Electric Cars Infinity War

I recently asked what the future of SUV's is. Will be. Whatever. And it turned out to be intertwined with the future of electric cars. That's a bit of a complication, since our electric future isn't clear either.

It's been generally assumed that electric vehicles are the future. And car companies are preparing for it, investing huge sums in the technology and infrastructure. But at the same time, turning our back on internal combustion is the sort of huge revolution that doesn't happen without some turbulence. I figure there's still a few roadblocks to a complete electric takeover.

Range

Electric car costs have come down, and performance has been great, But range is still a problem. It’s improved, but not really enough to change anyone’s attitude. This problem isn’t new: for a long time now, we've been able to build electric cars that will easily have enough range for what the average person drives in a day. But, part of the reason for buying a car/truck/SUV is the freedom it gives you, so even if you rarely drive great distances (say, on vacation) you'll likely be reluctant to buy a vehicle that doesn't give you the option to drive greater distances when you want to.

So electric vehicles are fine, if you only ever drive within an hour of your home. But if you want to use your vehicle for anything more than a day trip, you’re out of luck. And don’t even ask about towing something while driving a long distance. Range has increased over the years, but the problem is that the vacation requirement is another order of magnitude farther than the daily-driving requirement. Even a big increase in range only takes a dent out of the vacation range problem. So we need either a huge range increase, or a huge charging-speed increase, to let people believe they can travel greater distances. Until that changes, there's a whole lot of people who won't consider an electric car.

Charging Infrastructure

The speed of charging has long been a stumbling block for electric vehicles. That's improved a lot too, but there's still the problem of where are we going to charge all these cars? If you live in a house, you can charge at home, but an increasing number of people live in apartments or condos, where charging isn't as easy. Yes, we can set up chargers in parking lots and garages of apartment and condo buildings, but that's a lot of infrastructure that still needs to be built, and it will be built by the landlords who won't (directly) make money off it.

And there has to be a solution for charging away from home. There are a fair number of public charging places, but they're mostly set up by either the car companies or public businesses like malls and stores . Those are both loss-leaders: the car company is swallowing the cost to make electric cars more appealing, or the business is swallowing the cost to attract customers. Either way, it's hard to imagine that scaling-up to being a solution for all of us charging our vehicles. I mean, I can't imagine GM — or Tesla, or whoever ends up on top — building a network of chargers big enough for all the cars in society.

The thing that makes me skeptical is that no one is making any significant money off of charging, and that’s usually what’s needed to get a big change like that happening in our society. Note that it doesn’t have to be switching our gas stations to charging stations. It’s entirely possible that the charging business of the future operates with small charging outlets here and there around a city. But they’ve got to make money off it or no one is going to go to all that trouble and expense to build the infrastructure.

Culture War

It's still relatively low-key, but a few people have targeted electric vehicles as a symbol of everything they hate. I don’t really see that going away. Some of the biggest hot-button issues for conservatives in recent years has been asking people to change behaviour. When you see the fury at being told to put on a mask or learn about slavery, it’s hard to imagine people just accepting that their cars are going to totally change whether they like it or not. 

Right now, that’s not an immediate issue: although buyers have ever-increasing choices for electric cars, there still aren’t any segments of the market where the internal-combustion options are disappearing. When we get to that point, there’ll be a lot more anger, and people taking “never electric” stances.

Big Oil

We're about at that point in the movie where it looks like the heroes will succeed, but you're watching, thinking it can’t be over yet, there's still a half hour left before the credits roll. And then the bad guy that you thought was dead reappears, and says, "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" Well, I’m still waiting for that from the oil industry.

Eventually, they've got to make a move against it. I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen much of a campaign against electric vehicles yet. Yes, they're only a small segment of the market so far, but car companies keep positioning themselves to be ready to move to mostly electric production. Surely Big Oil isn't just going to fold up and go home.

When I went looking for stories about the Oil Industry fighting electric vehicles, pretty much all I found was a lot of waffling about how they still make lots of money elsewhere, they'll invest in renewables to make money of the change, they'll sell more stuff at gas station convenience stores to compensate, etc.

