It would help if there's a graphics presenting this.

If you run on your own hardware then you can as well ignore github and also self-host your git repo.

You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

The best numbers I've been able to find put that number at about 25% of car owners

In the US, I thought I'd seen the number being closer to fully 1/3 of the population that did not have offstreet private parking where they could recharge every day....

I'm not in favor of the govt intervening....I'm ok with them maybe helping to get charging infrastructure going a bit more, but I don't want taxes or incentives on EV or ICE....let the market work that out. When the EVs are truly beating out the ICE vehicles.....the public will switch....if they don't, then they don't...but the govt shouldn't be choosing winners and losers here.

As far as I can tell claims like yours are just another right wing myth used to demonize immigrant populations they don't like with as much supporting evidence as Trump's fake immigrant crime wave. Maybe a few anecdotes with no broad supporting trends.

All I can say is that I hope you're right and I'm wrong. I don't like the idea of children growing up in America and as citizens who aren't allowed to learn the dominant language.

Or the money Meta has burned off trying to be something that they aren't, the ashes of failed products needing to be brushed under the rug with fresh revenues.

"and picks your charging stops", I should have added. On long trips it optimizes to minimize charging time, which typically translates to 2-3 hours of driving, then a 20-minute stop, then 2-3 hours of driving, repeat. The charging stops tend to align pretty well with bio-break needs.

It's really not.

In practice what you do is you use the car's navigation system, and it tells you if you need to charge to get to your destination. About the only manual planning I do on road trips is to think about where we'll be for meals and override the automatic charger selection to pick chargers in those places, and check the icons on the charge station to make sure there's food nearby. This is a minor annoyance, far more than offset by the fact that when I'm not on a road trip I never have to go to gas stations at all, and pay no attention at all to my "fuel" level.

The best numbers I've been able to find put that number at about 25% of car owners. That is a large number of people, but it's not a good reason to hold up the EV transition. Such people will transition last, and only after public charging options are sufficient that they don't need charging at home (and after apartment complexes deploy charging infrastructure so more apartment-dwellers can charge at home).

Also, we need to help people understand all you really need for home charging is a standard 120V outlet from which you can safely run an extension cord to your car. L1 charging will add ~40 miles of range every night, so unless you drive more than ~280 miles per week (14,600 miles per year), L1 is enough. Access to some public charging is also required, to deal with exceptional circumstances, but it can be rare and used only for getting a 15-minute quick charge when the battery is low. L2 is nicer, of course, but it's not the minimum requirement most people think it is. L2 at home enables you to pretty much just forget about charging/fueling ever in your daily life. It's a significant improvement over having to deal with gas stations, so people want it... but it's not a necessity.

We need to avoid all-or-nothing thinking. It will likely be the case for quite some time that people with unusual requirements have to stick with fossil-fuel vehicles. If there are legal electrification requirements they need to have an exception process.

I actually don't think we need legal electrification requirements, myself. If we put a reasonable carbon tax on fossil fuels (calibrated based on our best assessment of the future cost of mitigating the warming that will be caused by burning the fuel) to internalize that externality and if we drop trade barriers that block the purchase of cheap EVs manufactured in China, the transition will happen on its own for purely economic reasons. It'll probably happen even without those steps, but they would make it happen a lot faster.

For that matter, I think we don't even need to impose the carbon taxes and tariffs, just pass them. Phase them in over a decade, so people know they're coming, and people will begin making the change even before they take effect.

No. Tipping is the problem, and the problem has gotten entirely out of hand. Make tipping illegal, and employers will be forced to pay wages that will retain their employees, and then, in turn, raise prices to compensate. At which point, we will have the system that Europe has been using for longer than I know, where being a waiter is not a stop-gap employment option while you're trying to do something else, but a respectable profession. There are establishments I frequent in various parts of the Continent where I see the same waiters working there, year after year, and there is never any problem with the service. Tipping is not expected, and if you do, it's a couple of percent. The prices on the menu are the prices you pay. No extra taxes, no extra tipping. Completely transparent.

It is pure commercial greed that prevents the US from adopting the same rational standard, and instead we get the fraud where the price you see is nowhere near the price you pay, except in very specific, isolated cases like fuel and airline tickets.

Before leaving the charger, you can see your next charging stop and the expected arrival SoC (state of charge). Only an idiot would leave a charger without having enough battery. You can also choose to charge more and skip the next charger - for example, if youÃ(TM)re stopping for lunch.

Sounds like a pain in the ass to me.

With my normal car (ICE), I don't have to 'plan' my trip based on where I have to fuel up....with the few exceptions of extremity, like crossing a few desert areas in the US, but for the majority of the US....there's a gas station on every corner in a city and all long the highways....you don't have to know where...they're just there whenever you need them.

And...gas is getting so cheap again too.....

Last time I used one of those apps to find chargers in my area....I found precious few for the whole city area that were public.....

I've only seen a few in a Whole Foods parking lot, and I think there were some in a Winn-Dixie parking lot.

But the few the apps showed were mostly private chargers.

so, living here if you can't charge at home, you're pretty screwed.....EV is just not the way to go around here in the New Orleans area.

With TCO it is cheaper to put there bigger battery and remove the ICE. But most of the new car buyers cannot calculate TCO and they care only about purchase price.

Well, you also have to consider the large number of people that do not have the capability to charge at home.

If you cannot charge at home, then an EV just doesn't not make much sense in most of the US.