Depending on the public charging infrastructure in your area, it is already quite feasible to own an electric car without your own wall box. Modern BEVs can charge basically to full within 20 minutes. If your supermarket has a public charger and your driving and shopping cycles are matching (or can be aligned depending on your daily driving distance), you can simply plug in while you shop for your groceries.
Also, you can check if there is someone else on your street who has a charger and who might be willing to let you charge in exchange for a little surcharge on the electricity you consume.
But doesn't nuclear power present a complication when designing a power grid for renewable energy? It is basically very expensive caseload energy that needs permanent demand, when the entire proposition of a renewable-focused grid is that you manage a non-certain production with dynamic demand (via batteries and price-sensitive usage).
For power plants, this is glacial. A power grid has to balanced perfectly on a sub-second level. Also, you can only do this down to about 50% of rated capacity. Below that you have to switch it off completely.
If you combine this with renewable generation, it all falls apart. A cloud passing over a large PV installation will drop generation much faster than nuclear plants will ever be able to follow (by increasing generation). So if you want to have a substantial share of renewable generation (which, remember, is the cheap stuff), you can't have more than a token nuclear capacity, because you need to invest the money you might want to spend on nuclear on battery and hydro storage.
The other aspect is the economics of nuclear itself. Nuclear power plants are the most capital intensive generation capacity you can build. Even when driving them at the maximum of their rated capacity, the have a levelized cost of electricity several times that of PV and Wind per kwh. Requiring routine load following for nuclear would basically guarantee that no one ever builds a nuclear reactor again.
There are reasons to build new nuclear, but it's not cheap/reliable power generation. You build it to have access to a nuclear industrial base, as well as the research and professional community to run a military nuclear program. Or you actually succeed in creating a Small Modular Reactor, which might be suitable for niche applications (i.e. power isolated communities in extreme remote locations). Or you are simply fascinated by the technology and want to invest a ton of money on the off chance that it will produce some unforeseen technological breakthrough (though arguably you'd do better with investing in nuclear fusion from my limited understanding of the research).
But as far as I know this is a non issue since we 've mostly been able to cover this where it props up. Especially since the grid's demand doesn't tend to go 0-100 or the other way around that fast. Even with a significant amount of nuclear there's multiple of those solar farms, wind farms, etc
For the small fluctuations the turbine's governor response can provide frequency stabilization and pressurised water reactors also provide moderate load following.
>The other aspect is the economics of nuclear itself. Nuclear power plants are the most capital intensive generation capacity you can build. Even when driving them at the maximum of their rated capacity, the have a levelized cost of electricity several times that of PV and Wind per kwh.
When I looked at actually honest comparisons this simply isn't true across the board. I mean it doesn't help that the west has built so few recently and managed some exceptional fuckups whilst also making a lightbulb in an unimportant sidebuildings toilet cost a couple dozen grand in a way that might as well be purposefull sabotage of nuclear but much of the world (read mostly china) does relatively fine with their costs and time frame. These comparisons also have a tendency to use absolutely unrealistic storage costs all the same or foresee continued storage costs of methods that are exhausted. (hydro over here)
Additionally it's the cheapest solar that often pulls this down but the vast majority in let's say here in Belgium is residential which is a lot lot more costly and less efficient. The solar farms are all way more south so a lot of these american reports don't make much sense in most of europe either.
> If you combine this with renewable generation, it all falls apart
Rubbish. Only true if the renewable generation is poorly integrated. Solar plus batteries can provide synthetic inertia if the incentives/regulations are correctly designed.
Australia has been adding oodles of solar, and they have been doing it surprisingly well.
> Solar plus batteries can provide synthetic inertia if the incentives/regulations are correctly designed.
Yes, but why build nuclear at all, if you are already building PV + batteries? Nuclear is much more expensive than that combination. And if you add nuclear capacity on a level that actually matters (i.e. 30%+ of peak load), you run into real integration problems.
