Category Archives: Energy

Delaware Surges to Top of 2024 EV Index for Charging Infrastructure

HERE Technologies and SBD have released their 2024 EV Index, which ranks readiness based on infrastructure development. For example, it explores the distance between chargers and how quick the charging can be, as well as the likelihood of an open charger being available. That said, here’s a snapshot of Delaware with a score of 79.4 absolutely crushing the other states.

For perspective, that’s even higher than Norway (73.3), which often is considered the world leader. The index notes point out Denmark leapt from 6th to 1st place in a year, underscoring how easy it still is for simple legislative work to radically transform national infrastructure and security.

Texas is so far down the list it doesn’t even make the US cut above 50, and the UK (ranked in the EU) fares even worse.

American Diesel Cheaters Acting Like VW Never Happened, Hit With Measly $10M Fine

As I’ve said since forever, VW was a much easier target for America than America was. Dropping a regulator hammer on the Berkeley Professors and Marin Dairy Farmers driving a diesel VW station wagon is like a walk in the park.

Sure, VW got raked over the coals and there was serious fall-out in Germany (e.g., a $4.3 billion fine). In some sense, idling with low emissions isn’t quite the problem people made it out to be, which is why lying about it was such a stupid strategy. But the real story always was that direct action against the huge number of American diesel cheaters was only being signaled instead of enforced — a big overseas takedown on VW was like warning shots that every diesel-head should have heeded immediately.

It’s almost like regulation in Europe somehow emboldened those prone to abuse in America. In fact, on the news of VW getting in hot water, Tesla’s CEO ran out and started operating a huge bank of dirty diesel generators. It was egregiously bad behavior, made even worse by Tesla marketing these generators as clean energy because they were wrapped up and sold as an EV charging station.

And now, finally, wheels of justice are starting to make the rounds on the actual emissions problem being in America. It’s amazing just how intentionally dumb and blind about harms the good ol’ American “tuners” have acted, flaunting laws, even while watching regulators clean up Germany.

Feds Nail Another Diesel Shop With $10M in Fines for Deleting Emissions Equipment: It was caught selling, installing, and manufacturing tuning devices that imitated another company’s products.

So dumb. And of course it was run out of the infamous “what do you mean slavery is wrong” state of North Carolina.

That $10 million seems pitifully low for the intentional harms that generated huge revenues in the 10s of millions. When set low, the fines become rationalized as a cost of doing business instead of a proper prohibition to exploitative practices.

“Those selling defeat devices are willing to pollute the environment so that they can personally profit,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia. “Today’s sentencing makes clear that there will be significant consequences for those who traffic in these devices. Anyone considering peddling or installing these devices is on notice of the substantial costs of doing so.”

Fun history fact, the Department of Justice and National Parks were created by President Grant after he won the Civil War, to stop the KKK-minded southern states from trying to profit from massive systemic harms in America including pollution.

Fast forward to today and the Department of Justice is busy shutting down dangerous and dumb North Carolina business models like it’s the 1870s again.

But my favorite part of the story is actually this buried lede:

Rudy’s then started faking these tuners in-house. This involved an $850,000 laptop purchase, as the computer contained the software to convert other tuners into Mini-Maxxes and XRT Pros. Until stopping in July 2018, Rudy’s sold nearly 44,000 imitation tuners and generated about $33 million in revenue from them. All this is as reported by the DOJ.

In 1808 America banned import of slaves so North Carolinians started making them “in-house” (systemic rape of Black women) instead.

See the parallels?

And should we really call it an $850,000 laptop purchase? The computer “contained” valuable software, while the laptop was likely worth next to nothing on its own. The idea someone could license software on just one laptop for nearly $1M tells you just how stupidly lucrative causing intentional environmental harm had become even after the VW takedown.

To put it another way, think about a $10 million fine as the cost of 10 laptops on a diesel cheater’s balance sheet. Is there a business that can afford to buy 10 laptops?

