Oh, and the Guinness record only specifies "electric vehicle" - you'd think the World Solar Challenge folks would have this handily, as they go 3000 km+ https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

And yet again, it doesn't specify electric _GROUND_ vehicle. Solar Impulse 2's 4,819 nmi (8,924 km) stretch from Japan to Hawaii would be tops: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

It may be the longest by a "stock production vehicle", but we don't even know that for certain. And it clearly used a major downhill amount to achieve it.

By contrast, a battery technology company put a prototype 200 kWh battery in an older Tesla Model S in 2022 and got 752 miles in one charge (4 miles more), on flat terrain: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

Except it isn't a strawman astroturfing. It's a real sticking point that we need to solve. Many (US) apartment complexes/buildings don't have parking that has reasonable ability to charge an EV. And relying on public charging infrastructure - while absolutely doable today - negates one of the main "usability" and financial advantages of an EV - spending a few seconds plugging in when you get home and paying low home electricity rates, to start each day "with a full tank" inexpensively.

If you have to do the ICE-like "plan a stop to refuel" that costs just as much per mile as refilling an equivalent gasoline car, you're losing the "mainstream advantage."

Yes, to people for whom "trying to minimize their own personal carbon footprint," it may be worth it.

As for the other claims on towing? I've had zero problem towing travel trailers over 10,000 miles in my Rivian R1T over the last 3 years. Including a 4500 mile round trip throughout the Western US. The GMC Sierra EV / Chevy Silverado EV is even better for towing (much more range, much faster charging.) And while the CT may be an absolute joke of a vehicle, it can actually tow at least as well as the F-150 Lightning. (And I know Lightning owners who have towed significant distances, including a trip from Oregon to Colorado and back.)

Pointing out that as it stands now there are inequalities does not make someone a Russian shill.

The solution for bringing equality to EVs is to promote even cheaper EVs, keeping the used EV tax credit (which was just nixed starting September,) and promoting multifamily housing EV charging access. Maybe require new-construction to add EV charging, incentivize retrofitting EV charging to existing multifamily housing, promoting low-power residential streetside charging (as is happening in parts of Portland and Seattle,) enforcing "resident can pay to have EV charging installed" laws (that already exist in many states, but have onerous hoops to jump through.)

They also have a point that if we had better designed dense cities, with good public transit, then personal cars wouldn't be as necessary. See New York City, where only 45% of households own a car at all thanks to the good subway system! A dense city with good clean public transit is far cleaner than a sprawling car-required hellscape like Los Angeles or Phoenix, even if all vehicles were EVs.

I'm a chemist. To me, "organic" just means "contains carbon-carbon" or "contains carbon-hydrogen." :-P

Some company/organization/"AI influencer" will declare that AGI has been achieved in 3-10 years. But it won't. They'll just be redefining what "AGI" means to be something less than they mean now; and come up with some new term "Universal Artificial Intelligence" or something to mean "true Sci-Fi style AI." (Like when they said "we have AI, what you're talking about is A*G*I")

This.

Amazon doesn't deliver to most rural addresses - they just ship it via USPS. Amazon simply cannot replace USPS with their existing infrastructure. Heck, I'm not exactly "rural" and most of my Amazon deliveries come by USPS or UPS, not by Amazon delivery vehicles.

And I fight for the users.

Disclaimer: I am an "EV enthusiast". I currently own another electric trike, an Arcimoto FUV. I also own a Rivian R1T electric pickup and a Ford Mach-E.

I've had a deposit in for an Aptera for years, and I'm one of the "small investors" who has stock in them.

At this point, I'm assuming that my deposit and my investment won't ever produce anything for me.

I hope they succeed, even if I wasn't an investor and deposit-holder. The idea may be kind of silly, and absolutely not for everyone (neither are motorcycles.) But they're always begging for more money to actually start production, and always failing to raise as much as they say they need.

At this point, I imagine the first few dozen vehicles will be delivered to the "high value investors", but that true large-scale production won't happen.

On the technical front - yes, the solar panels are largely a gimmick. Maybe if you always park outside in somewhere terminally sunny like SoCal, Arizona, or Florida, it might make it so that you never have to plug it in; but in most areas, it will make a small dent on your charging needs. The big "selling point" is the extreme efficiency. There are a few ways to measure EV efficiency. The EPA uses "Miles Per Gallon equivalent" or MPGe to rate EVs. By their measure, the most efficient vehicle is the Lucid Air Pure, at 146 MPGe. My Rivian is rated at 73 MPGe.

Most EVs measure efficiency in either "miles per kWh" (one gallon of gasoline contains 33.7 kWh of energy, so an easy conversion is to take this number and multiply by 33.7 to get the "MPGe") or "Watt-hours per mile" (inverted, so a lower number is better, this is similar to what many metric countries use for gas vehicles - liters per 100 km where a lower number is better.) That Lucid Air Pure gets about 4.3 miles per kWh of energy, or about 230 Wh/mi.

Aptera claims 10 miles/kWh / 100 Wh/mi. That is more than double the efficiency of the most efficient "full size" vehicle. My Arcimoto FUV, a similar "two seater three wheel EV" gets about 5 mi/kWh in mixed city/non-interstate-highway driving. The Arcimoto is great for city driving, and while it is absolutely capable of highway driving, it isn't very aerodynamic so its efficiency drops like a brick on the freeway. The Aptera _IS_ aerodynamic, so should be much more efficient on the highway.

What the crap is âoeit helps get animal spirits back into the marketâ supposed to mean?

You know what people will remember about this company in a decade?

Their name.

Uh McAfee the person hasn't had anything to do with McAfee the company in a couple decades.

I mean, if this isn't the most McAfee thing ever, I don't know what is.

Half are "HOW PETTY! THIS IS WHY WE LEFT!"

The other half are "Makes total sense, we didn't want to be a part of them."

Well, that didn't age well.

Obviously he isn't getting thrown out of office (unless they hold ANOTHER impeachment, since he was just acquitted in this one.)

At this point, I'd vote for a ham sandwich if it was the option with (D) after the name in November...

"Flying cars" really depends on your definition. We'll never have Back to the Future or Blade Runner style "primary ground vehicles that can also fly". The currently-under-development "readable aircraft" I'm 90% sure will actually start deliveries this decade, though. And small self-flying air taxis are probably inevitable, too; although I'd say "this decade" is a stretch.

"Self driving cars will be everywhere" also depends on your definition of both "self driving" and "everywhere." Limited self driving are ALREADY all over the place. But if you mean 100% level 5 autonomy no human driver required in any circumstances - no. I give it a decent shot that there will be full production vehicles with "just shy of" it by the end of the decade, but they won't be even half of all new cars made in 2029, much less "everywhere/most cars on the road." But that last 1% of self-driving will be a ridiculously tough nut to crack.

Facebook, Google, Amazon each broken up - zero chance of all three being broken up by government entities. I'd say 50/50 that one of them breaks up due to market forces, and about 1-in-3 that *one* of them is broken up by a governmental order. And about 1-in-10 that one of them completely goes under (or is bought out by a different company.)

Human on Mars - The most definitive of the statements, either a human lands on Mars by the end of the decade or not. I'm certain that a human will land on Mars "soonish", but by the end of the decade is pretty much the close cutoff. Much as SpaceX/Boeing's Commercial Crew is *JUST* missing out on the 2010s decade, it's very reasonable that human Mars landing will slip to *JUST* in to the 2030s. But I could also very reasonably see it happening this decade. Possibly even mid-decade (2024-2026.)

Then there was the absolutely ridiculous, not at all meant to be taken seriously Cowboy Neal option.