As I've written elsewhere, a toke nuclear program can make sense if you want to keep the industrial base, institutional knowledge and expertise around, i.e. to guarantee independent access to nuclear weapons. But it is ludicrous to make nuclear a cornerstone of your energy policy. Not even China is expanding its share of nuclear in total energy generation. They keep it around as a strategic asset, but a subsidized one.
For countries like Denmark and Spain I'd be pulling my hair out if my government would start throwing money into the money pit that is nuclear power (and it is inevitably is government money, because no nuclear power plant has ever been built without government subsidies and/or price guarantees).
> Nuclear can load follow, within limitations
Yes, but it makes zero economic sense to do so. Nuclear is multiple times more expensive per kwh than PV + batteries, even if you run it at max capacity continuously. If you require nuclear to load follow on a regular basis, not a single reactor will ever be built again.
It's more cost efficient to keep them running all the time since most of the cost of nuclear is building the power plant, but power output can be adjusted if needed.
Why would you invest in nuclear power, which is several times more expensive per kwh than wind + battery in Denmark, which also has excellent links to reliable hydropower from Norway and Sweden? Especially when your greatest external security threat is Russia which has openly threatened targeting nuclear reactors of a country they are trying to invade?
Not to speak of the inconvenient fact that Uranium is not a resource found in sufficient quantity in Europe and current European nuclear reactors get their fuel from Russia and Niger, not exactly reliable havens of stability.
Nuclear power makes certain sense for nations that want a military nuclear arsenal and are willing to subsidize nuclear reactors to retain the required workforce and research base. For everyone else it is a money sink and a complication when designing their grid for renewable energy.
> Why would you invest in nuclear power, which is several times more expensive per kwh than wind + battery in Denmark
Strategic mix.
I'm not saying its a good or bad idea, but nuclear can be used as a tool with batteries to make wind much more reliable. urianium sourcing can be an issue, but sadly so are batteries. (granted nuclear fuel is changed more often)
Not really - for either system, the transformer substations are the part that's vulnerable to drones. Any munition capable of breaching the outer containment structure of a nuclear power plant (let alone impacting the core, dozens to hundreds of meters further inside) is closer to a bunker buster than a drone.
What I'd really like to see though is heavy subsidies for synthetic e-fuel plants running a carbon negative process during off peak hours. That would work with both solar & nuclear.
No I am not against that. I'm just against any medium-to-large to large nuclear reactor built in within striking distance of a credible foe. Which is to say, at this point in time, all of them.
But if we start producing Fallout style reactors everywhere, sure, why not.
Nuclear doesn't vibe well with a grid that is supposed to be dominated by renewable electricity generation. You can't simply increase or decrease nuclear generation and even if you could, it would make the economics even worse, if you wouldn't keep their utilization at maximum capacity.
So if nuclear is supposed to have a "strategic" effect on your electricity mix, you have a substantial (20-40%) block of your electricity generation that is essentially static. That in turn requires you to have static demand. But static demand is poison for a renewable generation. You actually want demand to be highly dynamic via grid-tied batteries and dynamic loads (i.e. electric car charging, scheduled appliances and heating, cost-dependent production) so that it can be tailored to supply and keep the grid stable.
> I'm not saying its a good or bad idea, but nuclear can be used as a tool with batteries to make wind much more reliable.
I doubt that this is a requirement for Denmark. There is tremendous hydro capacity in northern Scandinavia and the country is tied into the EU and UK grid.
> You can't simply increase or decrease nuclear generation and even if you could, it would make the economics even worse, if you wouldn't keep their utilization at maximum capacity.
you totally can, and for keeping the grid stable, they are absolutely grand.
But to your point, pan continental links are not that practical for making up ~30% of a country's peak demand.
> you have a substantial (20-40%) block of your electricity generation that is essentially static. That in turn requires you to have static demand.
If you look at the grid on aggregate, there is always a static demand. If you look at https://grid.iamkate.com/ you'll see the variance in use is 30% over 24 hours.
