relevant: https://brython.info/
Brython is designed to replace Javascript as the scripting language for the Web. As such, it is a Python 3 implementation
> “[He] slowly began making money to further expand his exploit collection,” reads his Doxbin entry. “After a few years his net worth accumulated to well over 300BTC (close to $14 mil).”
> KrebsOnSecurity is not publishing WhiteDoxbin’s alleged real name because he is a minor (currently aged 17)
If they're 17 years old, there's no way they bought into BTC recently.
5 years ago, BTC popped up to around $20k, and then fell down to near $3k. It took until December of 2020 to get back up to 20k.
If they were on Tor, they would have known about BTC, and if they were interested in black-hatting, BTC would have probably been the most accessible financial instrument for them to use in that pursuit. I'm 99% sure someone like that would have had a stash kicking around somewhere.
Think anyone paid the group for work? That'd be a good way to fill the coffers.
Because Tesla knows that the vast majority of people will never need it.
Most people use their cars for well under 100 miles per day. With a battery-electric car, you can charge it at home. You never go to a station for anything -- not fuel, not fast-charging, not battery swapping. You come home, plug in, and get on with your life.
People will make a few long trips per year, and those cases are well handled by the supercharger network. It doesn't take long, and corresponds to down-time that most drivers should be taking anyway.
There is nothing for them to gain by a massive redesign that would gain most users little to nothing. Instead, they take the stable battery pack and design around it, even making it a structural part of the vehicle to save weight.
Replaceable battery packs for cars solve a non-problem. People who would want them would do better purchasing a gasoline car, which are readily available and will remain so for quite some time.
> Because Tesla knows that the vast majority of people will never need it.
I don't know what portion of US drivers park either on the street or in a parking garage, but I'm pretty sure it''s tens of millions of people. Driveways pretty much don't exist in my neighborhood. It's all parking garages and street parking.
Lining every parking garage and neighborhood street with dozens of chargers may be the optimal solution, but I'm skeptical.
I think people overthink how complicated EV chargers are (specifically slow chargers). At they’re core, they’re just a normal 3-pin plug with a fancy computer controlled switch. All of the heavy lifting is done by the car, it has the inverter, the battery controller, and all the monitoring equipment.
All the charger does is tell the car how much power it’s allowed to use, authenticates the car, and flicks the switch on at the command of the car. The charger also has a cheap-as-chips current transformer so it can make sure the car doesn’t consumer more power than it allowed, and will flick the switch off if the car misbehaves. The car is responsible for everything else.
So at the end of the day, and on street slower charger is a metal post with a plug on the outside, and a Raspberry Pi and relay inside. They can, and will eventually be, dirt cheap to manufacture. As for power cables, well, and can just slice into the cable already powering houses and lampposts.
AC slow chargers (for overnight or at work) are cheap and simple. Basically the same as installing an outlet for a clothes dryer or oven with a circuitry box to act as a relay and monitor.
DC fast chargers are more complex and expensive but still way cheaper than a robotic mechanical battery swap system that works across multiple makes and models of car. And more of these are being installed literally every day:
We're getting to the point where many newer EVs are coming with 300+ miles of range that can do an 80% charge in 20 minutes.
The swappable batteries seems like a great solution for mopeds etc. but for giant car batteries I think better and cheaper batteries will outpace any advantages that battery swapping has within a few years.
Most people in most big cities don't have private parking they can equip with a charger, and they struggle to even find parking at all. You'd have to make every single parking space in a big city a charger to make this approach scale.
Most people in big cities don't have cars. Most of the cars in a city are commuters, who go home every night to the burbs. It's the same reason cities have relatively few gas stations.
People who insist on having cars in cities will either find places to charge, continue to own gas cars, or switch to ride sharing plus public transport. It is not a case for Tesla to change their entire design.
Is there public data about how big the network would need to be if 90-100% of long distance travel is switched from 5 min gas station stops to super charging; both in terms of throughput and latency? And/or studies of (probably rare) mass transit events that may or may not be expected; thinking natural disasters and large events away from population centers like burning man or Coachella.
