Tech Tuesday: Seven Stories from This Week's EV News

Photo courtesy J Dean via Unsplash

My comments in italics

TESLA VEHICLES GET A RECALL
Tesla is recalling almost all of its electric vehicles in the U.S. for a software fix as it faces heightened scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). 

When you read the details regarding this recall, it seems the recall involves something incredibly petty, though it will require Tesla to notify every car owner and schedule time to make the adjustment for each car. Is the government trying to disincentivize Elon Musk from selling cars to Americans? Did Ford or GM put a bug in the ear of the NHTSA? 

EVs Are Too Heavy to Be Stopped by Guardrails 
Results from crash testing in the US have raised concerns that electric vehicles may be too heavy to be stopped safely by guardrails on roads.

EVs must be heavier than we realized.... or guardrails flimsier. Is replacing guardrails part of the infrastructure plan?

Building EVs Impacts the Environment, Too
"As the world embraces electric vehicles as a solution to carbon dioxide emissions, there is too little discussion of the environmental harm associated with the metals needed to build them, says one of Japan's foremost researchers in the field."

This story from Tokyo draws attention to another side of the EV coin. In theory they are better for climate impact considerations, but there are other problems that the mining of rare metals exacerbates.

GM Went All In on EVs. Dealers Say Buyers Want Hybrids.
Some auto retailers worry GM is missing an opportunity to nab buyers who aren’t ready for EVs

This is what happens when there is a government-generated mismatch between supply and demand. Will GM need another bailout in a few years? 

More automakers are being forced to rethink their EV plans

EVs have been the shiny new toy in the auto industry, albeit an expensive toy, but the demand has not yet been generated for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest is the hassle of re-charging the batteries.

77% of Americans have homes, but only two-thirds of these have a garage. Finding re-charging stations can become massively annoying, and even moreso when travelling. One recent study found that 40% of all charging stations in California were broken. (or maybe it was in L.A.)

Why Americans Don’t Want Electric Vehicles

Not long ago, pundits were telling us that gasoline-powered cars would soon vanish from the streets, replaced by sleek, space-age vessels powered by electricity. But consumer demand for electric cars never matched the hype.

Why? Again, charging stations are a hassle. And in cold weather, it takes even longer.

Keep Politics out of the EV Debate and Listen to the People

People in Connecticut want to know the details of a plan: where will we get the extra electricity to power the thousands of new EVs, how will the transmission line infrastructure be built, who will pay for it all (your electric bill is already too high), where will people charge them throughout the state, will there be enough operational charging stations where people live and work, and will EVs be affordable? 

This last was a letter to the editor of the CT Examiner. Many questions. I drive by our university paking lots and see a thousand cars, but only a half dozen charging stations, if any. At UMD Saturday I only saw one Golf utilizing a charger. Will we one day have a totally electric transportation fleet? Maybe, but probably not in my lifetime.

Alarming Tesla Incident Reminds Us of Tomorrow's New Challenges

Here's a funny story someone sent me recently. (Thanks, Kent.) It's not entirely funny, as you will see in a moment.

This is not a Tesla.

For years we've been reading and hearing bout the IoT (Internet of Things) in which everything is connected via technology. If you have car trouble, you call tech support and, because "they" are connected to the brain box in your car via satellites and whatever else. From their ivory IT tower they can diagnose and fix are your troubles in a flash. 

In an ideal world the IoT will all supposedly make life easier, at least for the haves. This story, however, shows how we have not yet arrived at the utopian future yet. The humorous aspect of this story is that the "victim" in this case is a podcaster who is also famously upbeat.  In fact, his cheerful podcast is titled, "Always Sunny In Philadelphia."

So what happened?

Well, actor Glenn Howerton owns a Tesla Model X. Evidently he was parked way underground beneath a Los Angeles parking garage when his key fob broke. Fortunately, the Tesla has a nice feature in which you can contact tech support and they can let you into the car and start it for you.