For denmark (and the UK) wind is a great source of power, but its not always there, even at grid level. Currently the UK uses gas to bridge that demand. The UK is rolling out batteries, and thats going to help with price in the peaks. (currently most of them are used to stabilise rather than "peaking") But _currently_ battery capacity is only really measured in hours. Ideally we'll be measuring capacity in weeks. The hard part there is pricing reserve capacity, especially as it leaks.
Now, where nuclear comes in, is allowing the grid to arbitrage night time production from nuclear, into peak demand or, when wind is short. (in addition to bridging/stabilising) This gives a country more options to
We will see something like this bridging capacity in spain in the next few years. They have a much less well developed battery grid, but have more sun so the generation is a bit more predictable day to day. The problem spain needs to overcome is the morning and evening peaks. From memory its something like 1-2 gigawatts (but it could be more.)
> The problem spain needs to overcome is the morning and evening peaks. From memory it's something like 1-2 gigawatts (but it could be more.)
The EU has collectively added 27 Gwh of battery capacity in 2025 alone. If Spain only needs anything close to 2 GW of load for around 2 hours in the morning and evening each, this seems to be inherently achievable.
> you totally can, and for keeping the grid stable, they are absolutely grand.
Nuclear plants can load follow at about 5% of their rated capacity per minute. This is glacial in the world of electricity.
At the moment, this would theoretically work, because you have gas peaker plants that can adjust much faster and pick up the slack while nuclear plants come up (or down) to speed.
But countries like Spain and Denmark want to have a 100% renewable grid within two decades (much shorter than the typical lifetime of a nuclear reactor). So gas peaker plants are increasingly not an option.
The reality of the grid at that point will be a lot of wind and PV capacity (because it is dirt cheap). Nuclear is not compatible with those on its own, because a cloud passing over a large PV installation will drop power much quicker than nuclear will be able to follow.
Of course you can build a ton of batteries to act as a buffer. And guess what, that's exactly what we are doing right now. But at that point, why do we need nuclear again? Simply building batteries is already much cheaper than building a substantial nuclear generation capacity and while batteries will continue to become cheaper while nuclear won't.
Also, if you require new nuclear plants to load follow on a regular basis, it completely destroys the already bad economics of the technology. You need to run those at capacity continuously to make even remotely sense.
> Nuclear plants can load follow at about 5% of their rated capacity per minute. This is glacial in the world of electricity.
which is why batteries are really great. We have couple of batteries that are 180 and 300gwh, which can turn on frighteningly quick. The iberian market is really young at the moment for batteries, they have a way to go before batteries make a dent in prices (which is great for us)
The spanish grid has about 16% nuclear: https://www.ree.es/en/datos/todate Now spain's grid usually has a whole bunch of solar sites in curtailment, which means they can turn on power fairly quickly. Which is where batteries come in, as the curtailment could be flowing into batteries, and that sweet sweet energy sold at a stonking profit in the evening.
But!
Denmark isn't the spanish grid. They have less predictability, so need bigger storage to account for the variability of wind.
I am a bit surprised that a engineer-heavy forum does not think about scaling of batteries.
If everyone in the developed world starts to build batteries massively - in the extent necessary to bridge multiple days of bad weather for millions of people, because that is what happens quite often in northern half of Europe in winter - there will be new strategic dependencies, at least during the buildup phase, and then in a smaller extent for maintenance and modernization. Instead of oil, lithium and other resources not present or not mined in Europe will become worth fighting over and blackmailing over.
When we are already undergoing such a massive transformation, I would like to have a bit more strategic independence, instead of trading Arab/Iranian/Russia pressure for Chinese/Bolivian/Congolese pressure.
Ultimately, we must hope for fusion and/or geothermal to become practical. These are nigh impossible to be subjected to geopolitical constraints.
There are already battery chemistries available that do not rely on lithium and drastically reduce the usage of other suplly-contrained inputs. Especially for stationary storage (where energy density and weight are not much of a concern) there is a wide array of technologies already available and in development.
And as you yourself say: once a battery has been built, it simply exists. There is a very gradual deterioration, but nothing even close to the "just in time" dependency that we are experiencing in this very moment when it comes to fossil fuels.
