John's Stuff - Personal Log 1280

May 6, 2024 - May 11, 2024

Last Updated: Sun. 11/03/2024

5-11-2024
Free Charging. We get rhetoric like this from time to time: "Why are there so many free EV charging stations, but no gas stations giving away free?" That provides me with an opportunity to supply supporters with material to answer that question: They didn't do the math. 20 minutes at the grocery store would deliver about 2 kWh. That's about $0.30 for the electricity delivered. At $3.50 per gallon, you equates to 0.086 gallons of gas. What ICE owner would stop for less than 1/10th of a gallon of gas? From an EV getting about 3.5 mi/kWh, that electricity delivers about 7 miles of range. From an ICE getting about 30 MPG, that gas delivers less than 3 miles of range. In other words, those asking likely don't recognize the much greater value returned for the EV.

5-10-2024
Test-Drive Questions. We got this today: "My test drive is tomorrow. What questions do you feel I should not forget to have answered?" Responses to that were pointless. Almost all of them had nothing to do with taking a test drive. It was just specification to ask about that you could easily get online. Why would you waste time on that when in person, getting an opportunity to actually drive the vehicle? Needless to say, I was quite annoyed by that complete absence of critical thought. Geez! Try to be helpful to someone who was bold enough to ask for help. I thought about how to answer for a long time. What could I provide as useful, something you would not be able to obtain good information about online? I finally came up with a helpful question to not only ask, but to also stir more discussion about, while there in person: Does the purchase include an EVSE? If so, is it only 120-volt or does it include an adapter for 240-volt?

5-09-2024
Bottom Up. Informing naysayers & doubters of the other approach is much easier now. People understand top-down. It's easy to see that progress. Focus on attention-getter vehicles is obvious. Subtle is far more difficult to notice... or even detect when pointed out. That's how Toyota operates though. Watching TNGA rollout throughout the fleet went pretty much completely invisible. It took quite a number of years. Those cost-reduction and production-simplification efforts clearly paid off though. It is what Toyota is now so well positioned for their biggest stage of ICE phaseout... making the 100% switch to hybrid for their premiere vehicle... Camry. I'm all too happy to point that out too, hence the ease now of sharing bottom-up: Transition is already well underway for Toyota. ICE model of Camry is dead. In Europe, the HEV model of Prius is dead. Enthusiasts despise the bottom-up approach, but it is getting difficult for them to deny how well that sets the stage for plug-ins.

5-09-2024
Backpedaling. A few of us saw this coming. It wasn't that long ago either. The entire saga played out within just 2 years. Other automakers were making bold promises without any means of supporting them. It was the same old, we'll figure it out along the way, nonsense. Toyota makes plans and shares them. Enthusiasts hate having to wait. They were appalled by the thought back when the IRA bill was passed (summer of 2022) that it wouldn't be until 2025 that Toyota would deliver their first phase of producing their own batteries in the United States and that the second phase of wouldn't come until around 2028. So, we get this story now: "This kind of backpedaling was probably inevitable at some stage, but the tech is advancing rapidly." Probably? How could it not have been inevitable? I asked "how" relentlessly, to the point of being labeled as anti-EV. They had nothing to support their beliefs. It was all blind faith. Ugh. Of course, that's why they are enthusiastic. Being realistic isn't required. Again, ugh. This was my reply to that nonsense: It is really the automakers getting caught in an empty promise. No one exercising any critical thought should have accepted their "all in" pledges. It was absurd to think they could make the jump straight from ICE to BEV. No bridge for transition was totally unrealistic with so much still needed in terms of battery advancement and infrastructure build-up. Something in between was required. They are only now finally coming to terms with that. It's too bad enthusiasts lost sight of what was truly important... how to get there... what next steps to take... rather just focusing on the destination.

5-09-2024
Long Process. You want chargers, prepare to wait. Much of the impatience comes about from not being aware of all the steps involved. Each time an entity must be reached out to, the entire string of events is paused to wait for a reply. When you get information back, decisions need to be made. Choices among a group of decision-makers who aren't familiar with what's involved slows down the process more. But even in the best of circumstances, you still end up having to schedule services and deal with deliveries. That kind of planning can be a challenge. Whether it's a paying customer or a tenant to be billed, nothing can be done to speed things up. Keeping everyone involved helps. It won't make any part of it faster, but at least they will feel included... which makes the process seem shorter, since they will recognize small steps as an effort on your part. Anywho, it takes forever. This is how I presented the situation this time: Knowing how long the process takes for shared property (rental, apartments, condos, etc.) to go from idea to implementation is a painful reality. Those projects can take years to research, plan and ratify... before even securing funding and contracting the work. Then there's the equipment purchases and red-tape to deal with. By the time a project reaches inspection, years could have passed. Just look at NEVI for real-world examples of what it takes to make that happen even when there's strong support for it.

