Commercialization is 5-10 years away?

I believe the technology behind the PHEV is just getting started, that there's plenty of room yet for improvement to the point that the PHEV could make the ICEV as we know it today obsolete.

Where the PHEV shines is in offering the ability to drive on all electric power for most people's commutes while allowing for the convenience to burn some kind of liquid fuel for the times that there's a longer trip, extreme weather that could impact all-electric range, power outages, or whatever else might interrupt the ability to drive on the electricity stored in a battery. This is a plan to end the internal combustion engine and I believe that will only backfire on the plans to lower CO2 emissions in the long run.

Those that don't want to give up the convenience of liquid fuels could simply keep their ICEV longer as opposed to buying a new PHEV that could be plugged in overnight for an all electric commute the next day. Is is possible that the PHEV owner would choose to drive on fossil fuels than plug in at night? Sure, but I'd expect most people that get a PHEV to plug in most every night in order to save on fuel costs and not have to pay so many visits to a filling station.

The PHEV is such a "no brainer" on lowering our reliance on fossil fuels while removing all "range anxiety" of those that drive them that it amazes me that anyone would put in laws that oppose their sale and use. Not all PHEVs are equal on their ability to free the driver from needing fuel but all are still an improvement from the traditional ICEV. As time moves on I'm seeing more and more features and comforts from the BEV being incorporated into new ICEV models that the line is being blurred on what it means to be a "hybrid". If the vehicle has so little "electrification" as the means to plug in for power to preheat the cabin then that's still savings on burning fossil fuels.

What we are seeing is hating on the internal combustion engine. The problem is not the engine but the fuel. We can still have the internal combustion engine without burning fossil fuels. We can synthesize hydrocarbons. I'll see people argue against synthesized hydrocarbons based on assumptions for costs and energy efficiency that would not likely apply in the future. One such assumption is that the hydrogen used for synthesizing the fuel must come from either electrolysis of water or from natural gas. We know of different processes that are lower cost and have much higher thermodynamic efficiency. We will need liquid hydrocarbon fuels well into the future as our economy has been built upon it for the last century, it would likely take a century to transition to anything else. We can get those hydrocarbons from fossil fuels or we can work to get them from alternative sources, sources that are carbon neutral. That won't happen if there's a ban on the internal combustion engine. We can't expect to see a ban on the internal combustion engine to take effect unless something that provides some improvement upon it, and battery-electric vehicles are not a sufficient replacement.

Banning the PHEV is idiocy. The PHEV is likely a 90% solution to our needs for liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Because it's not a 100% solution we should ban them? That's not going to happen so long as the people have any say in the matter. Maybe in a communist nation like China that could work, but even then the people running the place need to keep the people from rioting. Remember, the problem is the fuel, not the engine. We can fix the fuel problem and negate any need to remove the engine from use. Until then we should encourage the use of the PHEV as a 90% solution, because otherwise we can expect people to keep their ICEVs running, or perhaps some kind of opposition if not worse from the people.

I'll see claims on how we can extract energy from existing sources that would otherwise be wasted but that's just stretching out the inevitable. We can't conserve our energy down to zero, we will still need a source of energy to survive. If we are to maintain our standard of living, and some semblance of a modern economy, then we need more energy than we can extract from wind, sun, and water. That means nuclear fission for energy, a need to have energy source than merely a nice to have energy source.

Advocating for nuclear fission as an energy source on Slashdot is getting moderated into oblivion. Apparently there's a group of people that choose to use the "troll" moderation as their way to express disagreement. Well, it appears that there's a general realization that wind, water, and sun will not be sufficient to provide the power we need. We are seeing support for nuclear fission for energy growing. This makes sense since given the options of fossil fuels, energy shortages, or nuclear fission, that people will choose nuclear fission. Nuclear fission isn't a perfect energy source but it is the best we have available today. Maybe in the future we will have some other option but for now it is burn fossil fuels, energy shortages, or nuclear fission.

This technology that can extract more useful energy from heat that would otherwise be wasted could be applied to nuclear fission, making nuclear fission even more valuable for energy than it already is today. We can't conserve our way to zero energy needs. Because we need energy supplies that are reliable, and use as little material resources as possible, people will be attracted to nuclear fission for energy until something better comes along. Maybe nuclear fusion will prove to be a better option but at best that is 50 years away. We will need to start building nuclear power plants today to bridge that gap. No new nuclear power plants means either burning more fossil fuels or energy shortages.

