Now imagine for the same $10k cost making a cruise missile, instead. This is close to what a Shahed is -- the estimate is $20k-$50k / unit, so close enough.
This is bonkers. Countries can now afford for the same cost * to make not a 10-20 mile range artillery shell, but a 1500 mile effective range cruise missile.
* Defense costs are "fake" to a large degree. A lot of that is really corruption with money flowing from the taxpayers to the arms manufacturers, but still if we go by the numbers...
> Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.
The shells are already made by the 10 and 100s of thousands, Shaheds are also not a research project, so either one is in amortized serial production now.
What I meant is that a $10k shell doesn't cost that much. Russians are making the equivalent artillery shells for an _order_ of magnitude less for around $1k. A lot of defense costs are just overinflated simply because they can be. The government is spending taxpayer money, it's not really coming from the politicians' pockets. If the kickbacks are just right, they may in fact flow back into the politicians pockets.
Wonder how developers working on profitable parts feel about it. I’ve been at an employer who burned their cash on vanity projects and hubris and turned around to people working on the bread and butter profitable parts and said “sorry hard times hit, no bonuses this year, we have to tighten our belts”. It's when I left.
Truck was on a different frequency from the aircraft so they couldn’t even hear each others’ clearances.
Also first time ATC told the truck to stop it wasn’t too clear who the message was addressed to. It’s a bit hard to hear “Truck1” there, not clear who he wants to stop. The second time, one can argue by the time “stop” command was heard it might have been better to gun the engine. As the truck sort of slowed down in the middle of the runway.
> Their reaction? Genuine shock. They were actually concerned that developers were holding onto this position.
They have to be playing dumb? I mean they are interacting with someone from the outside, and they have to suspect it will end up shared somewhere. Do you want to be the developer at Apple to publicly acknowledge the shitshow your high priest designers cooked up, and spent a huge amount of resources pushing through? Most definitely not. Here is where reading body language can come in handy when speaking face to face. Maybe when they express their genuine “shock” they also smiled and winked, just plausibly enough to be taken multiple ways.
Would this open "interesting" possibilities for false flags: make one entity attack another entity you don't like, and now watch them fight each other.
> What will put an extra edge on this is the whole ICE thing, and airport chaos pulling the roof down.
How would the ICE thing cause more ground traffic collisions. Are you thinking ATC controllers are illegal immigrants and they’re going to run away during their shift? I just don’t see a connection there…
This incident caused delays and cancellations that ripple throughout an already understaffed network of TSA checkpoints. ICE presence will make airport security somehow an even worse experience for brown people.
Not the crash, but the aftermath. Passengers will be showing up for flights today, nervous with the crash on their minds, and many will then encounter untrained goons cosplaying as airport security.
> As GM’s team put it: “EV1 set in motion everything we’re doing in electric right now”
Sounds line GM is taking credit for EV industry’s success after they recalled and sent to the crusher the very car model these people are trying to restore.
If you read the history you’ll see the appropriate word is “restarted” the EV revolution. It was on and off again in a slow march to the point that allowed Tesla to exist. I’m not diminishing the role Tesla played, but it has to be taken in context. They stood on shoulders.
I think looking at every carmaker’s lineup should make it obvious that they don’t give a crap what powers a car, they are just trying to sell what’s popular. EVs were trendy for a couple years and a margin-subsidizing $7000 was available so everybody enthusiastically brought out EVs. Now they’re less popular so they’re all pulling back. Arguably even Tesla is doing so, given that Musk has intimidated that he didn’t really think Tesla was going to keep selling cars forever.
When the demand is sufficient, the cars will be sold in numbers to match it. Demand will increase as it becomes practical to own an EV for more people. This mainly has to do with charging infrastructure at every level, which is capital intensive for both individuals and governments.
Do you suggest we ignore or include in this history the original contributions of the first electric cars from all the way back in the single digits of the 1900s?
There was a long time between those cars and the modern electric car where the only thing electric was "golf carts" (not general purpose cars), or homemade conversions. The EV1 was the first commercial car in the memory of most people alive today. The 1900s ones were fun/interesting historical things, but not practical.
I am not EV owner but that’s not how like my car trips. I can drive 4 hrs nonstop and then expect to “charge” my car in 5 minutes at the pump with a bathroom break, and be on the road.
Sometimes we like a more leisurely drive, but it should be up me to decide when that happens not the car.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with liking how EV behave, it’s just it’s not for everyone. And I think a lot of recent pullback from EVs (Ford, Honda) kinda points that way. With as fast a charger as a gas pump situation may change though, so let’s what happens!
I felt the same way as you until I took a few road trips in sn EV.
I drove about 20 hours in two days. The thing that struck me is how refreshed I felt when I arrived. Normally I'd be dead on my feet and the travel day would be lost completely but I was ready for activity on arrival. I was very surprised.
I have heard that the combination of self-driving and mandatory 30-60” breaks every few hours is very relaxing. I look forward to trying it some day. Meanwhile…
I would be very wary of taking my bolt on a long journey. I have no confidence that what few fast chargers are out there would actually work, or be available, and I wouldn’t want to plan my journey around charging stops, with copious backup plans! It would be very stressful!!
Not to mention that my bolt has only 300mi range in summer, and less than 200mi in winter. And fast chargers are rare enough that I’d be scared to get anywhere near the limit.
By contrast, my Elantra hybrid has a ~600mi range. And I can “charge” it anywhere.
The past is still here. It just isn’t evenly distributed.
e-GMP platform (IONIQ 5, etc.) is really good for road trips.
At least in summer temperatures it reliably charges to 80% under 20 minutes. Its range estimate is quite good, and I can depend on it to know when I can skip a charging stop (when I first drove an EV I was freaking out about the 20% state of charge like it was a cellphone. Now I roll to the chargers with 2% left when it saves time).
It depends where you live, but infrastructure in the UK and EU has got good enough to the point I don't need backup plans. Chargers are as common as McDonald's (often quite literally). If a station is slow or busy, I can just go to the next one (and they are in clumps often enough that even with a low battery it's not a big deal).
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