5-09-2024
Absolutes. This is a sign of a challenging audience: "PHEV still burns fossil fuels. And now you have the complexity of multiple systems in the same vehicle." It's quite common for someone who embracing BEV to turn against anything with a gas-engine. They only see that absolute of no support to be the way forward. That makes no sense. Our goal has always been a carbon-neutral society. Offset is acceptable, since elimination entirely isn't realistic. So what if there are a small number of ICE that shift from fossil fuels to entirely renewable? From my engineering career of many decades, I have learned about diminishing returns. Efforts to deliver an absolute can be extremely expensive and simply are not worth it. You spend an enormous amount of resources for a very small return... hence the 90-10 rule. You strive for 80%, then consider if that next 10% returns acceptable value. If it does not, don't invest. It will be quite obvious how much more difficult it is to reach 90% as you proceed, making any decision about 100% a non-starter. I didn't bother pointing any of that detail though. I kept my reply brief: That absolute is evidence of enthusiasts being their own worst enemy. PHEV use can dramatically reduce fossil fuel use. As for complexity, that's just FUD at this point. History has confirmed it.

5-09-2024
Lack Of Progress. In that discussion about the value of PHEV, this needed to be pointed out: Notice how many treat PHEV if they are the same thing as hybrids? That's evidence of not taking the transition seriously. A large segment of the population will struggle to keep their vehicles charged. They will be stuck with 120-volt connections and dependency on public charging. Heck, even households with a BEV will face challenges replacing their other vehicles. How many actually households have multiple EVSE available? Being able to drive EV miles daily with a gas-engine backup just in case make transition much easier.

5-09-2024
Trying To Be Constructive. This was at least better: "The money that was invested in hybrids should’ve been invested in bringing compelling full BEV to the market sooner. All the hybrid manufacturers did was likely prolong the transition. But it did afford them a learning curve on battery technology and allow battery manufacturing to ramp up. At this stage, there is literally zero reason for a hybrid in a standard passenger car or SUV." I responded to that by asking: How would sooner have been achieved? Evolution of batteries still isn't to the point where a compelling BEV is possible for the masses . That's a few years away, despite such heavy industry investment to accelerate storage & charging technology. Shortcoming from infrastructure make the argument pointless anyway. PHEV address absence of plug-in support.

5-09-2024
He Didn't Think. With the entire industry now reconsidering the value of PHEV, comments like this are emerging: "If you think about it, a hybrid vehicle is really just a gas-powered vehicles that gets better fuel economy due to a small battery being included in the powertrain. So, why would we really want to give it more of a chance if the goal is to transition away from gas?" It's a fair guess he didn't think. Any actual constructive effort would made him wonder why some deliver EV miles. That's not better fuel economy. That is not consuming any gas at all... you know, the plug. Ugh. Anywho, this is how I responded to that mess: Outdated claims like that do a disservice to everyone. True, some hybrids did indeed start out that way. They continued to evolve though, making the simple addition of more battery and a clutch all that was needed for EV driving. Way back in 2016, not only did Toyota do that, they also added a heat-pump. That enabled electric-only driving up to 84 mph without ever starting the gas-engine. Successful transition away from gas was achieved. In fact, it was so successful that same design has been spread to several other vehicles.

