Okay, I know the virus has actually been out there a while. And yes, I am monitoring the bird flu situation in a professional capacity.
While the vaccine currently out there is not perfect, it is better than the alternative to getting vaccinated: nothing. I urge you — both personally and professionally — keep your hands clean, get vaccinated, and stay home if you are sick. Remember that year we did a lot of things to keep from getting COVID? The flu rate sure was low that year!
I can now add almost two years of experience actually driving one to the mix. Here are my observations.
Choose the person who installs your outlet or charger with care. Not all installers know what the heck they are doing. Some will try to “help save you money” (or cut corners) by using materials not rated for the draw. This can result in charger failure, or fire. Likewise, pay attention to signs that things are not as they are supposed to be. I do not regret choosing a plug in rather than a hard wired charger; heaven forbid it dies, I order a new one on Amazon. It arrives in a day or two, I bolt it to the wall, and I plug it in.
Choose your manufacturer with care. I have no regret choosing Ford over Tesla for many reasons, not the least of which is “easier access to trained repair people.” There is only one Tesla dealership in town, and there’s several Ford dealerships. Same logic applies to Toyota, even to Jeep.
It’s not hard to actually pay attention to your remaining charge. Now if you were the person who put off gassing up your regular car until you were running on fumes, maybe electric is not for you. And if flying cars are ever a thing? Absolutely not for you! That meme online of the Tesla being charged by the side of the road using a gas generator is the same idiot that would have been waiting for AAA to show up with a gallon of gas.
The weather will absolutely effect your range. In very hot or very cold weather expect to lose a bit of range. Plan accordingly. EVs might not be the right choice for those of you in very cold climates yet.
Road trips and towing are possible, but challenging. I’d still recommend using gas, hybrid, or PHEV for those uses. Sure, range is improving and access to charging is improving. I am having a hard time imagining a future where you charge to 100% in the time it takes to fill a gas tank. For my use case that’s ok, but it’s not for everyone.
EVs are still probably not an option for most apartment dwellers. Sure, there are complexes that have a charger. Maybe two. For over a hundred units. And public chargers do exist. But, well, see all of the above.
It’s going to take a serious amount of time to solve these issues. We need infrastructure. And the law of supply and demand makes that a chicken and egg issue: there won’t be massive demand for EVs until there’s massive ability to quickly charge them, which won’t be cost effective to build until there’s massive demand for EVs and the ability to charge them. I won’t pretend that’s anything other than a hard, expensive problem to fix.
EVs are still not for everyone. But at this time, they work for me.
Not everyone should be considering them. But it looks very much like I am the poster child for who should be considering one:
I drive a regular daily commute of under 20 miles one way. Furthermore, I drive that reliably 5 days a week.
I have a garage where it’s easy to install an outlet. Plug it in Friday night when I get home from work and don’t worry about it.
Surge pricing for power you say? Fine, most home charging systems can be set up with a timer to start in the wee hours of the morning.
I live in a town with reliable electric infrastructure. Even if Lake Mead dries up and Hoover Dam is no longer producing lots of electricity, the sun is still shining and solar power will continue to work. If the sun stops shining, we all have much bigger problems than charging our electric cars.
Thanks to the casino industry, chargers are everywhere. Looks like there’s a dozen public charging stations near me, each with multiple charging units. Malls have them. Some big employers have them. It wouldn’t surprise me if hospitals started installing them since I’ve met many doctors who love their Teslas (heh, and one pharmacist who hates his). And the car or your phone will have an app telling you where the nearest chargers are.
Let’s also address some of the arguments against electric cars. Road trips? There’s a gas car in the family so that’s a non-issue for me. That vehicle is a small SUV with a towing package, shutting down the “but what about hauling” argument before it begins.
“Just as dirty as gas cars, but moving the pollution elsewhere”? Electricity can be made more cleanly than it is today. Petroleum based solutions cannot.
But what about maintenance? This may still be a valid argument regarding Tesla and Rivian. But now you can buy electric vehicles from VW, Nissan, Ford, Chevy, Cadillac, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo…. and you can get your electric car serviced at the many places that sell those cars.
And what about the price? There are some models under $30k. Not many I concede. This is not yet a solution for people making less than $15/hr and living in apartments.
I’m not saying it’s the answer for everyone. I’m not saying California is on to something. I still think “can I make it from Vegas to LA without stopping for a charge” is a valid metric. But it may be time for people to start looking at whether it’s a good option to consider for one of the family vehicles.
The other day a bridge collapsed (no, not the one in the picture). Old news, right? The NTSB is investigating, and they’re going to find that maintenance that should have been done, repairs that should have been made, renovations that should have been budgeted for, weren’t. I can say that without fear of contradiction; only the details are yet to be determined.
