I would like to point out (as I have seen this confused by many non-scientists) that the NIH (National Library of Medicine) provides a service called "PubMed" which collates peer-reviewed (and many pre-print) scientific papers into one database / website. This particular paper (like 99% of the papers on PubMed) was not published by a NIH scientist or by the NIH itself.
In cold climates, EVs should absolutely include a propane tank to generate passenger heat and bring the battery into its proper operating range. Generating high entropy heat with low entropy electricity from a battery offends my sensibilities.
Most modern EVs have heat pumps. Not using heat pumps to generate heat - exploiting the larger than 100% efficiency you get in the process - offends my sensibilities.
If we have propane, and want to use it for energy/heating, it’d be better to burn it at some large central efficient generator (perhaps supplying waste heat as district heating for nearby homes), and use the electricity to power heat pumps.
At -40C, the COP is only going to be 1.4. A natural gas fired cogen plant is 60% efficient so even without transmission losses this ultra complex arrangement is not more efficient at generating heat.
You are conflating the efficiency of generating mechanical energy (where such arguments hold) with generating heat.
> Not good enough to trust your life to if you’re an Albertan.
I believe the heat pumps intended for these climates provided alternatives for those cold days. If you want to stay all electric, it would include a resistive electric heater, but could be paired with some other fuel source.
Personally, I'd seriously consider going ground source where temperatures like this are the norm, but that doesn't work for everyone either.
Good EVs can heat up their battery pretty fast using only electricity.
I know someone who was using a diesel heater in its Mitsubishi I-miev, an old EV that had a terrible factory heating system. It did sound a lot less convenient than electric heating.
Absolutely? Maybe adding a propane tank, the systems to use propane to heat the passenger compartment and battery safely, the complexity refuel it, the extra mass, the extra maintenance, being banned from some underground parking...
I get your sensibilities to be efficient but I think overall it's not efficient or a great idea to add propane and propane accessories to EVs.
Well a Tern GSD has a max carry weight of 379 lbs and a max speed of 20 mph. Only needs a 0.5 kWh battery too. Has infinite range, depending on your fitness.
No has mentioned that the initial assertion is incorrect? The US Government sent troops to remove native inhabitants. Then they gave the land away. Having an army clear the land ahead of time makes a lot of homesteading possible.
And for that matter, the clearance job wasn’t always exactly complete: part of the price of admission to your “free homestead” was fending off the occasional raid by its armed and rightfully furious former occupants.
I suppose a similar sense of menace applies to some of the options on the linked inventory, but my first interpretation of the task was to think of places sufficiently remote/economically-irrelevant as to be uncontested.
Rightfully? What right do they have to the fruit of the earth more than any other person? They only have the right to take it by force, if they can, as they did before from other people and animals.
I agree the assertion with regard to America is incorrect. However, there were several truly inhabitable-yet-uninhabited territories discovered during the Age of Discovery.
I dont think that is a historical take. I think the vast majority expansion was homesteading first, which troops and militias coming in only later and as needed when inevatible resource conflicts arose.
This is is closer to the cycle that expansion has always taken. Groups first expand, develop economic interests, and then fight over those economic interests.
For real, the entire “lawless, free, wild west” cultural image we have was a federally subsidized endeavor from beginning to end. It needs to be re-understood as a giant welfare project for white Americans
The Americas largely were empty land ready to be taken by colonists, because Europeans brought old world diseases that killed 90+% of the native people, often before they'd even seen a European.
Without smallpox et al., it very likely would not have happened at all. The settlers/colonialists would have faced a massively larger existing population, and would almost certainly have lost the violent struggle. There would still be people of European descent in the Americas, but not as part of the dominant culture.
The Aztecs could have picked up tech like gunpowder and horses in a few decades and easily kept the Spanish out of their home turf, if 90% of them hadn't died from Smallpox and Maasles.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, so just to clarify ...
it is absolutely a different claim. The land was not empty at all, though it did have millions less people than it had had a century or two earlier. Ethnic cleansing by violence was absolutely a central part of the expansion of the US (and also New Spain before it). The only difference is the question of whether, in a violent struggle between the American peoples at their pre-smallpox population levels and arriving European settlers, the latter would have won (and with relative ease). My point/claim is that they probably would not.
I remember when I moved to DC many years ago we drove to an art exhibit (in an empty building way away from the metro). There was a guy walking up and down the road saying "$5 to park!" I paid him and in the elevator an older woman smugly told me "It's free to park here!" I told her "I know, I'm paying for him to not break MY window." The look on her face....
Unpopular (?) opinion: don't worry about theft. If you are making developer-money then a $1000-$3000 bike is a trivial amount of money. Just use a cafe-lock with a sturdy chain and go about your life. It gets stolen? Buy a new one. Seems silly to be hesitant on a eBike because of a theoretical concern. Finding an environment where you are reasonably safe from getting murdered by a vehicle should be your primary concern. Everything else is just noise.
I make developer money but that's just stupid. Sorry, no other word for it. $1000-3000 is absolutely not a "trivial amount of money" objectively. If I was going to lose that kind of money, I'd at least want to donate it so it could help someone in need.
The author of this post specifically recommends stretching your budget for the best possible e-bike. By definition, if one stretched their budget for a thing it is nontrivial to replace that thing. Also, people are not robots. Even if you can afford to replace a thing there remains a psychological toll from theft.
Depending on where you live, you can cargo bike with your kids. If you check out the cargo bike forums there are always posts on how to attach baby seats to a bakfiets and such. I've got two kids and my ecargo-bike replaces about 20 car drives a week.
The M5 equivalent is now $1300. 1TB requires the CPU upgrade.