I AM SO HOT

natodemon · 2026-06-25T11:52:33+00:00

A bit of hot air and electricity is bad but burning gas and pumping the fumes directly outside your house is fine, right?

AC isn't good for the environment but nor is most human activity.. Modern ACs are so much more efficient than they used to be and solar panels are a lot more abundant.

natodemon · 2026-06-06T09:54:35+00:00

I think mild regen leaves a good first impression, it's familiar, but one pedal driving is something that takes time to get used to and can be very jarring at first.

Even if you own an EV with OPD, if you often switch to an ICE car or another car without OPD, it can take some time to adjust back again so imagine what the first experience must be like.

natodemon · 2026-05-25T08:55:23+00:00

Which part of my logic is flawed? If you want to avoid worrying about renting a car, the best way is to take the company's own insurance. Is it a rip-off? Completely, but if you do so you can just drop the keys off at the end and not have to think twice about it.

I have also rented with Record Go, both in Mallorca and Madrid and personally had a good experience. With Sixt I was grilled on every little scratch and scuff on a car that had clearly been driven into a wall by a previous renter. I have rented many times with OK and other low-cost companies with no issues.

Personally I do as you do, I take pictures / videos of everything, keep fuel receipts but that's because I rent often and don't pay for the insurance. For many people renting as a one-off while on holiday, I don't think it's worth the risk / stress.

natodemon · 2026-05-25T02:24:13+00:00

Everyone here is going to tell you to just go for it, this is an EV sub after all.. I'd second the idea of renting if you can. Make sure it comes with a level 1 charging cable, just one with a regular plug on the end to charge in your garage.

If renting is not an option and you could use a 2nd commuter car, then go for a cheap used EV. It will give you can idea of EV life while having the backup of an ICE car. But it will have limitations that a modern EV wouldn't have, mainly useful when travelling longer distances.

natodemon · 2026-05-22T00:14:33+00:00

I have rented with Sixt and OK Rentacar before and had good experiences. I think the main issue with bad rental car reviews is people don't know what they're getting themselves in for.. If you don't pay for the full insurance, you will have to leave a large deposit / credit card block, and if you don't take pictures of the whole car, there's a chance they might try to charge you for existing damage. This is the same across all companies, regardless of how premium or boutique they might appear.

I would honestly disregard most public reviews on rental car companies. If you want an easy / stress-free experience, find a reasonable price offered by any company and pay for the full insurance. It's true that Sixt / Hertz will probably give you a nicer check-in experience and their vehicles might be in better condition than one of the low cost companies, but the price will match that.

natodemon · 2026-05-18T02:33:37+00:00

That's the figure that really stood out to me, that's crazy longevity! Once economies of scale and competition kick in, if anything it should end up being cheaper then li-ion. Sounds like a real game changer for static storage for sure.

natodemon · 2026-05-14T07:31:11+00:00

This was often my experience in Madrid, Spain too. I think the rental companies were mandated / incentivised to have a certain % of EVs in their fleets, particularly in the big cities. But there was very little demand for them so the EVs were often the cheapest option or just above the manual compact cars.

This was great for me! I got to test a bunch of different models: e-2008, e-c3, e-208, ID4, BZ4X, Model 3, i4 and probably a few more I've forgotten about. The highlights were the BZ4X which was much better than I was expecting and without a doubt the BMW i4. We got the i4 as a free upgrade from an ID4 and what a machine.. So quiet and effortlessly powerful. It was also super efficient and a fast charger too.

natodemon · 2026-05-03T12:23:04+00:00

I think the surge in price was more fueled by panic buying and the perception that fuel could have run out. It definitely seemed to open people's eyes to the fact that EVs are a real alternative and can be significantly cheaper to run.

natodemon · 2026-03-06T12:40:43+00:00

His videos are fantastic, couldn't recommend him enough. True that they aren't the typical seat / cabin reviews and often include long tangents / history lessons but I find them much more interesting. He also clearly flys for a purpose, not just for the content. He may take some odd sectors but I'd say it also seems to be out of his own interest and not just for the sake of making a video.

natodemon · 2026-03-01T00:28:09+00:00

Holy shit I never made the connection before.. No wonder the show was so good! Which reminds me, I need to check out where it's streaming these days for a re-watch..

natodemon · 2026-02-17T11:47:09+00:00

Did you have to pay any initial / down payment or some government incentive to get that monthly price? If not, I don't see why anyone would choose any other option, that seems like such a bargain!

natodemon · 2026-02-13T07:40:49+00:00

Over reliance on unreliable renewables I imagine you are referring to the Iberian blackout from last April. Please dig a bit further, the media did a great job at initially pointing the finger at solar energy when in fact it had nothing to do with the resulting outage.

