The Electric-Vehicle Bubble Starts to Deflate
The Electric-Vehicle Bubble Starts to Deflate
It’s ironic, to say the least, that the U.S. is seeking to imitate China’s economic model at the moment that its industrial policy fractures. Look no further than its collapsing electric-vehicle bubble, which is a lesson in how industries built by government often also fail because of government.
SciTechDaily: CalTech satellite beams energy from space.
A space solar power prototype, SSPD-1, has achieved wireless power transfer in space and transmitted power to Earth. The prototype, including MAPLE, a flexible lightweight microwave transmitter, validates the feasibility of space solar power, which can provide abundant and reliable power globally without ground-based transmission infrastructure.
This is one of those dangerous ideas that sound wonderful until you understand it.
ATLANTA (AP) — The first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades is sending electricity reliably to the grid, but the cost of the Georgia power plant could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power as a path to a carbon-free future.
BBC: Summer temperature strain the grid.
Nearly 200 million Americans are under “dangerously hot conditions” alerts with temperatures expected to soar past 100F (38C) in several major cities.
Those major cities are places where it often gets above 100 F in the summer, so no real surprise.
“I’m usually an early adapter,” said Wiesen, 46 years old. “It might be the gadget part of me that made me buy it, but it’s also the safety aspect.”
Weisen is self-aware enough to know that it’s a novelty.
Making a good electric car is challenging. It’s also difficult to make a good aircraft. Making a flying car isn’t likely to be very good at either function, but it’s fun to see them try.
Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems.
I never knew that Mr. Bean is an engineer.
WSJ: Automakers get into mining.
WSJ: Automakers get into mining.
When General Motors began outlining plans in 2020 to fully switch to electric vehicles, it didn’t account for one critical factor: Many of the battery minerals needed to fulfill its plans were still in the ground.
“I remember seeing a report from our raw-materials team at the time saying, ‘There is plenty of lithium out there. There is plenty of nickel’,” said Sham Kunjur, an industrial engineer now in charge of securing the raw materials for GM’s batteries. “We will buy them from the open market.”
GM executives soon came to discover how off the mark those projections were, and now Mr. Kunjur’s 40-person team is scouring the globe for these minerals.
“Why Magical Thinking isn’t Whimsical” or “No Shit, Sherlock” would also have been serviceable titles for this article.
This isn’t my invention. One of my students told me that her dad built a system to use the heat from the central air conditioning heat pump to warm the water for their swimming pool.
Foreign Policy: Will Washington Stop Nuclear Power
Foreign Policy: Will Washington Stop Nuclear Power
As Biden administration climate czar John Kerry rightly put it: “We don’t get to net zero by 2050 without nuclear power in the mix.”
It is not often that John Kerry says something that is smart and needs to be repeated often.
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