For a strategic independence point of view, being reliant on a global value chain to replace existing infrastructure every 15 years beats being reliant on a global value chain to replace your tank of gas every day by miles. Don't let perfect become the enemy of good!
These need to be available in enormous quantities, though.
Are they? Who produces them? Please tell me that it is not China and that they don't come with a firmware that may or may not have remotely exploitable rootkits.
The road from a lab discovery through a working prototype to mass-deployable tech usually takes decades, especially in devices which pack a tremendous amount of energy.
The manufacturing of all modern battery chemistries is dominated by Chinese companies because the Chinese government has strategically invested in production capacity and expertise for more than two decades.
But Chinese companies are running and building production facilities around the world. Leaving the production in Chinese hands is a political choice, not an inevitability.
Also, you can't take batteries away once you have delivered them to the customer. I have a 14kwh battery in my basement. It's built by BYD, a Chinese company. But once installed, I can pull the network cable and air gap it from the internet. Communication with my roof-mounted-solar and grid-tied electrical supply works without external network access, if I deem that an unacceptable risk. I could also do the work required to filter all network request from the battery management system at the router to make sure it can only contact servers from a whitelist, if I want to have access to diagnostics while I'm not at home.
These are all known, manageable risks that are completely within the capability of sovereign states to take care of. But there is literally no government (apparently) that can keep Trump and Netanyahu from fucking over the global fossil energy supply on a whim.
Indeed, at least 2 Chinese companies (CATL and BYD) already have in mass production sodium-ion batteries, including a 50 MWh model for stationary storage.
Using lithium-ion batteries for stationary storage is a historical accident, because using lithium makes sense only in mobile applications where weight is essential.
For new installations, sustainable alternatives, like sodium-ion batteries, should be preferred.
In the past there have been many companies in various countries, including Australia, UK and USA, which have claimed that they are able to make very high capacity flow batteries for stationary storage, based on various chemistries, e.g. vanadium-vanadium or bromine-sulfur. A few such batteries have been installed at various customers.
I do not know what went wrong with flow batteries. They have bad weight, similar to the lead-acid batteries, but that is irrelevant for stationary batteries. Otherwise they should be the best batteries for stationary applications, because they have 3 essential advantages over other batteries. Their energy and their power are not coupled as in normal batteries, but they can be scaled independently, i.e. for a given power (which is determined by electrode area) in a flow battery the stored energy can be made arbitrarily large, because it is determined by the volume of a couple of tanks where liquid electrolytes are stored. The second advantage is that the auto-discharge when the battery is not used can be almost null, because the 2 electrolytes can be stored in separate tanks, preventing any reaction between them. The third advantage is that the solid electrodes do not take part in the chemical reaction, so they are not damaged by a charge/discharge cycle, so they can have a very long life.
Despite the advantages, none of the many kinds of flow batteries that have been proposed has been a commercial success and it appears that the companies producing them have lied about the problems that might plague them.
I have not seen any published information about which were their problems, but I assume that a likely cause was the separator membrane that stays between the 2 liquid electrolytes, which must selectively allow the passage of certain ions and not of others. Such membranes are expensive and they might have a short lifetime, requiring frequent maintenance. Another possible problem could be caused by secondary reactions leading to solid precipitates from the liquid electrolytes, another possible cause for expensive maintenance.
Regarding the battery firmware, it does not really matter if the batteries are made in China. The history of the last 3 decades has demonstrated that no firmware can be trusted, regardless whether it comes from a company located in USA, in UK, in China or in any other country, so any firmware must be treated with suspicion.
China actually makes a great number of electronic products that are much more trustworthy than almost anything that comes from USA or other western countries, because those products, like it was the norm several decades ago, but no longer today, are accompanied by full hardware documentation, including schematics and PCB layout, which makes it much easier to verify that a malicious firmware would not be able to do damage.