5-08-2024
Signs of Hope. I keep trying to spread hope. Impatience and absence of background make understanding of the situation now basically impossible. Looking back at what happened with the original plug-in hybrids provides a great example. It resembled exactly what's happening with bZ4X now. Supposedly, it was so bad the entire effort was being abandoned by Toyota. Enthusiasts failing to see a mismatch of their priorities with the greater population wasn't a possibility in their mind. Having to wait a full product-cycle before getting a competitive product didn't make any sense to them either. But with that being a more recent example, it's difficult to get a hostile audience to step back to look at what's happening. So, you look at an older example of something similar instead. In this case, that would be what started 25 years ago. I remember reading about the program in 1999 to collect data from Gen-0 of Prius to create determine what Gen-1 should rollout with. That's what showed me how Toyota finds real-world opportunity. They adapt & deliver. Much of it goes unnoticed, like the existence of Gen-0. So, I point out what people can discover on their own... Gen-1. That's the rollout in the United States that began in August of 2000. I got mine the next month, in early September. The rest is history for me. I watched the impatience and the chest-pounding. Enthusiasts were clueless. Mainstream consumers were in for a surprise a few years later. That's why I keep posting comments like this: I recognize this history repeat. The pattern is very familiar. Heck, even enthusiast commentary matches that past. Gen-1 was leveraged to get real-world feedback. It focused on mainstream priorities, making it a disappointment for enthusiasts. That experience gained resulted in a strong contender as Gen-2. Looking at the state of battery evolution and infrastructure build-up, spending resources on ICE phaseout is looking to have been a wise choice. Profit from hybrid sales will fund EV production ramp-up.

5-07-2024
Just Say No. He was bias from the start, a BEV owner trying PHEV with a strong dislike for anything with a gas-engine. Claiming to give it an honest try was the intent. Unfortunately, the observations shown were only anecdotal. Void of any data at all is worse than the cherry-picked kind. That leaves us with nothing to dispute. This was the opening to his summary: "Thoughts after on week with the Toyota Prius Prime: Plug-in hybrids, just say no! Nothing specifically against the Prime, but I'm anti-PHEV. You get the worst of both worlds..." That was all I needed to read to recognize the pattern. I continued though. The article was filled with so many misconceptions and incorrect conclusions drawn, it wasn't even worth addressing them. Out of curiosity, I did reply though. I wondered if there was any way to start a dialog, some type of meaningful exchange. Hope to make that a teaching moment seemed realistic: There's a lot of false & misleading information being spread, but it completely misses the point. Trying to convince someone having only the ability to recharge overnight with a 120-volt connection is a wasted effort. With a PHEV, they can still benefit from electric-only driving... even though they lack the ability to fully support a BEV.

5-07-2024 Turning Point. Even more layoffs from Tesla. No one really knows what's going on. The crown-jewel of the business was Superchargers. Now, expanding access and building of new locations has become a big mystery. The personnel resources to make that happen supposedly aren't needed anymore... according to certain experts. I find that an act of insanity. To upgrade & grow existing sites, you require experts to sell that opportunity. Sadly, such a cut of valuable employment is an unsurprising executive decision. It's what they do when things get tough and survival becomes their focus. Here's the observations I had to share:

History is filled with turning points. When an event is big, you can tell. Historical significant is not always apparent though. Some of that comes from those who hadn't noticed signs along the way. They don't see how pieces of the puzzle fit together.

A good example of that was Dieselgate. From supporters of hybrids, misrepresentation was obvious real-world efficiency had been cherry-picked. Arguments of cost hardware, fuel and treatment, didn't actually add up. Emission claims were just outright lies. When evidence was finally presented to reveal their actually was foul play, it still took awhile for the scale of its impact to be realized.

What took even longer to sink in was when GM rolled out Volt. After so much praise... 4 years of propaganda... that delivery was not actually by the delivery team. Virtually everyone associated the project has moved on prior to the event. To dedicate yourself to that much development and not be there to see it become a reality... how bizarre. When sales began, signs popped up all over the place.

Sound familiar? Tesla followed in the footsteps of legacy automotive... setting a number of bold goals that couldn't be reasonably fulfilled in the allotted time with available resources. We saw that with how GM gave up on Volt, only to come back to it years later. It was a sound idea, but with executive expectations not realistic.

Like with VW, there have been clues along the way that Tesla claims didn't sync up with what we ended up getting. Superchargers, Cybertruck, Full Self Drive, and of course something directly competitive with ICE not dependent upon secondary funding (tax credits, carbon credits, investor capital, etc.). Ironically, it is hybrids drawing attention to shortcomings yet again.
Long story short, this is major tipping point in history. What to expect as a response from the automotive industry is anyone's guess.

