Being from Sweden, as I’m, I must say that hybrids are, by far, the most popular choice in Northern Europe and it all has to do with the combination of infrastructure, distance, and politics. If you live in the more densely populated areas of Sweden, Norway, and Finland a EV makes sense (I do, and I have one) but if not you need the combination of long range and shorter, cleaner runs. As Sweden pays people for going electric while people still need the range, hybrids are where’ it’s at.
Hybrids are also safer. If one system fails, one can always rely on the other. look at the UK that has all home heating electric, electric for cooking, electric for everything. Check how many people still in the sh*t after the latest storm struck the UK, because homes have no back up systems with gas or solar panels ( that stil electricity though). Apply this to cars. Probably in EU we have a bit more accuracy ( sometimes) in planning? Just wondering. :)
Plug-in hybrids are great for the eco+eco (ecological + economical) crowd, of which I’m a proud member, having bought a Chevy Volt right as they were going out of production. A PHEV with sufficient range acts as an EV like 90%+ of the time, and if its software was designed right, it’ll turn on the gas engine just often enough to prevent damage from dis-use, keeping it in pristine condition because it’s barely getting any miles. Seriously, we’re putting like 15,000 miles a year on our Volt, but it’s only getting a new tank of gas every 3-4 months, and an oil change every 2 years. And it was only like $22k brand new after the tax credit. Ridiculously cheap, flexible, and environmentally friendly vehicle.
would it so much harder to get rid of the immensely complex gas engine (+fuel tank and gearbox..). And just trade the "gas tank every 3-4 month" with a good fast charging infrastructure?
@@Krusesensei I mean, I’m sure we’ll get there eventually, but I actually have to drive places over the next 10 years while that infrastructure is being built out, and PHEVs are way more convenient for that. By the time my Volt is ready to be replaced in 2030, I’ll see where the infrastructure is 🤷♂️. Besides, while ICE engines are certainly complex, it’s a very mature, reliable technology at this point. And since it’s very lightly used in a PHEV, it’s likely to be even more reliable (so far stats on the Volt have shown that too); meanwhile, even though EVs have fewer moving parts and should theoretically be easier to maintain, Teslas are notoriously expensive to maintain over the long term. We’ll get there, and hats off to everyone forging ahead. But from a pure usability and economical point of view, PHEVs are currently a fantastic choice while still having most of the benefits of EVs.
@@Krusesensei I'm curious, do you know of an EV that can go 200 miles in the winter (with heat), charge for 3 hours and then drive 200 miles back? (or better yet, make the trip on one charge.) I make that drive 20 times every winter so I was thinking of getting a RAV4 Prime because while most of my trips are short and I can recharge at home I also have LONG trips and I can't drive 3 hours and then charge for 12 hours. If there was a hydrogen tank replacement station that would work, but other than that, I don't see how you could make it work with the power charging limitations.
Volt was a clever technology as well. Massive reduction in mechanical complexity, in spite of (actually because of) now having three motors (2 electrics in addition to the ICE) and the electric motors having to act as chargers/dynamos, because it replaced the whole complex transmission with the electric motors. (A standard auto-transmission has something like 10 clutch-packs, the Volt had three.) GM screwed the pooch with it, though. The technology should have become standard throughout their entire range of ICE vehicles, _especially_ their large vehicles. It would have drastically improved the performance of their SUVs and pick-ups (the torque boost alone, but also being able to run the ICE as a generator on building sites, farms, etc. See what Ford did). But it also applies to large commercial diesel vehicles. (Reduced fuel costs, reduced maintenance, every freight carrier would love you.) And serves as transitional vehicles for both their manufacturing and for their EV-reluctant customers as battery tech and charging infrastructure improved. But GM management are screaming idiots.
In America hybrids are just more things to go wrong, overly complicated, and impossible to work on. EVs are amazing, ICE are easy to repair, hybrids are junk.
Hybrids are appalling vehicles to drive, having driven for a known car rental company in the UK, I've drove a few and nothing made me go "oh cool" let alone "Wow!", and not everyone has a company to register it as a company car (with barely anyone's workplace ever agreeing to the person registering it with them 😂) Pure electric on the other hand is great, but I'm not ready to drop the sound, driving characteristics and smell of petrol just yet 😅
plug in hybrids would be fantastic for commuters, as the whole commute can be done on the battery... but the tax credits were aimed at company lease cars mostly... and if a company gives you a lease car you'r probably traveling a lot more distance, then the battery can handle fairly regularly, so your not getting that much benefit from the hybrid system. add in that those km's will be mostly highway km's and the whole hybrid system is rendered almost completely useless.
As an automotive technician who has worked on electric, hybrid and traditional ICE vehicles, your comment of 'best of both worlds' goes both ways; they also combine everything that could go wrong with either setup. As well as all the maintenance that gas cars need. I would never buy a hybrid for this reason, to me it's always been the 'worst of both worlds'.
First thing that came to my mind. The sleeper advantage of EVs over ICEs is the vastly reduced number of moving parts. If, as stated in the video, someone is only using battery power for their normal day to day driving, the heavy and mechanically complex collection of parts under the hood is basically dead weight.
I feel like there's a ton of examples of hybrids being more reliable than the sum of ICE and EVs. That being that the engine doesn't need to be run as hard, and doesn't really have a real "transmission". I mean they're probably going to seem archaic soon, but they still make sense at the moment, especially if they're the only "renewable" option that's practical and cheap
@@ryanatkinson2978 that implies you know how to maintain both. Most people are not very good at maintenance on an oil vehicle, so if you neglect one side over the other you're in for trouble. I know that's true for both, but you're only adding fuel to the fire.
Exactly this. To get the best of the respective technologies, you have to optimize for them on a fundamental design level so that they become more than the sum of their parts, let alone a liability. This is neither cheap nor simple, which is why the only hybrids _actually worth_ being called "the best of both worlds" are limited-series supercars like LaFerrari, Porche 918, and McLaren P1 which are all marvelous feats of engineering. Whereas for a typical hybrid, sure, early on in its usage you'll enjoy the benefit of versatility, but then you'll quickly come to realize that they are guaranteed to have pretty much _all_ of the problems of their respective technologies as well as their combined maintenance costs while not exactly giving you the best of either. So you won't get the crazy torque, cleanliness, and low usage cost of a full-on BEV nor the low upfront cost, high range, and raw sustained power of a good ICE car. You'll always be stuck in the middle for no compelling reason that may have been there prior to the 2010s.
@@jacobrodrig8 you don't need to understand how to maintain them to understand the engineering principles behind their design. There's a reason why hybrids are so popular as fleet vehicles, especially in punishing use cases, like taxis. I've never understood why people take the word of maintenence techs as gospel, even though they may be right a lot of the time. It's basically anecdotal evidence. I think the popularity of hybrids speaks for itself. Not every hybrid is the same design, and of course there's going to be examples of some garbage hybrids, but engineers wouldn't have kept with this design philosophy for so long if they were a bad idea. If I had the choice, I'd pick an EV, but hybrids still make sense
I've owned a Chevy Volt PHEV for almost five years, and it's a great car, and probably the most EV-like PHEV there is (90%+ of the miles I've driven are pure electric). But, it was always a bridge technology for me. I would have bought a BEV if I could have, but when I bought it, there were no decent affordable BEVs on the market. Now, there are at least a couple, and in the future there will be more.
Re: Plug-in Hybrids - I have a one, it is exactly as Joe said, it's the kind of best of both worlds but honestly, the primary reason we went for a PHEV was because we didn't know if we could live with an electric car at the time (we don't have off-street parking/garage/driveway). I imagine for the vast majority of people, if they wanted a plug-in car they'd go the whole way and just get an EV. Plus I drive a Estate (Station Wagon) and until recently there were no EVs in that body-style, and even now we have a choice of one.
It has. I invested in Zebra tech before and it's paid back nicely with their supply chain automation tech. Fast food restaurants are more turning towards QR code automated ordering to get around paying human beings. Google/Tesla are working on Self Driving and it will happen. Nasa uses UIpath. Crowdstrike and Palo Alto utilize AI for cyber defense. While many of these is not directly AI they slippery slope contribute.
Not always new ideas, but technology in general. I know of a few jobs that have been replaced by technology, because the company wasn't able to get people to do the work
The first car I ever owned is my 2014 nissan leaf, all because of your videos. I was so convinced by the arguments in your videos I waited till I had the money to get one instead of plenty of cheaper gas vehicles, and it was entirely worth it. Have not spent a cent in fuel, theres a free charging port basically next door to me. One of smoothest rides ever, and if the infrastructure gets put in place it's only going to become easier to manage. I agree with your view almost completely.
Don't forget the knock on effect of AI either. Example, call centres. When the AI takes those jobs, you don't need the phones, chairs, desks, office space, photocopier (my trade) computers, (IT staff) canteen (coffee machine, fridge) etc, etc, etc
Great video! Ill chime in as someone who has a PHEV. We got the Kia Nero and its been great. We didnt go full electric just for distance you can travel. On EV mode only it gets about 25 miles which is more then enough for 90% of our trips. With a full tank and EV we can go around 500 miles. But filling up with gas has become a maybe once every few months kind of thing. In a few years when EVs are more popular and charging becomes faster and distances become longer im sure we will make the switch.
I can't imagine AI or a robot taking away my job any time in the next decade or so. I work as a marine electrician. Every day I have a new and different puzzle to solve, sometimes atop a 65' tall sailboat mast. I would say that any hands-on trade where you have to diagnose and fix things, or do custom fabrication / installations is safe from automation for a long time to come. Capt. Blackheart Charlie Key West
Unless those ships get more standardized, simplyfied and designed and outfitted from the start to be automated! This will take some years and there will still be pleasure yachts and stuff... But I guess automation isn't out of the question for navy's for example. Even if it would take years or decades.
@@alexanders.1359 A naval ship being automated creates even more job security for a marine electrician. They're literally the guys that wire that stuff up. Even *if* ships became standardized, preassembled, sections that just snap together - wires don't work that way and still have to be manually laid, connected, verified, and tested. If something goes wrong someone still has to trace the issue and fix it. Electrical issues can be insanely difficult to trace and many times requires experience and intuition.
The more dextrous and diverse your job, the less likely you are to lose it to a machine. Your job covers a good swath of skills, and requires working in odd locations and in many different ways; a job like this is one of the last jobs to be replaced by a machine, because designing a machine which can do a lot of separate things well is difficult.
From what I can see in NZ, EV's are still very expensive and the charging infrastructure isn't nearly built out enough for anyone but certain edge cases. There's only a handful of superchargers in the country rn. PHEV's are considerably cheaper compared to faster/higher-end EV's and have the petrol for more range.
I drive a PHEV in the Midwest. I would like to get an all electric vehicle at some point, but the long distance charging infrastructure is horrible in the Midwest. Tesla is the best bet at this time, but even they are a bit lacking. I'm hoping the charging environment improves as quickly as possible, but for now, my Chevy Volt is my best option.
I have a 2018 Chevy Volt Premium. Comfy, quick off the line, never use gas around town but can leave for Colorado at a moment's notice. I just got confirmation of my Lucid Air GT order. 516 mile range w/ crazy fast charging. The battery in that car could make 6.5 Chevy Volt batteries but the Lucid won't use any less gas than my Volt in a typical month.
YES- you 100% described my situation and why I have a Volt too. I'm in Kansas City, which actually has hundreds of chargepoint/etc. stations... very few are high-powered fast chargers though. And if I drive anywhere charging just dissapears... so, VOLT for the win :) The Volt is totally a compromise... and perfectly fits the mid-west situation we're in.
I've had my 2012 Chevrolet Volt since brand new and put 110k miles on it since with about 60-65k miles being totally electric. Can't speak for why they ditched the idea I know they've had some growing pains that I didn't end up dealing with but I love it. My commute is only 27 miles round trip so I almost never use gas unless I'm blasting the climate controls in the winter and even then it's about the last mile or so to home. But also knowing I have gas in the event I forget to plug in (which I have), is why I went with the hybrid of it instead of going fully electric.
What you said at 7:26 makes me wonder if when AI gets more sophisticated, if by making tonal adjustments, it could become abusive of manipulative to humans. For example, what if the AI determines that certain people respond to a more intimidating, authoritative sounding voice? Then you could have coercive AIs bossing humans around.
It would be interesting to see a study of the common patterns that would form, hahaha. Like the equivalent of local maxima and minima. Patterns or archetypes that people would fall into. I wonder what the "sweet spot" number of experiences would be!
Plug-in Hybrids - From an engineering perspective I understand why they are not common. You mentioned that they have the best of both worlds, but they also have the worst of both worlds from a design and layout perspective. Not only do you need to package all of the components and subsystems required to sustain an internal combustion engine, but you also add all the components and subsystems for the electrical drive. Add them together and it takes much more development time and cost than a vehicle that is purely one or the other. You end up with many compromises between the 2 systems such that neither is near optimal. You also end up with a higher cost for all of the components and the assembly they require. Finally, I think the biggest factor that would make me not want to buy one is that the inherent reliability is worse. More components and systems with opportunity for failures leads inherently leads to more failures. The only big advantages is the fuel flexibility, but with higher ranges and more charging infrastructure that advantage is waning.
I sort of hope the revolution of AI customer service causes companies to actually compete on and offer human customer support as a competitive advantage. I for one will glady be a patron of those businesses.
That depends largely on the customers. In my experience, Americans at least, are willing to put up with horrible customer service for a product to which they have an emotional attachment. My advice: Make your own choices and don’t wait for any sort of ‘movement’ to make the change for you. It’s not likely.
What if you couldn't tell the difference, or even realize that the human operators make errors and mistakes while the AI does not (or drastically fewer at least)?
The company I work at already in part differentiates itself on the quality of its support department. Lots of smart humans collaborating on solving problems can do things that computers and programs show no promise of ever being able to do.
@@ricks.9039 Assuming that AI isn’t making mistakes is what makes that idea work, but the truth is that machine learning and AI development is the process by which we teach machines to make mistakes and “guess”. You can’t have creativity without the ability to make mistakes.
EVs have also become a lot more capable just in the last two years. PHEVs on the other hand where always a stop gap measure. It also really doesn't make sense two drive around with two completely different drive trains as it add significant weight which gets you a handling and efficiency penalty
The other reason you need a second-stage rocket with your orbital railgun is that no matter how fast you yeet the payload, assuming it doesn't escape orbit entirely it'll still come back down to the altitude you launched it from (or lower because of air resistance losses), so you need some sort of in-space propulsion to even that orbit out.