Related: North Carolina was the first to secede to start a Civil War meant to preserve their business of slavery. As the rest of the world was very openly ending slavery towards the late 1700s (shout out to the colonies of Vermont and Georgia), America primarily fought its Revolutionary War to preserve and expand slavery instead. George Washington literally recruited soldiers to fight by asking if they opposed their British King being too progressive and setting free the Blacks in America. And Washington himself went on to keep his slaves even when it became illegal in Pennsylvania, ordering his lawyer to find loopholes that allowed keeping hostages and raping them for profit. Thus we see precedent for the haters in North Carolina who apparently had a hard time accepting a regulation that ended harms. It’s on that note we can see how President Grant was the best President in history. And Washington? An awful cheater. French historians now say he didn’t even fight his own battles.

Blood Courier Drones Cut London Transit Time

A hospital says its street-level motorized couriers were taking over half an hour to travel under 2 miles to a lab at another hospital. It has decided to try drones instead.

At the moment, transferring samples between Guy’s Hospital and the lab at St Thomas’ Hospital – a journey by road of nearly two miles – can take more than half an hour using van or motorbike couriers, but the samples can be transported in less than two minutes by drone.

A non-motorized bicycle takes under 10 minutes to go less than 2 miles in London. So the first question probably could be why supposedly health conscious hospitals aren’t also testing cyclists (and promoting clear roads for bicycles)? Add an electric bike to this test and time probably shrinks to 5 minutes.

Given the complications and cost of drones, a bigger question here is why anyone in a city ever thought in the first place that a van was the right call to take a small package less than two miles.

Maybe someone likes big complicated things with lots of moving parts, prone to high touch operations, instead of using easy and obvious solutions.

“Snake” CEO Lies for a Decade: Elon Musk Promised Robotic Cables in 2014, Again in 2020, Still Nothing

For some reason in 2014 Elon Musk decided to promise the world that Tesla would deliver robotic charging cables, which were called a “snake“.

They never happened, despite a shameless Tesla PR stunt posting a video in 2015 claiming they were real.

In 2016 some people tried very hard not to forget a “snake” was ever promised to them.

So then… nothing. No “snake” but in 2020 Elon Musk promised them again, more emphatically lying by saying their “snake” concept was real and even would enable cars with no humans to drive across America.

Yes.

Of course there’s no “snake” at all and Tesla was incredibly stupid to not use a socket design for charging stations.

Here we are a decade later.

Snake? No.

The significance of this robot can’t be understated. It is the kind of robot that is manifestly simpler than an entire car being driverless. Tesla couldn’t figure out the “snake” so it really sets the context for all these other CEO promises of something far more complicated during the same exact period.

  • 2015 December 22: “I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.
  • 2016 January 11: “In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere, connected by land & not blocked by borders.
  • 2016 June 02: “I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem. I think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy.
  • 2016 October 20: “By the end of next year, said Musk, Tesla would demonstrate a fully autonomous drive from, say, a home in L.A., to Times Square… without the need for a single touch, including the charging.
  • 2017 April 30: “I think that [time to deliver technology to allow Tesla drivers to fall asleep] is about two years.
  • 2018 November 15: “Probably technically be able to [have Tesla cars drive themselves to new customers for delivery] in about a year.
  • 2019 February 20: “We will be feature complete full self driving this year. The car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year. I’m certain of that.
  • 2020 July 09: “I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year. There are no fundamental challenges remaining.
  • 2020 December 05: “I’m extremely confident that Tesla will have level five next year, extremely confident, 100%.

None of that was true. None of it. Complete autonomy? Level five? Tesla can’t even get their “snake” to work.

Do you see why failing to deliver a basic robot to automate charging, while claiming to be on the road to do so much more in automation, really stands out as testament to why Tesla can’t deliver?

During the Q1 Earnings Call in 2020, Musk described his idea for the Robotaxi’s imminent rollout in 2021.

Without fraud there would be no Tesla.