Shower Thoughts

An argument for electric vehicles a lot of people miss is sovereignty 

You can live in the woods with no gas stockpile (or fuel supply network) and charge from a waterwheel, solar panel, woodfired steam engine, human power (dynamo), windmill, weird energy-emitting alien obelisk you found. Anything. 

That’s freedom.

exploring the intersections of technology, decentralization, and leftism • links: thumbsup.me • support: sub.thumbsup.me

Also giant battery built in for deferring generated power (with V2L), allows you to be more opportunistic and more predictable reserves. Otherwise really hard to do on your own (maybe gravity batteries if you have access to hilly terrain).

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

Currently: WhatsABI

Yeah that’s a great point. I was wondering if anyone would bring up batteries because there’s so pretty incredible technology at the bleeding edge right now and once it’s released electric will be the clear best option.

Although one thing I believe in that may surprise people is…

…I’m actually not very interested in new electric cars being made. I’d love to see retrofitting of old cars. I prefer the look, it’s less consumerist/wasteful, and it’s just frankly really cool to see old become new again.

Would love to see a whole industry spring up. I only know of one business doing this so far:

Would love to see a whole industry spring up. I only know of one business doing this so far:

https://www.zelectricmotors.com/

Interesting points. I’ve read that cars today are underpriced as a kind of loss leader in a maintenance and financing-focused scheme by the car industry. I’d like to see that model moved away from personally. But I’m not outright opposed to new vehicles being developed. One thing new vehicles tend to be is safer.

Agree about waste, but aesthetically I'm indifferent. Not sure how economic it is, something like 2/3 of the cost is the battery+engines. Retrofitting might cost more than making new, for now at least. Might be able to retrofit cheaply for smaller range setups, though.