From what I read that is a far bigger problem in the USA where you only have 110VAC. Where I live, New Zealand, the standard voltage is 240VAC and a standard domestic heavy current outlet, normally used for stoves, can supply 15A. I can pull 3.6KW with no special wiring. The local Tesla dealer told me I can install a rapid charger in my home easily.
A recent public radio discussion with a local expert discussed the amount of extra power generation we will need when our local vehicle fleet has transition to EVs and compared that with current power generation projects already approved, the increased demand out strips the increased supply by about 3%. Add to that NZ has mostly used green power generation for many decades and things are looking here.
In practical terms I spend a lot of time in Shenzhen where I see approximate 100% of the bus fleet is BYD electric models and about 50% of the taxis are electric BYD e6s. I have never seen any kind of hydrogen vehicle moving on a public road, ever, and I am old and well traveled.
Hydrogen powered cars have annoyed me for years as I am convinced are not practical and mainly funded to muddy the waters around the development of pure EVs. However if this was used for grid storage it could be a practical idea. Make hydrogen when you have surplus renewable energy and burn it at the same location when you need to support the grid. No issues with transport or storage density and you could locate it a bit away from population centers if you worry about safety.
As much as I love Tesla I feel using Li-Ion batteries for grid storage is a bad idea as you don't have the same space/weight concerns for grid storage that you do in an EV and therefore such batteries are better deployed for EVs where they bring the most benefit.
I picked 800km as an arbitrary figure that would represent the maximum distance you would travel without stopping. Most people are likely to want stop and eat before you have done 800km and I am assuming you will charge the car while you eat. 800km not far enough? Wait another 10 years and get 1600km. My point is right now today, not the future, there are EVs that have enough range for the bulk of the journeys people make and every year EVs become a practical and affordable. There are transition point coming, the first is when EVs are cheaper then ICEs, my guess in the next 5 to 10 years that transition will happen. The next transition is when EVs ranges exceed ICEs, you are looking at 10 to 20 years, but that is a softer transition as people will trade range for cost. The day an EV can travel 10km than an ICE people will go 'meh, whatever'. The day and EV is is $10 cheaper than an ICE they will switch. Yes a simplification but you get my point.
About range in general the trend is clear, if you look at it over the last few decades, the range is doubling every 10 years. That doesn't need to go on indefinitely. Just like PCs and phones rapidly increased in speed in the early years, making a huge difference, now they are fast enough for normal use the speed is seldom the big issue it once was. Same with EVs, range was a big issue but we are approaching a point where it is not anymore.
Yes, but you will sell them with a floor full of batteries where the thickness of the floor determines the cost and range. You are not going to see a boot full of batteries like you do with EV conversions. Have a look at the new VW Combi, the ID Buzz, at YouTube for an idea of where things are heading, its already impressive what they can do today. I have no idea what a Chevvy Suburban but my guess is that in time a small entry level city car will have about 200km range and a large high end touring car will have a 800km range. The price difference will be huge but that is the case with ICE cars today anyway.
Looking at the trends in EV range it is clear that the potential range of EV will exceed ICE vehicles at some point in the future, probably around 10 years from now. Once the range exceeds exceeds what driver can handle or needs the trend will switch from increasing range to reducing cost. Just as you now buy cheaper car for city use and a larger more expensive car for across country trip you will by cars with smaller cheaper batteries for commuting and larger more expensive batteries if you need it. The emergency service vehicles will fall in the later category.
For off road use decent EVs design for the job are going to be an awesome game changer that will shake things up the way Suzuki did in the late 1970s. No more extra weight and cost for triple limited slip diffs or diff lockers. No more selecting the right mode for the auto transmission or riding the clutch on a manual, just pick your line and go for it!
That is the most American thing I have heard in ages! Yea, sure, money can grease a lot of wheels but believe it or not there are many people in the world working on medical solutions not to make money but to make world a better place. However the odds are they are not working in the USA. BTW, while a lot of stuff is developed in the USA it should be mentioned that other countries have actually developed stuff to.
Yep, typical USA story, starts taking about sex and is changed to discussion about guns. No surprise really, same with USA movies. If a movies is not made in the USA then when a pretty girl gets topless the next scene is usually her making love but if the film is made in the USA the odds are pretty high that she is murdered violently in the next scene.
Yes, I am well versed in LCD technology. The active colour LCDs use more power than the simple black and white LCDs but you are right, it is the backlight that uses the most power. I don't display seconds by default but could flip over to another watch face if I really needed that. My Pebble runs about a week on a charge and is always ready read. No colour LCD can match that.