The scale. Tesla batteries are like 900 pounds. You now have to make a machine that can move 900 pounds of electronic hardware at mass scale. Meanwhile, if your machine only needs maybe 20lbs of batteries, suddenly that machine can be your user, and the infrastructure problem got a lot simpler and cheaper to solve. I have no clue why tesla isn't considering a low cost, <$500 EV, be it scooter or bike. I think their brand name and a price point that makes it easy for people currently on the sidelines to buy in would easily be enough to dominate this market overnight. At this point is just these companies from china you get from sketchy amazon sellers. I don't see schwinn ebikes when I drive around, they are too costly, I just see these cheapo foldable amazon ones that go by 50 different names, which I think is telling where the latent demand really lies (not in the saturated luxury ebike/escooter market which doesn't seem to move much product).
One of Elon's friends was killed in a motorbike accident, I think as a result of this Tesla isn't ever going to approach the 2-wheel-transport problem.
According to "Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors", it may not have been abandoned. Instead, the feature may have never been planned:
"In 2013, California revised its Zero Emissions Vehicle credit system so that long-range ZEVs that were able to charge 80% in under 15 minutes earned almost twice as many credits as those that didn’t. Overnight, Tesla’s 85 kWh Model S went from earning four credits per vehicle to seven. Moreover, to earn this dramatic increase in credits, Tesla needed to prove to CARB that such rapid refueling events were possible. By demonstrating battery swap on just one vehicle, Tesla nearly doubled the ZEV credits earned by its entire fleet even if none of them actually used the swap capability."
They tried and failed already. Lots of reasons why this wouldn't work with cars:
- The battery is expensive and makes up a large chunk of value of the car itself. Being able to swap out a dying years-old battery for a fresh new one doesn't make sense.
- Swapping an electric car's battery is time consuming and requires specialized equipment and labor.
- The real utility for battery swaps for cars isn't in the middle of the city but in remote highway stops, where setting up such stations isn't feasible.
I am actually more wondering why we do not see battery trailers. Imagine a two wheel, 500 lbs trailer that you pull for the next 30 miles between two 1 minute stops on the highway that recharges your cars battery within those 30 miles. I know there are prototypes, but something seems to stop it from becoming large scale. Inefficient? To much overhead? Can normal drivers not be trusted with a 500 lbs trailer? I would like to know...
I don't think there'd be much actual time savings. Every time I get off the highway to get gas (which means slowing down to exit, stopping at the bottom on the exit ramp, driving to the gas station, pumping gas, getting back on the highway, etc), it ends up being close to a 15 minute stop. I'd be surprised if you can pull off, hook up a battery trailer (and pay for it), then get back on the highway in a few minutes.
Might as well just stop in for a 20 minute charge at a DC fast charger, many cars can do an 80% charge in 20 minutes.
This actually sounds doable if the battery charging trailer is self driving (and self docking). You would lose only minimal time slowing down for the docking/undocking. Easier to test on select pieces of highway with predictable self driving conditions. And the highway gives you space and time for charging, when you need it most for long trips.
We're still far from having self-driving cars, I don't think we'll have self-driving battery trailers running around the highways anytime soon. And you've just more than doubled the cost of these battery trailers by putting motors and control systems in them.
My gas powered car gets around 300 miles of range before the fuel light comes on and I need to make a 10 or 15 minute stop to refuel. I think I could survive with an EV that gets 250 miles of range between charges (300 mile rated range, assuming 80% charge) before needing a 20 minute charge stop, I need to stop and stretch my legs, eat, or use the restroom more often than that.
Too much overhead and DC fast charger networks are already approaching parity with the speed you could make that work. Trailers add another set of wheels to the ground, too, which is a failure point. Might as well just put it on the roof or something instead.
Because they would need to announce it first, spend 10 years talking about how it's right around the corner but never delivering, and then maybe they could deliver it.
We'll see these battery swaps right after FSD actually becomes L3.
This is interesting, I'm no supporter of Russian media or Russia in general but RT is the media outlet that just came out with this very interesting newly released documentary about the current conflict from the Russian perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Z02bMtOK8
The closure of these production companies as satisfying as it feels from a western perspective, will mean less access to other (potentially legitimate) point of views.
