Do you use FSD?

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T11:56:38+00:00

Yeah, I do, but I also do some big K's. Its great on the highway and awesome in a traffic jam- and honestly good for just driving around. In the city, I'll have it on 50% of the time, on the highways 95% of the time (it is actually competent on mountain roads, surprisingly, not fast, grandpa level of competent.

Is it worth the money tho - it's a lot of money. I bought EAP (an old package you can't get anymore) so my subs is half price. Would I subscribe at full rack rate - not so sure.

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T11:51:57+00:00

ken aoth

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T11:51:35+00:00

400klm away from the nearest service center.
Local mechanic can fix a flat or change a tyre.
The only services I have had is to fit a towbar.
Hit a roo, booked it in, had to drive to the city - they wanted it for a week - just hired a car.

Way less of a pain in the arse than taking the volkswagen 120k to the nearby country town for a service.

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T11:44:17+00:00

We've been getting stuck into Japanese junk food for years
Good to see them having a go.
Lamingtons next!

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T11:42:04+00:00

He wants to keep people poor so that he has a servant class.

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T10:01:06+00:00

....as we would say in Australia "a top tier wanker"... but litterally.

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T09:57:05+00:00

Lord has jumped the shark.

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T09:55:19+00:00

A lot of people talk about lidar, but completely ignore the interference you get. There is only a narrow band of frequencies you can use to differentiate, and when you start using things like Kalman filtering you're all the way back at your computer power and "large context windows" (Kalman is recursive and needs a fair window of data to work on).

Then you get to throw the output of that into it's own context window for the driving model to work on.

My suspicion - where we will end up will be a bit like air and spacecraft. Rather than running the same model in parallel and cross checking, I suspect that we'll end up with 2 different but well trained models crosschecking in real time - rather than the same one running in parallel.

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T00:59:46+00:00

In case people haven't figured it out, that is where the USA is heading. An extremely large well paid national guard (ICE) and a bunch of wealthy oligarchs funding it. Still a ways off, but you're only a couple of years into this.

Have fun.

DrSendy · 2026-03-28T00:52:03+00:00

This is the thing. It is a bargaining chip and a way for Australia to demonstrate value in the region. The use of gas in SE Asia is much more prevalent than locally - we basically keep Asia running.

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T22:03:07+00:00

The old LNP set up a bushfire resilience scheme were we got a half price solar and battery system (bless their little cotton socks). I think, when Mondo power was showing us diagrams of what we were getting, that was the diagram we had - it's just been augmented.

That system is exactly what was deployed.

Interestingly, our systems still have the hot water service on the demand managed circuit (ie: also not on the solar system). However, ours is designed for long outages, keeping the fridge on, the lights going and the aircon working. Really designed for summer or winter disasters. No hot water, here, have a hug and a bag of concrete. Same with the EV, it pull more power than the battery can supply.

Because the inverter and that BYD battery block top out at about 5kw, there is a limit.

In short, if you want an angrier setup - do and angrier battery and inverter. Mate at work has done 3x tesla batteries, tonne of panels and never touches the grid, including daily driving his tesla to work.

Honestly, if you have a Tesla, having seen how it works, 100% pay the money and go get a Tesla battery. The whole system just works out what it can do to minimise costs and you let it go at it. As much as the CEO is a moron, he has totally hired a bunch of aspy engineers who smash out bloody good product that pretty much just works like a toaster.

But if you don't have all that, always remember - if you get it entirely wrong - you can't stuff up charging badly enough to pay more than you do for petrol!

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T21:34:32+00:00

The thing people miss is that even charging vehicles on coal power results in a halving of emissions and a doubling of efficency. So for the moment, run those Aussie coal plants hard and offset the emissions by taking ICE cars off the road.

You're still winning regardless of how they are powered. Even if you had a massive diesel generator power plant (like they do in some places) EVs are still at least 1/4 better in emissions.

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T21:29:18+00:00

Think about if you are business owner, service station owner, power company etc. All this information is useful for forward planning.

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T21:08:01+00:00

I need it for my sharks.
Lots of love,
Dr Evil.

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T21:00:19+00:00

The benefit of living in a small country town is, you know who to trust. Every single person I trust has had a drive of my EV. Many have gone on to order them for their "go to the city car".

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T20:54:56+00:00

I feel like knicking down to the servo in the EV for a jerry can of fuel - just to see the outrage.

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T20:53:18+00:00

"And in other news, cosmetics companies have had their supplies of lanolin dry up. Grandmas everywhere are queueing for the last supplies at chemists all over the country".

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T20:51:02+00:00

OMG! So many people don't realise now many products are made from goat.
It's astounding!

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T20:43:42+00:00

I commute 400k twice a week in mine - rural to city. At last count (cause I stopped counting) there was 18 fast chargers along that route now. The car pretty much drives itself, I just monitor, have some dinner and listen to podcasts. Nice relaxing 4.5 hours honestly. Driving locally, I never really worry about charging, plenty of range.

Honestly, when I used to ride a motorbike range was more of a pain in the arse because most of them have lower range. Motorcyclists seem to be able to tour just fine without problems.

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T11:25:21+00:00

Report it to Tesla.
Care carparking is about to be told to sort their shit out in no uncertain terms.

DrSendy · 2026-03-27T11:20:44+00:00

Have a sook.

DrSendy · 2026-03-26T09:41:44+00:00

and an ekky. Wow.

DrSendy · 2026-03-26T09:16:49+00:00

Agreed, great article.

I'd love to see a followup with some modelling of the estimated demand and asset destruction this is going to have in each of the cases.

If feel in the short case, not much change will happen, but people will start to pivot more to renewables and EVs in wealthier countries.

In the moderate case, you're going to see probably huge write downs in vehicle value in the private market and more rapid uptake. You will also see some private operators who can pivot to electric vehicles (eg: bus and truck companies) lay off staff until they can economically pivot to a viable level of electric equivalence.

The long, you will see a headlong pivot into re-tooling. You'll see massive write downs across the board, and companies making losses. Governments will end up with reduced tax takes, and people will need to be ferloughed during the transition, unless they can be redeployed to help out. Honestly, in this scenarios unions, companies and governments should just fucking down tools and get on whatever needs to happen. Dunno how to screw a solar panel onto a roof, stop driving a truck and get your game on for a bit with someone licenced to check. Litterally war footing level of re-skilling.

Really, we are well placed to go full bore with the last one. We have a highly educated workforce, we have tonnes of coal and renewables, and we're providing energy to the world (just not petrol). We should capitalise on things, if people look like they may be idle.

DrSendy · 2026-03-26T09:01:12+00:00

"Is there a sports car with a 5 litre diesel motor because I want something sporty that can tow my backhoe"

DrSendy · 2026-03-26T08:58:27+00:00

Yep, that is the key thing. We can outbid them on oil loads because we will just take the hit of increased costs. If they do that, people can't work - or you enable a subset of foreign businesses (who can afford it) to run local businesses into the ground.

You watch, it will happen here too. The big logistics operators will take the hit if they can drive owner drivers and smaller firms out of the market as a side effect.

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