My key point is smartwatches are a convenient display alternative to my phone screen but I do not play games or movies or anything else that need 60Hz refresh so ePaper is perfect as it is on 100% of the time. LCDs are the fatal flaw (IMHO) with every other smartwatch.
As far as I can tell the Pebble remains the only smart watch with an ePaper display and therefore is always on. The Ionic appears to have a not always on LCD, a fact they don't mention on the product page, so could not match the operation of a Pebble. Ironic might be a better name for it? Smartwatches are not very smart in my option if you have to interact with them to tell the time! A $5 dumb watch is more use for telling the time than any smartwatch if you have to touch the screen, shake your wrist or push a button.
Until someone can make a slim smartwatch that is on all the time and runs several days on a charge I'm sticking with my Pebble regardless of the software support.
When I think of other counties that have reached space I can't think of any who didn't need the technology for their nuclear weapons. Is there any other countries with a successful space program that didn't need it for their military?
Any brand that was so desperate to make money that they would try such shit is not going to sell to me. Think about it, if they are that desperate for a few dollars what is their warranty plan going to be like? Sorry sir your wheel falling off is not covered because you rotated it past 360 degrees...
I had a problem with LinkedIn suddenly wanting to invite hundreds of email address I never gave them.I have only ever used LinkedIn via a desktop web browser and always refused to give them access to my email accounts despite the weekly requests they send. Then suddenly they had all sorts of obscure email address they wanted it invite. Doing some research I found the email address in question were present in my imap inbox on my private mail server. This all happened around the time I brought an AT&T phone while in the USA and gave it access to my email account, so that has to be the prime suspect.
The real problem came when I challenged LinkedIn to tell me where they got the email addresses from. They simply refused. So what can I do? Who can you actually lay a complaint against them with? I want them to explain where the information came from and to delete it but there seems to be no way to do that with a USA based company.
Timber is currently, and always has been, the preferred building material in many earthquake prone regions because they can flex with ground movement and when they do fail it is less catastrophic and hence more survivable if you are in side.
Take the Christchurch earthquakes 5 years ago. Many timber homes we destroyed but it was the minority concrete buildings that by far killed the most people.
Now that HP printers are crippled with region restricted consumables it begs the question what region is the ISS classified as? The I in ISS is for International but the new HP printer policies don't permit consumables that can be used internationally. They do say there is a US and Russian side to the space station so I guess they can send up two separate sets based on those regions but of course if one printer runs out of consumables they will not longer be able to use the consumables from the other printer. But hey that's the price of progress right?
What normally happens is the customer quotes the consumer guarantees act to the retailer and they pull finger and do the right thing. If they don't you go to the relevant government body and lay a complaint. The processes are designed to be simple and straight forward. No lawyers and minimal expenses if any.
We also have a small claims court system to handle low value claims where you go before a judge with no lawyers and state you case in plain English.
Both systems put the power in the hands of consumers. I no longer do retails sales, too much risk as you don't have the right to pass the buck up the line to your supplier.
If you buy it in New Zealand then don't bother with extended warranties etc as all failures not caused by user misuse must be fixed for free for the reasonable expected normal life of the phone. On an expensive high end phone 5 years should be a reasonable expectation.
I use social networks to keep up with what is happening in the lives of my friends and family. I do not use it as news network, I do not use it to find out what is happening in the world. I do not use it as commercial network, I do not do business on it. I do not like or join company pages. If someone has to pay to inject their unwanted stuff in my feed I couldn't give a f**k. I never wanted their crap in their in the first place.
To be honest I do wonder why Facebook is still called a social network as the social aspect really seems to be secondary to the commercial aspects of it.
I was comparing them with New Zealand pay rates for the same jobs and the pay here in NZ appears to be better than the UK and the cost living is much cheaper here too, with the exception of accommodation in the Auckland region.
The way they were operating is quite common in other countries and seems quite reasonable to me so I see no need for this change.
The thing I find strange about the UK is the pay rates for developers appears to be pretty low. Maybe the crowd emailing me job offers there are the cheap labor suppliers, and real market rates are higher, but based on the offerings I am seeing the typical rates are £35 - £45 P/H or £25k - £65. The highest I have seen offered was £75k. Given that the UK is an expensive place to live this is hardly that attractive.
Ok so we now have Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook doing technology to listen to what is happening in our homes. Not sure I really trust any of them with that level of access to my private life, but Facebook would be way down that list if I was to sort them from most trusted to least trusted.