5-06-2024
Train Wreck. Oh my! There's a bizarre unknown now. The entire industry has paused, trying to figure out what Tesla is up to. Was this a planned purge with thoughtful next steps or just an emotional reaction? All we can still do is speculate. This comment captured the sentiment well: "This gives me the impression that Tesla is running away from what they used to be, which was an innovative car company for sustainability. I'm glad I sold my stock before the train wreck that's coming." I couldn't even begin to guess what the next steps will be. Heck, we don't even know when the purging will end. Concern of employees quitting simply due to uncertainty or low morale is a very real problem now. Remember, it's not the crime, it's the cover up. What happens later can actually make more of a difference. We have seen that far too many times with recalls. Poorly handled, it grows into a nightmare. Well addressed, it just ends up being an inconvenience. In this case though, we saw it coming. I really like being able to point that out too. Just like what we saw with GM, the train wreck could have been avoided. Here's why: Innovator's Dilemma was a business problem predicted to apply to Tesla, making it a shining example of major consequences from chasing niche opportunity too far.

5-06-2024
$22.25 for 21 kWh. That was what a Ford F-150 Lightning owner posted. He had forgotten to plug in overnight. That was quite expensive for only a partial recharge, just enough to cover his immediate driving needs. Readers not understanding that EV owners will pay for speed created a stir. It's a paradigm-shift to get your mind wrapped around only getting what you need. All their lives, they have been filling the tank all the way. That idea of waiting until you get home for an inexpensive fill isn't a behavior they have any means of related to. EV owners love it. You plug in when you get home, knowing that cheap overnight rates will apply to that battery fill up. Complicating matters is the fact that DC fast-chargers vary so much. You pay an ultra-premium for the fastest, even if your vehicle doesn't charge that quickly. Not being able to take advantage of the speed is not the problem of the station owner. It is up to you what service you select. That can vary at the same location. It is why new owners are instructed to take note which spot they park it. It is also why the experienced owners attempt to point out the less expensive DC chargers exist. Business & Government providers can choose what to offer. In this case, that information wasn't helpful. I kept my reply brief: Nope, it's just cost of tier-3 usage. Fast is expensive. In fact, that is why we still see some new DC fast-chargers only rated for 62.5 kW. That slower speed leverages existing infrastructure. The owner can taken advantage of offering something without having to install a big transformer or having to upgrade their service.

