This will, of course, raise the cost of solar equipment and washing machines in the U.S. I can understand the GOP wanting to raise the cost of solar power in order to increase the use of fossil fuels, but why washing machines? Did Maytag make a large campaign contribution?
I had been under the impression that Maytag had moved all their production to Mexico and elsewhere, but apparently not. According to this article, they moved some of it back to the US from Mexico (note: Whirlpool owns Maytag).
The Tesla Model S weighs significantly less than most pickups and large SUVs on the road today. Tesla's heaviest, the Model X, is significantly lighter than the GMC Yukon, for example.
I don't see the logic in this argument. Electric vehicles are not going to destroy the roads.
Road maintenance is funded primarily through taxation of gas and diesel [1]. As electric vehicles don't use either, they do not pay a proportional share of the cost to maintain roads. The fuel tax has been an elegant funding solution because it scales both with mileage and vehicle weight (as heavier vehicles use more fuel).
Further, electric vehicles weigh more than comparable gas or diesel vehicles, making the ratio of road wear to tax contribution even more disparate.
Even if you agree electric vehicles are good for society overall, we will need to find a new way to fund road maintenance.
The same way we fund it currently- by allocating money from the budget. While it may feel good to talk about "this tax pays for this program" it is not a law of nature that a decrease in a specific tax will lead to a corresponding decrease in funding for any particular program. On the contrary, it is commonly expected that an overrun in a particular tax will be spent elsewhere.
When the day comes that the revenue from the fuel tax has dipped low enough that the money needs to be replaced, I am quite sure we can come up with 300 other ways to allocate the tax burden appropriately.
Some things are more easily measured than others, e.g. how much fuel has been used vs how much street lighting has been used. Some public spending is more aligned with usage than others, e.g. road wear aligns well with distance traveled vs water piping wear does not align with use. It is a very nice situation when spending depends on usage which is easily measured - tax burden can be concentrated on actual users and not distributed to wide population.
This is the point of the debate. Prior to electric vehicles, we have been more or less in a situation where we could concentrate tax burden of road maintenance on vehicle users/owners. Electric vehicle use is much harder to measure apart from coarse odometer readings taken during inspection.
Ditch the fuel tax, and instead have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled and vehicle weight? Could also incorporate lesser factors like efficiency, and likely to be a subsidy for heavy vehicles. Of course the beauty of fuel tax that it incorporates all of those factors already, and you get easy, regular collection.
As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?
> have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled
Now the hard part is getting accurate distance traveled figures from all road users. Good luck with that.
> As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?
Yes, and the system is breaking down because of solar. Typically, most of what you pay for electricity goes towards maintaining the line to your house, not towards generation. When you get solar panels that cover most of your usage, but keep the connection for use when the sun does not shine, your bill goes down to the point where it's no longer enough to maintain your grid connection.
The correct solution to that is to disaggregate transmission and generation, and for transmission bill you for the size of your main incoming fuse instead of consumption. However, in much of the US the utilities are heavily constrained in how they bill you by law, and cannot do this, so the only thing they can do is hike up prices on everyone, so solar is even more appealing and more people get it, resulting in even higher prices...
Unfortunately the UK does not have proper emissions checks as part of the MOT.
There is a (subjective) visual check for visible smoke, and a metered exhaust check which again only tests generically for "smoke", ie large particulates.
Unfortunately there is no testing of specific pollutants (NOx, PM2.5, PM10, etc) so many vehicles can pass MOT even if they are way outside allowed emissions levels, have had DPF removed, etc.
Because installing a tracker on someone’s car will end with lots of privacy issues? You need a tracker to properly attribute taxes to the person that owns the road, and even though you don’t need super accurate trackers, any tracking can be abused.
You don't need trackers if you just want to replicate the mechanism of the fuel tax for cars that don't use fuel. For that you only need a tamper-protected mileage counter.