If the issue is that people will believe in this technology when they see it then that goes in favor of nuclear fission for energy. We have something like 60 years of safe, reliable, and profitable energy from nuclear fission. We need only make more of much the same for the future. Not exactly the same as we learned plenty on making nuclear fission safer, lower cost, and more reliable in that time.

I'm pleased to see opposition to nuclear fission for energy fall away. We should move as quickly as we can for more new nuclear power plants for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and improving the standard of living for all humans on Earth.

as suggested by me from 2007: "Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
        https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpatapata.sourceforge.n...
        "... Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case"
based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change.
          But, history has shown schools extremely resistant to change. ...
          That is not all technology has been asked to do in schools. It has been invited into the classroom in other ways, including educational simulations, Lego/Logo, web browsing, robotics, and computer-linked data collection from sensors. But assessment is mostly what technology does in schools that *matters*, where the other uses of it have been marginalized for various reasons. These "learning on demand" or "hands on learning" activities have been kept in their boxes so to speak (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally). Or to recall from my own pre-computer elementary school experiences in the 1960s, there was a big fancy expensive "science kit" in the classroom closet -- but there was little time to use it or explore it -- we were too busy sitting at our desks. ...
        Essentially, the conventional notion is that the compulsory schooling approach is working, it just needs more money and effort. Thus a push for higher standards and pay and promotion related to performance to those standards. Most of the technology then should be used to ensure those standards. That "work harder" and "test harder" approach has been tried now for more than twenty years in various ways, and not much has changed. Why is that? Could it be that schools were designed to produce exactly the results they do? [as John Taylor Gatto has suggested] And that more of the same by more hard work will only produce more of the same results? Perhaps schools are not failing to do what they were designed; perhaps in producing people fit only to work in highly structured environments doing repetitive work, they are actually succeeding at doing what they were designed for? Perhaps digging harder and faster and longer just makes a deeper pit? ...
        However, over the past 150 years or so the world has changed, and we have entered a post-industrial information age, with cheaply copied songs and perhaps soon cheaply copied material goods in nanotech replicators. ...
        Industry still matters of course, but only now in the sense that agricultural still matters, where an ever smaller part of the population is concerned directly with it, as innovation after innovation makes people in those fields ever more productive. If only a small percent of the people in the economy produce food, and now only an ever shrinking part of the population produces material goods, what is left for the rest to do? ...
        So, [as Dr. David Goodstein, Vice Provost of Caltech pointed out] employment in conventional research is closed for most people [even with PhDs, due to funding issues]. Still, if you look at, say, the field of biology, there are endless opportunities for people to research millions of species of organisms and their biochemistry, ecology, and history. If you look at astrophysics, there are endless stars and solar systems to study. If you look at medicine, there is a vast amount we do not know, especially for chronic diseases of poor people. If you look at music, there are endless opportunities for people to make songs about their specific lives and families. If you look at writing, endless novels yet to be written. And if you look at programming, there is even a vast enjoyment to be had reinventing the wheel -- another programming language, another operating system, another application -- just for the fun of doing it for its own sake. The world wide web -- from blogs to you tube to garage bands -- is full of content people made and published just because they wanted to. It is an infinite universe we live in, and would take an infinite time to fill it up. However, there is practically no one willing to pay for those activities, so they are for the most part hobbies, or at best, "loss leaders" or "training" in business. And, as always, there is the endless demands of essentially volunteer parenting to invest in a future generation. And there are huge demands for community service to help less fortunate neighbors. So there are plenty of things that need doing -- even if they do not mesh well with our current economic system based around "work" performed within a bureaucracy, carefully reduced to measurable numbers (parts produced, lines of code generated, number of words written) producing rewards based on ration units (dollars).
        But then, with so much produced for so little effort, perhaps the very notion of work itself needs to change? Maybe most people don't need to "work" in any conventional way (outside of home or community activities)? ...
        But then is compulsory schooling really needed when people live in such a way? In a gift economy, driven by the power of imagination, backed by automation like matter replicators and flexible robotics to do the drudgery, isn't there plenty of time and opportunity to learn everything you need to know? Do people still need to be forced to learn how to sit in one place for hours at a time? When people actually want to learn something like reading or basic arithmetic, it only takes around 50 contact hours or less to give them the basics, and then they can bootstrap themselves as far as they want to go. Why are the other 10000 hours or so of a child's time needed in "school"? Especially when even poorest kids in India are self-motivated to learn a lot just from a computer kiosk -- or a "hole in the wall"...
        Granted if people want to send kids to a prison-like facility each day for security or babysitting, then the "free school" model makes a lot of sense for that ... and is much more compatible with democratic traditions than compulsory schools (and is even cheaper to run). And the kids and teachers are generally happier in "free schools" where they have to show up but can otherwise then spend their time as they like; and such schools also do well with "discipline problem" type kids. Just ask any teacher how much happier they would be if only the kids in their classes were the ones who wanted to be there. However, there are alternatives to "free schools" as well, but requiring more parental involvement [like unschooling]...
        So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process. ...