Okay, fine, there are ways they can still stay in business and make tidy profits even after electric vehicles take over. But come on people, there's no way large corporations are just going to quietly give up a huge part of their customer base, or retool their entire business, when there's a chance that they can fight to keep things as they are.

They do fund the American Petroleum Institute, which publishes propaganda on their behalf, but most of its actions are just generic government lobbying; not the dirty tricks you'd expect from an industry fighting for trillions.

I've seen the odd story sowing suspicions about electric cars, like the recent one that the extra weight of electric cars will cause aging parking garages to collapse, but that just sounds like desperate casting about for anything that might gain traction. I probably did more damage earlier when I mentioned the problems using electric vehicles for towing.

But then, if they're trying to put together a major campaign to derail electric vehicles, it could be that they are going to get it stuck in the aforementioned culture war. If they can get a significant portion of the population committing to being personally against electric vehicles, adopting that as a part of their identity and world view, it will ensure that fossil fuels can have a foot in the door, preventing the electric domination tipping point for years to come. In that case, their campaigns would target the media of those most likely to buy into the anti-electric position. So it may just be something I haven't personally seen yet.

How Do We Stand When Our Pants Are Burning?

This week, The Guardian had an article about how the post-truth era will come to an end because Elon Musk is building the world's biggest battery. Huh? See the battery is going to be part of the power grid in the state of South Australia, so they can store electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind. And the article makes the case that this will be the final nail in the coffin for dirtier energy sources like coal: the costs of renewals have gone down, and now they'll have reliability on their side too.

Keep in mind that Australia has lots of coal, and has made lots of money selling it to China and other countries that need to ramp up their energy supplies quickly. Thus, Australians have been torturing logic and ignoring reality to convince themselves that coal isn't really that bad.

Personally, I don't think that a compelling case for renewables will be enough to stop post-truth discourse. There are lots of forces pushing people to believe falsehoods, and convenience is only one. There's also the need to save face; people have invested their reputations in arguments, so they won't just admit they were wrong and go away. And of course they've invested plenty of money too. Coal companies and their hired guns won't just give up when there's so much money at stake. And then there's tradition. There's plenty of inertia behind the way things are. Just look at how Donald Trump scored points by promising to bring coal jobs back. That energized people in a way that promises of growing future technology never could.

But still, this article does bring up a point that I - and I'm sure many others - had wondered about: what is the post-truth endgame? I mean, you can pretend all you want, but eventually reality asserts itself. Another great example of that came up recently, and it's also from Australia. (What is going on down there?) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was discussing encrypted communications, when he said,

“Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,"

Of course, this has lead to a global lambasting online. But the point is that however ignorant he and his laws are, at some point the rubber has to hit the road. The fact is that the only known way of breaking modern encryption is by time-consumingly impractical brute force methods. Eventually the government will be faced with the alternatives of changing the laws or attesting people for not doing the impossible, like a scene from Kafka or Italy.

Of course, most post-truth situations are less immediate. On, say, global warming, you could picture the deniers hanging on to their beliefs all the way down. Long-term trends can be easily ignored, and there will always be an excuse or alternate explanation for noticable things like sea levels. And in the case of competing power sources, people can always invent excuses why our past experience isn't representative ("If they'd just use the best way of burning coal, it would be better") or create unverifiable reasons things aren't as they seem ("the government is covering up the facts.") So I don't think anyone is going land a knockout in any post-truth argument, at least not by simply overwhelming the opponent's ability to delude.

That's The End Of The Killerwhaletank

SeaWorld has announced that they will end orca breeding. I found that pretty surprising: yes, it's been getting them very bad publicity, lately, but their identity is quite tied to the performing orcas.

What I'm getting at is, this is about the biggest win I've ever seen activists get. As such, it's interesting to see how people are reacting. The stereotype of activists is that they never give anything but bad news. Environmentalists were traditionally the worst, but in recent years they seem to have realized that this is turning people off. Even David Suzuki seems to understand the benefit of mixing in some positivity.