If the European Union or any other countries would be concerned by the security risk posed by malicious firmware, the solution is simple and it does not consist in banning the products of some arbitrarily chosen countries, but in mandating that any product with an embedded computer, regardless of its origin, must provide complete documentation, i.e. schematics and the source program for the firmware, and it should allow the replacement of the firmware. This would be nothing new, as this is how computers, including the IBM PC, were sold in the old times, before the vendors succeeded step by step to incline the balance of power in their favor and in the detriment of their customers.
I am unfortunately not the one empowered to make these decisions, nor do I know the reasoning of those who are, I just noted it seems back on the table based on discussions, maybe because
>Nuclear power makes certain sense for nations that want a military nuclear arsenal and are willing to subsidize nuclear reactors
since also on the table seems to be making a deal with France for Nuclear Weapons access, as I understand what I read.
Wind + Battery doesn't exist. Wind and solar renewables are dependent on natural gas plants at this moment. This is why nuclear is still a consideration, it's more "green" then most "green" energy.
Wind and solar are not "dependent" on natural gas plants. You can observe this quite well by simply building a wind or solar plant, connect a battery and a load. It works and it works well.
Many national grids do not have enough renewable generation capacity to satisfy 100% demand at all times yet. When renewable generation is not sufficient, the difference is made up with generation from fossil-fueled thermal plants. But the existence of thermal power plants shouldn't be confused with any form of technical reliance on them. 100% renewable grids are inherently possible. If only, because you can simply enlarge grids geographically to the point that wind and solar production averages out. In combination with planned overcapacity (you can simply "switch off" wind and solar if you don't need generation), you strictly speaking don't even need batteries. It's just much more economical.
>Many national grids do not have enough renewable generation capacity to satisfy 100% demand at all times yet.
When will it make sense for many countries? Because the difference between peak production and a winter dip for germany in let's say Berlin is enormous.
First of all there is no alternative that makes sense. Climate change is real and its consequences are more expensive and catastrophic than any trade-offs we’ll have to make for a 100% renewable grid.
The good news is that going 100% renewable is probably less onerous than most people expect. If we get our act together politically, we can easily build the grids, generation, storage and intelligent loads required. With the exception of a few industrial processes, the technology is already existing and economically viable, but it also gets better and cheaper every year.
I never get why people are so opposed to renewables. In the past (and apparently present), we have spent multiples of what we’d need for 100% renewables on stupid wars. Now we could transform our economy with dramatic positive consequences even if we ignore climate change completely (think air quality and corresponding public health concerns, as well as political risks associated with fossil fuels).
It will be one of the breakthrough developments of human civilization and unlock tremendous potential, but people are concerned with the aesthetics of windmills and bickering about minor subsidies, while there is literally an economic crisis going on because some ships with liquified dinosaurs on boats can’t get to their destination on time …
And my guess would be that it would be much more expensive for you to build out (and hold in reserve) enough generation capacity to satisfy your theoretical peak demand than it costs to have interconnected grids and a large efficient market, even if you are a net exporter.
You are aware of our different price-markets in sweden right? SE4 is priced at the export prices for Danish wind and German goal - which sucks for Swedes in SE4 (and to some extent SE3). SE4 can eat their own dogfood since they cut the Nuclear Power and are now burning oil instead (Karlshamnsverket).
That is why we need to stop with oil quickly, yes. Nuclear will do that, and people will pick nuclear if the renewables aren't there yet when oil runs out, which it is close to doing today.
No, that is why you made a gross error extrapolating grid battery growth.
> when oil runs out, which it is close to doing today.
Peak oil is a way off yet, and the reason we need to stop using sequestered carbon is because atmospheric insulation is increasing steadily as a direct result of fossil fuel usage. Not because of ground supply shortfall.
The current events highlight the supply chain issue - not a shortage of oil, it's a shortfall in "oil going anywhere".
> Nuclear will do that, and people will pick nuclear if the renewables aren't there
Again, country by country - nuclear makes sense in China, the US to a degree, France, the UK (despite the snails progress) to a degree ... but makes no sense in, say, Australia that has abundant sunlight, fresh air that moves, and near zero prior experience with nuclear power and plant construction (See: the very recent Australian CSIRO report on energy futures for Australia)
Brick and mortar stores, as well as service oriented businesses do exist and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Tech is not the entirety of business.