I disagree on ditching the current fuel tax for combustion engines. What about keeping the current system for combustion engines and creating the "distance traveled tax" only for electric vehicles. Although the separate systems would be a bit confusing for hybrids.
Only took me a few seconds to figure out how to abuse the distance traveled tax for combustion engines. Physically roll back the odometer if the vehicle is old enough, do it electronically, disconnect the odometer, and/or other ways. I think people that travel around the country a lot would abuse. FYI, messing with the odometer is a felony so don't do it.
My state does not have yearly inspections, so nobody is going to read my odometer.
Only took me a few seconds to figure out how to abuse the mileage tax for combustion engines. Physically roll back the odometer if the vehicle is old enough, do it electronically, disconnect the odometer, and/or other ways. I think people that travel around the country a lot would abuse. FYI, messing with the odometer is a felony so don't do it.
My state does not have yearly inspections, so nobody is going to read my odometer.
Anyway someone will need to pay for the electric infrastructure, all these megawatt-scale charging stations, power lines to supply them and 2-3 times more power plants than we need now. But hopefully reality check will come before that
Petrol/Diesel destroys the environment. Maintaining the road is the govt's duty. Let them figure it out :)
There are some +ve and some -ve points about each technology and I'd rather have the govt build roads every year or research on building better roads if that is what it takes to get every vehicle to be electric.
A fully specced Model X weighs 5,531 lbs vs a fully specced Yukon at 5743 lbs, hardly significant, but thats beside the point.
I was specifically referencing semis, where an incredible amount of road damage comes from, and the need for new road funding to account for the transition from diesel taxes.
The logic is that road damage does not scale linearly with vehicle weight, and with current battery tech, an electric semi will need to complete more trips for the same amount of cargo due to the battery's weight eating into the load capacity.
> The Tesla Model S weighs significantly less than most pickups and large SUVs
Pardon my ignorance but I thought the S was a luxury sedan and not a pickup or large SUV? Does the weight of the S compare favorably with vehicles in its own class?
Even if a Tesla Semi weighs the same than an unloaded diesel semi, the point would still stand.
Diesel taxes are one way to help make the truck industry cover the costs of road improvements, which electric semis will never have to pay. This requires a new funding source given how much semis destroy the roads.
In a similar fashion, Diesel is not charged for the social cost that its carbon and NOX emissions cause on the health of the communities through which they drive. They should be, but regulations will take time to catch up to technology effects in both cases.
There will be better autopilots, but never perfect ones. Aircraft have been using imperfect autopilots since their inception. Most planes have a prominent red button you can press to disable the autopilot whenever it misbehaves.
The difference is when a plane's autopilot goes wonky you typically have minutes to realize it and take over manually. In a car you often have less than a second. Pilots also are highly trained and rehearse emergencies. Drivers put on makeup.
Anything less than a truly 100% autonomous car autopilot is 1 massive lawsuit away from failure.
I believe that the autopilot that you have to override in critical moment is worse than the driving assistance that doesn't turn on until it's critical.
In the former case, if you turn on the autopilot that you know is not just keeping the speed constant, you will tend not to be fully concentrated on the road all the time. And you'll surely seldom be able to estimate when the autopilot will work and when it won't.
In the later case, you must remain aware of the situation and you are "in the loop" for the common cases, but if there's something you estimated wrong the clever radars, lidars and computers have the chance to react better than you are able.
Part of the problem is Tesla's "autopilot" isn't designed to be fully automatic. It's a diver's assistance package. As a comment in the Facebook thread mentioned, I too wonder if the problem is partial-autopilot in general. People will tend to put their trust in the system if it appears to be automatic. We probably shouldn't be shipping partial autopilot at all. Fully automatic or bust.
I have an assisted driving system in my Jeep. I'm pretty clear on its capabilities and, for example, stay alert to the possibility I have to hit the brakes when coming up on stopped traffic at freeway speeds because I'm outrunning its detection range for it to do so safely automatically.