@UCVvmngn-72t7gAYAJuqXQ0A Wonderfully condescending reply to countertony, but I think you need to have a think about it. You are launching a projectile on a purely ballistic trajectory. Without course correction after launch it is coming back to Earth in short order. Draw a circle. That's Earth. Draw a second, larger circle. This it the trajectory of the projectile. Make the circles touch at a single point (the launch point). Barring air resistance, the projectile is returning to the launch point on every orbit.
As a soon to be replaced delivery driver, hybrids are actually ideal for me. I can work 2-3 days on one tank of gas with my Prius. Definitely couldn’t do that in any EV on the market currently. Plus the charging for one would take a significant amount of time since I would have to go to a station and do it every day. EVs are also expensive. Almost anyone can afford a used Prius. I’m all for EVs and hold stock in several companies but they just aren’t practical enough for the mainstream YET with the biggest issue being the amount of time it takes to charge them. I’m personally in favor of a battery swapping system. Anyway just saying there are plenty of reasons to choose hybrid over EV. A Prius is actually also useful because it can double as a mini camper van. The hybrid system allows you to run electronics/climate control for days on end and doesn’t use very much gas. It’s basically an ultra efficient generator on wheels
it depends on how much you drive on a daily basis, and if you live someplace where you can charge overnight (or while at work). So, if you have a garage and don't drive more than 250-300 miles a day, it works just fine. For anyone else, it comes with additional challenges.
Battery swapping was an idea I had to eliminate charging. In gas vehicles we have a generator, to recharge batteries, called the alternator. In EV's, this seems to be missing and thus require recharge. Secondarily, multiple batteries operated by a relay system to ensure operation, secure against failure during transit, and avoid overcharging would mean you would never have to stop-and-go recharge again. But then you would be outside their control (free) and they would not profit from anything more than the sale of the vehicle. The assumption that that's just the way it is, Status Quo thinking, is exactly how we got to our current state of climate crisis and teetering economic collapse every few years. Freedom is somehow a bad thing in our current culture.
@@michaelmerrell8540 the Achilles heal of EVs remain that chsrging time. Say a lobed one gets life flighted to a distant hospital amd you only have an EV. Too bad you can't just fill the batterires in 5 mimitrs and grt going. Now your just stuck hundreds of miles away or hoping someone is willing to provide you with a more useful transportation option. I'll only buy am EV as a second car. I see them as a fad that will end up second to hydrogen eventually. Also, we can't suppoert the infrastructure necessary to charge all the EVs if they somehow became to sole mode of transportation. Computers are expected to consume more power than we can produce within 20 years, forget adding EVs to that equation.
@@gregpeabody8536 How often does this scenario happen. Seriously. And EVs (Teslas, at least) can take a 200 mile charge in 15 minutes from a supercharger, which it what you'd be using for a long trip. As fast as a tank of gas, no; but certainly not a barrier to long-distance travel. The more common scenario would be the "forgetting to get gas/charge the day before, and now you have to go to work" situation. I get about 44 miles per hour with my home charger, so depending on how long your commute is, and how low you let it get...well, you'll always be waiting longer that it takes to gas up on the way to work. Infrastructure won't be a problem, for EVs or computers. There's a lot of FUD out there on these subjects.
@@michaelmerrell8540 having a middle of the night emergency? Maybe not the distance i referred that, but in my house, every couple of months. My circumstances are somewhat unusual, but hospital visits at odd hours are pretty common. It's those visits which could dramatically increase the likelihood of your scenario of being late to work.
I am a translator, and altho AI helps me a lot in my job, it is scary to see how good it is getting at understanding complex material, many of my colleagues already see a big decline in the orders.
Same here, I've seen a decline in work orders too. My hope is that AI's won't be able to interpret very complex sences conveying emotion or implication. But the prognosis is grim.
@@WikkeSchrandt yeah luckily I work with many big corporate clients (I specialize in Finances and technical translations) that work will not go away with AI, but all the small stuff like student papers, or any translations that are just needed for research/reference are going away quickly.
@@CharlieTheAstronaut Good for you, that's one positive at least! Unfortunately, I do scientific and historical translation, and I figure that's one of the things that'll be automated reasonably quickly, since such texts often take on very similar formats. Let's hope not, though!
Hybrids were suppose to be a baby steps towards full out blown EVs. We haven't gotten there yet but for a person like my brother in-law who drives a lot, he gets like 40-50 miles/gallon. Actually since he gets paid by the miles he drove, he actually made money from his company by driving his Camry hybrid.
I love these lighting round videos, awesome questions and answers. I would love an in-depth video about the moon space elevator. I’m curious about the difference in GEO and the end of the moon space elevator velocities. (I believe the 225,000 mile long tether for a moon space elevator would wrap around Earth’s equator about 9 times not 28 times).
Quite a lot, the moon moves around earth in 28 days, GEO is where it takes one day, so around 28 times speed difference. Probably an actual lunar space elevator, at least first would only bring you to lunar orbit, saving around 2km/s delta v in each time using it. So useful, but not skipping the entire chemical rocket problem. Also the cost saving would be not as large as we believe usually, we still need to pay the exact same energy cost, just not in chemical energy, but producing that much electricity is not simple, so the bill will be quite large. Yet it will save 10-100 times the cost, but not making it effectively free
@@thorin1045 Most of the weight of a rocket is fuel. The biggest cost savings come from 1) less total mass for a given payload mass and 2) more efficient conversion of energy to change in height. Also regenerative breaking when descending can recover some of the energy used on the way up.
@@charleslivingston2256 The less mass is true, the better conversion is questionable at best, yes, in theory an electric motor is better, but it will be a bit more complex than that in reality, so not sure, if we reach the efficiency of the rocket motor in the end. The regenerative part is once again not really true, actually you will need some way to maintain the orbital station, as you still need to conserve momentum and such fun stuff, so the station will lose its position with the moving payload, it could be recovered by time if we just let orbital motion do it, but that would mean limited usage of this insanely costly infrastructure. And of course, the real question, if it will ever be recovered by usage. As usual, we need a space industry to make it worth to make the space industry.
@@thorin1045 Electric motors are generally over 90% efficient. Rocket mechanical efficiency is close to 100% when rocket speed is near or slightly above exhaust speed. However, that needs to be multiplied by the efficiency of the engine to convert fuel energy to work. Most are near the max theoretical Carnot efficiency. At the given temperatures, that is in the range 60-70%. Now, if you are generating the power for the electric motor by burning fuel in a power plant, it will suffer an even worse Carnot efficiency (lower temperature difference). I assume a space elevator would harvest solar energy. Furthermore, that net rocket efficiency is instantaneous. Most of the early work goes into accelerating all that fuel so it is around to burn later. That mass difference dwarfs the 20-30% penalty in efficiency of rocket engine relative to solar PV.
Rail gun launch: You have something with that 2nd option where the rail gun replaces only the 1st stage or part thereof. And for a location, how about Ecuador. The thought being that they have a couple of very high mountains that are on the equator. The track could start down closer to sea level and end near the summit. The air is getting pretty thin up there (around 0.45 Bar on Chimborazo) and you have equatorial velocity to help along too.
Honestly, with space flights becoming more common and standardized, a shared spaceport with re-usable infrastructure for phase 1 could easily pay off. Using an acceleration-Torus like in CERN before ascending the mountain, it could even prolong it's acceleration phase indefinitely to reduce wear and tear such as human discomfort. Ecuador sounds like an ideal candidate for the Americas and other countries with access to the pacific ocean.
Wow. Lots of territory covered! Regarding Deimos being made into the top of an elevator on Mars,...this idea was in the "Mars Trilogy" by Kim Robinson. (Great read even today.) Maybe the folks at Neurolink, et. al., will get in touch with Northwestern University School of Engineering, where the head researcher, Samuel Stupp, reported on a one-time injection therapy that causes neuro-repair of spinal cord injuries (only in mice so far, but results look very encouraging.) And maybe the remaining usefulness of hybrid cars would be for the "EV curious". :D
Hybrid cars are just a vain attempt to prolong the decline of the fossil fuel Industry The "EV Curious" who are tempted will be left with a frozen asset which they can't sell on and with appreciating running costs.
We are in the UK and my wife went for a plug-in hybrid. She is paraplegic, so we didn’t really want to risk running out of charge when she is out alone. Also, fun fact, most charging stations - not in wheelchair accessible parking bays, at least in the UK.
I'm really worried about the low-skilled workers being replaced by A.I.. Dont get me wrong, that kind of work is soul-crushing but some people rely on that kind of work to just keep eating. If you're feeling spry, I'd love to see a video on realistic alternatives for the drivers/burger flippers/maids of the world.
The solution is for society to reorganise to offer better jobs. Which, on the whole, it will tend to do - if AI and automation results in the generation of wealth, the economy will expand and more wealth will be available to employ people to do other things, which we can't or don't want to automate. This sounds farfetched, but think about all the people in the past whose jobs it was to clean out cesspits and do back-breaking agricultural labour. Those jobs have essentially disappeared and in their place are the many, many service sector jobs most people in developed economies have - jobs which pre-industrial societies wouldn't have been able to support. I'm 110% in favour of monotonous, soul-crushing jobs being automated. They are a waste of human potential. In combination with the fact that the global population is set to decline, and the working-age population outside of Africa even faster, then I think it all fits quite nicely, assuming we can stop the wealth generated by automation just concentrating at the top.
The gap between the mass of humanity and the top 10, 1 or 1/10 of 1%, whatever the f_ck it is, is already leading to many of our current social problems. Get rid of the remaining jobs for the unskilled many, is a perfect recipe for the French Revolution, part deux. Money won’t save Musk et al, when the angry hordes are at their doors. We are maybe 20 years away from societal revolution. The perfect opportunity for despots to step in and take over. The Google’s, Meta’s and Tesla’s of this world should be expanding lower-skilled jobs not eliminating them.
I have two questions about the spin launcher. 1: how to stop the 750rpm spin on release. 2: slamming an equivalent mass at equivalent velocity into the ground at the same time.
Damn!! I assumed "orbital railguns" meant railguns that were ALREADY in orbit, as a weapon against earth-bound targets, kinda like the "orbital bombardment"/"rods from god" idea, but with the added (probably superfluous) oomph of electromagnetically-accelerated projectiles. Or, maybe even as a "Star Wars"-style anti-satellite weapon. I like MY version of "orbital railguns", more than just using earth-bound railguns as an alternative to rockets, to launch stuff into LEO.
The problem with "railguns in orbit"? Isaac Newton. If you impart enough energy into the projectile, you also impart the same energy into the gun in the opposite direction. So, unless the gun is very big, and the projectile very small, that gun is going to be moving pretty quickly before long.
@@cpob2013 And if we manage to spark rebellion both on Moon and on Earth at the same time, with right positioning, we get to save money in planetary bombardment budget.
The way my friends Prius hybrid works is it reins on the batteries until more power is needed like for hill climbing or higher speeds, then the gas engine cuts in.
Just want to say thanks for these videos and all the work you do- your backlog has kept me sane for the last month between packing, driving across the country, and now, unpacking, heh. Hope you’re doing well!!
In the eighties when I was a child, my stepfather was a janitor at the University of Washington. one day he brought home a thick booklet positing this exact theory on how to get to space. He knew I was into science and technology and he said he found it in either a dumpster or it needed to be shredded or something to that effect. It was being thrown away that's what I remember the situation being. My clearest memory is how they designed the gun. Which they had at the base of a gently sloping Mountain. I remember it being over a mile-long and exiting at the top of the mountain.... Seemed far fetched even then. Edit: I'm a commercial plumber. I recently finished a job at a Wells Fargo Data Center. The type of job that needs to be done at night while everyone is home. We would get there as these people were leaving for the day and be leaving as they were getting there in the morning. I must tell you the energy emitting from this group of people is the single most sorriest shit I've ever seen in my life... coming in a close second was their cubicles and the decorating Therein.... how we don't have a mass shooter at these places every other day is beyond me....
@@wilee.coyote5298 was both actually. Large rooms of servers and an ocean of cubicles.... Edit: for all I know those servers only complimented the call center I don't know for sure. Seem like both to me.
Hey Joe, how about a video on the Doomed Moon of Mars? Do we want to save Phobos from its inevitable doom of reaching the Roche limit and breaking/crashing into Mars, or should we go full-on supervillain and accelerate its descent due to some crazy terraforming concept? And if it forms a ring around Mars, how could it affect the plans of colonizing Mars?
Sci-fi writer Jerome Bixby wrote a story called "The Holes Around Mars", about a third moon called Bottomos, which traveled so close to the planet's surface it actually punched tunnels through elevated terrain.
Really enjoyed the video, especially the comment regarding scale needed being related to the hyper loop. I’ve speculated for a while now that the HL project is a precursor as a rail gun to low earth orbit solution, though some gaps still remain. Firstly, exploration in laser array tech to create a column or vortex of ionized atmosphere to reduce friction loads (no small task). Secondly, RG planetary orbiters for rerouting and deceleration activities (highway infrastructure). These will have to be big and made-in-space, finding a balance between size to reduce the momentum exchange from frequent use- and careful traffic load balancing (both ways) to balance the momentum budget. The pathfinder tech for that will likely come from orbital sweepers focused on clearing space debris.
Let’s see now, The Saturn V used for the Apollo Missions burned 40,000 lbs fuel PER SECOND. It took 11 seconds to clear the launch tower. (I checked). So, it uses 440,000 pounds of fuel JUST TO CLEAR THE LAUNCH TOWER. . . I have no idea what the speed of the vehicle is as it clears. . . but it doesn’t look like much. If a mass driver could be used for JUST those first 300 feet. . . And, just maybe, those “Chopsticks” at Boca Chica would fill the bill. . . Elon, you have my number. . . 😀
Wow, you’ve got an excellent point! It doesn’t need to accelerate the rocket any faster than it would go through the atmosphere and this reduction in fuel would save a lot due to the need to not lift it in the first place!
" I have no idea what the speed of the vehicle is as it clears" Somewhere around 60 miles an hour. It definitely seems like a big ground-based catapult could yeet a few million pounds to that speed without too much trouble. I am curious what the additional payload to the moon would be. I'd suppose probably not very much, but it might be worthwhile in fuel savings for someone doing high-cadence launches. Sounds like a fun Kerbal challenge.
Hybrids are a good niche vehicle for places like where I live, where plug in stations and emergency run time are an issue. Sadly makers aren't targeting that niche and they are too expensive for the lowest wage workers who are stuck buying old used gas guzzlers
Regarding the hybrids vs EVs, I own a Honda Insight and when we bought it we considered EVs too. The main reason we decided against fully electric was that back then, they still had a more limited range, but secondly, the infrastructure here in the Netherlands for charging EVs while on the road was pretty minimal too. Basically, a hybrid was the way to be environmentally conscious yet not get stuck somewhere on a long trip.
