You don’t have cables coming out of your walls, you have outlets to plug into. It’s perhaps obvious that this is how the EV market should also work.

Yet, for some odd design reason in America, EV chargers always have cables permanently attached… which in reality means octopus-like chargers are damaged when their ugly, long and floppy cables are stolen.

It begs the question why an EV isn’t designed for a retractable cable like every other major electrical appliance (e.g. oven or dryer). Or have a cable that detaches on both ends, like everyone’s laptop or phone.

In fact, in the EU everyone uses the outlet and brings a cable, meaning anyone can pull their EV up to a light pole on the street and plug in. Easy, reliable, no mess, plus far less risk of failure to charge because a socket design on existing light poles is so much simpler to secure from damage.

The EU will completely outpace the US on EV infrastructure because of such intelligence in quiet and almost hidden distributed power, reflecting the lack of any need for America to slowly roll out large wasteful concentrated “stations” covered in advertisements.

Given 2 lbs of copper runs in a large charging cable, and the rush of copper theft, it makes even less sense that Tesla has been building centralized ugly zones where an attacker can quickly hit a strangely numbered 88 of their cables, to recycle them at around $10-20 each.

Concentrated charging stations into a single area, is a truly dumb concept. Why did anyone ever think this made any sense at all? Centralizing charging stations with all their expensive delicate cables to be dangling and damaged, instead of spreading out simple reliable sockets, are even dumber. Outlets are the future like it’s 1924 again.

Electricity runs practically everywhere today. Trying to undo Westinghouse and go back to Edison’s dream of limited reach is peak ignorance in American history. And what could be more ironic than a company named Tesla doing the exact opposite of what Westinghouse would do?

Westinghouse was horrified by the reports of Kemmler’s execution [by Edison’s cruel designs]. “It has been a brutal affair,” he said. “They could have done better with an ax.”

Even more to the point, Tesla unnecessarily modified EU charging equipment made by Mennekes to put their brand on it. They could have left it a standard Mennekes product instead.

Terrible concepts, terrible designs, terrible operations… that’s the T now in Tesla.

The Houston Police Department tells KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding that 18 of the 19 charging stations had their cables stolen, according to a report that was filed by a Tesla service technician on Monday.

Kind of them to leave one cable behind, I guess? Here’s another case with local analysis included.

Thieves are targeting high-powered Tesla and other EV charging stations and stealing the heavy cable for the copper metal inside. In Vallejo, someone cut cables from nine charging stations…

“You know, they left five charging stations. I’m pretty sure after they racked up, I don’t know what the quantity was, but almost 20 cables with the nozzles. Those are extremely heavy, so I’m imagining that’s all they could haul at one given time,” [retired Marine and former investigator] Beckler said.

This has been going on for years already, with far too little discussion about the basic risk economics. The plug end and cable typically are the most expensive parts of a level 2 EVSE. Here’s the big news from 2022:

…a Tesla Supercharger at a Meijer grocery store in Cincinnati, Ohio, had its cables cut. The post notes that a Tesla mobile technician arrived to repair the cut cables and reportedly told people that this was the third time in a week that cables were cut at the Supercharger station.

So you think Tesla should just keep putting cables back on repeatedly, at huge expense in time and materials, to be cut again? With no changes in design?

Ugh. Enough already.

Two obvious fixes for this, which can rapidly advance the safety and security of EV charging.

1. Switch regulations so the US moves away from fixed cables and to an open socket design. Drivers bring their own cables, always (with liquid-cooled DC extreme chargers perhaps being an exception). Have a simple secure door covering the socket, which can be tied to payment. Have a simple electromag cable locking mechanism during charge.
2. Switch regulations so the US rapidly pushes charging sockets into existing infrastructure. Light poles on streets and in parking lots, and especially at gas stations, should have standard EV charging sockets. Every gas station should be mandated to provide at least two high speed charging sockets, like how they already have been forced to provide the public restrooms, air and water.

Come on people, this is not that hard to solve. Blink even announced US light pole charging in 2020. Why is every city in America not jumping in this option already?

The pole mounting system is also beneficial in communities transitioning their streetlights into power-efficient LED systems. These LED system lights allow the excess power to operate the pole-mounted EV charging station, turning every streetlight into a potential charging destination.

Get rid of the cables and any light pole is an EV outlet!

Tesla (with the real Tesla rolling in his grave) is doing the Edison thing with EV chargers because they were trying to get everyone stuck into their centrally planned, centrally controlled system of scarcity to enrich one man. That’s more Edison than anything, opposite of the real Tesla.

Of course the Tesla plan, in its ahistorical backwards thinking, is going to fall apart from the most basic known threats. We’ve known since the time of Egyptian pharaohs.

It’s way past time for America to move on step up and get serious about EV infrastructure.

Porsche owners have poured toxins into the air for decades, with little to no liability to those harmed.

Now a groundbreaking enforcement of pollution laws seems to be honing in on noise, rather than the other forms of pollution.

Fitted with sensitive microphones, the $35,000 cameras detect and capture everything from loud exhausts and backfires to honking and blasting music. Eighty-five decibels is the threshold for receiving a fine, which starts at $800 for a first offense and rises to $2,500 for repeat offenders. For reference, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention places the average environmental noise level of city traffic inside a car at 85 decibels, indicating that City officials are targeting those who go above and beyond a normative sound level.

…[a Porsche driver thus caught making noise] was initially puzzled by the violation. Sure, he admits to hitting 35 mph in a 25 mph zone, but he wasn’t speeding excessively or wringing out the rear-mounted engine, either.

What? He thought 35 in a 25 wasn’t excessive?