Animal Rights had never been a cause I was particularly close to, so I'm not really knowledgeable on their reaction. But from what I have seen, as individuals they are quite positive, celebrating this as the win that it is.

On the other hand, PETA put out the protestors' traditional this-isn't-enough reaction. Yes, it's clear that PETA has never really cared about having a positive public perception. But still, you have to wonder: if this doesn't get a positive reaction out of them, what will?

I've always figured that the nothing-is-good-enough attitude from activists comes from their relatively rare motivation pattern: they tend to be spurred to action by the badness of the situation, so they see relentless negativity as a motivator. Unfortunately, for most people downplaying any and all positivity just Leafs to hopelessness, which leads to inaction.

So it might pay to emphasize this victory. Like I say, PETA had positioned itself as an organization for more dedicated, uncompromising people. It's the 70's Greenpeace of Animal Rights. That might mean that the all-negative attitude will work for it.

Eat Locally, Rant Globally

I have a long history of trying to recycle things. I sorted through the blue boxes in our early recycling program in high school, I tried to get my roommates to recycle in university. Living on my own, I've done everything I can to divert as much waste as possible from the landfill.

So I know just how hard it is to get people to understand what is and isn't recyclable. Many don’t consider that there has to be someone somewhere who sorts everything you put in the blue box. Or they just assume that putting other stuff in there will somehow make it magically become recyclable. Or they have bizarre reasoning, like assuming that if paper is recyclable, then wood is also recyclable.

But now I find myself on the other end of things whenever I eat at a food court in a shopping mall. In a commendable effort to be responsible, they’re introducing recycling. And they’re doing the best they can in an industry - fast food - that doesn’t try to hard to minimize waste.

Having said that, whenever I try to throw things out, I feel like I’m taking a test. There’ll be several categories, like paper and plastic, but then there’s also a “garbage” category. There are pictures to give examples of each category, but the pictures of the garbage also include plastic and paper things, so I’m still confused. What about a straw? I have no idea what kind of plastic that is. And you have cardboard in the paper section, but does that include waxy paper cups? So there I am looking back and forth at the different pictures, nervously grasping my Subway cup, while people line up behind me. I’m sure they’re quietly cursing me, with the final judgement coming when I make a decision and become a terrible person for either adding to the landfill unnecessarily, or for making life harder for some sorter.

The frustrating part of all this is that there’s only so many types of waste at a food court. Waxy drink cups, sandwiches and burgers in paper or foil, paper napkins, plastic cutlery, cardboard boxes, and the segmented plates from the chinese place. So you could just have a photo of everything people are going to throw out, and it will be nice and simple. And I’m sure whoever empties the recycling will be glad to take the photos for you.

Reading The Lettuce Leaves

Today, I bought lettuce. The selection was pretty poor, with only a few, wilted heads available. I'm assuming that's a product of the ongoing drought in California. I’m not sure how many people are aware of how much we rely on California for food. We think of it as being all about the entertainment and technology industries, and other than that, it’s all surfing, earthquakes, and mountains. But they also produce half of America’s fruits and vegetables. That makes me wonder: what is the rest of the U.S. doing? If California provides food and ideas, and China makes stuff, what are the other 49 states spending their time on?

But back to dry, dry California. It’s slowly dawning on people that there isn’t going to be an easy solution anytime soon, so they’re going to have to think about where they can cut water use. And a lot of people are looking at agriculture. It uses most of California’s water.

The Economist, for instance, demonizes farmers for taking so much water for something that makes up such a small part of the state’s economy. That sounds good, as long as you don’t remember that it’s providing half the country’s fruits and vegetables, so perhaps that is worth forcing someone in Anaheim to water the lawn every-other week.