I remember reading an article years ago about an orbiting Doomsday Weapon called "Rods From God". It was planned to be an orbital weapon equipped with 1000 pound Tungsten or Titanium Rods that would be fired at a target on Earth. There was no ability to alter its course once it was fired. It relied on gravity to accelerate it to extreme speeds so when it hit its target it was like a nuclear blast. So I guess that makes it a Kinetic weapon. Have you ever heard of this? Not sure if the concept is being pursued or not. Might make an interesting video. Thanks for the video.
There are variations of this that include crowbar-size rods with sensors at the pointy end and simple fins for guidance. Those were proposed to be dropped from high-altitude drones to counter large concentrations of armor.
I sometimes think life is boring but it's not; I get these ideas that pop up like what you said: the space elevator. I've heard of it before but it's nice to hear a lot of thought has been put into it. Thanks!
Super pedant time: On a rotating body a space elevator might be at the geostationary altitude letting you put an object into orbit by just nudging it off the platform. Unfortunately, on non rotating bodies this can't exist (the point that has orbital speed is at infinity), and it's likely that most attempts at an elevator wouldn't meet this altitude anyways, they'd just get a useful distance up and use a second stage to do an orbit insertion from there.
13:15 You summed it up perfectly for me. I consider myself a car enthusiast, and I love fast cars. I love gas guzzling sports cars, but I understand why we need to get off of fossil fuels. You also don’t need a hybrid for good fuel economy, if I need a fuel sipper I’d much rather drive a Miata or a small CC motorcycle then a hybrid. That being said, In regards to hybrid vs EV, I’d much rather have a AWD torque monster then a slow as shit FWD hybrid that sounds like it’s about to explode everytime the engine turns on.
Well it comes down to cost. I've owned a Camry Hybrid that gladly takes me 110 miles/day. Cost ~30K and was so so with gas prices down but needed nothing more than basic maintenance. Overall I've used less fossil fuels, got far better reliability than ever before and a damn decent vehicle. Get me a an EV that's competitive and proper full scale infrastructure to support it and I'll buy it....often.
I feel you may not know what you're talking about. Electric motors have instant torque. And hybrids only have like one gear and a kinda centrifugal clutch so there's no shifting during acceleration. My Camry hybrid can get up and go better than most cars I've experience. I think full electric vehicles have done 0-60 mph in under 2 seconds.
I'm absolutely loving my self charging hybrid. (Toyota Corolla Estate) All the bells and whistles and when the 2.0 litre ICE has help from the generator/motor it REALLY scoots! 50 mpg and no charging hassle! And as a hand control driver (no legs) then a Neuralink enabled hybrid would be very cool! How about Neuralink prosthetics? That'd be something!
Personally, I feel that the plug-in hybrid is the most important kind of car at the moment in the way it will ease the eventual transition to full electric. It allows people to learn how to manage range and charging on road trips without any risk of getting stuck, reducing range anxiety. It allows people to get into the habit of charging their car overnight without leaving them stranded in the morning if the forget one day. It allows people to get used to the instant torque and lack of gears (in countries like UK where automatics are uncommon), potentially even one pedal driving.
I wish I had the money to waste so I could buy a crap, overly expensive, new car that would be virtually worthless in 5 years time. Just keep your current car, or buy a second one rather than killing the planet by encouraging manufacturers to build new cars that will have a short lifespan. Bring on the million mile Tesla that you buy once and never has to be replaced! 😉
Stanley was quite abrupt and saying very little about why hybrids have some disadvantages. New BEV’s have enough range to make hybrids unnecessary. Why put a gas engine in an electric car? Now you have to pay to take care of it with all the maintenance requirements of an ICE car AND carry a load of batteries and an electric power train. Better is pure BEV or pure gas.
Europe was “filled in” regarding population before railroads - actually before the industrial revolution. So how far can people walk in a day, work, then walk back home - that’s how far apart population centers are in Europe and electric cars don’t need to charge in the way for that. Most of America’s expansion west of the Mississippi occurred with railroads. Further there was an immediate population magnet at the western most extent in discovering gold. After that, filling in was based much more on non agricultural resource exploration which isn’t based on walking distance but mechanized distance. So americas layout is a special challenge regarding equal performance not refueling between destinations is important to a customer, whether for convenience or safety.
i think what might have happened to hybrids (specifically PHEVs) is that the narrative that people wouldn't buy EVs because you can't drive 500 miles on a charge but might buy PHEVs to get the best of both didn't survive the reality that almost nobody drives that much in a single day, and what was actually holding (most) people back from buying EVs was the false perception of their weakness and/or a simple-minded allegiance to gasoline which is becoming more expensive again (think the 1970s when everyone went out and bought mopeds when gasoline got expensive).
If a railgun to orbit on Earth is not possible, would a railgun in low orbit be useful to boost payloads to a higher orbit? Yeah, you would still need to re-boost the railgun, and also have the payload have propulsion to stay in new orbit. Seems you could still have some interesting transport options
For the Neurlink section, I have a follow-up question. As a person who lives with ADHD, how will the chip work with neurodivergent individuals? Would there be any change at all?
Interesting question. I know little about how Neuralink works and way less about the brain. Maybe it won't work, or maybe it could bypass those bad circuits.
Buying a new car last month, I was told by the Subaru salesperson not to buy their hybrid because it wasn't worth it. He specifically said buy petrol or electric, not hybrid.
other job that AI will take over: youtubers. Ai can write articles about anything on webpages, someday there will be videos about any topic from an AI avatar, just to gather views and $$$, MARK MY WORDS JOE.
I used to work at a running store as a customer service representative and I gotta say our reviews were extremely high because we didn't have any automated systems, you just call and a person picks up the phone. There were COUNTLESS times where that immediately changed the tone of the customer simply because they felt more valuable that a real person was talking to them. Honestly I think that fact alone should be enough to keep customer service rep jobs. Even if AI gets BETTER than me at calming someone down, it will still be like using a campfire instead of a stove, it's more fun and nice and cozy.
Nice work, Joe. I DO like your stuff. Just one point though: the heating on re-entry, or launch, as you point out, is not caused by friction - it is caused (mostly) by compressive heating at the bow. This is part of what we call 'drag' but is NOT friction.
As someone who works with truly stupid people every single day I can tell you from first-hand experience there is no BOT that can help these people. They need a real person to assist them. I am personally 1000% confident in my job security.
The only thing keeping me from getting an EV is the complete lack of charging infrastructure. I live in a highrise and commute 1 hr each way to work every day. My highrise has no chargers. My work has no chargers. The nearest charger to my residence is several miles away, despite living in a fairly large city. There is no way after a long day of work that I am going to return to my city just to sit at a random charger for a good chunk of time before actually heading home. The ease and convenience of a gas-powered car is still too big of a factor to be ignored. Hopefully this changes soon.
Lots of people in my country do: bike from home to the train station, park bike, take train, take other bike to work, park bike at work. Maybe if you replace train station with charging station and train by EV it sounds about right ?
There's definitely a set of conditions under which EVs work extremely well, but IMO they all involve being able to charge at home. At work can be as good, depending on how much you drive on weekends. I installed a charger at home, and it's a good fit for me. When I lived in an apartment, it was a hard no.
@@michaelmerrell8540 Yea, when I looked into getting an EV, I came to the same conclusion. Charging at home seems to be the lynchpin in making EVs as convenient as ICEs, unfortunately my apartment also doesn't have any plugin spots.
Joe, Just speaks as an ML engineer here. Something to also consider is the small push towards augmented/automated programming, like copilot. Now, I'm not going to say it's a full automation by any means, far from it. But it is something to consider. We are making large strides to understand speech with machine learning and augmenting software development with tools like copilot. The better a machine can understand what I mean when I say something, and the closer it gets to writing the code autonomously... well, there's less room for development after that. Also, if it can understand me and respond with a codebase, can it understand a codebase and explain it to me... or another machine it's collaborating with? Does this mean it understand the architecture too...? I won't say something like this will never be done. However, in my experience, it's very hard to get a machine to "understand" what it's doing like we do on a human level (for now). Of course, what is "understanding" anyways. When an ML system does "understand," I think software development at large will be gone, maybe even everything afterwards, ML engineering included. On a philosophical note: Considering human history often shows how human decisions are just a large, very complex repetition... is not the entire state of being a "human" and experiencing it itself able to be automated eventually...? Think a bit what that suggests about us and life itself... Anyways, thought I'd burst what was left of any anthropomorphic bubble. All this being said, we are likely decades (maybe longer, who knows) from reaching this level of automation and machine understanding. There are an insane amount of theoretical limitations in ML alone, e.g., data storage limits, computational limits, etc.
I would seriously love to see a diesel/electric hybrid, like the 3.0L ecodiesel with a full single Tesla motor, Regen braking in a mainstream pickup truck. So you won't have the range anxiety if you're trying to do out of state work or drive across country, but also have electric for Stop & go / city driving. Best of both worlds for this transitional state.
You should look up opposed piston engines they are crazy fuel efficient like 50 mpg in certain applications... Also every motor can have regenerative braking... Whenever you spin a motor you generate electricity
I too would enjoy said vehicle, but alas diesel systems are heavy and electrical systems are heavy so that’s a lot of weight diminishing from a vehicles load capacity. Or they go the route VW did for their XL1 concept and making everything super small and streamlined, but then there’d be no option for trucky goodness. Also, North American consumers associated diesel with being smelly and obnoxious and electric with being kale eating hippies. Getting the majority of potential US truck buyers to marry diesel and electric would be like letting those same customers to let their child marry someone of the same gender and different colour. Of course, I do like your idea.
@@McTacoDelight LOL 🤣 I'm from Texas, thank you for the laugh!. Yes agreed, if the weight ratio could be solved (affordably) I would get one ASAP. I saw Ford has a F150 power boost. Using gas/electric assist. But I was surprised at how little power the electric part provided. And it's so expensive! Just thinking about the same thing but with diesel to assist with quick acceleration changes. The part where black smoke happens 😅. 👍(I get about 1000 miles of range with my F250 & it's tool box tank add on tank. Granted the fuel economy is trash, but still ways off with battery Tech fingers crossed they keep pushing past good enough to handle remote areas where charging infrastructure wouldn't happen)
@@johnreese7352 that's good advice, yearning for 3/4 ton at 1 ton intermediate replacement options though. Maybe if they looked at that tech for pickup trucks that would be a legit!
My BFF owns a plug-in hybrid. First, she lives in an apartment and wasn't sure if she would be able to charge her car every night, so she wasn't sure how often she might have to drive without a full charge. That worried her, not so much about range per se, but just having the option to drive at all if she couldn't easily charge up. Her girlfriend lives 100 miles away or so, so she had some range anxiety on top of that. Also her job includes visiting the homes of kids with disabilities, which means that each workday contains a large but unpredictable amount of driving. She lives in the city, but works for an agency that covers a broad territory and she's got a rural area where the (local) central office is 25 or 30 miles from her house, so it's 60 miles each way minimum. I think she probably doesn't drive more than 100 to 110 miles even on pretty insane days, but whatever it is exactly, it was enough to increase that range anxiety. My BFF and I were also among the very earliest adopters of hybrids - we each bought a Honda Insight in 1999/2000 before the Prius was even widely available (I think it was in California at that point, so we probably could have gotten one, but the early Prius was pretty poorly reviewed: the only thing it did better than the Insight was cary more people.) So my BFF had experience with hybrids and there was a certain amount of comfort with them. Finally, the full electric cars were about 5k more. While that wouldn't really have been a problem for her income I don't think, she had to buy a car in a hurry because she was rear-ended and had to replace her car right away to get back to work. She didn't have time to think about things and was going from a fully paid-off car to a car loan, which was a big change in her bills. All of that ended up with her buying a plug-in hybrid, but I she's often said since that it would be nice to save money on maintaining the gasoline engine and that batteries have gotten bigger in the last 3 years, and such. With just a little time to think and maybe a couple years more development of battery range, I'm sure she would have gone full electric. As you say, we're greenies and all our values align with full electric vehicles. To be perfectly honest, as the batteries get bigger, I think the people drawn to plug-in hybrids are really going to be limited to the apartment dwellers who don't have a reliable place to plug in. And I'm glad the option exists for them, but if you get to the point where you can drive for 250-300 miles, stop somewhere for 30-45 minutes for a 60% charge, then drive another 160+ miles then you basically have 400 miles of driving per day, with a stop for lunch. Just getting the 60% charge down to 15 minutes would be even better, since you can stop twice to use the bathroom & grab a drink & snack from a convenience store ant that's practically 15 minutes right there. It's not exactly what people are used to with gas cars, but 250 miles + 160 + 160 = nearly 600 miles of driving in a single day with two short stops. Very few people ever drive so hard towards their cross country destination that that isn't enough. For those reasons, I think range anxiety is effectively solved from a technological standpoint (we easily have the capacity to give a 60% charge in 15 minutes, even if it's not yet well distributed). So, again, I think the reason that plug-in hybrids aren't popular is just that no one has a good use-case except people who literally don't have a reliable spot to charge up. After all, you might save money on a battery, but one of the huge benefits of going electric is reducing maintenance frequency and expense. With plug-in hybrids you have the expensive components of an electric AND the high maintenance cost of a gas engine. Why would anyone want that if they could just go fully electric? (BTW: the studies have been done, the $5k you save on purchase price is lost to the increased maintenance budget) If you're a government agency or large corporation that needs a car fleet in Alaska or Montana or Texas, plug in hybrids might be good. If you're an apartment dweller, they might be good, but they're not popular because whatever advantages they have just don't outweigh their disadvantages.
@@trojanhorse6029 fun fact. 😁Today's suborbital spinlauch platform, if placed on the moon can already launch with a velocity nearly fast enough for a lunar escape velocity.
I watch so many of your videos randomly just because they are interesting. I've probably seen about 20-30 at this point so why not subscribe. I especially love the stuff backed with papers and anything space or high tech. Thanks for the content.
The current battery technology still has to evolve more, so it replaces the use of rare metals as Lithium or Cobalt. That would lead in a mainstream scale to supply shortages, plus the higher production costs with low profit margins. This is where Solid State Batteries come in, and could solve part of the BEV issues.
The Lithium supply isn't as much of an issue, since there are more than enough untapped natural reserves. Cobalt isn't used that much anymore, since it has been largely replaced by LFP batteries. Whether solid state batteries will be cheaper than the upcoming lithium-sulphur batteries depends on which technology can be brought to mass production quicker. Either would drastically reduce EV costs, possibly even below the costs of combustion cars.
Neither Lithium nor Cobalt are rare earth metals. Both are abundant. Both only have issues due to how certain regions handle them. Cobalt is the worst since the largest deposit is in Congo where there is heavy child labor. However, not all mines use child labor there and none of the Cobalt mines in other countries do. LFP batteries don't use any Cobalt and several chemistries of Li-ion batteries have greatly reduced the amount used.