Maybe the people running the data centers will also own the power plants but I doubt it. We've already seen how this is likely to work with Microsoft and Three Mile Island. A company looking to open a data center will look for places that are looking to build a nuclear power plant, or take an existing closed nuclear power plant back online. They will make some long term deal for the power that power plant would produce in order to secure their supply of power, such as sign a contract for 20 years of power to prove to those offering the loans that there's a good return on their investment.

What I'm seeing from history is that as there's threats of a local nuclear power plant closing, and with it a lot of jobs and tax income lost, the local politicians get really interested in keeping that nuclear power plant operating. As demand for electricity rises so will interest in building new nuclear power plants and expanding the capacity of existing nuclear power plants.

As it is now local governments will give out sweet deals on taxes and permits to attract big building projects like data centers. No greasing of palms required as that's a short term loss on tax revenue in exchange for a longer term income on property taxes and those working in these businesses spending money on homes, food, and so on. A data center might not attract many people working in the area since that's a bunch of computers humming away in a warehouse but a nuclear power plant will have a lot of people working there. With a reliable power plant largely paid for by the data center that can mean attracting light industry or such, people looking for low cost and reliable energy for any of a number of other uses.

I doubt the people running the data centers will own the power plants. That's excepting maybe data centers bringing in their own natural gas generators that can be trucked in and dropped on site, which is likely a temporary fix until new power plants and utility lines can be put in place a few years in the future. Once they have sufficient power lines run in then the natural gas generators can be picked up and trucked away, then that room where the generators sat can be used to expand the data center or leased for some other use.

When competing for market share, and your product or service is much like so many products and services, there will be a desire to stand out in some way. For a long time there was an advantage in advertising as being "greener" than the alternatives, and for data centers that meant showing your data center uses "greener" power than the competition. I suspect that the rolling back of green initiatives isn't as much about being "fair weather friends" as much as there's so many other companies that made the same promises on being green that it's not a differentiator any more. Once the costs on green energy started to rise then maybe "fair weather friends" applied to some extent, people wanted lower cost data services more than they wanted "greener" services. Going "green" costs money and once money got tight then there wasn't the same level of money for the luxury of being "green". I know people will push back on the idea that being "green" is a luxury but when it's a matter of surviving the winter and lower CO2 emissions to survive some global warming decades from now then people will choose surviving the winter because if they don't survive the winter then they don't much care what happens a decade later.

There's a renewed interest in nuclear fission for energy all over the world, and a need for stable "base load" power is certainly a part of that. With concerns on international trade growing there's a lot of nations looking for ways to be free of the near monopolies China has on commodities like solar PV and rare earth metals. There's nothing rare about rare earth metals, it's just a name they picked up for historical reasons. People like to point to China as some kind of leader on renewable energy, ignoring that China is on track to have more nuclear power capacity than the USA and France combined by 2030.

China is going big on nuclear fission while exporting solar PV panels, rare earth magnets for windmills, and other commodities to feed this desire to "go green" around the world. Nuclear power is as "green" as any other option available to us but all too often nuclear power has been ruled out as an option for bullshit reasons. Point that out in the "wrong" places and you'll find yourself shunned, such as on Slashdot where saying nice things about nuclear power gets your karma destroyed. That appears to be changing.

China is going big on nuclear power with efforts like thorium reactors and plans for nuclear powered civilian cargo ships. This is driving nations in the region to also invest in nuclear power, especially in their navy since China is looking to become a global naval power. Australia made a deal for nuclear powered submarines some time ago, and recently South Korea has made a similar deal. Neither nation *needs* nuclear powered submarines to defend their national interests, but if things get kinetic in the region then there will be difficulty in getting fuel for a navy. Nuclear powered submarines are likely the start, nuclear powered frigates and destroyers will likely follow soon.