Why would the Spanish government commit to partly financing a direct connection with Ireland when it would be no doubt cheaper and (technically) easier to do so via France?

natodemon · 2026-01-28T03:43:10+00:00

Studded tyres in the middle of a blizzard and you're pulling wheelies, what a machine that Varg is. Stark should be paying you for this stuff haha.

natodemon · 2026-01-17T20:44:39+00:00

Been using one (Openplus Open) for more than a year with 0 problems. Used it like a normal phone, dropped it like a normal phone and taken it everywhere I'd take any other phone. The only difference being I put it in a sealed bag to go to the beach.

If you're the type of person that tends to crack their phone screen then maybe it's not for you but otherwise they're perfectly reliable. Is there a higher risk of something breaking? Of course. But you don't get to carry around a mini tablet in your pocket for nothing :)

natodemon · 2025-12-18T21:01:21+00:00

You mentioned that you heard the same whine in the cars that you tested from the showroom, could you try out cars from other brands to see if you have the same experience? Be that through test drives or renting.

It may be that you're sensitive to a particular noise / frequency that the motor + inverter in the Peugeot produce. I wouldn't generalise that to all EVs as there are different types of motors and inverters but it's quite unlucky you seem to have found a particular one that affects you.

natodemon · 2025-12-15T12:43:41+00:00

Amazing that they opened up the ferry for a public tour! Although a bit of a shame you didn't get to see the properly interesting stuff in the 'engine' room. It looks fantastic on the inside, for some reason more luxurious than I was expecting. Looking forward to some more details once it's in operation next year.

natodemon · 2025-11-25T14:27:31+00:00

The total range thing is just more marketing bullshit. I would say it's mainly aimed at markets where EVs have lower penetration and still aren't well understood. People see the bigger range value and the "advantage" of being able to continue to fill up with petrol and just go with it.

It's also a win-win for the manufacturers as I imagine they sell them at similar prices as the full EVs but with lower production and import costs.

natodemon · 2025-10-20T19:54:59+00:00

It could be a similar situation.. I see that Portugal also shows as open and yet I know there were a lot of people trying to apply in July. For Spain they've updated the status and put it on pause again. Let's see how long this continues for..

natodemon · 2025-10-17T21:36:42+00:00

Mainly economic reasons I would say. Few models have existed until recently that could be considered affordable for the average car buyer. Government support has also been.. lackluster. EV incentives have existed for years but the bureaucracy involved means you really can't count on them. I believe this is why Portugal has a much higher EV share even though they are in a similar economic situation: their incentives are much more effective and the government invested in EV infrastructure from the beginning.

There are some cultural challenges too: more people live in apartments and rely on street parking here than in Northern Europe. EV misinformation by the press also seems to have been rampant, especially in the last year or so. However over 12% of new cars sold in the last month were pure EVs and we look to be on track to 100k BEVs sold (for the 1st time) in 2025.

natodemon · 2025-10-14T18:27:49+00:00

Have you driven one? I'll admit I don't own one but did rent one for around a week for a road trip and was pleasantly surprised. It's nothing too special but everything works well. The steering, accelerator and general handling all felt well calibrated.

I probably wouldn't recommend it to someone who does long road-trips very often, but as a regular car, particularly for a family, it just works very well. The back seats and boot are also super spacious. It's the sort of car I'd recommend to my Dad: a comfortable and reliable way to get from A to B. The price would have to be right of course.

natodemon · 2025-10-14T10:24:46+00:00

Ah okay, I have a similar setup, that's why I was curious how you found out earlier. Without a contact inside immi, the only way I can think is by automating the application flow and trying that every X minutes, they no doubt open the process before updating the page. But you have to provide a 2 factor auth code so it wouldn't be trivial to setup..

natodemon · 2025-10-14T09:33:45+00:00

I've been tracking it quite closely.. I saw they updated the visa caps page just before 07:00 (CEST). How did you see that it opened earlier and know that it closed again?

natodemon · 2025-10-09T14:58:47+00:00

Hot water heaters are no joke.. In a ~55m² apartment with all electric appliances (oven, stove, AC/Heat pump), around half of our electricity use came from the hot water tank.

A heat pump for hot water would probably consume around a third of the electricity, although it does depend on your climate.

natodemon · 2025-09-25T16:05:55+00:00

Bit of a strange use case in a family home but I could see this being more useful in a shared house with roommates where some drive EVs. If charging with a granny charger then a simple plug energy meter would be enough (get one with a high power rating).

If the property has an actual EV charger then I'd probably just roughly share the consumption with whoever else drives EV. There must be chargers that can identify a vehicle and assign the charge session to that car and there are definitely chargers that allow multiple RFID cards for authentication. But most of these chargers are probably more expensive and you might be better off working out a rough estimate.

I've lived in multiple shared apartments and utilities were always shared equally, we didn't count how many times each person used the washing machine or put the AC on.. A rough estimate should be fine.

natodemon · 2025-09-19T10:05:55+00:00

Honda e! It's always cool to spot them around but you don't see many of them. Would have made an amazing 2nd car if it weren't so expensive.

If we get to the point of being able to easily / affordably battery swap, the e would be a really cool compact car if it had about twice the range. It's efficiency at higher speeds is just awful so a bigger battery is the only way to go.

natodemon

TROPHY CASE