@@ehtuanK "Lithium supply isn't as much of an issue", you should check the prices per ton lately. Isn't an issue yet because BEVs are still a niche market, but if it was the main car market, you can bet the prices would go trough the roof.
A.I. as Augmented Intelligence has been displacing so-called "knowledge workers" since the beginning. My mother was a computer. There were human computers before electronic computers. "Computer" was a job-skill description. A utility executive circa 2010 told me that computer aided design (CAD) tools made it possible for 30 engineers to handle a workload that once employed 300 engineers. - Ironically, the hardest tasks to _partially_automate_ seem to be the ones that require the least education. Note, I said "partially automate". Journalists talk about "robot" or "A.I." ... "taking your job". That is not how it works. Particular tasks might be machine-assisted or automated, but factory work still exists. Computationally-intensive work is actually at a greater risk than manually intensive work.
Here is someone who knows what's up. It's tasks that are automated and sometimes whole processes/production lines are done in a different way that is easier to automate. Only in the last case sometimes are all jobs lost/replaced. Those are the most disruptive. Most are like the transition from steam trains to modern trains. With a steam train you have someone doing the digging. That job is gone. But their are new higher-end jobs for far fewer people that do get created. Similar things for tasks which require a brain. Repetitive tasks get replaced. That doesn't automatically mean jobs are gone, might also mean: more production and cheaper production per unit produced.
How long have we had the automatic checkout for? 10 years? I can't remember. I'd be surprised if we saw that as the only system anytime soon. Yesterday I picked up my items and walked away from one because the attendant wasn't paying attention (she was distracted and it didn't seem work-related). The stupid unit was confused as to whether or not I placed my own bag down (they don't provide bags there anymore unless purchased). It kept AUDIBLY saying I needed to wait for an attendant. I only had one item left to put in the bag. I even audibly said, "Seriously?" twice because it shouldn't have been acting this way. So I said fuck it, and I took my nearly filled bag to a regular checkout. Meanwhile the attendant was still distracted as I left the store. I could cite other instances where a seemingly simple process went south because au automated checkout machine wasn't responding properly.
Yeah, it may not be soon but it feels inevitable considering how many people flock to the self checkout, at the Walmart near me they now have a full section of self check outs on either end of the store and people line up so quickly that half the time I end up going to a cashier just cause it's faster. The fact that the business owner has an incentive to push self check out and customers would prefer to use them means cashiers are on the way out, I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 more years it's all self check out with only 2 human cashiers available solely to cater to those few who would prefer human interaction.
Every store that has self checkout usually allows 25 dollars to be accidentally stolen per transaction. I wouldn't worry about saying f it on box oc raisins or wgatever it was. I would worry if it were something worth more.
I avoid self checkout unless im just getting something like ice cream and don’t want to wait in line while it melts. If they want me to check myself out, they need to PAY me, until then I’ll support the humans doing the work by letting the, do the work.
What about a rail gun that's based in orbit? It could be used to send ships and cargo farther in space. It could be built in orbit and then operate totally in orbit.
@@lukasmakarios4998 Yes for every force there is an equal and opposite force it is not a hard idea to understand, However if you put rocket thrusters, or some other type of propulsion on the rear end to counter at the time of launch this is not an issue.
@@captkurt9607- If you have to put rockets on your launcher, it defeats the whole idea. Why not just have rockets on your vehicle in the first place? Rail launchers belong on the Moon, or other small airless worlds. That's their specialty.
@@lukasmakarios4998 it's called mass. The mass of the fuel for acceleration can be replaced with cargo equipment experiments. The only fuel you would have to take is for deceleration. Admittedly astronauts would probably get splattered inside. But that's a problem to figure out in the future.
Because I live in the west and often do roadtrips into very remote areas, EVs are not on my radar for awhile until I know that there's a charging station in a tiny town like, say, Hanksville UT or Tonopah, NV. My current plan is to find a used fun sporty car to go with my little crossover SUV and have them hopefully be my last gasoline cars...assuming I can get 5-10 years out of them. Then hopefully EVs are the norm and I'll make the switch.
EVs make so much more sense than Hybrids. Why would you want the extra weight of two different engines. It makes the car much less efficient due to weight. Not to mention, they cost more to build because you’re buying two propulsion sources.
Educate yourself. Your opinion is based on what's been done,not what can be done. Batteries are super heavy,engines can be rather light. ...and we'll. Cars can be but sadly aren't. A car build as ev first fuel second can make alot of sense , covering only a low everyday range with the ev part n further routes with a weak,just about good enough motor. Would be ideal for the kind of car you can run on a 150 pounds motorcycle Engine.
Cost more to build. ...do you know what batteries cost? Most existing hybrids kinda suck but the concept isn't bad. With all else around aka the modern fat car ,it's looking bad. Sure. In 2002 vw build a sub350kg car that ran on 1 l diesel n reached 120or so kmh. That kinda concept could use an electric punch and only a little bit of batteries as ev engines are light,batteries not.
I love the following AI driven solutions: 1) Customer support, since I can get answers without waiting for a long time while waiting for someone to get to me; 2) Dishwashers, since washable plates are better for the environment than disposable ones while the AI can minimise the amount of water used, which can also be recycled; 3) Robots to prepare meals, why not the entire food delivery chain, means greater safety from environmental impact. All in, I like the way technology is evolving but it needs to be faster as humans seem to get more sillier by the year.
As a hybrid owner, EV recharging stations are still to few. Having said that, I also feel hybrids are designed wrong. There should only be electric tractor motors. Where the ice engine would come in is to recharge the batteries. If this was done, there would be no need to have a high torq engine involved. A turbine that has a slow wind up would fit the bill and of a smaller size. As fuel availability changes, the carburetor or injection system could be changed to handle different fuels. The big mistake that car manufacturers, including Tesla, are making is not using four individual reversible DC motors with direct drive. This would eliminate about 60% of the energy required to move the vehicle because of the transmission and differential. Once a desired speed was obtained two of the motors could be turned off. Granted new efficiencies are reducing the energy used by these two components, They still use up a lot of energy. The energy reductions obtained by such a vehicle could be as high as 80% which could increase range close to doubling the current range.
A Tesla is already more than 80% pack to wheel efficient. Tesla's don't have a 'transmission'. They use a single speed link to the motor to the axle. Give this a watch: th-cam.com/video/SRUrB7ruh-8/w-d-xo.html
Plug in hybrids are EVs with range extenders. If people realized this and if they were built with the power of a Tesla or Porsche EV then they'd win. Plus most don't even need the gas engine to function which means you'd only have to fill it on that rare long trip. We just need a high powered plug in Hybrid with a standard plug.
Another great vid. Regarding the hybrids. In certain mid-EU countries they are quite popular actually. They get the green reg plate with all perks and they can get away without charging which is a + there due to the lack of charging sites
I've often wondered about the hybrids and I think it's an early idea of an electric vehicle while still being able to be sold to people who want to have the safety net of gas. In Australia most of the taxis use hybrid vehicles so I suspect that it's a cost saving thing for these companies.
I suspect that Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)s are more popular than hybrids in Europe because petrol/gas is a lot more expensive. Driving on electric is 1/10th the price of petrol hence the premium for a BEV is quickly recovered. Also governments often discourage hybrids; driving through London will cost me £27 a day (Emission + Congestion Charge) for a hybrid but nothing for a BEV.
Using a kind of genetically modified organism to possible grow some sort of connectors throughout the human brain for neural link to interface with would be interesting.
A few years ago I bought a used Chevy Volt because it was the only electric-type car I could afford. It only gets like 35 -40 miles on electric, but I rarely go over that in a day. I can't charge it from my apartment, but I found a free charger a couple blocks away. That and the low maintenance make it pretty affordable, but I wouldn't want to go full electric unless I could charge at home because I do occasionally drive more than 40 miles at a time. Even then, I don't know if I could afford the electricity to charge it. So the plug in hybryd is the best option for me right now. If I somehow came into some money, I'd probably buy a full electric. Not everyone can be TH-cam star, Joe...
Plug in hybrids are electric vehicles without the range anxiety. For those who worry about not being able to drive as far as they want, the gas engine can just take over. I have one. It's nice.
Joe, have you ever read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy? Because of that idea of attaching a Space elevator on Mars to one of its moons. That idea has been in the first book of the trilogy already and it came out in 1992. If you haven't read that I can highly recommend it.
2:46 It is not AIR FRICTION not only or most of it at least. The air in front of the projectile gets compressed because it has no time to get out of the way (supersonic velocities). This heats the air and this hot air heats the capsule (or projectile). This is called adiabatic heating. The friction with the air is negligible compared to this process despite of it getting greater quickly (square of velocity or more for turbulent flows), but for smooth aerodynamic objects (like a space) is still much lower.
The current reason that I can think of for a plug-in hybrid is to use the EV portion for getting back and forth to work, shopping, and any short distance travel. But the Hybrid section would be for traveling long distances in areas not supported by EV charging stations. The main example I can think of is traveling in National or State Parks in ice cold conditions. Space heating and the impact of cold on the batteries might limit how far you could travel on a single charge with an EV.
I paused the video right at the end of Joe talking about how a space elevator from Earth to geosynchronous orbit would be prohibitive. I wrote up a whole comment espousing the LEO-to-moon space elevator, posted it, then resumed the video. Literally 10 seconds later I pause again, delete my hasty comment, and have learned my lesson 😀
Neural Link could also be used for Full Dive VR role playing games. I would also for a space elevator and electromagnetic launcher. Use a ceramic superconductor, which would be super cooled. This way friction could be virtual eliminated. Heating becomes therefore a non-issue. I would also build a floating continental size platform on the surface of the Ocean. To build the launcher and later the space elevator tether. No vacuum tubes needed with the super cooled ceramic super conductor. As drag and friction is highly dampened by doing it that way. As for energy needs. Building that gargantuan floating platform on the ocean. Can use kinetic, wind, solar, and the actual people who will call it home. Nevermind putting a direct piping system to the volcanic vents to produce geo thermal energy. Without all the drilling and use of toxic processes.
yasssssss he riffed the Frakes show. that was awesome dude. railguns, as the u.s. Navy has learned, or more precisely the "barrels", degrade pretty fast due to the forces being utilized. until new metalurgy can overcome this issue, which isnt going to be anytime soon, railguns are relegated to scifi at best
A bit surprised that the section on AI jobs didn't mention taxi and truck drivers. Considering the speed at which autonomous driving systems are developing I'd be surprised if they haven't had a major impact by the end of the decade.
I used to watch you channel now and then. But haven’t been on your channel for 4 months. Then watching a video on the Havana Syndrome remembered how you could always find ways to explain the unexplainable. Couldn’t remember your name though. And then found it after searching with random words for 5 minutes. I was so happy to find you again. If you haven’t done a video on Havana Syndrome, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I recall someone’s description that doctors, lawyers, accountants, tax Attys , taxi/truck drivers etc being at earlier risk than nurses, factory workers, ditch diggers That is to say jobs requiring vast and up to date knowledge but not manual dexterity can be automated …example Omniscient medical expert system allows 2 human doctors to do the work of 20 human Drs (while automatically charting info and billing insurance) but still needs even more nurses for dextrous and messy tasks
Eerh... wait... the moon does not spin? That is news to me! Last time I checked, the moon DOES spin. BUT it spins at such a rate, that the same face always points toward the earth. So, it APPEARS to us like it does not spin. Or is that total wrong?
What I find interesting is how some jobs can be or are already being replaced by having the customer do the work themselves. The self-check out at grocery stores or putting in your order at a fast food restaurant kiosk yourself (which isn't any different than using a website or app to place a delivery or to go order). That's a boon for those companies. No big technology cost of A.I. and much lower labor costs. Those jobs disappear completely because the customer is doing the job for free. That's much more concerning that jobs being done by A.I., where jobs tend to disappear on one end of the supply chain and might be created on the other end, even if the skills are different, at least other jobs might be created rather than be gone altogether.
Being from Sweden, as I’m, I must say that hybrids are, by far, the most popular choice in Northern Europe and it all has to do with the combination of infrastructure, distance, and politics. If you live in the more densely populated areas of Sweden, Norway, and Finland a EV makes sense (I do, and I have one) but if not you need the combination of long range and shorter, cleaner runs. As Sweden pays people for going electric while people still need the range, hybrids are where’ it’s at.
Hybrids are also safer. If one system fails, one can always rely on the other. look at the UK that has all home heating electric, electric for cooking, electric for everything. Check how many people still in the sh*t after the latest storm struck the UK, because homes have no back up systems with gas or solar panels ( that stil electricity though). Apply this to cars. Probably in EU we have a bit more accuracy ( sometimes) in planning? Just wondering. :)
Yep, this is exactly why hybrids make sense
Indeed. My dad has an older hybrid (2006) and it is fantastic.
@@RejectedInch Hybrids are safer or just more versatile? Can you plug a hybrid into your home to power it?
Sverige är bäst 👏
Plug-in hybrids are great for the eco+eco (ecological + economical) crowd, of which I’m a proud member, having bought a Chevy Volt right as they were going out of production.
A PHEV with sufficient range acts as an EV like 90%+ of the time, and if its software was designed right, it’ll turn on the gas engine just often enough to prevent damage from dis-use, keeping it in pristine condition because it’s barely getting any miles.
Seriously, we’re putting like 15,000 miles a year on our Volt, but it’s only getting a new tank of gas every 3-4 months, and an oil change every 2 years. And it was only like $22k brand new after the tax credit. Ridiculously cheap, flexible, and environmentally friendly vehicle.
would it so much harder to get rid of the immensely complex gas engine (+fuel tank and gearbox..). And just trade the "gas tank every 3-4 month" with a good fast charging infrastructure?
@@Krusesensei I mean, I’m sure we’ll get there eventually, but I actually have to drive places over the next 10 years while that infrastructure is being built out, and PHEVs are way more convenient for that. By the time my Volt is ready to be replaced in 2030, I’ll see where the infrastructure is 🤷♂️.
Besides, while ICE engines are certainly complex, it’s a very mature, reliable technology at this point. And since it’s very lightly used in a PHEV, it’s likely to be even more reliable (so far stats on the Volt have shown that too); meanwhile, even though EVs have fewer moving parts and should theoretically be easier to maintain, Teslas are notoriously expensive to maintain over the long term.
We’ll get there, and hats off to everyone forging ahead. But from a pure usability and economical point of view, PHEVs are currently a fantastic choice while still having most of the benefits of EVs.