Wrong. First of all only 25% of the natural gas inserted into the reactor are converted (with the rest presumably resulting in emissions) and natural gas also produces emissions during exploration and exploitation
I’ve literally transported dishwashers in a Renault Twingo. And the „small car + trailer“ combo will always carry more than a pickup. Pickups are pure lifestyle.
In a lot of smaller cars, you can fold down back row.
And if you are ok, with having trunk open, and tied down, you can transport fridges (I used reno clio, that is slightly bigger). Done that myself (not two door wide ones, one door fridge).
That's said I just found out you can hire van for 35EUR 20min away from where I live, so nowdays I just do that.
I looked it up. It does not appear to me it would be possible to fit an American dishwasher in that car in the box, seats folded down or not, based on the internal dimension and hatch width/height or door width/height. It might be possible if you take it out of the box.
It's important to note that American appliances are generally larger than European ones.
I drive a small very useful car almost every day I have moved a ton of stuff in (including a DRESSER) but it's inarguable that trucks simply have greater utility for this sort of thing. And any time I do need to move something...I just use the cheap pickup I bought so I don't even have to worry about it or spend ages trying to squeeze it in.
Most recent purchase: Christmas tree. Yeah, that wouldn't have fit in my car.
Christmas tree? Real ones are usually tied to the top of the car for transport. Artificial ones absolutely fit inside a car with the back seats folded, and possibly just across the back seat. I bought and transported my current artificial tree in my WRX years ago.
An artificial tree that can’t fit in a car would be a big tree.
1. Let the Christmas tree farmer toss a 8’ tree in the back of my truck, tying the base to the anchors behind the cab. Very little overhang with the tailgate down. Drive away. This is what most people do.
2. Spend 15 minutes balancing the the 8’ Christmas tree on the roof of my Honda Fit with substantial overhang, precariously tying it, I guess leaving the windows down in the cold weather and praying the Highway Patrol doesn’t pull me over. This is not what most people do but I’m sure it can be done.
Lots of things “can” be done but people value convenience.
I don’t know where you live but around me I see people carry trees on top of their cars all the time at Christmas. It’s not complex. You put the tree on the car. You open the doors and tie the tree. You get in and close the doors. You don’t drive with the windows down because why would you? And why would highway patrol pull you over? I’ve never even heard of anyone getting pulled over for carrying a tree or anything else.
Is it more convenient in the back of the truck, though? Sure. I didn’t say otherwise.
I will say that buying a giant truck with poor visibility and 2.5x the kill rate of a sedan so that you can haul a tree once a year is nonsense. It’s a shitty tradeoff and a much smaller truck would do exactly the same job. But little trucks don’t sell like giant trucks because people are not actually buying them for their utility.
Do you think suggesting people who do things you don’t like are just not as enlightened and rational as you a productive way to change hearts and minds?
Of course not. Probably more than 99% of online conversations are a complete and utter waste of time. I would assume there is literally nothing anyone could say to you that would make you get rid of your truck.
With that said, you admitted with your first comment that buying these trucks is based on feelings and not rational.
“Consumers buy what they like and feel like they need and can afford. They place an almost absurdly high value on convenience and not having to think about things like "oh I need to move this thing I need to go rent a truck because I only ever need to do this once every two years, making it irrational to buy one."
Because a 7 bedroom McMansion is unlikely to drive over my child in a parking lot or kill my wife in a collision. The dangers of these giant trucks are not hypothetical. It’s documented that they kill drivers of cars at 2.5x the rate of cars.
In terms of pure annoyance, the McMansion is also not using 3 parking spots at the grocery store.
An minivan will transport almost anything a normal person would want to move, while being more practical the other 99% of the time, but of course they have the wrong image.
A number of my whitewater paddling friends really like their minivans. There are still at least a couple of models available but they have largely gone out of fashion.