They should see what is happening in China first. Many Chinese cities had a very high usage rate of electric scooters. Very practical transport for flat cities that provide lanes for them and a potential pollution free option. Interestingly there is a movement there away from scooters to cars. When the weather is ok the scooters are a more practical solution being cheaper and faster, but in the case of China the movement to using cars is a status thing, not about what is best but what impresses others more. As a result some cities that had free flowing traffic 5 years ago are now gridlocked much of the day.
Translate that to the Hanoi situation and try and imaging 2500 cars per km! Of course Hanoi is not China and I suspect few people will be able to afford the cost step from a motorcycle to a car. Regardless it is a trend in the wrong direction. The better option would be to ban the new sales of 2 stroke motorcycles now then force the transition from petrol to electric over a period of time. The irony here is the bulk of commuters will likely switch from petrol to electric, simply because of the advantages, over the next few years. For example a few years ago in China I could buy an electric scooter for USD $400 (500W) or a 125cc motorcycle (5KW) for $1200. For the average commuter in a Chinese city it makes little difference. Now in China I have found you can buy more conventional electric motorcycle (1.2KW) for $1000. In my book that means for city commuters electric motorcycles are close to parity with petrol ones in cost and performance today.
No need for a well intentioned but short sighted law change.
Are they really plaining to bring the Internet to remote places, or just an internet probably best called FacebookNet? This is a classic case where the flaw change by many media outlet to rename the Internet as just internet matters. The article does not mention if they going to repeat the questionable behavior they had in previous attempts where the internet they were offering was restricted to Facebook and approved partners.
In New Zealand, and I would imagine many other countries, if any of the material released by Microsoft, in any media format or source, refereed to it as a laptop and the consumer received it without a keyboard then they would be legally entitled to either a free keyboard or a full refund. I think under NZ law Microsoft may have the choice of which remedy applies but if they chose the refund option they would open them self up to prosecution under false advertising laws as a calling a device without a keyboard a laptop is misrepresenting it as something other than it really is. If they only used weasel words like "laptop capable" they would probably be get away it.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I read that is a far bigger problem in the USA where you only have 110VAC. Where I live, New Zealand, the standard voltage is 240VAC and a standard domestic heavy current outlet, normally used for stoves, can supply 15A. I can pull 3.6KW with no special wiring. The local Tesla dealer told me I can install a rapid charger in my home easily.
A recent public radio discussion with a local expert discussed the amount of extra power generation we will need when our local vehicle fleet has transition to EVs and compared that with current power generation projects already approved, the increased demand out strips the increased supply by about 3%. Add to that NZ has mostly used green power generation for many decades and things are looking here.
In practical terms I spend a lot of time in Shenzhen where I see approximate 100% of the bus fleet is BYD electric models and about 50% of the taxis are electric BYD e6s. I have never seen any kind of hydrogen vehicle moving on a public road, ever, and I am old and well traveled.
Hydrogen powered cars have annoyed me for years as I am convinced are not practical and mainly funded to muddy the waters around the development of pure EVs. However if this was used for grid storage it could be a practical idea. Make hydrogen when you have surplus renewable energy and burn it at the same location when you need to support the grid. No issues with transport or storage density and you could locate it a bit away from population centers if you worry about safety.
As much as I love Tesla I feel using Li-Ion batteries for grid storage is a bad idea as you don't have the same space/weight concerns for grid storage that you do in an EV and therefore such batteries are better deployed for EVs where they bring the most benefit.
I picked 800km as an arbitrary figure that would represent the maximum distance you would travel without stopping. Most people are likely to want stop and eat before you have done 800km and I am assuming you will charge the car while you eat. 800km not far enough? Wait another 10 years and get 1600km. My point is right now today, not the future, there are EVs that have enough range for the bulk of the journeys people make and every year EVs become a practical and affordable. There are transition point coming, the first is when EVs are cheaper then ICEs, my guess in the next 5 to 10 years that transition will happen. The next transition is when EVs ranges exceed ICEs, you are looking at 10 to 20 years, but that is a softer transition as people will trade range for cost. The day an EV can travel 10km than an ICE people will go 'meh, whatever'. The day and EV is is $10 cheaper than an ICE they will switch. Yes a simplification but you get my point.