This is getting beyond keeping the lights on. Nuclear fission is likely to quickly move to powering ships at sea. We've had nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers for decades so that's been a "no brainer" for a long time. There's been some aborted attempts at nuclear powered civilian ships and navy surface ships like frigates, cruisers, and destroyers. Expect to see those experiments get restarted. Russia has had nuclear powered icebreakers for some time, and it makes sense to start such experiments with icebreakers for many reasons. Russia has adapted the nuclear reactors used in icebreakers to make floating power plants, a means to bring power to remote areas without having to support construction crews in these areas then bring them back. Expect floating nuclear power plants to be another trend in the near future.

Build time on a new nuclear power plant that can be a concern. As it is now it takes about 7 years to build a nuclear power plant, or nuclear powered submarine if looking for some analog to building a floating nuclear power plant. I expect that we will see that cut in half real soon. So much of the build time on nuclear power is from issues unrelated to the technology. It's a matter of regulation, funds, infrastructure, skilled labor, and so on. That's largely political, and that can change with the next election. Get the build time for nuclear power under 4 years, so a nuclear power plant can be completed inside the term for POTUS, and it will be far more difficult for politics to drag build times out beyond a decade like we've seen in the past. After that it will be far smoother sailing for lower CO2 emissions and similar concerns to be luxuries, the costs will come down and it will simply be the norm than something people would expect to pay extra to get.

If you are not using your old disks, donate them to the library instead of thrift stores, they will get more use. The library can then donate the duplicates as they see fit.

Pay it forward!

Thank you, Gabe and Valve! I appreciate being able to run on Linux and get rid of Windows once and for all. I also played Portal 2 last week on my couch with friends, streaming it to my living room Big Screen using Steam Link. It was glorious! Next stop, Baldur's Gate 3 in co-op mode!

p.s. How much is Deckard going to cost? Prepare to take my money!

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Fbeyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

I read the fine article and I'm not seeing what kinds of policies concerning AI these two individuals are fighting for and therefore why they are creating these PACs. What I see as an issue concerning people about AI is how much electrical power is expected to be used in the growth in AI, which is only being made worse with more manufacturing being brought back to the USA after a long time of so much manufacturing being sent overseas.

I had someone knock on my door a week or so ago that was doing some political campaigning where she brought up the concern on how much electrical power is going to data centers. Then is a video published this morning from Peter Zeihan that also brought up this issue:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

To summarize the video there's a need for massive amounts of new electrical generating capacity due to the growth in AI use on top of growing manufacturing in the USA, because data centers run 24/7 they need electricity sources that run 24/7. There's only two options for electricity production that runs 24/7, coal and nuclear fission. While natural gas can technically be a 24/7 source of electricity there's more value in using natural gas for load following. I'd add to that by pointing out that there's a lot of natural gas used for heating and petrochemicals like fertilizers.

We will need more electricity production regardless of how this AI boom goes. If this AI boom goes bust then that just means we can have more electricity production for manufacturing, heat pumps to replace natural gas heating, electric vehicles, or so many other uses that are currently seeing growth. What other concerns on AI are there? I can think of a few but electricity demand seems to be the largest concern and one that impacts far more people than any thing else.

Will these PACs work on energy policy? What positions on energy policy will they hold? That's what concerns me the most, and it appears I'm not alone in this concern.

I didn't read the book but I can recall in interviews with Andy Weir that he kind of handwaved off some of the issues of radiation in living on Mars with The Martian in that the space suits and such had some lightweight material that could protect people from radiation. This discovery of melanin providing protections from radiation puts some science behind that claim. Weir knew this could be bullshit but to make the story interesting he made a few choices that contradicted known science at the time in the telling of his story.

If we are to put people on Mars then I'd expect a staged approach much like we are seeing now with the Artemis Program. We send an unmanned ship with sensors and such to test the technology, maybe sending a probe to Mars in the process to provide some kind of landing simulation. Then we send a manned mission to orbit Mars, maybe again sending an unmanned probe to Mars, but nobody yet sets foot on Mars. Then, maybe, on the third mission, we put people on Mars. If there's people going to Mars in 2026 then it will be to orbit Mars for a bit and then come back to Earth to test a mission abort scenario, as in something goes wrong and they have to return to Earth before the optimal return window in 18 months or whatever. That would be something like the setup for The Martian where an unusually powerful storm on Mars threatens the habitat and they have to leave quick and in a hurry.

