The only solutions are way better/larger batteries, much smaller cars, or massively expanded charging infrastructure. Unfortunately nothing [affordable] in the market is addressing any of those.

I think the market is addressing all three. The F-150 Lightning is giving way to the Slate and Ford’s upcoming Ranchero. They’re working on battery chemistries, they’ve been getting better. Charging infrastructure HAS been built out.

Gas car owners haven’t seen EV charging stations going in, because they’re often put in out-of-the-way places. They’re not as visually obvious as gas stations, so gas car owners may have been surrounded by them and not realize it. So they don’t feel like the infrastructure is there, when it is. The EV charging industry has done a better job of concealing itself from the American public than the NSA.

I could rant about charging stations being difficult to find, “But use an app” you mean nazi stalker software? We’re in an age where a lot of people want to step back from all that shit because of who’s running it all. I genuinely do prefer to find gas stations by seeing their signs. I could throw my phone in a lake and drive my 2005 Buick to California, right now. I know how the US interstate system works and I know how to find and buy gas without any precise location enabled spyware.

Let’s ignore that for now, and instead: EV prononents like to point out that most charging will be done at home, and charging away from home will be a rare occasion mostly on road trips. Lemme ask you something: You got an app on your phone you only use occasionally? It’s a pain in the ass, right? Go to order your quarterly pizza from Domino’s and the app needs to be manually updated and logged back into and their terms of service have changed…sounds like fun to deal with when you’ve been sent on a 4 hour mission and you need to find a charging station. Phone apps aren’t tools you can get and put in your toolbox until you need them, they rust.

BUT ANYWAY. What they need is better communication of the vehicle’s limitations. The manufacturer spits out a number achieved in ideal conditions. Then you talk to owners and they go “Yeah. WELLLL…it depends” and start listing the conditions where you won’t get that. Start telling me what the machine WILL do, give me ways to predict the vehicle’s performance in non-ideal conditions, or start engineering those limits out.

I’d rather hear “It will do 200 miles between charges.” more than “It’ll do 300 miles. WELLLL…it depends. Maybe it’ll only do 180 if it’s cold out and you’re running the heater.”

Well when Futurama made that joke about the iPhone, the line was “It’s $500” and everyhing was basically true.

They eat beans and it gives them gas. It’s not a constructed joke. It’s like in Airplane 2: The Sequel where they take the Lunar Shuttle to 0.5 Worp speed and it does the trippy Star Trek visuals, and Elaine takes a drag from a joint and says “oh wow.” Dya get it? She did drugs, now she’s high. Didja get it?

It’s $400, there’s no choice of carrier, the battery won’t hold a charge, and the reception isn’t very-

More Slates than Silverados will be powered by coal.

It’s got a lot of elements that evoke other trucks and 4x4s.

A lot of the face evokes Toyota Landcruisers. The shape of the hood is very Land Rover. The thick B pillar reminds me of a Nissan Hardbody. The Slate graphic on the tailgate reminds me of old Toyota pickups. The fastback roof reminds me a lot of the later model 2-door Chevy Blazers.

You know what? You’ve led me to the diagnosis of my own EV range anxiety: Unpredictable performance.

In a gas powered car, you pretty much can think in miles. They put the “24 city, 29 highway” numbers on the sticker in the window, and that’s pretty close to what you’ll get out of it. Maybe loading it until it squats on the suspension or pulling a trailer or driving like a maniac will decrease the economy. But, if you do those kinds of things, you can fill the tank, note the mileage, drive like that awhile, fill the tank again, note the fuel consumed and the mileage performed and you’ve got a figure you can pretty much rely on no matter the weather. The limiting factor is almost always the driver. Drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank, drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank…

I happen to be a flight instructor. There’s a whole chapter in flight school about cross country flight planning and predicting aircraft performance. Wind is such a factor that you really can’t rate a plane in miles of range, but in hours of endurance. So to plan a flight, you look up the route of flight on an aeronautical chart, the weather forecast, read performance charts and tables out of the plane’s Pilot’s Operating Handbook, crunch a whole bunch of numbers and you’ll know fairly precisely how long you’ll be aloft and how much fuel you’ll burn.

