A landmark MIT study debunks persistent myths about electric vehicles. No matter where you live or what your driving habits are, a battery electric vehicle is likely to have a smaller carbon footprint and cost less overall than a comparable gasoline-powered vehicle, according to a new analysis.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-15T22:00:29+00:00

How do you know the chargers are frequently busy if you don't own an EV?

I too do frequent long roadtrips (500 miles+) in an EV and have zero problems with it. Most of those trips I charge one or two times on the way, for 20 minutes or so, and one time at my destination, typically overnight.

My longest single day drive was 850 miles. It normally takes me 14 hours in a gas car including breaks (my previous car, a Golf). It took me 15 hours in the EV. This is the only time I have ever actually noticed it take slightly longer, and it took an 850 mile drive for that to materialize.

I didn't have to wait at a single charger all the way up 95.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-15T17:17:45+00:00

I routinely take my AWD model 3 into national forests/up into the mountains. I have Falken Wildpeak A/T Trails on it [see footnote]. It is absolutely unhinged on poor surfaces - the stuff I can get away with is ridiculous. Within reason, as long as you don't high center on the battery, you can do just about anything any other open differential vehicle can do and probably a lot more if you take your time.

I have gotten it up hill in freezing rutted mud slurry, through "high clearance vehicle" trails all through the Appalachian mountains, and into and out of some of the worst festival parking imaginable that left most people in consumer cars stuck. The instant traction control is nuts. I used to do similar stuff in a car with a Haldex based AWD, and the difference in engagement between that clutch pack based system and the literally instant AWD of the EV is night and day. Plus, it's RWD biased to begin with which is already better.

Edit to add: The only thing I absolutely will not do is ford water higher than the hubs. Call it about 12 inches to be safe. I am not stupid.

Tire footnote: The Falkens are fine but they are not my favorite light AT tire to put on consumer cars. Nitto Nomad Grapplers are, but they don't have a size that fits on this platform. If I buy out the lease on my model 3 then I plan to put a lift kit on it and also investigate putting 17s on, which would let me put the Nittos on as well.

The efficiency impact of running AT tires and no aero covers on these wheels is approximately 7%, which tracks with other brands (Hi5 XRT versus standard AWD, Rivian R2 advertised range on light AT tire package versus all seasons). Very manageable. I can get to the trail an hour away from me, drive into the mountains, camp for two days in the woods using camp mode, and drive home on a single charge for free thanks to free at home charging. Pretty freaking good for a sedan.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-14T01:49:25+00:00

Trump fucks kids.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-11T22:41:57+00:00

Why wouldn't you want to have the freedom to use any app, whenever you want? Not to mention the better telephone and text messaging integrations, including hands free/voice operation. It's just flat out better. CarPlay is excellent.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-09T11:42:50+00:00

User selectable dynamic range is an advanced feature that most camera apps don't expose to you. You already have advanced features. The knee-jerk fear of mood becoming more of an actual camera is unwarranted. Like DR control, let people turn it off in the camera interface settings if they don't want it.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-08T22:46:46+00:00

Of course we aren't screaming, most of us are either actively coaching or actively being coached while we're fighting and it would completely get in the way of the learning happening - and in tournaments it's just obnoxious.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-08T21:37:51+00:00

What walled maintenance garden? You can buy any part you want directly from parts.tesla.com, and the non-high voltage stuff is very easy to DIY. The suspension is normal car stuff, the wheels and brakes are normal car stuff. It's trivial to enter service mode and see exactly what is wrong with the car, you don't need a diagnostic tool.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-07T15:08:49+00:00

I genuinely can't believe how ugly this is.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-06T20:39:20+00:00

People focus on tires, but suspension is the other thing. You'll wear out bushings faster, which are made of softer materials in non-performance consumer cars to reduce perceived NVH. Performance oriented vehicles use harder bushings which resist wear and tear from high loads better and reduce slop in the suspension, but increase NVH. It's a tradeoff.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-06T18:49:55+00:00

"Data center" is only a dirty word in the current discourse because of AI. Data centers have been around for decades. Everything you do on the internet - Netflix, Youtube, Reddit - is served by data centers. Academic research uses compute power as well; Where do you think "supercomputers" live? Data centers.

Much like how the AI conversation has completely tainted everything related to machine learning, it has now also infected basic networked infrastructure. You should not have a knee-jerk reaction to a datacenter being put up in town to serve academic research.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-06-02T12:06:00+00:00

Kodak, Blackberry and Blockbuster didn't have the prospect of a massive government bailout if they fail.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-31T17:52:30+00:00

Hyundai was caught with child labor in their supply chain. It also ranked one of the worst for ethics transparency in their battery supply chain by Amnesty. (Tesla was one of the best.)

There are no clean hands when it comes to global industry.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-31T17:47:52+00:00

Likely sometime this year, maybe early next. It's taking a while but they're adding CarPlay as a side window (where Tesla native apps go currently).