5-11-2024	Free Charging. We get rhetoric like this from time to time: "Why are there so many free EV charging stations, but no gas stations giving away free?" That provides me with an opportunity to supply supporters with material to answer that question: They didn't do the math. 20 minutes at the grocery store would deliver about 2 kWh. That's about $0.30 for the electricity delivered. At $3.50 per gallon, you equates to 0.086 gallons of gas. What ICE owner would stop for less than 1/10th of a gallon of gas? From an EV getting about 3.5 mi/kWh, that electricity delivers about 7 miles of range. From an ICE getting about 30 MPG, that gas delivers less than 3 miles of range. In other words, those asking likely don't recognize the much greater value returned for the EV.
5-10-2024	Test-Drive Questions. We got this today: "My test drive is tomorrow. What questions do you feel I should not forget to have answered?" Responses to that were pointless. Almost all of them had nothing to do with taking a test drive. It was just specification to ask about that you could easily get online. Why would you waste time on that when in person, getting an opportunity to actually drive the vehicle? Needless to say, I was quite annoyed by that complete absence of critical thought. Geez! Try to be helpful to someone who was bold enough to ask for help. I thought about how to answer for a long time. What could I provide as useful, something you would not be able to obtain good information about online? I finally came up with a helpful question to not only ask, but to also stir more discussion about, while there in person: Does the purchase include an EVSE? If so, is it only 120-volt or does it include an adapter for 240-volt?
5-09-2024	Bottom Up. Informing naysayers & doubters of the other approach is much easier now. People understand top-down. It's easy to see that progress. Focus on attention-getter vehicles is obvious. Subtle is far more difficult to notice... or even detect when pointed out. That's how Toyota operates though. Watching TNGA rollout throughout the fleet went pretty much completely invisible. It took quite a number of years. Those cost-reduction and production-simplification efforts clearly paid off though. It is what Toyota is now so well positioned for their biggest stage of ICE phaseout... making the 100% switch to hybrid for their premiere vehicle... Camry. I'm all too happy to point that out too, hence the ease now of sharing bottom-up: Transition is already well underway for Toyota. ICE model of Camry is dead. In Europe, the HEV model of Prius is dead. Enthusiasts despise the bottom-up approach, but it is getting difficult for them to deny how well that sets the stage for plug-ins.
5-09-2024	Backpedaling. A few of us saw this coming. It wasn't that long ago either. The entire saga played out within just 2 years. Other automakers were making bold promises without any means of supporting them. It was the same old, we'll figure it out along the way, nonsense. Toyota makes plans and shares them. Enthusiasts hate having to wait. They were appalled by the thought back when the IRA bill was passed (summer of 2022) that it wouldn't be until 2025 that Toyota would deliver their first phase of producing their own batteries in the United States and that the second phase of wouldn't come until around 2028. So, we get this story now: "This kind of backpedaling was probably inevitable at some stage, but the tech is advancing rapidly." Probably? How could it not have been inevitable? I asked "how" relentlessly, to the point of being labeled as anti-EV. They had nothing to support their beliefs. It was all blind faith. Ugh. Of course, that's why they are enthusiastic. Being realistic isn't required. Again, ugh. This was my reply to that nonsense: It is really the automakers getting caught in an empty promise. No one exercising any critical thought should have accepted their "all in" pledges. It was absurd to think they could make the jump straight from ICE to BEV. No bridge for transition was totally unrealistic with so much still needed in terms of battery advancement and infrastructure build-up. Something in between was required. They are only now finally coming to terms with that. It's too bad enthusiasts lost sight of what was truly important... how to get there... what next steps to take... rather just focusing on the destination.
5-09-2024	Long Process. You want chargers, prepare to wait. Much of the impatience comes about from not being aware of all the steps involved. Each time an entity must be reached out to, the entire string of events is paused to wait for a reply. When you get information back, decisions need to be made. Choices among a group of decision-makers who aren't familiar with what's involved slows down the process more. But even in the best of circumstances, you still end up having to schedule services and deal with deliveries. That kind of planning can be a challenge. Whether it's a paying customer or a tenant to be billed, nothing can be done to speed things up. Keeping everyone involved helps. It won't make any part of it faster, but at least they will feel included... which makes the process seem shorter, since they will recognize small steps as an effort on your part. Anywho, it takes forever. This is how I presented the situation this time: Knowing how long the process takes for shared property (rental, apartments, condos, etc.) to go from idea to implementation is a painful reality. Those projects can take years to research, plan and ratify... before even securing funding and contracting the work. Then there's the equipment purchases and red-tape to deal with. By the time a project reaches inspection, years could have passed. Just look at NEVI for real-world examples of what it takes to make that happen even when there's strong support for it.