We allocate resources in our society with a mixture of capitalism and government policy, and the result often doesn’t make that much sense. In this case, it seems to be the worst of both worlds: water use doesn’t make sense according to cold economic equations, and it’s not exactly environmentally conscious either. This is one of those cases where it becomes hard to tell the political sides apart. Conservatives would point out that deregulating water prices would lead to more efficient use, because water would be too expensive for water-intensive uses. And that would probably lead to reduced water use, and benefit the environment, which liberals would like. But it would also price the poor out the market, which they wouldn’t like. And once that Anaheim suburbanite can’t water the lawn, conservatives will sour on the idea too. So this is one of those frustrating issues where we can’t use a knee-jerk solution, and will actually have to think about it.

A Little Too Much Off The Top

China is now planning to bulldoze 700 mountains to make more room for cities.  What's really shocking is the quote that this is the "largest mountain-moving project in Chinese history."  So, this isn't even the first mountain-moving project in China.

It reminded me of the developers in the book Snowcrash who have designed the optimal suburban neighbourhood, and just keep building copies of it all over the world, even if they have to remodel the landscape to make it the same.  China seems to have achieved the same combination of boldness in construction and timidity in design.

It's nice to see China building the maglevs and exotic architecture we thought were in our future. But more often they just shovel their money into building facsimiles of western cities.  And that's disappointing when you think about the more creative things they could do with their money (even within the context of housing their people and modernizing their infrastructure.) Rather than brute-force work, try cleverer solutions.  Instead of moving mountains to make conventional cities, couldn't that money go into adapting structures to the sides of mountains.  Or better transportation so the cities can be build on the other side of the mountains.  Or for that much money, build the cities inside the mountains.

A.I.'s Horrible Ending

Stephen Hawking recently said that it would be a big mistake if humanity created artificial intelligence.  There seems to be a lot of technologists concerned about the effect of possible future science. It seemed to start with Bill Joy's infamous essay on nanotechnology.

I can understand where they're coming from. When you think about how we've abused everything from internal combustion to high-fructose corn syrup, it becomes scary to even contemplate what we would do with self-replicating nanomachines.

But there is a flip-side to that line of reasoning: because we abuse every technology we create, we can't stop now. We don't use technology responsibly or with restraint, so we need to keep inventing new things to clean up our past messes.

To look at it another way, we often laugh at past alarmists, like Malthus or the  folks who said we'd have so many horses that today's world would be awash in manure. But they weren't wrong, they just didn't see new technologies coming. Without improved farming techniques, we wouldn't be able to feed the world (the part we do currently feed) and without the car, the world really would smell a whole lot worse.

So if you're going to advise us to avoid future technologies, you'll also have to prescribe a great shift in how we use our current technology.  Standing still with the world we've got now simply isn't an option.  I realize it may seem reckless to continue our current "strategy" of ignoring the consequences and assuming we can invent our way out of any problems we get ourselves into.  But until you can talk humanity into a new level of maturity, it's all we've got.

What's Powering That i3? Don't Ask

I thought I'd continue my theme of German environmental stories.  Today a newspaper article caught my eye.  Germany's government shut down half its nuclear power plants two years ago, after Japan's earthquake/nuclear accident.  And in those two years, CO2 emissions have gone up both years.  This comes in spite of the fact that Germany - where the Green party is a major political force - has generally made progress on greenhouse gasses.

See, it turns out that eliminating nuclear power doesn't cause the spontaneous creation of windmills and solar panels, nor does it cause people to suddenly use less power.  Instead, it forces utilities to replace that power supply with the quickest cheapest thing available.  That's coal, and it produces more CO2 than any other major power source.

For the last freaking time, environmentalists, you've got to get over your fear of nuclear power.  Yes, I know, it's expensive and technological, and - worst of all to the activist heart - not the perfect solution.  But it's the only workable, non-disasterous solution we can get now.

And remember, it's "right now" that's the important point here.  To illustrate, the German Green party's energy plan would move to 100% renewable energy by 2040.  Yes, in the teeth of environmental catastrophe, they're going to take decades to implement the ideal solution, all the while pumping out CO2 from coal plants, apparently.  Is that really any better than the suburbanite who's hanging on to his SUV right up until the day they can make the recharge-in-a-minute, thousand-mile-range electric model that will allow him to keep his lifestyle without any compromise?