About range in general the trend is clear, if you look at it over the last few decades, the range is doubling every 10 years. That doesn't need to go on indefinitely. Just like PCs and phones rapidly increased in speed in the early years, making a huge difference, now they are fast enough for normal use the speed is seldom the big issue it once was. Same with EVs, range was a big issue but we are approaching a point where it is not anymore.
Yes, but you will sell them with a floor full of batteries where the thickness of the floor determines the cost and range. You are not going to see a boot full of batteries like you do with EV conversions. Have a look at the new VW Combi, the ID Buzz, at YouTube for an idea of where things are heading, its already impressive what they can do today. I have no idea what a Chevvy Suburban but my guess is that in time a small entry level city car will have about 200km range and a large high end touring car will have a 800km range. The price difference will be huge but that is the case with ICE cars today anyway.
Looking at the trends in EV range it is clear that the potential range of EV will exceed ICE vehicles at some point in the future, probably around 10 years from now. Once the range exceeds exceeds what driver can handle or needs the trend will switch from increasing range to reducing cost. Just as you now buy cheaper car for city use and a larger more expensive car for across country trip you will by cars with smaller cheaper batteries for commuting and larger more expensive batteries if you need it. The emergency service vehicles will fall in the later category.
For off road use decent EVs design for the job are going to be an awesome game changer that will shake things up the way Suzuki did in the late 1970s. No more extra weight and cost for triple limited slip diffs or diff lockers. No more selecting the right mode for the auto transmission or riding the clutch on a manual, just pick your line and go for it!
Law suits from the first person operating a target vehicle in that trial to get cancer can't be that far off.
That is the most American thing I have heard in ages! Yea, sure, money can grease a lot of wheels but believe it or not there are many people in the world working on medical solutions not to make money but to make world a better place. However the odds are they are not working in the USA. BTW, while a lot of stuff is developed in the USA it should be mentioned that other countries have actually developed stuff to.
Yep, typical USA story, starts taking about sex and is changed to discussion about guns. No surprise really, same with USA movies. If a movies is not made in the USA then when a pretty girl gets topless the next scene is usually her making love but if the film is made in the USA the odds are pretty high that she is murdered violently in the next scene.
Must have been a slow day when looking for submissions...
Yes, I am well versed in LCD technology. The active colour LCDs use more power than the simple black and white LCDs but you are right, it is the backlight that uses the most power. I don't display seconds by default but could flip over to another watch face if I really needed that. My Pebble runs about a week on a charge and is always ready read. No colour LCD can match that.
My key point is smartwatches are a convenient display alternative to my phone screen but I do not play games or movies or anything else that need 60Hz refresh so ePaper is perfect as it is on 100% of the time. LCDs are the fatal flaw (IMHO) with every other smartwatch.
As far as I can tell the Pebble remains the only smart watch with an ePaper display and therefore is always on. The Ionic appears to have a not always on LCD, a fact they don't mention on the product page, so could not match the operation of a Pebble. Ironic might be a better name for it? Smartwatches are not very smart in my option if you have to interact with them to tell the time! A $5 dumb watch is more use for telling the time than any smartwatch if you have to touch the screen, shake your wrist or push a button.
Until someone can make a slim smartwatch that is on all the time and runs several days on a charge I'm sticking with my Pebble regardless of the software support.
Great work guys!
When I think of other counties that have reached space I can't think of any who didn't need the technology for their nuclear weapons. Is there any other countries with a successful space program that didn't need it for their military?
Any brand that was so desperate to make money that they would try such shit is not going to sell to me. Think about it, if they are that desperate for a few dollars what is their warranty plan going to be like? Sorry sir your wheel falling off is not covered because you rotated it past 360 degrees...
I had a problem with LinkedIn suddenly wanting to invite hundreds of email address I never gave them.I have only ever used LinkedIn via a desktop web browser and always refused to give them access to my email accounts despite the weekly requests they send. Then suddenly they had all sorts of obscure email address they wanted it invite. Doing some research I found the email address in question were present in my imap inbox on my private mail server. This all happened around the time I brought an AT&T phone while in the USA and gave it access to my email account, so that has to be the prime suspect.
The real problem came when I challenged LinkedIn to tell me where they got the email addresses from. They simply refused. So what can I do? Who can you actually lay a complaint against them with? I want them to explain where the information came from and to delete it but there seems to be no way to do that with a USA based company.
Timber is currently, and always has been, the preferred building material in many earthquake prone regions because they can flex with ground movement and when they do fail it is less catastrophic and hence more survivable if you are in side.
Take the Christchurch earthquakes 5 years ago. Many timber homes we destroyed but it was the minority concrete buildings that by far killed the most people.