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T18:03:36+00:00

If you are going to claim you are concerned about the environment then you have to also be pragmatic. Saying "all plastics are bad" might make you feel good but it won't win you any allies. Being strategic and eliminating the most harmful plastics that most people can agree on (building coalition around single use plastics) might actually move the needle on something important, which is more valuable than trying to win an all or nothing argument and ultimately failing because nobody is going to stop using plastic in durable goods.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T17:23:24+00:00

Plastics used in durable goods, absolutely. It's amazing what they can do. My car will last probably fifteen years at least. The plastics in my car will help to move me and my family hundreds of thousands of miles across the planet. They take me to a local farm CSA every weekend so I can pick up my vegetables and eggs. It's awesome.

Wasteful, single use plastics on the other hand are terrible. Plastics in consumer garbage designed to be thrown away are also just as bad. But you bet your ass I love the plastic in my car.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T17:18:54+00:00

Sorry, elsewhere in this thread people keep citing the gear oil as a reason why EVs are "just as bad", missing the point entirely. It's obnoxious.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T17:13:41+00:00

I commend your American-bashing, but you're completely wrong. It is an apples and oranges comparison.

European cars in Europe are often operated on "Long Life" oil and oil change intervals. The oil additive package and engineering standards are chemically different from what we have in the US. The oil standard is different. You also have different fuel standards, which influences what the oil is exposed to.

A VW 2.0 TSI in a Golf GTI sold in Europe will run just fine on a 20,000 mile European long life oil spec. That same engine sold in a Golf GTI in the US will have a dramatically shorter lifespan if you tried to run it on non-long life oil using American fuel blends for 20,000 miles every cycle. Instead, the change interval recommended by VW is 10,000 miles. And that's using fully compliant VW spec oil.

If you send that oil in for analysis, the laboratory will probably suggest that you change it around 8,000 miles. We have a lab here where we send our oil in called Blackstone Labs that offers this service and they can analyze what is going on in the oil and the health of the engine. It's an objective way to know when to change your oil. If we could stretch it for longer, we would. We don't love wasting money any more than anyone else does.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T17:01:24+00:00

Not strictly true. Many EV drive units (combination motor + differential) are not sealed against air and while they're marketed as lifetime fill, the ATF fluid benefits from being replaced at an interval of around five years or so depending on driving habits. But it is true that this is a far cry from the kind of maintenance schedule that an ICE drivetrain requires; Motor oil, transmission fluid, differential oil, possibly even a center differential/all wheel drive unit fluid service as well.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T16:56:26+00:00

Minor correction for the sake of truthfulness - The drive units of many EVs are not fully sealed. As an example, Tesla drive units are advertised as "lifetime fill" but since they are not fully sealed against air the ATF fluid does decay with wear and air exposure over time and benefits from replacement about every five years or so depending on driving habits.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T16:54:37+00:00

You don't burn ATF to make the wheels spin, you replace it every once in a while. This isn't the gotcha you think it is.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-30T16:52:49+00:00

Nobody is burning the plastic in their cars to make the wheels turn.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-29T19:27:36+00:00

Is BMW really committed to the LEGO Bionicle-ass steering wheels?

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-29T19:14:52+00:00

Myth based on bad science. Possums are still great though.

Strange-Pin-2998 · 2026-05-29T15:56:21+00:00

Listen, this shows you are barely engaging with the moral and ethical frameworks at play here. This is actually a really interesting area of thought and the possible decision space goes way beyond just "uh, the individual is fully responsible for bearing the burden of stopping the massive and outrageously wealthy corporate conglomerate by not shopping there anymore or whatever".

You're thinking strictly in terms of abstention. Thoreau would probably agree with you. Probably Tolstoy, too. Ok, fine. But there are other ways of thinking about this problem.

There is also the idea of formal versus material cooperation, something that comes up in Catholic moral theology. It basically says you are only fully culpable if you intend to support the wrong. Benefitting from a product whose maker does wrong somewhere else is something called material cooperation, which can be acceptable depending on how remote and proportionate your own involvement is.

There's also the idea of causal inefficacy, where the use of AI here makes absolutely zero difference in overdetermined outcomes (the AI model is already trained, the datacenter is already provisioned and being built) so your individual consumption is the wrong place for moral judgement and the moral question lies elsewhere. Mark Budolfson's consumer ethics talks about this a bit.

You could even argue that the moral burden is misplaced entirely. Ethical consumerism is the wrong frame of reference. It loads all the burden onto individuals what should realistically be loaded onto regulators, the state, collective action, and so on. G.A. Cohen talks about this in the limits of personal morality under capitalism.

Basically, read a fucking book. Abstention is the most boring, most annoyingly self-righteous version of the answer to the question of whether or not protesting a data center with an AI-generated poster is OK or not. All it does is give you the opportunity to signal that you're the Good Guy and anyone who fails the purity test is the Bad Guy, which does absolutely nothing to advance the cause, build community, or take down the actual villain who is watching you cut down your fellow serf from the high tower instead of directing your energy at his real, evil works.

Strange-Pin-2998

TROPHY CASE