jmiller
@jmiller@lemm.ee
- Comment on Disney 4 months ago:
This isn’t a science related meme. I can understand you not being sure where to put it, I haven’t seen a “Racist Memes” community on Lemmy.
- Comment on xkcd #2929: Good and Bad Ideas 6 months ago:
Well, I just said carbon fiber, but to be more exact it is forged carbon SMC, so yeah, careful engineering involved. Same stuff Lamborghini is using for some structural components, so probably fairly fit to purpose.
- Comment on xkcd #2929: Good and Bad Ideas 6 months ago:
Well, it has a carbon fiber frame with a crumple zone in the front. They are going to put it through 3rd party safety testing. It won’t be as safe as a big SUV, sure, but I think it will be safer than an ebike. It also protects you from weather and has 35 cubic feet of storage in the back. I think ebikes are great too, but this does have more of the advantages of a car.
- Comment on xkcd #2929: Good and Bad Ideas 6 months ago:
The benefits increase as the efficiency of the car increases though, check out Aptera. They say they get 10 miles per kwh, and they have a lot of surface area for panels. Enough that in ideal conditions they say they get 40 miles per day from solar. It is a bit different looking though.
- Comment on Republicans are pulling out all the stops to reverse EV adoption 6 months ago:
Growing crops to make ethanol is not particulatly green. In fact, in most existing production loops we would be better off environmentally to just burn pure gasoline than produce the ethanol to mix into it, unfortunately. Too much water, too many tractors and trucks, and way too much electricity into ethanol production to be worth what we get out of it. And the bit of carbon the crops sequester doesn’t overcome it. Electric vehicles are by far the greenest option right now.
- Comment on The diagnosis is in—bad memory knocked NASA’s aging Voyager 1 offline 7 months ago:
It won’t have started getting closer again before the Milky Way collides with the Adromeda galaxy in 5 Billion years, so it and anything we send on a similar path isn’t coming back.
- Comment on Three people ‘sucked out’ of apartments as they slept by typhoon-like winds in China 7 months ago:
TIL! I had never heard the typhoon was used for both tornados and hurricanes in China, had just heard of their Typhoon rating sytem that seems to apply more to what would be called a hurricane in the states.
But the storm in the article was not a tornado. The 3 people who were pulled from their homes lived in a high rise, and had large windows that failed in the wind, and they were blown out.
- Comment on Three people ‘sucked out’ of apartments as they slept by typhoon-like winds in China 7 months ago:
A typhoon is what we call a hurricane when it is over the northwest Pacific Ocean. A tornado is a very different event. A hurricane covers an area 1000x or more larger than a tornado, but the tornado has significatly higher wind speeds, and is much more dangerous if you are directly under it, but you will likely be fine standing in your yard half a mile away. As many cell phone videos show. Until it turns towards you, because they don’t always travel in consistant directions. As many cell phone videos show.
- Comment on Biden Administration Is Said to Slow Early Stage of Shift to Electric Cars 8 months ago:
A increasing percentage of new construction gets heat pumps. Some replacement HVAC units make the switch, but there is still a large portion of people who won’t because of misinformation and/or stubbornness.
But, unfortunately, most existing residential systems do not use heat pumps, under 20% in the US I believe.
- Comment on Biden Administration Is Said to Slow Early Stage of Shift to Electric Cars 8 months ago:
They are too expensive. But only because auto manufacturers are only making midsized and larger suvs or luxury cars. The average price of an EV has dropped over 50% in China since 2015. That would have been tough for us to match, mostly because of batteries, but we could have made much more progress than we have.
The electric grid isn’t nearly as unprepared as people say. Sure, we need to build out more charging stations, but the grid as a whole far exceeds current needs. In fact, nationwide electrical usage is actually trending down in the US because of efficiency gains. Better building codes, heat pumps, LED lighting, if it uses electricity newer stuff is more efficient. If we had sold 8 times as many EVs in 2023 than we did, electricity usage would have stayed about flat.
- Comment on Honda announces a new line of electric cars, the Honda 0 10 months ago:
Well, as far as crash safety, I would think it would almost always safer to be facing backwards. That’s the way infant car seats are. Facing backward would mean your whole body would absorb the inertia change against the seat and your head would be supported. Better than seat belt bruises and a bobble head imitation, seems like.
That’s assuming the forward facing people in the back row are buckled of course. 60 mph headbutt would be…bad. Turn those seats around too maybe?
- Comment on ‘The early adopters have adopted’: US carmakers slow their EV growth plans 1 year ago:
I believe they are kei cars. I looked up the safety ratings on them when I heard about them, and the D.O.T. equivalent board that rated them gave them 5 stars. But it could be that was a kei car specific rating. It did show diagrams with front and side air bags, and all the electronic crash avoidance systems. It’s bigger and seems like it would be safer than a smart car. I honestly think the hold up is that if we had options like that in the US fewer bigger, more expensive, cars would be sold. Maybe not a lot fewer, but enough fewer that it is overall more profitable not to offer them.
- Comment on ‘The early adopters have adopted’: US carmakers slow their EV growth plans 1 year ago:
Nissan Sakura and Mitsubishi eK X EV are $14-16k, but are only for sale in Japan. Nissan closed orders for the Sakura because they already had more orders than capacity to make them. We need vehicles like that everywhere! That would drive EV adoption far, far more than another “affordable” $45k SUV.