The problem is Tesla selling a system with similar limitations as "autopilot." It's not. It's an assisted driving system, albeit a very smart one, and they need to make it more clear that's what it is. They're setting incorrect expectations, and the various "I climbed into my passenger seat while it drives!" bits aren't helping.
Basically we're living the old urban legend of the dude putting on cruise control and then crawling into his camper for a nap. The cruise control is a little bit smarter nowadays, but it comes down to a gross misunderstanding that Tesla is (inadvertently) encouraging.
Does the Jeep system function if you don't provide any inputs? The Subaru system will brake if it has too, but won't actually drive the car for you. Same for lane holding - it'll give some steering input and beep if you start to swerve, but it won't actively steer around a curve.
Really late response, but it'll gas/brake on its own and will steer back to the center of the lane if you go past a configurable margin.
Gas/brake is meant to be "foot off pedals." You set a desired speed, and it'll go the lesser of that or the speed of the car you're following, and follow at a configurable distance otherwise. It's very, very, VERY nice for Bay Area commuting.
The only real needs to pay attention are A) if a car cuts you off and then slams brakes, B) the car in front of you locks brakes up or swerves out of the way last minute with something in front of it, or C) you're booking it at freeway speeds and come up on stopped traffic. In all three cases an alarm sounds telling you to brake, but if you don't want to to be an emergency you'll be looking out for at least C) so you can take over the slowing down before that alarm could go off. Hopefully the sensors get longer range in the future.
The lane-keeping is meant to only be an assist, though, and would leave you pinballing from one side to the other (or getting stuck on the side that's downhill from the crown) as you hit the margin and it pushes you back center. It'd also get you through a gentle curve the same way. You can go hands free with good alignment and tolerance for looking like you're driving drunk but I wouldn't recommend it. Eventually an alarm will sound if you're fully hands off the wheel.
Worth noting Tesla's system isn't much different there, though, aside from that it'll hold center of the lane and won't pinball. You're still expected to keep your hands on the wheel, and it has a similar alarm that goes off if you don't.
Don't get me wrong--their system is ultimately more advanced, with speed limit sign reading and a bunch of other cool tricks. But it's still meant to be a hands-on assist and isn't sold that way.
Edit: to be clear, I'm just describing adaptive cruise control above, and there's nothing particularly special about that. For all intents and purposes, the only difference with autopilot is the active steering for lane-keeping, even if it is smarter under the hood. It seems to be have the same limitations otherwise judging by their manual disclaimers.
> Most planes have a prominent red button you can press to disable the autopilot whenever it misbehaves.
Not really, or some pedantry.. the autopilot (heading and altitude) is disabled with a double-click on a small button either the yolk or the side-stick (boeing and airbus). Autothrottle (entirely separate) is disabled with a double-click on a small button on the sides of the throttle levers.
There is also a separate mechanism to disable it entirely, but it's usually a small button with an indistinct label (like "A/P" or "A/T") mixed in with a bunch of other buttons on the instrument cluster. Sometimes there is also a slightly larger "AP Disengage" button on some planes.
Most pilots I've seen will disable using the first method so they can be immediately "hands-on" when the system relinquishes control.
One glaring difference is that aircraft pilots have substantially higher training requirements than car drivers. And the pilots of large aircraft that typically use autopilot, are all trained professionals.
It's hard to believe so many people consider the use of shortened URLs a security measure. It is not, and was never intended to be. A URL is exposed, by definition, whether long or shortened. A shortened URL is a convenience, not a security tool. Some people misuse base64 encoding for "security" as well, but it does not mean we should get rid of base64 encoding.
Nobody was using shortened URLs with the intention of creating security (as a security measure). Rather, they were ignorant of the way shortened URLs degrade security. Different thing.
Why not, if you've tried to keep it secret? They're an incredibly common means of giving out things to a limited set of people without having to explicitly authenticate them. They're used by a lot of mailing lists for e.g. unsubscribe links. If there's enough entropy and they're once-only it's a reasonable approach.