This is an interesting development that shows that, as predicted by a certain Dr. Ian Malcolm, life finds a way. It shows we could develop better protections for people to survive high radiation environments, such as a trip to Mars. As unfortunate the accident at Chernobyl was it does appear that we could learn plenty from it in the coming years. One thing I expect people to learn is that there's not likely to be a need to contain spent nuclear fuel for thousands of years. As bad as the radiation may be still today that is the radiation from what we consider "medium-lived fission products" like cesium and strontium. These are isotopes with a half-life of about 30 years. It's been long enough now that the worst of this radiation has been more than halved by now. What happens to the threat of radiation in another 30 years? It will be halved again. The long-lived fission products have such long half-lives that they contribute little to the radiation around Chernobyl.

Does this mean we should not fear spent nuclear fuel? Or fear another nuclear power plant meltdown? No, that's not what this means. What it means is that the plans to put up warning signs for radiation that will last more than 10,000 years around radioactive waste sites is bullshit. In as little as 100 years the radiation risks could be quite minimal. In 1000 years the risks of radiation from the fission products we produce today would likely be no more than that seen on a sandy beach rich with monazite sand.

Would it be expensive to keep guard on radioactive waste for 100 years? I guess so, but then that's a minimal cost compared to the value of the energy we can produce from nuclear fission. If we are to put a permanent colony of humans on Mars then we will need nuclear power. To get people to Mars will likely require use of nuclear power. If nuclear power works to keep people alive on Mars then it can work to keep people alive on Earth. If we can pick up a few tricks on minimizing risks from radiation from nature then that just makes nuclear power an even better option.

Nuclear fission for energy is a "need to have" than a "nice to have" for sustaining a nation's energy supply if they wish to have a modern economy. Pointing this out appears to upset some people in spite of the data supporting this. Maybe there's some places in the world blessed with a climate and geography that allows for ample supplies of hydro, geothermal, and onshore wind for a supply of energy that is low cost, reliable, and free from international entanglements but such places will be rare. Even then they'd likely reach a limit at some point in the future where that's no longer enough to keep up with nations that embraced nuclear fission for their energy supplies.

Australia is in a unique position here with nuclear energy. They have ample reserves of uranium to draw from for energy, and active mines to extract uranium for export. There's no issues in Australia on getting fuel for civil nuclear power plants. Those opposed to nuclear power will claim that there's no existing infrastructure or skilled labor to support a civil nuclear power program. That's a solved problem since they are in the process of buying nuclear powered submarines from the US and UK in their AUKUS agreement, from that will necessarily flow people trained in nuclear power as well as facilities for managing nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. So, where's the objection now?

The objection to nuclear power often lies in that nuclear power costs too much in comparison to other options like wind, solar, and hydro. If that were true then Germany would currently be the picture of low cost and abundant energy while France has the highest energy costs in Europe. That is not the case and so it would appear that excluding nuclear fission from Australia's mix of energy sources means they will continue to be reliant on fossil fuels in order to maintain a reliable supply of energy.

Maybe something new will come along in the future to change this but for now the options are fossil fuels, nuclear fission, or energy shortages. Again, there may be a few places in the world where that might not be the case but Australia is not one of them. Australia needs nuclear fission for energy. This isn't because of some need to lower CO2 emissions, though that would be a nice side effect. Australia needs nuclear power plants in order to remain an independent nation as the world fights for energy. A big reason for Australia wanting nuclear powered submarines is for protection against the Chinese navy. China is building nuclear powered submarines. China is building civil nuclear power plants. China is apparently building civilian nuclear powered cargo ships. Why would China do this? Almost certainly because they know that if cut off from energy imports they'd be reliant on what energy they can produce domestically. Is Australia any different from this? No, not really.

Australia needs nuclear power or they could be left in the dark should things get kinetic with China. Or any other adversary in the region. Maybe they can rely on energy imports from the USA and Canada but then that's just choosing who is pulling the strings in the puppet state of Australia. I'd suspect having the USA as the puppet master is preferable to having it be China but Australia can cut those strings by developing a civil nuclear power program.