5-09-2024	Absolutes. This is a sign of a challenging audience: "PHEV still burns fossil fuels. And now you have the complexity of multiple systems in the same vehicle." It's quite common for someone who embracing BEV to turn against anything with a gas-engine. They only see that absolute of no support to be the way forward. That makes no sense. Our goal has always been a carbon-neutral society. Offset is acceptable, since elimination entirely isn't realistic. So what if there are a small number of ICE that shift from fossil fuels to entirely renewable? From my engineering career of many decades, I have learned about diminishing returns. Efforts to deliver an absolute can be extremely expensive and simply are not worth it. You spend an enormous amount of resources for a very small return... hence the 90-10 rule. You strive for 80%, then consider if that next 10% returns acceptable value. If it does not, don't invest. It will be quite obvious how much more difficult it is to reach 90% as you proceed, making any decision about 100% a non-starter. I didn't bother pointing any of that detail though. I kept my reply brief: That absolute is evidence of enthusiasts being their own worst enemy. PHEV use can dramatically reduce fossil fuel use. As for complexity, that's just FUD at this point. History has confirmed it.
5-09-2024	Lack Of Progress. In that discussion about the value of PHEV, this needed to be pointed out: Notice how many treat PHEV if they are the same thing as hybrids? That's evidence of not taking the transition seriously. A large segment of the population will struggle to keep their vehicles charged. They will be stuck with 120-volt connections and dependency on public charging. Heck, even households with a BEV will face challenges replacing their other vehicles. How many actually households have multiple EVSE available? Being able to drive EV miles daily with a gas-engine backup just in case make transition much easier.
5-09-2024	Trying To Be Constructive. This was at least better: "The money that was invested in hybrids should’ve been invested in bringing compelling full BEV to the market sooner. All the hybrid manufacturers did was likely prolong the transition. But it did afford them a learning curve on battery technology and allow battery manufacturing to ramp up. At this stage, there is literally zero reason for a hybrid in a standard passenger car or SUV." I responded to that by asking: How would sooner have been achieved? Evolution of batteries still isn't to the point where a compelling BEV is possible for the masses . That's a few years away, despite such heavy industry investment to accelerate storage & charging technology. Shortcoming from infrastructure make the argument pointless anyway. PHEV address absence of plug-in support.
5-09-2024	He Didn't Think. With the entire industry now reconsidering the value of PHEV, comments like this are emerging: "If you think about it, a hybrid vehicle is really just a gas-powered vehicles that gets better fuel economy due to a small battery being included in the powertrain. So, why would we really want to give it more of a chance if the goal is to transition away from gas?" It's a fair guess he didn't think. Any actual constructive effort would made him wonder why some deliver EV miles. That's not better fuel economy. That is not consuming any gas at all... you know, the plug. Ugh. Anywho, this is how I responded to that mess: Outdated claims like that do a disservice to everyone. True, some hybrids did indeed start out that way. They continued to evolve though, making the simple addition of more battery and a clutch all that was needed for EV driving. Way back in 2016, not only did Toyota do that, they also added a heat-pump. That enabled electric-only driving up to 84 mph without ever starting the gas-engine. Successful transition away from gas was achieved. In fact, it was so successful that same design has been spread to several other vehicles.
5-08-2024	Signs of Hope. I keep trying to spread hope. Impatience and absence of background make understanding of the situation now basically impossible. Looking back at what happened with the original plug-in hybrids provides a great example. It resembled exactly what's happening with bZ4X now. Supposedly, it was so bad the entire effort was being abandoned by Toyota. Enthusiasts failing to see a mismatch of their priorities with the greater population wasn't a possibility in their mind. Having to wait a full product-cycle before getting a competitive product didn't make any sense to them either. But with that being a more recent example, it's difficult to get a hostile audience to step back to look at what's happening. So, you look at an older example of something similar instead. In this case, that would be what started 25 years ago. I remember reading about the program in 1999 to collect data from Gen-0 of Prius to create determine what Gen-1 should rollout with. That's what showed me how Toyota finds real-world opportunity. They adapt & deliver. Much of it goes unnoticed, like the existence of Gen-0. So, I point out what people can discover on their own... Gen-1. That's the rollout in the United States that began in August of 2000. I got mine the next month, in early September. The rest is history for me. I watched the impatience and the chest-pounding. Enthusiasts were clueless. Mainstream consumers were in for a surprise a few years later. That's why I keep posting comments like this: I recognize this history repeat. The pattern is very familiar. Heck, even enthusiast commentary matches that past. Gen-1 was leveraged to get real-world feedback. It focused on mainstream priorities, making it a disappointment for enthusiasts. That experience gained resulted in a strong contender as Gen-2. Looking at the state of battery evolution and infrastructure build-up, spending resources on ICE phaseout is looking to have been a wise choice. Profit from hybrid sales will fund EV production ramp-up.