Personally I have a mid-size SUV but if you regularly need to transport around a lot of people, minivans seem more practical in general than a lot of the big SUVs.
The anti truck sentiment is directed largely at the ever-growing full size trucks. SUVs get less hate because the market for the absurdly huge SUVs is much smaller than the market for reasonably sized (by American standards) SUVs.
I don’t think smaller trucks get the same level of hate.
I absolutely use the capacity of my mid-size SUV quite often for a variety of purposes. Don't need anything bigger or the towing capacity of a full-size truck. And, given where I live, renting for a weekend would be very inconvenient. Sure, I could use a smaller hatchback/SUV day to day but I'm not going to own two vehicles at this point (though I used to own a two-seater as well) which some folks would probably also object to.
You pick a reasonable compromise and arguably a full-size truck is overkill for many but a Mazda Miata is probably too small for a lot of people even if it largely works for a lot of day to day stuff.
I own a small/mid-size SUV (and a van) so I’m not judging your car choice, but why would you not be able to rent a truck in Boston? Home Depot, Lowe’s, U-Haul, and more all rent trucks.
I don't live in Boston--about 60 to 90 minutes outside.
So, sure, I could pay for a delivery or rent something from Lowe's if I needed to for a specific purpose but I routinely use my mid-size SUV for weekend trips, transporting a canoe, picking up construction supplies, and the like. I need a vehicle in any case and it makes sense to own a somewhat larger one than I really need day to day to run to the grocery store, especially given that parking isn't an issue and my gas mileage really isn't bad.
If one actually lives in a city (which I don't), renting a vehicle can actually be something of a hassle on a weekend based on what I saw people go through when I was in a ski house after school.
If it’s a regular thing, yeah, renting becomes massively inconvenient because of the frequency. I misunderstood your comment to mean that even a 1-time rental would be extremely inconvenient somehow.
I don't need to transport 8 people around and I can always get mulch or gravel delivered. But, yeah, it's not uncommon for me to want to easily stuff a mid-size SUV's worth of stuff into my vehicle for a weekend or longer trip. I could probably do it with a somewhat smaller vehicle but why? The longer drives are probably when I need to do so anyway.
I did also have a smaller car as well when I did more shorter regular local drives but I really don't do those much any longer other than very local drives to the grocery store or nearby hiking trails.
A lot of standard SUVs don't have particularly great ground clearance relative to Jeep Wranglers and the like. Though that doesn't really matter unless you're going off-road in Death Valley and the like. The current Toyota Sienna (which has improved a lot) is better than my Honda Passport in terms on gas mileage.
Yeah. I don’t really need or want high ground clearance. But I would like enough that parking at a curb doesn’t risk dragging the front bumper. My van (Odyssey) is low enough that I’ve scraped on a few unexpectedly tall curbs and I would be pretty uncomfortable with anything resembling off-road. I wouldn’t drive my van anywhere I wouldn’t drive a Civic.
> The current Toyota Sienna … gas mileage.
Better mileage and optional all wheel drive were the only things I preferred about the Sienna. But while I don’t like the mileage the Odyssey gets, I also don’t actually drive far very often so it doesn’t matter much. I put less than 10k miles on my car every year.
I was actually surprised when I looked at what the current Siennas get. I have a friend with a, now, quite old Sienna who was really surprised at how high the mileage of my relatively new Honda Passport was. And the current hybrid Sienna is a fair bit better.
Renewable energy is literally available everywhere and solar and wind are now cheaper than hydro in many places.
„Economic development“ can mean many things and there is a scenario where it supports the concept of „well being“ rather than actively undermining it, as it is happening in many places currently.
> solar and wind are now cheaper than hydro in many places.
It's not possible to run a country entirely on wind and solar, you need backup for when it isn't windy or sunny.
It is possible to run a country entirely on Hydro. The lake on a hydro electric dam will last for a while - in some cases several months - between needing to be topped up by rainfall.
yes, but as the top comment suggest the problem in large countries is that economic development isn't as localized. one project that improves the lives of 1 million people in buthan means that india needs 1000 such projects to bring the same improvement to all its people. do less, and the effect is less noticeable.
