and really should be shown to those that do not comprehend the concept between those two terms.

But overall, it makes sense. Younger than 35 you are just starting out in this world. You should have very little net worth. 35-44 is where you are starting to accumulate assets and make something of yourself. 45-54 is where you have gained some experience and you income reflecting that. This is where the biggest jump should be happening. 55-64 you are preparing for retirement. If you don't have that nest egg for retirement, you still have some time to invest (although it is really getting a little too late). 65-74 if you are a democrat you are thinking of retirement. If you are a republican and not of the elite, BACK TO THE MINES - otherwise let's party. 75 and older you are living off your retirement so yes your net worth is decreasing. That way you can end your life where you started it back at $76k.

19 minutes ago, kallend said:

As a  professor for some 45 years, I could not care less what my students smoked or which deity (if any) they believed in,  so long as they could prove  that they could do science, math and engineering to the satisfaction of the accreditation agencies and their eventual employers.  Their personal lives were none of my business.

And this is exactly why you would not make a good republican politician. Although you failed to mention if you are highly concerned what your students did "in the bedroom".

On 8/4/2023 at 4:25 PM, johnhking1 said:

If we stopped turning corn into ethanol that would help.

You can blame the farm lobby (corn growers) for that mess. They were the ones to petition the government to use corn in ethanol verses other more appropriate vegetation. If I were you, I would go out and punch every farmer in the face for allowing that to happen.

3 hours ago, ryoder said:

Stark found that two of the clips in the video came from stock footage.

So, what are you complaining about? What is a poor singer/songwriter to do on a small budget? It is not like he could stage a multi-million dollar production with hundreds of extras, make-up, costumes, explosions, etc. He needs to get his racist, violent hate out there somehow and make it entertaining to watch. Give him a break.