Random EV thoughts.....

Is that person chopped in two?

yeah I’m pretty sure there’s nothing ‘on view’ there, but as Elm says….. zero survivability…..

I live in rural Dublin, and some of the implements I see attached to tractors these days wouldn’t look out of place in sci-fi horror movies… and to think this was just a flatbed which are 10-a-penny on Irish roads….

It's the logging trucks for me. Almost feels like 2 meters of 3 inch box section all that's holding 60 logs from barrelling off the side of the trailer.

Autonomous truck startup Waabi has landed $200 million in funding with some interesting investors including Nvidia, Khosla Ventures, Uber & IKEA’s Ingka Investments.

Waabi is one of just a handful of autonomous vehicle companies that have taken an AI-first approach to tackling self-driving vehicles, relying on a generative AI model to predict how vehicles move. Like generator tools such as OpenAI’s DALL-E, Waabi takes data gathered by lidar to create a map of its surroundings before breaking down that information to predict how vehicles will move in the very near future.

Unlike rivals like Waymo or Tesla, Waabi doesn’t rely on the time and cost-heavy method of operating a fleet of cars collecting data by driving millions of miles on public roads. Rather, it uses a simulation — Waabi World — to test scenarios at scale and predict results. The Toronto-based company says its AI system is capable of “human-like” reasoning, which lets it generalize common scenarios.

Only Ionity support the official Plug and Charge standard(ISO 15118) in Ireland.

And you obviously need an EV that suppports it too. VAG support it, not sure about others.

Found this to be quite an interesting read

https://www.electrive.com/2024/06/21/wrightbus-launches-re-powering-service-for-electric-buses/

Normally converting vehicles to electric isn't very economical, but the case seems quite different for buses

At least it must be if Wrightbus are willing to do the conversion rather than just sell a new bus

I assume it's down to production methods, buses and trucks tend to be more hand assembled and not automated to the same degree as cars. So there's already a lot of costly man hours sunk into existing buses

Interestingly they mentioned a price of £200,000 for the conversion and that it's a lot cheaper than a new electric bus. I know Kilsaran were saying electric trucks cost 2.5x what a diesel one does so the same could apply to buses

I don't know how much a diesel bus costs new, but £200k sounds in the right region. So it's possible fleet managers will be able to convert an existing bus for the price of a new diesel one, giving a life extension to their fleet and reducing emissions without incurring a cost penalty

The absolute bare minimum would be my assumption

Although there's a park and ride in planning for the M11 which has 42 EV chargers for 388 parking spaces (presumably AC chargers)

So maybe that'll give some idea of how many chargers will be installed

Perhaps I'm too skeptical but I'll believe it when I see it. Easy enough to delay or reduce scope of plans and EV chargers are a simple target for cost savings when there's a budget overrun

mWell this is interesting, looks like VW might be trying to improve their software by just buying it from Rivian

https://ground.news/article/rivian-shares-soar-30-after-volkswagen-takes-1-billion-stake?utm_source=mobile-app&utm_medium=newsroom-share I

All the free lamp post chargers on the 3 rock road now have signs on them saying Out of Order.

Probably the last free chargers around the area that were available.

Not an easy watch - he seems to have dug himself into a serious financial hole through the decisions he took on building a big house, an outdoor heated pool (which he built to convince "wifey" to move there) and a separate heated garage (which holds banana boxes for videos).

I like the content he creates, but I'm not sure the approach here asking fans to give him a loan is right. He is on the verge of learning a very difficult life lesson if he has to take a negative equity hit on the new house by selling it.

Maybe he crowdfunds enough from this video to get the loan sharks off his back.....

But it's Norway. Everything is more expensive.

But it's tough. He's creates great content, he's probably contributed to tons of car sales which is intangible.

But he doesn't get tons of views, like in the 100ks. I hope he gets out this mess.

I agree he creates great content, however I don't think I've watched any of his videos in over a year….. they are only interesting to prospective buyers of the car he's testing…

I too hope he get's it all sorted, and gets to keep his dream house, but at the same time I'm not building heated swimming pools in my garden when I don't have the means to fund it (I actually do, but those funds are better (in my opinion) spent paying off debts before buying fancy things).

I'm sure plenty of us here could build a swimming pool with borrowings less than the price of some of our cars (that said, I've no idea now much a swimming pool would cost to build as I don't know anyone that has one )

I'm not going to hold it against him for buying a nice house with nice stuff. After all we're all here trying to justify spending €40k or more on a car which is functionally equivalent to something half the price

He definitely made some mistakes though, buying stuff for the house before paying off the high interest loan. A lot of us who have bought houses lived for a few years with the cheapest IKEA furniture available simply because we can't afford more

As I said, I reckon he's also taken an income hit over the last few months and this played into his situation

Anyway, I hope he figures something out

Nothing was new with us, were happy to accept hand me downs from relations and second hand stuff. And our earnings were probably above average at the time.

The world has gone mad, I tell ya.🙂