Otherwise you end up with people just sending around "go to this url with this login and password" through email and chat instead, which is slightly harder to automatically exploit but not really more secure.
It's risk/reward. Whether a VC fund, NYSE, or government security, you can risk more for greater reward. This does not mean, as the article implies, that you should. It depends on the individual and the purpose of the investment. I can probably make a lot more money investing in a riskier company, but I am also more likely to lose some or all of my investment.
If I am considering investment in a fund that expects a 40% annual return, I should remind myself that if it was a sure bet, then enough people would be investing in it to drive the price up and the return down. There are plenty of investors as smart as me, and many of them are willing to do more research than I am.
This is typical of software development in recent years. The emphasis on newer platforms and technology (in the case iMap) results in new user interface limitations, as well as bugs, for existing users of older technologies (i.e. desktop, keyboard access, and Pop3).
I've found eM Client to be a good alternative to Outlook and WLM.
If people in a community have to drive three hours for food, then there will be enough demand that someone will open a grocery store. When there's an economic vacuum left by a closing superstore, other, possibly smaller, stores will come back and fill it. It's simple economics.
When a company such as Walmart opens or closes a large store, there seems to be a mass of news articles explaining how the opening or closing is destroying the community.
When a large store comes in, people rarely consider that the new jobs will have benefits and advancement opportunities not found in the traditional mom-and-pop stores. When a large store closes, people rarely mention that it will leave room for new mom-and-pop stores to open.
The fact is, large stores have a pluses and minuses. Their opening or closing is more a result of local economic conditions than the cause.
This is the thing that I keep thinking about. If Walmart comes in and essentially extracts the wealth of the community (profits of the store) and then leaves, how long does it take for that community to recover? How long before they can actually afford to invest in more stores to fill the gap?
You're incredibly ignorant to the reality if you really think that a small town wiped of small businesses by Walmart will have any capital to start a grocery store when they leave. Have you ever actually lived in a small town where most if not all of the population is struggling to make ends meet?
Further, what the heck are you talking about with "benefits and advancement opportunities" at Walmart? The employees are on food stamps just to get by! Where does that leave them extra capital or "benefits" to that situation?
I'm actually in the grocery business and know the economics of opening stores - you can open a store for practically nothing: you start as a convenience store selling staples like toilet paper, long shelf life foods, local produce and whatever the owner makes themselves (ethnic food, apple pies, etc). Then, you slowly add SKUs as you grow.
The rich call this a "food desert," urbanites call this the bodega or corner korean market and europeans have zillions of these. I actually love shopping in these places - terrific & patient service and amazing finds if you're patient.
The food distribution business is beautiful that way - economies of scale are very gentle. It's the exact opposite of automobiles and infrastructure software.
p.s. amazon+UPS is another great stopgap for these communities, and surprisingly efficient if they setup a DC (distribution center) somewhere a few hrs away with more limited selection. It's the 2016 equivalent of the milkman.
As a matter of fact, I do live in a small town with a median household income of less than $30,000. There is a Walmart store. Most Walmart employees do not qualify for food stamps, but they do get health and other benefits not available at many local small businesses. There are relatively high paying jobs at the Walmart store -- much higher than are typically available at local small businesses. And, if a Walmart employee is willing to relocate, there is even more advancement potential.
I cannot imagine anywhere in the lower 48 United States where there could be a community in which people have to drive three hours to get food. If there is, the demand would certainly justify someone from inside or outside the community opening a grocery store. A large capital outlay would not be necessary.
>If people in a community have to drive three hours for food, then there will be enough demand that someone will open a grocery store. When there's an economic vacuum left by a closing superstore, other, possibly smaller, stores will come back and fill it. It's simple economics.
Real life doesn't always play out like simple (simplistic) economics.
E.g. sometimes nobody will do the investment to build one for years.
Or it will much smaller and more expensive that a Walmart, but enough to stiffle anybody opening a competitor.
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