@@Krusesensei I'm curious, do you know of an EV that can go 200 miles in the winter (with heat), charge for 3 hours and then drive 200 miles back? (or better yet, make the trip on one charge.) I make that drive 20 times every winter so I was thinking of getting a RAV4 Prime because while most of my trips are short and I can recharge at home I also have LONG trips and I can't drive 3 hours and then charge for 12 hours. If there was a hydrogen tank replacement station that would work, but other than that, I don't see how you could make it work with the power charging limitations.
Volt was a clever technology as well. Massive reduction in mechanical complexity, in spite of (actually because of) now having three motors (2 electrics in addition to the ICE) and the electric motors having to act as chargers/dynamos, because it replaced the whole complex transmission with the electric motors. (A standard auto-transmission has something like 10 clutch-packs, the Volt had three.)
GM screwed the pooch with it, though. The technology should have become standard throughout their entire range of ICE vehicles, _especially_ their large vehicles. It would have drastically improved the performance of their SUVs and pick-ups (the torque boost alone, but also being able to run the ICE as a generator on building sites, farms, etc. See what Ford did). But it also applies to large commercial diesel vehicles. (Reduced fuel costs, reduced maintenance, every freight carrier would love you.) And serves as transitional vehicles for both their manufacturing and for their EV-reluctant customers as battery tech and charging infrastructure improved. But GM management are screaming idiots.
Shortened version when?
Hybrids are famous for one reason at least in Europe, is that they help you save taxes if you register them as company cars.
In America hybrids are just more things to go wrong, overly complicated, and impossible to work on. EVs are amazing, ICE are easy to repair, hybrids are junk.
@@davidbeppler3032 and they are slow lol
@@davidbeppler3032 That's the second thing they're famous for in Europe
Hybrids are appalling vehicles to drive, having driven for a known car rental company in the UK, I've drove a few and nothing made me go "oh cool" let alone "Wow!", and not everyone has a company to register it as a company car (with barely anyone's workplace ever agreeing to the person registering it with them 😂)
Pure electric on the other hand is great, but I'm not ready to drop the sound, driving characteristics and smell of petrol just yet 😅
plug in hybrids would be fantastic for commuters, as the whole commute can be done on the battery... but the tax credits were aimed at company lease cars mostly... and if a company gives you a lease car you'r probably traveling a lot more distance, then the battery can handle fairly regularly, so your not getting that much benefit from the hybrid system. add in that those km's will be mostly highway km's and the whole hybrid system is rendered almost completely useless.
As an automotive technician who has worked on electric, hybrid and traditional ICE vehicles, your comment of 'best of both worlds' goes both ways; they also combine everything that could go wrong with either setup. As well as all the maintenance that gas cars need. I would never buy a hybrid for this reason, to me it's always been the 'worst of both worlds'.
First thing that came to my mind. The sleeper advantage of EVs over ICEs is the vastly reduced number of moving parts. If, as stated in the video, someone is only using battery power for their normal day to day driving, the heavy and mechanically complex collection of parts under the hood is basically dead weight.
I feel like there's a ton of examples of hybrids being more reliable than the sum of ICE and EVs. That being that the engine doesn't need to be run as hard, and doesn't really have a real "transmission". I mean they're probably going to seem archaic soon, but they still make sense at the moment, especially if they're the only "renewable" option that's practical and cheap
@@ryanatkinson2978 that implies you know how to maintain both. Most people are not very good at maintenance on an oil vehicle, so if you neglect one side over the other you're in for trouble. I know that's true for both, but you're only adding fuel to the fire.
Exactly this. To get the best of the respective technologies, you have to optimize for them on a fundamental design level so that they become more than the sum of their parts, let alone a liability. This is neither cheap nor simple, which is why the only hybrids _actually worth_ being called "the best of both worlds" are limited-series supercars like LaFerrari, Porche 918, and McLaren P1 which are all marvelous feats of engineering. Whereas for a typical hybrid, sure, early on in its usage you'll enjoy the benefit of versatility, but then you'll quickly come to realize that they are guaranteed to have pretty much _all_ of the problems of their respective technologies as well as their combined maintenance costs while not exactly giving you the best of either. So you won't get the crazy torque, cleanliness, and low usage cost of a full-on BEV nor the low upfront cost, high range, and raw sustained power of a good ICE car. You'll always be stuck in the middle for no compelling reason that may have been there prior to the 2010s.
@@jacobrodrig8 you don't need to understand how to maintain them to understand the engineering principles behind their design. There's a reason why hybrids are so popular as fleet vehicles, especially in punishing use cases, like taxis. I've never understood why people take the word of maintenence techs as gospel, even though they may be right a lot of the time. It's basically anecdotal evidence. I think the popularity of hybrids speaks for itself. Not every hybrid is the same design, and of course there's going to be examples of some garbage hybrids, but engineers wouldn't have kept with this design philosophy for so long if they were a bad idea.
If I had the choice, I'd pick an EV, but hybrids still make sense
I've owned a Chevy Volt PHEV for almost five years, and it's a great car, and probably the most EV-like PHEV there is (90%+ of the miles I've driven are pure electric). But, it was always a bridge technology for me. I would have bought a BEV if I could have, but when I bought it, there were no decent affordable BEVs on the market. Now, there are at least a couple, and in the future there will be more.
Re: Plug-in Hybrids - I have a one, it is exactly as Joe said, it's the kind of best of both worlds but honestly, the primary reason we went for a PHEV was because we didn't know if we could live with an electric car at the time (we don't have off-street parking/garage/driveway). I imagine for the vast majority of people, if they wanted a plug-in car they'd go the whole way and just get an EV. Plus I drive a Estate (Station Wagon) and until recently there were no EVs in that body-style, and even now we have a choice of one.
As far as AI replacing jobs held by people im betting the COVID pandemic has inspired alot of new ideas to push forward on this.
It has. I invested in Zebra tech before and it's paid back nicely with their supply chain automation tech. Fast food restaurants are more turning towards QR code automated ordering to get around paying human beings. Google/Tesla are working on Self Driving and it will happen. Nasa uses UIpath. Crowdstrike and Palo Alto utilize AI for cyber defense. While many of these is not directly AI they slippery slope contribute.
Yup, ubi for a "path of least resistance" society. A permanent underclass on the way.
Not always new ideas, but technology in general. I know of a few jobs that have been replaced by technology, because the company wasn't able to get people to do the work
Is it just me or does this channel always get off topic from what the video is about?
Omg what will all the folks who care for horses do when ICEs takeover!!!
The first car I ever owned is my 2014 nissan leaf, all because of your videos. I was so convinced by the arguments in your videos I waited till I had the money to get one instead of plenty of cheaper gas vehicles, and it was entirely worth it. Have not spent a cent in fuel, theres a free charging port basically next door to me. One of smoothest rides ever, and if the infrastructure gets put in place it's only going to become easier to manage. I agree with your view almost completely.
Don't forget the knock on effect of AI either.
Example, call centres.
When the AI takes those jobs, you don't need the phones, chairs, desks, office space, photocopier (my trade) computers, (IT staff) canteen (coffee machine, fridge) etc, etc, etc
Great video! Ill chime in as someone who has a PHEV. We got the Kia Nero and its been great. We didnt go full electric just for distance you can travel. On EV mode only it gets about 25 miles which is more then enough for 90% of our trips. With a full tank and EV we can go around 500 miles. But filling up with gas has become a maybe once every few months kind of thing. In a few years when EVs are more popular and charging becomes faster and distances become longer im sure we will make the switch.
I can't imagine AI or a robot taking away my job any time in the next decade or so. I work as a marine electrician. Every day I have a new and different puzzle to solve, sometimes atop a 65' tall sailboat mast. I would say that any hands-on trade where you have to diagnose and fix things, or do custom fabrication / installations is safe from automation for a long time to come.
Capt. Blackheart Charlie
Key West
Unless those ships get more standardized, simplyfied and designed and outfitted from the start to be automated!
This will take some years and there will still be pleasure yachts and stuff... But I guess automation isn't out of the question for navy's for example. Even if it would take years or decades.
Sounds cool, and quite safe job until retired. I hope automation engineer is a future proof safe job (you never know)
@@alexanders.1359 A naval ship being automated creates even more job security for a marine electrician. They're literally the guys that wire that stuff up. Even *if* ships became standardized, preassembled, sections that just snap together - wires don't work that way and still have to be manually laid, connected, verified, and tested. If something goes wrong someone still has to trace the issue and fix it. Electrical issues can be insanely difficult to trace and many times requires experience and intuition.
The more dextrous and diverse your job, the less likely you are to lose it to a machine. Your job covers a good swath of skills, and requires working in odd locations and in many different ways; a job like this is one of the last jobs to be replaced by a machine, because designing a machine which can do a lot of separate things well is difficult.
@@alexanders.1359 it all comes down to cost analysis of what option will be cheaper and more effecient in the future. Impossible to predict
From what I can see in NZ, EV's are still very expensive and the charging infrastructure isn't nearly built out enough for anyone but certain edge cases. There's only a handful of superchargers in the country rn. PHEV's are considerably cheaper compared to faster/higher-end EV's and have the petrol for more range.
I drive a PHEV in the Midwest. I would like to get an all electric vehicle at some point, but the long distance charging infrastructure is horrible in the Midwest. Tesla is the best bet at this time, but even they are a bit lacking. I'm hoping the charging environment improves as quickly as possible, but for now, my Chevy Volt is my best option.
I have a 2018 Chevy Volt Premium. Comfy, quick off the line, never use gas around town but can leave for Colorado at a moment's notice.
I just got confirmation of my Lucid Air GT order. 516 mile range w/ crazy fast charging. The battery in that car could make 6.5 Chevy Volt batteries but the Lucid won't use any less gas than my Volt in a typical month.
GM stopped producing the Volt the very instant the subsidies were removed. Somewhat shortsighted since many people liked the car.
YES- you 100% described my situation and why I have a Volt too. I'm in Kansas City, which actually has hundreds of chargepoint/etc. stations... very few are high-powered fast chargers though. And if I drive anywhere charging just dissapears... so, VOLT for the win :)
The Volt is totally a compromise... and perfectly fits the mid-west situation we're in.
That's true for everywhere except major cities.
@@mb-3faze “somewhat shortsighted” lol you are so polite
GM = Shortsighted
for the past 30 years 😅
I've had my 2012 Chevrolet Volt since brand new and put 110k miles on it since with about 60-65k miles being totally electric. Can't speak for why they ditched the idea I know they've had some growing pains that I didn't end up dealing with but I love it. My commute is only 27 miles round trip so I almost never use gas unless I'm blasting the climate controls in the winter and even then it's about the last mile or so to home. But also knowing I have gas in the event I forget to plug in (which I have), is why I went with the hybrid of it instead of going fully electric.
What you said at 7:26 makes me wonder if when AI gets more sophisticated, if by making tonal adjustments, it could become abusive of manipulative to humans. For example, what if the AI determines that certain people respond to a more intimidating, authoritative sounding voice? Then you could have coercive AIs bossing humans around.
That doesn’t sound all bad, though.
But from the sounds of that reasoning i think you would enjoy that : P
It would be interesting to see a study of the common patterns that would form, hahaha. Like the equivalent of local maxima and minima. Patterns or archetypes that people would fall into. I wonder what the "sweet spot" number of experiences would be!
I guarantee it'll be a pornhub category
Imagine the AI calling and saying "Why did you do this to me, Dimi?"
Plug-in Hybrids - From an engineering perspective I understand why they are not common. You mentioned that they have the best of both worlds, but they also have the worst of both worlds from a design and layout perspective. Not only do you need to package all of the components and subsystems required to sustain an internal combustion engine, but you also add all the components and subsystems for the electrical drive. Add them together and it takes much more development time and cost than a vehicle that is purely one or the other. You end up with many compromises between the 2 systems such that neither is near optimal. You also end up with a higher cost for all of the components and the assembly they require. Finally, I think the biggest factor that would make me not want to buy one is that the inherent reliability is worse. More components and systems with opportunity for failures leads inherently leads to more failures. The only big advantages is the fuel flexibility, but with higher ranges and more charging infrastructure that advantage is waning.
You really captured the feel of Frakes in those memes but actually cutting him in was good for an extra laugh, thanks for another awesome vid!
As someone in IT a running joke about AI is that they couldn't replace us because a robot would never be able to understand what the customer wants
I sort of hope the revolution of AI customer service causes companies to actually compete on and offer human customer support as a competitive advantage. I for one will glady be a patron of those businesses.
That depends largely on the customers. In my experience, Americans at least, are willing to put up with horrible customer service for a product to which they have an emotional attachment. My advice: Make your own choices and don’t wait for any sort of ‘movement’ to make the change for you. It’s not likely.
Holy shit no kidding
What if you couldn't tell the difference, or even realize that the human operators make errors and mistakes while the AI does not (or drastically fewer at least)?
The company I work at already in part differentiates itself on the quality of its support department. Lots of smart humans collaborating on solving problems can do things that computers and programs show no promise of ever being able to do.
@@ricks.9039 Assuming that AI isn’t making mistakes is what makes that idea work, but the truth is that machine learning and AI development is the process by which we teach machines to make mistakes and “guess”. You can’t have creativity without the ability to make mistakes.
EVs have also become a lot more capable just in the last two years. PHEVs on the other hand where always a stop gap measure. It also really doesn't make sense two drive around with two completely different drive trains as it add significant weight which gets you a handling and efficiency penalty
The other reason you need a second-stage rocket with your orbital railgun is that no matter how fast you yeet the payload, assuming it doesn't escape orbit entirely it'll still come back down to the altitude you launched it from (or lower because of air resistance losses), so you need some sort of in-space propulsion to even that orbit out.
Yeah, you need a 'circularisation' burn to get the perigee out of the atmosphere.
@UCVvmngn-72t7gAYAJuqXQ0A Wonderfully condescending reply to countertony, but I think you need to have a think about it.
You are launching a projectile on a purely ballistic trajectory. Without course correction after launch it is coming back to Earth in short order.
Draw a circle. That's Earth. Draw a second, larger circle. This it the trajectory of the projectile. Make the circles touch at a single point (the launch point). Barring air resistance, the projectile is returning to the launch point on every orbit.
As a soon to be replaced delivery driver, hybrids are actually ideal for me. I can work 2-3 days on one tank of gas with my Prius. Definitely couldn’t do that in any EV on the market currently. Plus the charging for one would take a significant amount of time since I would have to go to a station and do it every day. EVs are also expensive. Almost anyone can afford a used Prius.
I’m all for EVs and hold stock in several companies but they just aren’t practical enough for the mainstream YET with the biggest issue being the amount of time it takes to charge them. I’m personally in favor of a battery swapping system.
Anyway just saying there are plenty of reasons to choose hybrid over EV. A Prius is actually also useful because it can double as a mini camper van. The hybrid system allows you to run electronics/climate control for days on end and doesn’t use very much gas. It’s basically an ultra efficient generator on wheels
it depends on how much you drive on a daily basis, and if you live someplace where you can charge overnight (or while at work). So, if you have a garage and don't drive more than 250-300 miles a day, it works just fine. For anyone else, it comes with additional challenges.