Now that HP printers are crippled with region restricted consumables it begs the question what region is the ISS classified as? The I in ISS is for International but the new HP printer policies don't permit consumables that can be used internationally. They do say there is a US and Russian side to the space station so I guess they can send up two separate sets based on those regions but of course if one printer runs out of consumables they will not longer be able to use the consumables from the other printer. But hey that's the price of progress right?
What normally happens is the customer quotes the consumer guarantees act to the retailer and they pull finger and do the right thing. If they don't you go to the relevant government body and lay a complaint. The processes are designed to be simple and straight forward. No lawyers and minimal expenses if any.
We also have a small claims court system to handle low value claims where you go before a judge with no lawyers and state you case in plain English.
Both systems put the power in the hands of consumers. I no longer do retails sales, too much risk as you don't have the right to pass the buck up the line to your supplier.
If you buy it in New Zealand then don't bother with extended warranties etc as all failures not caused by user misuse must be fixed for free for the reasonable expected normal life of the phone. On an expensive high end phone 5 years should be a reasonable expectation.
I use social networks to keep up with what is happening in the lives of my friends and family. I do not use it as news network, I do not use it to find out what is happening in the world. I do not use it as commercial network, I do not do business on it. I do not like or join company pages. If someone has to pay to inject their unwanted stuff in my feed I couldn't give a f**k. I never wanted their crap in their in the first place.
To be honest I do wonder why Facebook is still called a social network as the social aspect really seems to be secondary to the commercial aspects of it.
I was comparing them with New Zealand pay rates for the same jobs and the pay here in NZ appears to be better than the UK and the cost living is much cheaper here too, with the exception of accommodation in the Auckland region.
The way they were operating is quite common in other countries and seems quite reasonable to me so I see no need for this change.
The thing I find strange about the UK is the pay rates for developers appears to be pretty low. Maybe the crowd emailing me job offers there are the cheap labor suppliers, and real market rates are higher, but based on the offerings I am seeing the typical rates are £35 - £45 P/H or £25k - £65. The highest I have seen offered was £75k. Given that the UK is an expensive place to live this is hardly that attractive.
Ok so we now have Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook doing technology to listen to what is happening in our homes. Not sure I really trust any of them with that level of access to my private life, but Facebook would be way down that list if I was to sort them from most trusted to least trusted.
Sounds like a good idea for a Slashdot poll.
They should see what is happening in China first. Many Chinese cities had a very high usage rate of electric scooters. Very practical transport for flat cities that provide lanes for them and a potential pollution free option. Interestingly there is a movement there away from scooters to cars. When the weather is ok the scooters are a more practical solution being cheaper and faster, but in the case of China the movement to using cars is a status thing, not about what is best but what impresses others more. As a result some cities that had free flowing traffic 5 years ago are now gridlocked much of the day.
Translate that to the Hanoi situation and try and imaging 2500 cars per km! Of course Hanoi is not China and I suspect few people will be able to afford the cost step from a motorcycle to a car. Regardless it is a trend in the wrong direction. The better option would be to ban the new sales of 2 stroke motorcycles now then force the transition from petrol to electric over a period of time. The irony here is the bulk of commuters will likely switch from petrol to electric, simply because of the advantages, over the next few years. For example a few years ago in China I could buy an electric scooter for USD $400 (500W) or a 125cc motorcycle (5KW) for $1200. For the average commuter in a Chinese city it makes little difference. Now in China I have found you can buy more conventional electric motorcycle (1.2KW) for $1000. In my book that means for city commuters electric motorcycles are close to parity with petrol ones in cost and performance today.
No need for a well intentioned but short sighted law change.
Are they really plaining to bring the Internet to remote places, or just an internet probably best called FacebookNet? This is a classic case where the flaw change by many media outlet to rename the Internet as just internet matters. The article does not mention if they going to repeat the questionable behavior they had in previous attempts where the internet they were offering was restricted to Facebook and approved partners.
In New Zealand, and I would imagine many other countries, if any of the material released by Microsoft, in any media format or source, refereed to it as a laptop and the consumer received it without a keyboard then they would be legally entitled to either a free keyboard or a full refund. I think under NZ law Microsoft may have the choice of which remedy applies but if they chose the refund option they would open them self up to prosecution under false advertising laws as a calling a device without a keyboard a laptop is misrepresenting it as something other than it really is. If they only used weasel words like "laptop capable" they would probably be get away it.