My father’s decidedly non-nerdy logistics consulting business with roughly 20 employees ran (and runs) on Mac OS since the founding of the company in the mid 1990s with my mom being the „IT team“. There are some situations where companies rely on certain compatibilities requiring windows. But most could do completely fine without, especially nowadays.
You can run a logistics consulting business without windows, but you will struggle without Excel and PowerPoint, and 365 with SharePoint is basically needed for collaboration in any consulting business.
Im also a logistics consultant… try to parse a multi-million line orderlines extract in Google Sheets compared to excel.
I’m also on Mac but to be honest it’s a challenge - there are still enough industry specific tools that are windows only so I have to run a parallels VM to get by.
Collaboration with Sharepoint is I think the biggest issue with M365. It’s impossible to figure out where a file is stored… on your hard drive? One drive? Teams? Sharepoint?
And the biggest problem I have is managing revisions with multiple editors. If I were talking to Microsoft about strategy, this would be the thing I’d suggest. I know it’s common to use Sharepoint for collaboration, but it’s such a Frankenstein’d system that it’s going to be a problem for everyone sooner or later.
It's still better than anything else and the de-facto standard so you need it.
Clients will send you their PowerPoint template and want you to use it. They will send you their complex spreadsheets riddled with VBA macros and you will need to fix them. They will invite you to a Teams site because that's where their project updates go. I just don't see how you can avoid it as a consulting company!
For things like Excel - We can say it's 'bad' but I've not seen anything do the job it does better. And besides, even if it was bad, it doesn't matter - as a consultant you need to use it because your clients probably want your workings as part of the deliverables, and if it's on Google Sheets they often won't want that.
Many of the 22-25 year old-ish people in a grad school class I was part of recently had no idea where a shared project document was or how to edit it outside of Office 365’s online editor. Many didn’t know that the “attachment” from email was actually a Sharepoint link and not a file. This becomes a problem when you need to use some features in the desktop Word program that aren’t in the online editor.
Honestly, I’m less interested in how things work on day one. When systems are fresh or new, it’s easier to keep working. The mess always ends up happening after things have had time to accumulate cruft. Working on a collaborative manuscript in the current Microsoft shared system is normally a nightmare.
Trying to manage/accept/reject edits and revisions between different people is still difficult. That is unless you can use a source code repository like GitHub. But good luck trying to convince people to do that. Sadly, this means that emailing files around is still the easiest way to keep things straight.
This. Apples execs have choices on how to keep making profits. Enshitification is a choice, not a requirement by some force of nature. Tim Cook could just as well sell his shareholders on the idea that really good and user friendly products can be sold for a lot of money.
For consumer spending and disposable income, as for gdp per capita, averages are irrelevant as they can (and are) skewed by high earners/spenders and tell us little about the experience of the other 70% of the population.
Air conditioning is simply not necessary in many places in Europe. Either because of climate or building standards (ie proper insulation and/or traditional building styles with a lot of thermal mass).
The size of housing is more due to limitations on development permits designed to limit urban sprawl, as well as differing traditions and preferences.
Having top universities is nice, but won’t help you if the rest of your education system sucks, because 99% of people do not visit the top universities.
Same with wealth and quality of life: the strength of a society is probably measured best by asking where you’d rather be poor, than where you’d rather be rich.
> Air conditioning is simply not necessary in many places in Europe.
67 thousand people are dying each year in Europe from extreme heat, compared to 3k in the US. I'm sure AC "is not necessary in some places in Europe", but this lack of AC is a real material difference and has real, obviously negative consequences.
"Europe is the continent that is warming most quickly, at twice the global average,” says Tomáš Janoš, ISGlobal and Recetox researcher and first author of the study.
Historically you didn't need air conditioning in Europe to survive the summer, but that seems to change very quickly.
Also, you can check if there is someone else on your street who has a charger and who might be willing to let you charge in exchange for a little surcharge on the electricity you consume.
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