Battery swapping was an idea I had to eliminate charging. In gas vehicles we have a generator, to recharge batteries, called the alternator. In EV's, this seems to be missing and thus require recharge. Secondarily, multiple batteries operated by a relay system to ensure operation, secure against failure during transit, and avoid overcharging would mean you would never have to stop-and-go recharge again. But then you would be outside their control (free) and they would not profit from anything more than the sale of the vehicle. The assumption that that's just the way it is, Status Quo thinking, is exactly how we got to our current state of climate crisis and teetering economic collapse every few years. Freedom is somehow a bad thing in our current culture.
@@michaelmerrell8540 the Achilles heal of EVs remain that chsrging time. Say a lobed one gets life flighted to a distant hospital amd you only have an EV. Too bad you can't just fill the batterires in 5 mimitrs and grt going. Now your just stuck hundreds of miles away or hoping someone is willing to provide you with a more useful transportation option. I'll only buy am EV as a second car. I see them as a fad that will end up second to hydrogen eventually. Also, we can't suppoert the infrastructure necessary to charge all the EVs if they somehow became to sole mode of transportation. Computers are expected to consume more power than we can produce within 20 years, forget adding EVs to that equation.
@@gregpeabody8536 How often does this scenario happen. Seriously. And EVs (Teslas, at least) can take a 200 mile charge in 15 minutes from a supercharger, which it what you'd be using for a long trip. As fast as a tank of gas, no; but certainly not a barrier to long-distance travel. The more common scenario would be the "forgetting to get gas/charge the day before, and now you have to go to work" situation. I get about 44 miles per hour with my home charger, so depending on how long your commute is, and how low you let it get...well, you'll always be waiting longer that it takes to gas up on the way to work.
Infrastructure won't be a problem, for EVs or computers. There's a lot of FUD out there on these subjects.
@@michaelmerrell8540 having a middle of the night emergency? Maybe not the distance i referred that, but in my house, every couple of months. My circumstances are somewhat unusual, but hospital visits at odd hours are pretty common. It's those visits which could dramatically increase the likelihood of your scenario of being late to work.
I am a translator, and altho AI helps me a lot in my job, it is scary to see how good it is getting at understanding complex material, many of my colleagues already see a big decline in the orders.
Same here, I've seen a decline in work orders too. My hope is that AI's won't be able to interpret very complex sences conveying emotion or implication. But the prognosis is grim.
@@WikkeSchrandt yeah luckily I work with many big corporate clients (I specialize in Finances and technical translations) that work will not go away with AI, but all the small stuff like student papers, or any translations that are just needed for research/reference are going away quickly.
@@CharlieTheAstronaut Good for you, that's one positive at least! Unfortunately, I do scientific and historical translation, and I figure that's one of the things that'll be automated reasonably quickly, since such texts often take on very similar formats. Let's hope not, though!
Hybrids were suppose to be a baby steps towards full out blown EVs. We haven't gotten there yet but for a person like my brother in-law who drives a lot, he gets like 40-50 miles/gallon. Actually since he gets paid by the miles he drove, he actually made money from his company by driving his Camry hybrid.
I love these lighting round videos,
awesome questions and answers.
I would love an in-depth video about the moon space elevator. I’m curious about the difference in GEO and the end of the moon space elevator velocities.
(I believe the 225,000 mile long tether for a moon space elevator would wrap around Earth’s equator about 9 times not 28 times).
Quite a lot, the moon moves around earth in 28 days, GEO is where it takes one day, so around 28 times speed difference.
Probably an actual lunar space elevator, at least first would only bring you to lunar orbit, saving around 2km/s delta v in each time using it. So useful, but not skipping the entire chemical rocket problem.
Also the cost saving would be not as large as we believe usually, we still need to pay the exact same energy cost, just not in chemical energy, but producing that much electricity is not simple, so the bill will be quite large. Yet it will save 10-100 times the cost, but not making it effectively free
@@thorin1045 Most of the weight of a rocket is fuel. The biggest cost savings come from 1) less total mass for a given payload mass and 2) more efficient conversion of energy to change in height. Also regenerative breaking when descending can recover some of the energy used on the way up.
@@charleslivingston2256 The less mass is true, the better conversion is questionable at best, yes, in theory an electric motor is better, but it will be a bit more complex than that in reality, so not sure, if we reach the efficiency of the rocket motor in the end. The regenerative part is once again not really true, actually you will need some way to maintain the orbital station, as you still need to conserve momentum and such fun stuff, so the station will lose its position with the moving payload, it could be recovered by time if we just let orbital motion do it, but that would mean limited usage of this insanely costly infrastructure. And of course, the real question, if it will ever be recovered by usage. As usual, we need a space industry to make it worth to make the space industry.
@@thorin1045 Electric motors are generally over 90% efficient. Rocket mechanical efficiency is close to 100% when rocket speed is near or slightly above exhaust speed. However, that needs to be multiplied by the efficiency of the engine to convert fuel energy to work. Most are near the max theoretical Carnot efficiency. At the given temperatures, that is in the range 60-70%. Now, if you are generating the power for the electric motor by burning fuel in a power plant, it will suffer an even worse Carnot efficiency (lower temperature difference). I assume a space elevator would harvest solar energy.
Furthermore, that net rocket efficiency is instantaneous. Most of the early work goes into accelerating all that fuel so it is around to burn later. That mass difference dwarfs the 20-30% penalty in efficiency of rocket engine relative to solar PV.
Drone delivery was all the go around here a year or two ago. It seems to have faded out, drones were getting attacked by wild birds.
Getting stuff to the top of the mountain would be Super easy, barely an inconvenience. You'll have a straight hollow tube to drive up as you go.
Wow wow wow, wow
@@tylerfitzgerald6279 Oh really. :p
Climbing to the top of mountains is "tight"
@@abdulwahab5994 👍
We're working on it.
I'm going to need you to get all the way off my back about this
Rail gun launch: You have something with that 2nd option where the rail gun replaces only the 1st stage or part thereof. And for a location, how about Ecuador. The thought being that they have a couple of very high mountains that are on the equator. The track could start down closer to sea level and end near the summit. The air is getting pretty thin up there (around 0.45 Bar on Chimborazo) and you have equatorial velocity to help along too.
Honestly, with space flights becoming more common and standardized, a shared spaceport with re-usable infrastructure for phase 1 could easily pay off. Using an acceleration-Torus like in CERN before ascending the mountain, it could even prolong it's acceleration phase indefinitely to reduce wear and tear such as human discomfort.
Ecuador sounds like an ideal candidate for the Americas and other countries with access to the pacific ocean.
Wow. Lots of territory covered! Regarding Deimos being made into the top of an elevator on Mars,...this idea was in the "Mars Trilogy" by Kim Robinson. (Great read even today.) Maybe the folks at Neurolink, et. al., will get in touch with Northwestern University School of Engineering, where the head researcher, Samuel Stupp, reported on a one-time injection therapy that causes neuro-repair of spinal cord injuries (only in mice so far, but results look very encouraging.) And maybe the remaining usefulness of hybrid cars would be for the "EV curious". :D
Hybrid cars are just a vain attempt to prolong the decline of the fossil fuel Industry
The "EV Curious" who are tempted will be left with a frozen asset which they can't sell on and with appreciating running costs.
I totally loved "Mars Trilogy" by Kim Robinson. I hope Elon has read it.
We are in the UK and my wife went for a plug-in hybrid. She is paraplegic, so we didn’t really want to risk running out of charge when she is out alone. Also, fun fact, most charging stations - not in wheelchair accessible parking bays, at least in the UK.
I'm really worried about the low-skilled workers being replaced by A.I.. Dont get me wrong, that kind of work is soul-crushing but some people rely on that kind of work to just keep eating. If you're feeling spry, I'd love to see a video on realistic alternatives for the drivers/burger flippers/maids of the world.
The solution is for society to reorganise to offer better jobs. Which, on the whole, it will tend to do - if AI and automation results in the generation of wealth, the economy will expand and more wealth will be available to employ people to do other things, which we can't or don't want to automate.
This sounds farfetched, but think about all the people in the past whose jobs it was to clean out cesspits and do back-breaking agricultural labour. Those jobs have essentially disappeared and in their place are the many, many service sector jobs most people in developed economies have - jobs which pre-industrial societies wouldn't have been able to support. I'm 110% in favour of monotonous, soul-crushing jobs being automated. They are a waste of human potential.
In combination with the fact that the global population is set to decline, and the working-age population outside of Africa even faster, then I think it all fits quite nicely, assuming we can stop the wealth generated by automation just concentrating at the top.
UBI
Andrew Yang. UBI. Universal Basic Income. Not minimum wage. Minimum income. Everyone deserves to be able to survive. Those who work hard can thrive.
@@merrymachiavelli2041 Agreed. Also, The transition will happen over time although somewhat quickly. Attrition will smooth things out a bit.
The gap between the mass of humanity and the top 10, 1 or 1/10 of 1%, whatever the f_ck it is, is already leading to many of our current social problems. Get rid of the remaining jobs for the unskilled many, is a perfect recipe for the French Revolution, part deux. Money won’t save Musk et al, when the angry hordes are at their doors. We are maybe 20 years away from societal revolution. The perfect opportunity for despots to step in and take over. The Google’s, Meta’s and Tesla’s of this world should be expanding lower-skilled jobs not eliminating them.
I have two questions about the spin launcher.
1: how to stop the 750rpm spin on release.
2: slamming an equivalent mass at equivalent velocity into the ground at the same time.
Damn!! I assumed "orbital railguns" meant railguns that were ALREADY in orbit, as a weapon against earth-bound targets, kinda like the "orbital bombardment"/"rods from god" idea, but with the added (probably superfluous) oomph of electromagnetically-accelerated projectiles. Or, maybe even as a "Star Wars"-style anti-satellite weapon. I like MY version of "orbital railguns", more than just using earth-bound railguns as an alternative to rockets, to launch stuff into LEO.
The problem with "railguns in orbit"?
Isaac Newton.
If you impart enough energy into the projectile, you also impart the same energy into the gun in the opposite direction.
So, unless the gun is very big, and the projectile very small, that gun is going to be moving pretty quickly before long.
Sadly, I am not nerd enough for this thread. Carry on then!
@@rogerstarkey5390 just fire an equal shot in the opposite direction.
Double barrel rail gun
@@cpob2013 And if we manage to spark rebellion both on Moon and on Earth at the same time, with right positioning, we get to save money in planetary bombardment budget.
You are not alone. I was expecting the same high-tech space pew-pew too.
I am not disappointed nevertheless.
The way my friends Prius hybrid works is it reins on the batteries until more power is needed like for hill climbing or higher speeds, then the gas engine cuts in.
Just want to say thanks for these videos and all the work you do- your backlog has kept me sane for the last month between packing, driving across the country, and now, unpacking, heh. Hope you’re doing well!!
In the eighties when I was a child, my stepfather was a janitor at the University of Washington. one day he brought home a thick booklet positing this exact theory on how to get to space. He knew I was into science and technology and he said he found it in either a dumpster or it needed to be shredded or something to that effect. It was being thrown away that's what I remember the situation being. My clearest memory is how they designed the gun. Which they had at the base of a gently sloping Mountain. I remember it being over a mile-long and exiting at the top of the mountain....
Seemed far fetched even then.
Edit: I'm a commercial plumber. I recently finished a job at a Wells Fargo Data Center. The type of job that needs to be done at night while everyone is home. We would get there as these people were leaving for the day and be leaving as they were getting there in the morning. I must tell you the energy emitting from this group of people is the single most sorriest shit I've ever seen in my life... coming in a close second was their cubicles and the decorating Therein.... how we don't have a mass shooter at these places every other day is beyond me....
"Data" center or "Call" center?
@@wilee.coyote5298 was both actually. Large rooms of servers and an ocean of cubicles....
Edit: for all I know those servers only complimented the call center I don't know for sure. Seem like both to me.
Hey Joe, how about a video on the Doomed Moon of Mars? Do we want to save Phobos from its inevitable doom of reaching the Roche limit and breaking/crashing into Mars, or should we go full-on supervillain and accelerate its descent due to some crazy terraforming concept? And if it forms a ring around Mars, how could it affect the plans of colonizing Mars?
Sci-fi writer Jerome Bixby wrote a story called "The Holes Around Mars", about a third moon called Bottomos, which traveled so close to the planet's surface it actually punched tunnels through elevated terrain.
And will we ever be able to stop the Leather Goddess of Phobos?
Really enjoyed the video, especially the comment regarding scale needed being related to the hyper loop. I’ve speculated for a while now that the HL project is a precursor as a rail gun to low earth orbit solution, though some gaps still remain. Firstly, exploration in laser array tech to create a column or vortex of ionized atmosphere to reduce friction loads (no small task). Secondly, RG planetary orbiters for rerouting and deceleration activities (highway infrastructure). These will have to be big and made-in-space, finding a balance between size to reduce the momentum exchange from frequent use- and careful traffic load balancing (both ways) to balance the momentum budget. The pathfinder tech for that will likely come from orbital sweepers focused on clearing space debris.
Let’s see now, The Saturn V used for the Apollo Missions burned 40,000 lbs fuel PER SECOND. It took 11 seconds to clear the launch tower. (I checked). So, it uses 440,000 pounds of fuel JUST TO CLEAR THE LAUNCH TOWER. . . I have no idea what the speed of the vehicle is as it clears. . . but it doesn’t look like much. If a mass driver could be used for JUST those first 300 feet. . .
And, just maybe, those “Chopsticks” at Boca Chica would fill the bill. . .
Elon, you have my number. . . 😀
Wow, you’ve got an excellent point! It doesn’t need to accelerate the rocket any faster than it would go through the atmosphere and this reduction in fuel would save a lot due to the need to not lift it in the first place!
My thoughts exactly! 😎
" I have no idea what the speed of the vehicle is as it clears"
Somewhere around 60 miles an hour. It definitely seems like a big ground-based catapult could yeet a few million pounds to that speed without too much trouble. I am curious what the additional payload to the moon would be. I'd suppose probably not very much, but it might be worthwhile in fuel savings for someone doing high-cadence launches.
Sounds like a fun Kerbal challenge.
Thunderf00t has already done two videos explaining everything wrong with SpinLaunch. Definitely worth watching.