5-07-2024	Just Say No. He was bias from the start, a BEV owner trying PHEV with a strong dislike for anything with a gas-engine. Claiming to give it an honest try was the intent. Unfortunately, the observations shown were only anecdotal. Void of any data at all is worse than the cherry-picked kind. That leaves us with nothing to dispute. This was the opening to his summary: "Thoughts after on week with the Toyota Prius Prime: Plug-in hybrids, just say no! Nothing specifically against the Prime, but I'm anti-PHEV. You get the worst of both worlds..." That was all I needed to read to recognize the pattern. I continued though. The article was filled with so many misconceptions and incorrect conclusions drawn, it wasn't even worth addressing them. Out of curiosity, I did reply though. I wondered if there was any way to start a dialog, some type of meaningful exchange. Hope to make that a teaching moment seemed realistic: There's a lot of false & misleading information being spread, but it completely misses the point. Trying to convince someone having only the ability to recharge overnight with a 120-volt connection is a wasted effort. With a PHEV, they can still benefit from electric-only driving... even though they lack the ability to fully support a BEV.
5-07-2024	Turning Point. Even more layoffs from Tesla. No one really knows what's going on. The crown-jewel of the business was Superchargers. Now, expanding access and building of new locations has become a big mystery. The personnel resources to make that happen supposedly aren't needed anymore... according to certain experts. I find that an act of insanity. To upgrade & grow existing sites, you require experts to sell that opportunity. Sadly, such a cut of valuable employment is an unsurprising executive decision. It's what they do when things get tough and survival becomes their focus. Here's the observations I had to share: History is filled with turning points. When an event is big, you can tell. Historical significant is not always apparent though. Some of that comes from those who hadn't noticed signs along the way. They don't see how pieces of the puzzle fit together. A good example of that was Dieselgate. From supporters of hybrids, misrepresentation was obvious real-world efficiency had been cherry-picked. Arguments of cost hardware, fuel and treatment, didn't actually add up. Emission claims were just outright lies. When evidence was finally presented to reveal their actually was foul play, it still took awhile for the scale of its impact to be realized. What took even longer to sink in was when GM rolled out Volt. After so much praise... 4 years of propaganda... that delivery was not actually by the delivery team. Virtually everyone associated the project has moved on prior to the event. To dedicate yourself to that much development and not be there to see it become a reality... how bizarre. When sales began, signs popped up all over the place. Sound familiar? Tesla followed in the footsteps of legacy automotive... setting a number of bold goals that couldn't be reasonably fulfilled in the allotted time with available resources. We saw that with how GM gave up on Volt, only to come back to it years later. It was a sound idea, but with executive expectations not realistic. Like with VW, there have been clues along the way that Tesla claims didn't sync up with what we ended up getting. Superchargers, Cybertruck, Full Self Drive, and of course something directly competitive with ICE not dependent upon secondary funding (tax credits, carbon credits, investor capital, etc.). Ironically, it is hybrids drawing attention to shortcomings yet again. Long story short, this is major tipping point in history. What to expect as a response from the automotive industry is anyone's guess.
5-06-2024	Train Wreck. Oh my! There's a bizarre unknown now. The entire industry has paused, trying to figure out what Tesla is up to. Was this a planned purge with thoughtful next steps or just an emotional reaction? All we can still do is speculate. This comment captured the sentiment well: "This gives me the impression that Tesla is running away from what they used to be, which was an innovative car company for sustainability. I'm glad I sold my stock before the train wreck that's coming." I couldn't even begin to guess what the next steps will be. Heck, we don't even know when the purging will end. Concern of employees quitting simply due to uncertainty or low morale is a very real problem now. Remember, it's not the crime, it's the cover up. What happens later can actually make more of a difference. We have seen that far too many times with recalls. Poorly handled, it grows into a nightmare. Well addressed, it just ends up being an inconvenience. In this case though, we saw it coming. I really like being able to point that out too. Just like what we saw with GM, the train wreck could have been avoided. Here's why: Innovator's Dilemma was a business problem predicted to apply to Tesla, making it a shining example of major consequences from chasing niche opportunity too far.
5-06-2024	$22.25 for 21 kWh. That was what a Ford F-150 Lightning owner posted. He had forgotten to plug in overnight. That was quite expensive for only a partial recharge, just enough to cover his immediate driving needs. Readers not understanding that EV owners will pay for speed created a stir. It's a paradigm-shift to get your mind wrapped around only getting what you need. All their lives, they have been filling the tank all the way. That idea of waiting until you get home for an inexpensive fill isn't a behavior they have any means of related to. EV owners love it. You plug in when you get home, knowing that cheap overnight rates will apply to that battery fill up. Complicating matters is the fact that DC fast-chargers vary so much. You pay an ultra-premium for the fastest, even if your vehicle doesn't charge that quickly. Not being able to take advantage of the speed is not the problem of the station owner. It is up to you what service you select. That can vary at the same location. It is why new owners are instructed to take note which spot they park it. It is also why the experienced owners attempt to point out the less expensive DC chargers exist. Business & Government providers can choose what to offer. In this case, that information wasn't helpful. I kept my reply brief: Nope, it's just cost of tier-3 usage. Fast is expensive. In fact, that is why we still see some new DC fast-chargers only rated for 62.5 kW. That slower speed leverages existing infrastructure. The owner can taken advantage of offering something without having to install a big transformer or having to upgrade their service.