The calculation should be more than a simple multiplication of weight and miles, experimentation shows a relationship of weight to the fourth power to road damage:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

I'd expect this to be a problem with over-the-road trucking paying fees based on this "fourth power law" as that could lead to crushing levels of fees, especially since it is more of a "rule of thumb" than something shown definitively. There's also the matter that even though there's more wear with more weight there's benefits to drivers of lighter vehicles than could be paid with a rule based on only the wear on the road. Also, there's wear on the road by just being exposed to the sun, wind, and precipitation that might not be taken into account if the "fourth power law" was applied so blindly. Maybe a simple weight times miles isn't such a bad idea. If paying by weight is in the calculation then that can discourage people buying large vehicles without penalizing those moving commercial cargo too much.

My brother knows one of those "crazy guys" that runs his diesel vehicle from vegetable oil. He somehow got on the radar of the DOT and was accused of not paying the road tax. I don't know if he paid any penalties for that but since then he's had to take his vegetable oil fuel someplace to get measured out and pay a road tax on it. I'm not sure how they track this, that wasn't made clear in the retelling, but there's apparently a system laid out for enforcement on paying the road taxes on fuel.

A common problem here in rural America is people buying "red diesel" for burning in their over-the-road vehicles. Red diesel is just regular diesel fuel with some red dye in it to mark it as low tax fuel for off-road use such as for agricultural tractors, backup generators, and so forth. Small time users that will have a diesel tractor for mowing a large lawn, small time construction work, and whatever, will just get higher taxed fuel without the dye at a truck stop as the extra cost isn't worth the effort to seek out a place selling red diesel. Those that burn a lot of red diesel will have it delivered to them by a fuel truck. It would be tempting to fuel up their diesel truck off this lower cost fuel from a tank they keep on site than go to a truck stop for higher priced fuel. If caught then that can mean hefty fines, fines far higher than just making up for the road taxes not paid.

The idea of using a GPS tracker to count miles for accurate taxation just sounds like an excuse to put GPS trackers on vehicles. We have odometers, and tampering with the odometers is severely penalized already. Part of this is the odometers are made to be difficult to be tampered with. There will be seals on the odometer that will indicate tampering. There are mechanisms that cause the odometer to self destruct if there's an attempt to roll them back. With so much electronics in a vehicle now there's likely multiple odometers, with one being mechanical and another electronic somewhere. There's ways to compare the two and if there's a mismatch, and no records indicating a repair or something to explain the disparity, then that can lead to fines.

I agree that fees need to be paid for road repair. Charging a per mile fee on electric vehicles, based on the odometer readings, sounds like a logical means to resolve that. Claims of being unfairly charged for miles driven in another state, or country, or for miles driven off-road, such as a farmer or rancher that might drive many miles on their own property in their diesel truck, might just mean having to eat those fees for the convenience of not having to explain the time spent driving someplace other than where the taxes go to pay for the roads. This is routine already where people pay the fees on diesel fuel from a truck stop than seek out red diesel. Is this such a big fee that we should go through the expense of paying for a GPS tracker to avoid them when not in the country or not on roads paid for by the taxes?

I can recall hearing about how truck drivers that cross state lines often will keep some kind of log to make sure they are paying the correct taxes on fuel. Drivers in the Midwest USA know that fuel taxes in Illinois are quite high and so will do their best to avoid filling up in the state. Illinois knows this and so they will track commercial drivers to collect on those taxes than tolerate trucks filling up in neighboring states to avoid the fees. The non-commercial drivers aren't tracked because it isn't worth the trouble. Are they going to track passenger cars driving across the state without stopping for fuel? That level of enforcement would likely cost more than what they could collect, so they don't bother.

In short, we already figured this out without resorting to GPS tracking. If people want to avoid the fees then they should keep good logs on their driving and odometer readings. If they want some GPS tracker to do this for them then they should have to pay for it from their own pocket. It's that or they can simply pay the fees to avoid the bother of tracking the miles.

The idea of odometer tampering isn't new. We've pretty much solved that issue. Maybe this per mile fee will encourage more effort into tampering with odometers but I'm fairly certain existing efforts to detect this tampering are sufficient to prevent this being some widespread issue.

Augmented Idiocracy with all the rent seeking and regulatory capture going on.