Hybrids are a good niche vehicle for places like where I live, where plug in stations and emergency run time are an issue. Sadly makers aren't targeting that niche and they are too expensive for the lowest wage workers who are stuck buying old used gas guzzlers
Regarding the hybrids vs EVs, I own a Honda Insight and when we bought it we considered EVs too. The main reason we decided against fully electric was that back then, they still had a more limited range, but secondly, the infrastructure here in the Netherlands for charging EVs while on the road was pretty minimal too. Basically, a hybrid was the way to be environmentally conscious yet not get stuck somewhere on a long trip.
I remember reading an article years ago about an orbiting Doomsday Weapon called "Rods From God". It was planned to be an orbital weapon equipped with 1000 pound Tungsten or Titanium Rods that would be fired at a target on Earth. There was no ability to alter its course once it was fired. It relied on gravity to accelerate it to extreme speeds so when it hit its target it was like a nuclear blast. So I guess that makes it a Kinetic weapon. Have you ever heard of this? Not sure if the concept is being pursued or not. Might make an interesting video. Thanks for the video.
There are variations of this that include crowbar-size rods with sensors at the pointy end and simple fins for guidance. Those were proposed to be dropped from high-altitude drones to counter large concentrations of armor.
Wasnt that also in cod ghosts? It was called Odin I believe.
@@jiskool1 It was, although that particular rendition almost everything wrong in terms of how the rods are deployed
I sometimes think life is boring but it's not; I get these ideas that pop up like what you said: the space elevator. I've heard of it before but it's nice to hear a lot of thought has been put into it. Thanks!
Joe Scott: "This is megaproject territory."
Simon Whistler: "Did somebody call me?"
what? do you imply he can build this??? he´s a business educated youtuber!! he have NO! credentials to even touch this..
@@brianwgDK OK...
Super pedant time: On a rotating body a space elevator might be at the geostationary altitude letting you put an object into orbit by just nudging it off the platform. Unfortunately, on non rotating bodies this can't exist (the point that has orbital speed is at infinity), and it's likely that most attempts at an elevator wouldn't meet this altitude anyways, they'd just get a useful distance up and use a second stage to do an orbit insertion from there.
13:15
You summed it up perfectly for me. I consider myself a car enthusiast, and I love fast cars. I love gas guzzling sports cars, but I understand why we need to get off of fossil fuels. You also don’t need a hybrid for good fuel economy, if I need a fuel sipper I’d much rather drive a Miata or a small CC motorcycle then a hybrid. That being said, In regards to hybrid vs EV, I’d much rather have a AWD torque monster then a slow as shit FWD hybrid that sounds like it’s about to explode everytime the engine turns on.
Well it comes down to cost. I've owned a Camry Hybrid that gladly takes me 110 miles/day. Cost ~30K and was so so with gas prices down but needed nothing more than basic maintenance. Overall I've used less fossil fuels, got far better reliability than ever before and a damn decent vehicle. Get me a an EV that's competitive and proper full scale infrastructure to support it and I'll buy it....often.
I feel you may not know what you're talking about. Electric motors have instant torque. And hybrids only have like one gear and a kinda centrifugal clutch so there's no shifting during acceleration. My Camry hybrid can get up and go better than most cars I've experience. I think full electric vehicles have done 0-60 mph in under 2 seconds.
I'm absolutely loving my self charging hybrid. (Toyota Corolla Estate)
All the bells and whistles and when the 2.0 litre ICE has help from the generator/motor it REALLY scoots!
50 mpg and no charging hassle!
And as a hand control driver (no legs) then a Neuralink enabled hybrid would be very cool!
How about Neuralink prosthetics? That'd be something!
Personally, I feel that the plug-in hybrid is the most important kind of car at the moment in the way it will ease the eventual transition to full electric.
It allows people to learn how to manage range and charging on road trips without any risk of getting stuck, reducing range anxiety. It allows people to get into the habit of charging their car overnight without leaving them stranded in the morning if the forget one day. It allows people to get used to the instant torque and lack of gears (in countries like UK where automatics are uncommon), potentially even one pedal driving.
I wish I had the money to waste so I could buy a crap, overly expensive, new car that would be virtually worthless in 5 years time. Just keep your current car, or buy a second one rather than killing the planet by encouraging manufacturers to build new cars that will have a short lifespan. Bring on the million mile Tesla that you buy once and never has to be replaced! 😉
Stanley was quite abrupt and saying very little about why hybrids have some disadvantages. New BEV’s have enough range to make hybrids unnecessary. Why put a gas engine in an electric car? Now you have to pay to take care of it with all the maintenance requirements of an ICE car AND carry a load of batteries and an electric power train. Better is pure BEV or pure gas.
Europe was “filled in” regarding population before railroads - actually before the industrial revolution. So how far can people walk in a day, work, then walk back home - that’s how far apart population centers are in Europe and electric cars don’t need to charge in the way for that. Most of America’s expansion west of the Mississippi occurred with railroads. Further there was an immediate population magnet at the western most extent in discovering gold. After that, filling in was based much more on non agricultural resource exploration which isn’t based on walking distance but mechanized distance. So americas layout is a special challenge regarding equal performance not refueling between destinations is important to a customer, whether for convenience or safety.
i think what might have happened to hybrids (specifically PHEVs) is that the narrative that people wouldn't buy EVs because you can't drive 500 miles on a charge but might buy PHEVs to get the best of both didn't survive the reality that almost nobody drives that much in a single day, and what was actually holding (most) people back from buying EVs was the false perception of their weakness and/or a simple-minded allegiance to gasoline which is becoming more expensive again (think the 1970s when everyone went out and bought mopeds when gasoline got expensive).
If a railgun to orbit on Earth is not possible, would a railgun in low orbit be useful to boost payloads to a higher orbit?
Yeah, you would still need to re-boost the railgun, and also have the payload have propulsion to stay in new orbit.
Seems you could still have some interesting transport options
For the Neurlink section, I have a follow-up question. As a person who lives with ADHD, how will the chip work with neurodivergent individuals? Would there be any change at all?
Interesting question. I know little about how Neuralink works and way less about the brain. Maybe it won't work, or maybe it could bypass those bad circuits.
@@jbbuzzable funny you would assume some are bad. All the brain works the same way, just slightly different from what some might consider normal.
@@autohmae Then ADHD shouldn't be a problem. Good to know.
@@jbbuzzable my guess is their are far more problems with chemical, like using drugs.
Buying a new car last month, I was told by the Subaru salesperson not to buy their hybrid because it wasn't worth it. He specifically said buy petrol or electric, not hybrid.
The main problem with these launch mechanisms is that the g-forces would destroy any payload.
g-loads are high and its too slow and energy intensive to shoot bulk material
other job that AI will take over: youtubers. Ai can write articles about anything on webpages, someday there will be videos about any topic from an AI avatar, just to gather views and $$$, MARK MY WORDS JOE.
I used to work at a running store as a customer service representative and I gotta say our reviews were extremely high because we didn't have any automated systems, you just call and a person picks up the phone. There were COUNTLESS times where that immediately changed the tone of the customer simply because they felt more valuable that a real person was talking to them.
Honestly I think that fact alone should be enough to keep customer service rep jobs. Even if AI gets BETTER than me at calming someone down, it will still be like using a campfire instead of a stove, it's more fun and nice and cozy.
Nice work, Joe. I DO like your stuff.
Just one point though: the heating on re-entry, or launch, as you point out, is not caused by friction - it is caused (mostly) by compressive heating at the bow. This is part of what we call 'drag' but is NOT friction.
Re: lunar space elevator - look up a video on the topic on "Cool worlds" channel by a doctoral student there (that being Columbia)
As someone who works with truly stupid people every single day I can tell you from first-hand experience there is no BOT that can help these people. They need a real person to assist them. I am personally 1000% confident in my job security.
The only thing keeping me from getting an EV is the complete lack of charging infrastructure. I live in a highrise and commute 1 hr each way to work every day. My highrise has no chargers. My work has no chargers. The nearest charger to my residence is several miles away, despite living in a fairly large city. There is no way after a long day of work that I am going to return to my city just to sit at a random charger for a good chunk of time before actually heading home. The ease and convenience of a gas-powered car is still too big of a factor to be ignored. Hopefully this changes soon.
Lots of people in my country do: bike from home to the train station, park bike, take train, take other bike to work, park bike at work.
Maybe if you replace train station with charging station and train by EV it sounds about right ?
There's definitely a set of conditions under which EVs work extremely well, but IMO they all involve being able to charge at home. At work can be as good, depending on how much you drive on weekends. I installed a charger at home, and it's a good fit for me. When I lived in an apartment, it was a hard no.
@@michaelmerrell8540 Yea, when I looked into getting an EV, I came to the same conclusion. Charging at home seems to be the lynchpin in making EVs as convenient as ICEs, unfortunately my apartment also doesn't have any plugin spots.
Joe,
Just speaks as an ML engineer here. Something to also consider is the small push towards augmented/automated programming, like copilot.
Now, I'm not going to say it's a full automation by any means, far from it. But it is something to consider. We are making large strides to understand speech with machine learning and augmenting software development with tools like copilot.
The better a machine can understand what I mean when I say something, and the closer it gets to writing the code autonomously... well, there's less room for development after that. Also, if it can understand me and respond with a codebase, can it understand a codebase and explain it to me... or another machine it's collaborating with? Does this mean it understand the architecture too...?
I won't say something like this will never be done. However, in my experience, it's very hard to get a machine to "understand" what it's doing like we do on a human level (for now). Of course, what is "understanding" anyways. When an ML system does "understand," I think software development at large will be gone, maybe even everything afterwards, ML engineering included.
On a philosophical note: Considering human history often shows how human decisions are just a large, very complex repetition... is not the entire state of being a "human" and experiencing it itself able to be automated eventually...? Think a bit what that suggests about us and life itself... Anyways, thought I'd burst what was left of any anthropomorphic bubble.
All this being said, we are likely decades (maybe longer, who knows) from reaching this level of automation and machine understanding. There are an insane amount of theoretical limitations in ML alone, e.g., data storage limits, computational limits, etc.
I would seriously love to see a diesel/electric hybrid, like the 3.0L ecodiesel with a full single Tesla motor, Regen braking in a mainstream pickup truck.
So you won't have the range anxiety if you're trying to do out of state work or drive across country, but also have electric for Stop & go / city driving. Best of both worlds for this transitional state.
You should look up opposed piston engines they are crazy fuel efficient like 50 mpg in certain applications... Also every motor can have regenerative braking... Whenever you spin a motor you generate electricity
I too would enjoy said vehicle, but alas diesel systems are heavy and electrical systems are heavy so that’s a lot of weight diminishing from a vehicles load capacity. Or they go the route VW did for their XL1 concept and making everything super small and streamlined, but then there’d be no option for trucky goodness. Also, North American consumers associated diesel with being smelly and obnoxious and electric with being kale eating hippies. Getting the majority of potential US truck buyers to marry diesel and electric would be like letting those same customers to let their child marry someone of the same gender and different colour.
Of course, I do like your idea.
Well every time you see a freight train you are seeing a diesel/electric hybrid.
@@McTacoDelight LOL 🤣 I'm from Texas, thank you for the laugh!. Yes agreed, if the weight ratio could be solved (affordably) I would get one ASAP. I saw Ford has a F150 power boost. Using gas/electric assist. But I was surprised at how little power the electric part provided. And it's so expensive! Just thinking about the same thing but with diesel to assist with quick acceleration changes. The part where black smoke happens 😅. 👍(I get about 1000 miles of range with my F250 & it's tool box tank add on tank. Granted the fuel economy is trash, but still ways off with battery Tech fingers crossed they keep pushing past good enough to handle remote areas where charging infrastructure wouldn't happen)
@@johnreese7352 that's good advice, yearning for 3/4 ton at 1 ton intermediate replacement options though. Maybe if they looked at that tech for pickup trucks that would be a legit!
My BFF owns a plug-in hybrid. First, she lives in an apartment and wasn't sure if she would be able to charge her car every night, so she wasn't sure how often she might have to drive without a full charge. That worried her, not so much about range per se, but just having the option to drive at all if she couldn't easily charge up. Her girlfriend lives 100 miles away or so, so she had some range anxiety on top of that. Also her job includes visiting the homes of kids with disabilities, which means that each workday contains a large but unpredictable amount of driving. She lives in the city, but works for an agency that covers a broad territory and she's got a rural area where the (local) central office is 25 or 30 miles from her house, so it's 60 miles each way minimum. I think she probably doesn't drive more than 100 to 110 miles even on pretty insane days, but whatever it is exactly, it was enough to increase that range anxiety.
My BFF and I were also among the very earliest adopters of hybrids - we each bought a Honda Insight in 1999/2000 before the Prius was even widely available (I think it was in California at that point, so we probably could have gotten one, but the early Prius was pretty poorly reviewed: the only thing it did better than the Insight was cary more people.) So my BFF had experience with hybrids and there was a certain amount of comfort with them.
Finally, the full electric cars were about 5k more. While that wouldn't really have been a problem for her income I don't think, she had to buy a car in a hurry because she was rear-ended and had to replace her car right away to get back to work. She didn't have time to think about things and was going from a fully paid-off car to a car loan, which was a big change in her bills.
All of that ended up with her buying a plug-in hybrid, but I she's often said since that it would be nice to save money on maintaining the gasoline engine and that batteries have gotten bigger in the last 3 years, and such. With just a little time to think and maybe a couple years more development of battery range, I'm sure she would have gone full electric. As you say, we're greenies and all our values align with full electric vehicles.
To be perfectly honest, as the batteries get bigger, I think the people drawn to plug-in hybrids are really going to be limited to the apartment dwellers who don't have a reliable place to plug in. And I'm glad the option exists for them, but if you get to the point where you can drive for 250-300 miles, stop somewhere for 30-45 minutes for a 60% charge, then drive another 160+ miles then you basically have 400 miles of driving per day, with a stop for lunch. Just getting the 60% charge down to 15 minutes would be even better, since you can stop twice to use the bathroom & grab a drink & snack from a convenience store ant that's practically 15 minutes right there. It's not exactly what people are used to with gas cars, but 250 miles + 160 + 160 = nearly 600 miles of driving in a single day with two short stops. Very few people ever drive so hard towards their cross country destination that that isn't enough.
For those reasons, I think range anxiety is effectively solved from a technological standpoint (we easily have the capacity to give a 60% charge in 15 minutes, even if it's not yet well distributed). So, again, I think the reason that plug-in hybrids aren't popular is just that no one has a good use-case except people who literally don't have a reliable spot to charge up. After all, you might save money on a battery, but one of the huge benefits of going electric is reducing maintenance frequency and expense. With plug-in hybrids you have the expensive components of an electric AND the high maintenance cost of a gas engine. Why would anyone want that if they could just go fully electric? (BTW: the studies have been done, the $5k you save on purchase price is lost to the increased maintenance budget)
If you're a government agency or large corporation that needs a car fleet in Alaska or Montana or Texas, plug in hybrids might be good. If you're an apartment dweller, they might be good, but they're not popular because whatever advantages they have just don't outweigh their disadvantages.