Except, the car was too far below the ground that there was no internet access. 

Bummer.

Well, he called the tow truck folks, but then there was another problem. Where he parked had too low of a ceiling and the truck couldn't get there. PLUS, to tow him out would require unlocking the wheels so they would roll. But this was not going to work either because--yep, that's right--no internet access.

While I was reading this story last night, we had a major storm with rolling thunder and I lost my internet connection as well. I'm a little concerned about the future of transportation as we continue to become more embedded into the grid.

You can read the full account here at Jalopnik.com: https://jalopnik.com/dennis-from-always-sunny-got-his-tesla-stuck-in-a-parki-1849682811

A Life Lesson from Tesla's Memoir, My Inventions

One of the things I like about autobiographies is how they enable you to directly engage with the mind of the author. An autobiography shows what a person thinks about and reveals what is important to them. Samuel Goldwyn jokingly said "No one should write an autobiography until after they are dead," but Mark Twain did him one better. He wrote his while living but would not permit its publication till he had been dead 100 years. That way he could be totally honest, yet not hurt people who were living, some of who he perhaps still cared about.

Nikola Tesla's autobiography is more about his ideas, a very different account than the "tell-all" pilf of gossip columns, though it is not absent of interesting anecdotes about others. The title alone shows that it is of a different character, just as he was a different kind of man.

Tesla's autobiography was originally published in 1919 as a series of six articles in the publication Electrical Experimenter. The chapters are as followes:
(1) My Early Life
(2) My First Efforts in Invention
(3) My Later Endeavors
The Discovery of the Rotating Magnetic Field
(4) The Discovery of the Tesla Coil and Transformer
(5) The Magnifying Transmitter
(6) The Art of Teleautomatics

Like many other influential people, Tesla was a lover of books. "Of all things I liked books the best," he writes. "My father had a large library and whenever I could manage I tried to satisfy my passion for reading."

* * * *
The opening paragraph of the first chapter, My Early Life, contains the lesson I wanted to relay:

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. It’s ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the better struggle against pitiless elements.

Here it is, the conviction that formed the foundation of his life quest, his belief that invention is not only a vitally important undertaking, but the most important undertaking of a creative mind.

He saw himself as part of something bigger than himself that was essential to the betterment of the human race. Even if the work was misunderstood and unrewarded, it was a vital and privileged undertaking.

* * * *

The great minds of philosophy likewise considered themselves as participants in a great dialogue that extended back through history through the Enlightenment and back all the way to the Greeks. A man like Nietzsche believed that his work of cultural analysis and commentary was of importance to the larger body of humanity.

The emerging Information Age and thought leaders behind the Internet were fully aware of its potential power to alter our lives in the same manner as the Gutenberg press contributed to the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the expansion of Western Civilization. I recall a 1980s article drawing attention to this information revolution occurring in our lifetimes.

* * * *
Perhaps this is why so many people remain unfulfilled in their careers. They fail to see any connection between their actions and a higher purpose beyond a paycheck. 

There are countless jobs which could easily be shown to have a greater value than even their owners are aware of. Our souls languish when it feels like our activities have no meaning, our labors vain. 

What are you doing to make a difference? 

Saturday Morning A to Z

Artforum (358 pages this month)
Borges
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Dangerous Trends
Einstein Disguised As Robin Hood
Four Letter Words -- Fork, for example
Giraffes
Howling at the Moon
Indian Summer
Just-In-Time Manufacturing
Kickstarter
Luck
Monsters
Nukes
Open Source Coding
Penelope Cruz
Quickdraw McGraw
Ronnie
SNL
Tesla
Utopian Dreams
Violins
What is your life all about?
Why are you doing what you are doing?
What if...
Xerxes
You can make a difference. Do it.
Zootopia

*  *  *
What does your Saturday morning off-the-top-of-your-head A to Z look like?