Where do these people learn math? Driving 10 mph over in a 25 mph urban area is the definition of excessive.

In urban areas, driving merely 3 km/h (2 mph) or faster above the posted or implied speed limit is considered a punishable infraction…

No wonder he was puzzled why his excessive noise making was ruled excessive. This guy doesn’t care about what’s at stake when he speeds and pollutes excessively, begging laws to be enforced to protect society from such criminal acts.

And then, perhaps to nobody’s surprise, this “belief-based” anti-science guy aggressively tried in court over and over again to prove Porsche designed noise pollution as “stock” just so owners like him could cheat and get away with it.

Instead his protests have ended up proving the opposite, Porsche is failing tests every time in court for good, albeit not broad enough, safety reasons.

Specifically, research shows that prolonged sleep disruption, hearing loss, hypertension, and heart disease are all linked to consistent noise pollution. Additionally, the impacts of noise are specifically detrimental to children, yielding decreased memory, struggling reading skills, and lower test scores when consistently exposed to high levels of noise. With noise monitored by New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as well as 311 noise complaint data, the top sonic offenders in NYC are unsurprisingly traffic…

Fun fact?

Noise pollution monitoring is far safer politically to enforce than other pollution forms because… the biggest polluters (e.g. utilities like gas companies) aggressively shut down any attempts to measure their crimes.

It’s a wonder VW was caught cheating on American air pollution laws, while Exxon, Tesla, GM and Ford were not, for example. Tesla in particular lit up horribly toxic diesel pollution centers on purpose to troll regulators after VW had been caught, and I’ll bet you never even heard about it.

So this story is really about German car companies having little to no American political clout to defeat public interest safety laws that keep cities safe from known dangers.

It’s not that if he drove a Ford he would have been granted a loophole to harm, it’s that he isn’t getting any support from Porsche because they know how badly this fight to do harm ends for them.

Remember 10 years ago how Germany tried to weigh in on this noise issue internationally?

Future Porsche sports cars could get away with being almost four times noisier than regular cars while high performance versions of the BMW 3 series, Audi A4 and Mini Cooper could become almost twice as loud under German plans for weak international limits on vehicle noise. […] Transport noise is linked to 50,000 fatal heart attacks every year and 200,000 cases of cardio-vascular disease in the EU. […] At full throttle, sports cars could get away emitting over 100 decibels, equivalent to a pneumatic drill.

Well then, German car companies seem to have been headed into their infamous Diesel-Gate fiasco believing at that time they could get away with anything — that all forms of intentional pollution would be good for their brand.

Indeed, noise-polluting Porsche cheats read almost exactly like the diesel-polluting VW cheat designs.

Police chief Dieter Schäfer snitched to the authorities at the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA), the agency responsible for certifying that vehicles comply with regulations, about the noise made by cars with sport exhaust modes. Referring to exhaust flaps, which keep performance cars quiet and in compliance with noise regulations at moderate loads but open up when drivers step on the throttle or select a performance driving mode, the police chief said, “We can’t have something certified that makes a large amount of noise in real life.”

Ah, how times have changed. Today it seems clear that American cities would be well within reason to continue to chase Porsche execs under the famous VW precedent, regarding a brand willfully attempting to violate pollution regulation.

Let’s hope this guy exposing the willful fraud of Porsche cheat-to-harm culture is going to bring them to bear in ways that will save thousands of lives or more.

Rumors of the German A-N.T. death are false. But seriously, the A-N.T. Cargo:4 electric bike is the best urban hauling machine you’ve got to ride to believe.

It can carry an unbelievable 800 pounds of capacity silently and cleanly on the narrowest of lanes with ease.

Why even own a truck for carpentry, plumbing, electric anymore? The A-N.T. is the best delivery, renovation and construction vehicle I’ve ever seen, let alone rural community, forestry and agricultural development.

Imagine your farmers market being a circle of these with awnings and a desk unfolded from the side. Clean, efficient and easy.

I never, ever understood the hydrogen car crowd. The fantasy of building a giant sprawling hydrogen generation and supply infrastructure, another horribly centralized yet unstable model of high risk energy, seemed totally nuts. Here are a couple of my old blog posts, if you see what I mean.

• September 2006: The Danger of a Fuel Cell Infrastructure
• October 2006: Problems of Hydrogen Distribution
• November 2006: Will the Hydrogen Farce be With You?

Perhaps they could rename hydrogen-based combustion engines as “farcicles”…so we can go riding on a farcicle built for four.

Fast forward to today, and Shell is abruptly killing the hydrogen dream.

Shell to permanently close all of its hydrogen refuelling stations for cars in California … Shell had last September told Hydrogen Insight that it had “discontinued its plan to build and operate additional light-duty vehicle fueling stations in California”, effectively scrapping the 48 new sites it had previously announced it would build.

Picture this: Shell accepting $40.6 million in grant money from California, only to close operations shortly thereafter. It seems like Shell accepted the funds as a gesture to politicians who expect now to be receiving that money back from Shell for upcoming elections.

The flow reflects hydrogen serving mainly as a politically corrupt system. Climate attention and energy resources are unjustly diverted by wealthy incumbents into scams (e.g. toxic hydrogen, broken hyperloop, dead Tesla-tunnels) in order to deny practical and secure initiatives.

What a farcicle.

Perhaps ironically there is a buried lede in this long running disaster. Smaller engineering fraud stories are bubbling up within the larger hydrogen supply-chain management fiasco.

“Fraud, false promises, concealment”. Iwatani files lawsuit against Nel over faulty hydrogen refueling stations.

Who could have seen it coming? Who?