Fun fact: Today's navy rail gun is already powerful enough to launch a little over 20kg of lunar materials to a lunar orbit.
they tested an explosive one time, they think the launched the drain like top into orbit because the explosion was so powerful.
@@trojanhorse6029 fun fact. 😁Today's suborbital spinlauch platform, if placed on the moon can already launch with a velocity nearly fast enough for a lunar escape velocity.
I watch so many of your videos randomly just because they are interesting. I've probably seen about 20-30 at this point so why not subscribe. I especially love the stuff backed with papers and anything space or high tech. Thanks for the content.
When your the one working on drones that are gonna put the Amazon couriers out of jobs 🤡
Thank you Joe for getting my head stuck in the „I need a video on railguns“ Mode.
The current battery technology still has to evolve more, so it replaces the use of rare metals as Lithium or Cobalt. That would lead in a mainstream scale to supply shortages, plus the higher production costs with low profit margins. This is where Solid State Batteries come in, and could solve part of the BEV issues.
The Lithium supply isn't as much of an issue, since there are more than enough untapped natural reserves. Cobalt isn't used that much anymore, since it has been largely replaced by LFP batteries. Whether solid state batteries will be cheaper than the upcoming lithium-sulphur batteries depends on which technology can be brought to mass production quicker. Either would drastically reduce EV costs, possibly even below the costs of combustion cars.
Neither Lithium nor Cobalt are rare earth metals. Both are abundant. Both only have issues due to how certain regions handle them. Cobalt is the worst since the largest deposit is in Congo where there is heavy child labor. However, not all mines use child labor there and none of the Cobalt mines in other countries do. LFP batteries don't use any Cobalt and several chemistries of Li-ion batteries have greatly reduced the amount used.
@@anthonypelchat
I wouldn't even say "heavy child labour" in comparison to the total output.
@@rogerstarkey5390 True. I think that the country itself has overall high child labor. Still, as you implied, many mines are properly ran.
@@ehtuanK "Lithium supply isn't as much of an issue", you should check the prices per ton lately. Isn't an issue yet because BEVs are still a niche market, but if it was the main car market, you can bet the prices would go trough the roof.
A.I. as Augmented Intelligence has been displacing so-called "knowledge workers" since the beginning. My mother was a computer. There were human computers before electronic computers. "Computer" was a job-skill description. A utility executive circa 2010 told me that computer aided design (CAD) tools made it possible for 30 engineers to handle a workload that once employed 300 engineers.
- Ironically, the hardest tasks to _partially_automate_ seem to be the ones that require the least education. Note, I said "partially automate". Journalists talk about "robot" or "A.I." ... "taking your job". That is not how it works. Particular tasks might be machine-assisted or automated, but factory work still exists. Computationally-intensive work is actually at a greater risk than manually intensive work.
Here is someone who knows what's up. It's tasks that are automated and sometimes whole processes/production lines are done in a different way that is easier to automate. Only in the last case sometimes are all jobs lost/replaced. Those are the most disruptive. Most are like the transition from steam trains to modern trains. With a steam train you have someone doing the digging. That job is gone. But their are new higher-end jobs for far fewer people that do get created. Similar things for tasks which require a brain. Repetitive tasks get replaced. That doesn't automatically mean jobs are gone, might also mean: more production and cheaper production per unit produced.
How long have we had the automatic checkout for? 10 years? I can't remember. I'd be surprised if we saw that as the only system anytime soon. Yesterday I picked up my items and walked away from one because the attendant wasn't paying attention (she was distracted and it didn't seem work-related). The stupid unit was confused as to whether or not I placed my own bag down (they don't provide bags there anymore unless purchased). It kept AUDIBLY saying I needed to wait for an attendant. I only had one item left to put in the bag. I even audibly said, "Seriously?" twice because it shouldn't have been acting this way. So I said fuck it, and I took my nearly filled bag to a regular checkout. Meanwhile the attendant was still distracted as I left the store. I could cite other instances where a seemingly simple process went south because au automated checkout machine wasn't responding properly.
Yeah, it may not be soon but it feels inevitable considering how many people flock to the self checkout, at the Walmart near me they now have a full section of self check outs on either end of the store and people line up so quickly that half the time I end up going to a cashier just cause it's faster. The fact that the business owner has an incentive to push self check out and customers would prefer to use them means cashiers are on the way out, I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 more years it's all self check out with only 2 human cashiers available solely to cater to those few who would prefer human interaction.
Every store that has self checkout usually allows 25 dollars to be accidentally stolen per transaction. I wouldn't worry about saying f it on box oc raisins or wgatever it was. I would worry if it were something worth more.
yep, they are great ways to steal stuff, love em
I avoid self checkout unless im just getting something like ice cream and don’t want to wait in line while it melts. If they want me to check myself out, they need to PAY me, until then I’ll support the humans doing the work by letting the, do the work.
@@crazy9932 How does one exploit this?
I was waiting for another lightning round for quite some time now, awesome vid Joe! :)
What about a rail gun that's based in orbit? It could be used to send ships and cargo farther in space. It could be built in orbit and then operate totally in orbit.
One problem: every time you launch something, the railgun goes backwards and down to a lower orbit. Newton's Law. 🤨
@@lukasmakarios4998 Yes for every force there is an equal and opposite force it is not a hard idea to understand, However if you put rocket thrusters, or some other type of propulsion on the rear end to counter at the time of launch this is not an issue.
@@captkurt9607- If you have to put rockets on your launcher, it defeats the whole idea. Why not just have rockets on your vehicle in the first place? Rail launchers belong on the Moon, or other small airless worlds. That's their specialty.
@@lukasmakarios4998 it's called mass. The mass of the fuel for acceleration can be replaced with cargo equipment experiments. The only fuel you would have to take is for deceleration. Admittedly astronauts would probably get splattered inside. But that's a problem to figure out in the future.
Because I live in the west and often do roadtrips into very remote areas, EVs are not on my radar for awhile until I know that there's a charging station in a tiny town like, say, Hanksville UT or Tonopah, NV. My current plan is to find a used fun sporty car to go with my little crossover SUV and have them hopefully be my last gasoline cars...assuming I can get 5-10 years out of them. Then hopefully EVs are the norm and I'll make the switch.
EVs make so much more sense than Hybrids. Why would you want the extra weight of two different engines. It makes the car much less efficient due to weight. Not to mention, they cost more to build because you’re buying two propulsion sources.
Educate yourself. Your opinion is based on what's been done,not what can be done. Batteries are super heavy,engines can be rather light. ...and we'll. Cars can be but sadly aren't. A car build as ev first fuel second can make alot of sense , covering only a low everyday range with the ev part n further routes with a weak,just about good enough motor. Would be ideal for the kind of car you can run on a 150 pounds motorcycle Engine.
Cost more to build. ...do you know what batteries cost? Most existing hybrids kinda suck but the concept isn't bad. With all else around aka the modern fat car ,it's looking bad. Sure. In 2002 vw build a sub350kg car that ran on 1 l diesel n reached 120or so kmh. That kinda concept could use an electric punch and only a little bit of batteries as ev engines are light,batteries not.
@@gur262 prices for EV batteries dropped by a factor of 8,75 over 10 years.
I love the following AI driven solutions:
1) Customer support, since I can get answers without waiting for a long time while waiting for someone to get to me;
2) Dishwashers, since washable plates are better for the environment than disposable ones while the AI can minimise the amount of water used, which can also be recycled;
3) Robots to prepare meals, why not the entire food delivery chain, means greater safety from environmental impact.
All in, I like the way technology is evolving but it needs to be faster as humans seem to get more sillier by the year.
As a hybrid owner, EV recharging stations are still to few. Having said that, I also feel hybrids are designed wrong. There should only be electric tractor motors. Where the ice engine would come in is to recharge the batteries. If this was done, there would be no need to have a high torq engine involved. A turbine that has a slow wind up would fit the bill and of a smaller size. As fuel availability changes, the carburetor or injection system could be changed to handle different fuels.
The big mistake that car manufacturers, including Tesla, are making is not using four individual reversible DC motors with direct drive. This would eliminate about 60% of the energy required to move the vehicle because of the transmission and differential. Once a desired speed was obtained two of the motors could be turned off. Granted new efficiencies are reducing the energy used by these two components, They still use up a lot of energy. The energy reductions obtained by such a vehicle could be as high as 80% which could increase range close to doubling the current range.
A Tesla is already more than 80% pack to wheel efficient. Tesla's don't have a 'transmission'. They use a single speed link to the motor to the axle. Give this a watch: th-cam.com/video/SRUrB7ruh-8/w-d-xo.html
Plug in hybrids are EVs with range extenders. If people realized this and if they were built with the power of a Tesla or Porsche EV then they'd win.
Plus most don't even need the gas engine to function which means you'd only have to fill it on that rare long trip. We just need a high powered plug in Hybrid with a standard plug.
Another great vid. Regarding the hybrids. In certain mid-EU countries they are quite popular actually. They get the green reg plate with all perks and they can get away without charging which is a + there due to the lack of charging sites
10:39
OOOOOH MYYYY GOOOOOD !!!!
I've often wondered about the hybrids and I think it's an early idea of an electric vehicle while still being able to be sold to people who want to have the safety net of gas.
In Australia most of the taxis use hybrid vehicles so I suspect that it's a cost saving thing for these companies.
I suspect that Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)s are more popular than hybrids in Europe because petrol/gas is a lot more expensive. Driving on electric is 1/10th the price of petrol hence the premium for a BEV is quickly recovered. Also governments often discourage hybrids; driving through London will cost me £27 a day (Emission + Congestion Charge) for a hybrid but nothing for a BEV.
A better forward looking question on EVs is whether BEVs will remain dominant, or will HFCEVs come to dominate, or can both co-exist sustainably?
In Marshall Brain's book "Manna," he posits two options for mankind, starting with AI takeover fast food jobs.
I know there isnt much info on neurolink but i think once more comes out, a video on it would be so dope!
Using a kind of genetically modified organism to possible grow some sort of connectors throughout the human brain for neural link to interface with would be interesting.
A few years ago I bought a used Chevy Volt because it was the only electric-type car I could afford. It only gets like 35 -40 miles on electric, but I rarely go over that in a day. I can't charge it from my apartment, but I found a free charger a couple blocks away. That and the low maintenance make it pretty affordable, but I wouldn't want to go full electric unless I could charge at home because I do occasionally drive more than 40 miles at a time. Even then, I don't know if I could afford the electricity to charge it. So the plug in hybryd is the best option for me right now. If I somehow came into some money, I'd probably buy a full electric. Not everyone can be TH-cam star, Joe...
Never heard of the space elevator from the moon to geostat orbit idea until now but oh my god I love it.
Plug in hybrids are electric vehicles without the range anxiety. For those who worry about not being able to drive as far as they want, the gas engine can just take over. I have one. It's nice.
Joe, have you ever read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy? Because of that idea of attaching a Space elevator on Mars to one of its moons. That idea has been in the first book of the trilogy already and it came out in 1992. If you haven't read that I can highly recommend it.
2:46 It is not AIR FRICTION not only or most of it at least. The air in front of the projectile gets compressed because it has no time to get out of the way (supersonic velocities).
This heats the air and this hot air heats the capsule (or projectile).
This is called adiabatic heating. The friction with the air is negligible compared to this process despite of it getting greater quickly (square of velocity or more for turbulent flows), but for smooth aerodynamic objects (like a space) is still much lower.
The current reason that I can think of for a plug-in hybrid is to use the EV portion for getting back and forth to work, shopping, and any short distance travel. But the Hybrid section would be for traveling long distances in areas not supported by EV charging stations. The main example I can think of is traveling in National or State Parks in ice cold conditions. Space heating and the impact of cold on the batteries might limit how far you could travel on a single charge with an EV.
I paused the video right at the end of Joe talking about how a space elevator from Earth to geosynchronous orbit would be prohibitive. I wrote up a whole comment espousing the LEO-to-moon space elevator, posted it, then resumed the video. Literally 10 seconds later I pause again, delete my hasty comment, and have learned my lesson 😀
Neural Link could also be used for Full Dive VR role playing games. I would also for a space elevator and electromagnetic launcher. Use a ceramic superconductor, which would be super cooled. This way friction could be virtual eliminated. Heating becomes therefore a non-issue. I would also build a floating continental size platform on the surface of the Ocean. To build the launcher and later the space elevator tether. No vacuum tubes needed with the super cooled ceramic super conductor. As drag and friction is highly dampened by doing it that way. As for energy needs. Building that gargantuan floating platform on the ocean. Can use kinetic, wind, solar, and the actual people who will call it home. Nevermind putting a direct piping system to the volcanic vents to produce geo thermal energy. Without all the drilling and use of toxic processes.
yasssssss he riffed the Frakes show. that was awesome dude. railguns, as the u.s. Navy has learned, or more precisely the "barrels", degrade pretty fast due to the forces being utilized. until new metalurgy can overcome this issue, which isnt going to be anytime soon, railguns are relegated to scifi at best
A bit surprised that the section on AI jobs didn't mention taxi and truck drivers. Considering the speed at which autonomous driving systems are developing I'd be surprised if they haven't had a major impact by the end of the decade.
I used to watch you channel now and then. But haven’t been on your channel for 4 months. Then watching a video on the Havana Syndrome remembered how you could always find ways to explain the unexplainable. Couldn’t remember your name though. And then found it after searching with random words for 5 minutes. I was so happy to find you again. If you haven’t done a video on Havana Syndrome, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I recall someone’s description that doctors, lawyers, accountants, tax Attys , taxi/truck drivers etc being at earlier risk than nurses, factory workers, ditch diggers That is to say jobs requiring vast and up to date knowledge but not manual dexterity can be automated …example Omniscient medical expert system allows 2 human doctors to do the work of 20 human Drs (while automatically charting info and billing insurance) but still needs even more nurses for dextrous and messy tasks
Eerh... wait... the moon does not spin? That is news to me! Last time I checked, the moon DOES spin. BUT it spins at such a rate, that the same face always points toward the earth. So, it APPEARS to us like it does not spin. Or is that total wrong?
What I find interesting is how some jobs can be or are already being replaced by having the customer do the work themselves. The self-check out at grocery stores or putting in your order at a fast food restaurant kiosk yourself (which isn't any different than using a website or app to place a delivery or to go order). That's a boon for those companies. No big technology cost of A.I. and much lower labor costs. Those jobs disappear completely because the customer is doing the job for free. That's much more concerning that jobs being done by A.I., where jobs tend to disappear on one end of the supply chain and might be created on the other end, even if the skills are different, at least other jobs might be created rather than be gone altogether.