Yeah, this is assuming you can plug in at home or at work. My commute is 25 miles each way, which is about as far as I’d consider going, and I can charge at home, so it would totally work for me and the people stuck in traffic with me.

Yeah, it’s way better than the bike lane with cars parked in it or a sidewalk. I’ll take what I can get.

We have a dedicated walking path right next to my house, and part of it runs right next to the road. It’s super nice, though the only physical barrier is either a bit of gravel, but it’s way better than what we used to have.

I think those tradeoffs are fine assuming a huge cost difference. I’m under the impression that sodium ion batteries cost something like 1/3 of a lithium ion battery. And since the battery is most of the cost of a car, a commuter could be very cost competitive.

I don’t know about cold weather efficiency, but honestly, most of that 150 mile range is to account for winter range drop. A commuter only really needs about 75 miles usable range year round.

People would put up with a lot for an attractive price.

Rule 37, there are no girls on the internet.

Exactly. I’m a cyclist, and the bike lane is often unsafe because there are parked cars right next to it and it’s nigh impossible to tell if someone is going to open a door right in front of you. I don’t want to be in the main traffic lane, but I’ll do it if it’s safer for me, and plugging up a lane is much better than swerving into traffic to avoid colliding with a door.

But where lube? Should be a kit.

And female.

That’s disgusting, please provide a list so I can avoid them.

Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death’s construction

Uh oh, something is brewing.

Just so everyone knows, Fancy Feast is owned by Nestle, so if you want to avoid their products, eat a different brand of cat food.

Surely this is easily exploitable…

Yeah, if I ate a gram of salt for every pound of my body weight, I’d be eating 1/3c of salt. That’s a lot of salt!

Dietary recommendation is 2.5-5g/day of table salt (I think that roughly correlates to sodium labels), and 1g/2lb would be about 20-40x that. Nuts!

And it has less protein than other options, so there’s literally no reason to eat cat food.

Regular chicken breast has higher protein content than cat food too, as does everything else on this list. Don’t eat cat food, it’s more expensive, has less protein, and (probably) less tasty.

Apparently that can has 91kcal/can, and 10% of it is “crude protein.” Protein provides about 4 calories per gram, so one can is 2g protein.

If we scale to 250 kcal, that’s 6g protein.

Not sure I want to know where OP got their numbers from…

Also, regular chicken breast has higher protein content than this cat food, and it’s probably cheaper per calorie.

This is a fantasy

It used to be reality. Copyright law was reasonable and largely unchanged for 180 years, it lasted 28 years, with an optional extension for another 28 years. Originally it was 14 years, with an optional extension for another 14 years. The same is true for a number of other stupid laws that large corporations exploit.

But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in

Agreed, and maybe we should consider constitutional limits on what governments can do. You won’t bribe someone who is legally restricted from helping you…

But honestly, the root of the problem, I think, is the two-party system, which encourages corruption, especially when state governments get to redraw federal districts. We shouldn’t be pushing for individual changes to separate government from big money until we solve the problem with party politics.

Some suggestions:

• proportional representation for House Reps - you vote in your party primary to rank candidates, and seats are awarded in the general based on percent of popular vote; eliminates gerrymandering, with the risk of candidates being geographically consolidated (totally worthwhile tradeoff, and IMO not something that actually matters)
• term limits - not a solution in and of itself (creates a pipeline to industry, encouraging corruption), but could be useful in addition to the first
• campaign finance reform - ban political ads, and only allow organized debates and town halls, with a central location for info about each candidate (w/ fact checking by other candidates)
• end FPTP - preference for STAR or Approval voting, but the specific option isn’t important; needs to be paired w/ a solution to gerrymandering though, because on its own, this doesn’t do much

Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.

That’s true of any economic system. You said you’re not pushing socialism, but you didn’t offer what you do support, so I’ll speak broadly.

Power attracts money, and money attracts power. These are constants in human nature, and they need to be watched very closely. My point is that increasing the ability of governments to make changes that benefit or hurt the market attracts big money, so we should be very careful of anything we ask our governments to do. Having a political system that encourages entrenched politicians just exacerbates the problem. And moving more and more powers to the executive branch reduces the amount of work companies need to put in to get a desired result (e.g. Trump can be bought).

My opinion is that, in general, rules should be crafted and enforced as locally as possible, which would then dramatically increase the work required for a large entity to get what they want. Federal policy should be simple and limited to only what’s needed for a functioning union, and likewise down the chain.

there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there’s only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.

What you’re missing is that as companies get bigger, they lose sight of their competitive advantage. Look at big household names from 50 years ago (or sooner!) that don’t really exist today. Capitalism works by smaller upstarts finding a competitive advantage, exploiting it, and then the cycle repeats.

The way large orgs compete now is by buying small orgs. We could consider blocking corporations from buying other corporations, which should encourage more disruption vs larger orgs (i.e. erode wealth of the big players), since they can’t just buy their competitors.

It’s capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root.

I really don’t think the two are related. Look at fascism before WW2, they didn’t need to erode capitalism first, they just ran on a populist platform, identified a common enemy, and used the platform and enemy as an excuse to eliminate democracy, at which point they could nationalize whatever industries they want. The transition to fascism throughout history has been through political means, not the market.

I suppose it’s possible for it to happen in the other order, but I don’t think it’s inevitable. We had a similar situation w/ Standard Oil taking over everything, and we ended up doing some trust busting to fix the issue. It’s not too late to change course, we just need the public to recognize the problem and demand change.

100% agreed. There are multiple ways to solve this problem, yet we looked at none of them. A work truck shouldn’t be concerned much w/ fuel economy, since it’s a very small group of people that need them. Just like we have special farm diesel, we should have special vehicles that are only available to that demographic, and they can be stripped down versions of similar/same vehicles intended for regular consumers (who will pay a premium for the privilege).

I thought it was something like 75% as energy dense? If you’re targeting a commuter with a max needed range of 150 miles, it seems more than sufficient.

It’s not going to solve the range anxiety problem, but it’s inexpensive, which is perfect for a cheap, around-town second car, which is precisely what the Leaf should be.