With an EV…they spit out a range in miles that the vehicle will do in unspecified ideal conditions, tell you that heat, cold, using the heater, using the air conditioner, carrying weight, wind and age will reduce the range, and then they’ll get impatient with you if you try to work out what the vehicle will actually do and they’ll mail you anthrax if the answer you arrive at is “not enough.”

That’s a false dichotomy.

I’ve been driving an S10 for decades. Yeah, it’s a little bit 20th century, it makes 18mpg out of a large, slow, primitive V6. It’s great for small truck missions, it’s reasonable for long hauls, and I can expect to go THIS far on THIS much gas.

Aerodynamics. The Bolt is a slick little running shoe. The Slate is a slab.

And I see why, I could have phrased it more clearly.

I’ve no more fucks to give.

My fuck fuse has just blown.

I’ve looked around for my fucks all day but they’ve up and fucked off home.

I’ve no more fucks to give.

My fuck rations are depleted.

I’ve rallied my fuck army, but it’s been fucking defeated.

Correct.

The episode on Tenerife proclaimed it to be “The worst aviation accident in history.”

Later episodes of the show about different, unrelated accidents had to start undershooting that mark, like “The worst aviation accident in American history” or “The worst aviation accident in Swiss history” until they start talking about a rough landing in a Beech 1900 where everyone got hangnails and it’s “The worst aviation accident at an uncontrolled field to take place during the daytime over a federal holiday weekend involving one twin-engine propeller plane.”

Clue was partially ruined by its theater gag; during its original theatrical run, you’d buy a ticket, go see a ~70 minute movie that randomly had one of the three endings. It flopped. The cable/VHS edit that hastily crammed all three endings together made it longer, you got all the content there was, and…it works better on TV.

If I’m honest, I could do without the farting around the campfire scene.

It’s Moby Duck.

Man, I went to a coffee shop with a girl once. This coffee shop sat maybe 24 people, okay? It’s a shallow, wide building. There’s the counter with two baristas working, in front of the counter along the front wall of the building are those narrow “table for two” booths, like 2 or 3 of them. Both the counter and those booths run to the right wall of the building. To the left is a small more open area with maybe 4 four-seat tables.

There was this guy. This male homo sapiens. Who brought an acoustic-electric guitar. A microphone. And two, count them in the eyes of sweet zombie Jesus TWO. 60+ watt amplifiers. Because this was the artistic opportunity of this existing organism’s life. This creature, this placental mammal, was going to REACH his audience on this night. Through all the noise of a commercial AC unit and the single digit number of people that I ever saw in the building, his Green Day covers would be HEARD!

That happened during the winter of 2011. My headcanon is that guy wheezed to death of covid on one of those 3D printed ventilators they tried to get me to help make. I didn’t do those, I did the 3-ring binder slip cover face mask visors.

I’ve only read the first book. Are the others worth putting up with the author being a shitheel?

Reminds me of that show Air Crash Investigations, you might know it as Mayday.

They did the episode on the collision of two 747s on Tenerife fairly early in the show’s run, so they’d shot the “worst aviation accident in history” wad. And yet the format demanded they quantify the subject’s exact place in history. So they start going “It was the worst aviation accident involving an American-manufactured plane flown by a non-American crew in American airspace to occur on a summer Tuesday.”

I dated a girl who had been raised by a single mother, one sister no brothers, then she went to an all-girl’s college. At 25, I was her first boyfriend. I’m not sure I convinced her we’re the same species. A 5’7" 200 pound man dating a 5’1" 110 pound woman, I was almost twice her size and casually lifted or moved things she utterly couldn’t. She very nearly screamed the first time I picked her up.