The Biden Administration did manage to get an infrastructure bill passed, but it’s probably too little and spread out over too many things. We also need state and local governments to get out the checkbooks and say “we need to fix this stuff before somebody gets hurt.” Oh but that will raise taxes. This is one of those cases where an ounce of prevention really is better than a pound of cure.
Regrettably, state and local governments want to argue over whether masks are important and whatbooks should get banned instead of making sure the road less travelled remains a road at all.
A lot of you have New Years Resolutions. I think it’s wonderful that you want to do something to improve yourself and/or your life. However, I will point out that if it were really important to you, you would not have waited for an arbitrary calendar date. You’d have started working on it right away (or at minimum, started making plans).
There’s been a lot of talk over the last couple decades about SMART goals: a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time constrained. That R (often mislabeled as “reasonable,” and how is that different from achievable?) can also be seen as your Reason for the goal. It’s the “why it’s important,” and arguably the most important part. Why do you want to have a million dollars or lose 30 pounds or earn your degree? That why is what will get you up in the morning to work your goal.
Picture taken by me at Mandalay Bay. I needed a cool picture to start you guys off. I’m going to try and post more regularly this year.
Some of these are things we are now learning. Some are things we should have long since learned but are now becoming obvious.
We should be taking medical advice from medical experts, not politicians. Insert the Fauci Facepalm here. Some of our Governors are remarkably well informed, because they choose to be informed by medical experts. Gov. Cuomo’s presentation Sunday was particularly level, and riddled with facts. Gov. Sisolak is doing the best with what he’s got. I wish him and NV Attorney General Aaron Ford much luck making banks follow rules.
Employer based insurance was [still] never going to cover everybody. Long time readers know I’ve been beating this drum for over a decade. First, it’s never going to cover all children. Second, it inhibits the growth of small business. And finally, there’s the unemployed. Which brings me to….
The uninsured aren’t somebody else’s problem, they’re everybody’s problem. Cancer isn’t communicable, nor diabetes, nor hypertension. But TB sure is. And now, COVID-19 sure is. There’s a couple of problems with the uninsured in an epidemic or pandemic. First, people who don’t think they can afford a doctor are not going, not getting help, probably still going to work (because they can’t afford not to work, duh), and most importantly infecting other people. So yeah, now it’s your problem. Oh, I said a couple problems, didn’t I? All those unpaid costs are going to drive your medical costs up. The hospital isn’t getting paid for a bunch of critically ill patients? Your bed cost goes up.
It turns out a lot of jobs can indeed be done from home. I’m hearing radio shows from home studios, seeing TV shows done via videoconference. There’s a lot of “important meetings” that can now be done remotely, or not at all. That is a trend I hope sticks. Of course, this may mean that business travel is in for a longer term slump, since it’s easier, safer, faster, and cheaper to teleconference to San Jose than fly there.
It turns out a lot of jobs are essential. We all knew medical personnel, firefighters, and the like were essential. Some of us in reality-land also knew that “environmental services” (cleaning staff) were essential — I can’t keep people from getting diseases in a hospital if the hospital isn’t clean. Maintenance staff? Essential. Supermarket staff? Essential. Oh yeah, and that “kid” who makes minimum wage making your burger at lunchtime when an actual “kid” should be at school? Essential.
$1200 a month isn’t a lot of money. I don’t know if Congress actually considered this, but with a minimum wage of $7.25/hr, 40 hours of minimum wage a week for 4 weeks is $1160. Round that up to the nearest $100, and that’s $1200. So if you’re kvetching that you can’t pay your bills on that, think about the “essential” employee who does just that. More on what Congress did here.
I had hoped to have something substantive to post today. Reality had other plans for me.
No, I don’t honestly expect to have anything coherent to say about tomorrow’s Presidential debates. Other than it’s shaping up to be an interesting moment in television.
We’ve already lost musicians Glenn Frey (of The Eagles), Maurice White (of Earth, Wind, and Fire), and David Bowie (The Sovereign — is anybody else concerned that Dean is now in charge of the Guild of Calamitous Intent? Or is he?). Over and above that, we’ve lost impressario René Angélil, conductor Pierre Boulez, and producer Robert Stigwood.
In addition, we’ve lost actors Alan Rickman (Severus Snape), Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams), and Abe Vigoda (Fish) — this time for real. Oh, and voice actor Joe Alaskey.
And truth be told, that’s just a few of the people who have already left us in the last 40 days.
So hey, all you great actors and musicians out there: Be careful.
