Where did I specify “mph”? Could have been furlongs per fortnight for all you know! ;-)

Even slower than the slowest race! The grown-ups won’t let us race together any more, some newfangled thing called elf and softy or somesuch nonsense.

That Mercedes is a piece of junk. Just like its Freightliner cousin.

It may not be a vehicle, but if this is ever outlawed it’ll mean the world’s given up on having fun...

Very true. I imagine we’d get another 1776 kind of thing going as described in The Expanse, where Earth and Mars duke it out and end up essentially separate “nations”.

Back in those days I was a Welding Manufacturing Engineer for Boeing Aerospace. Our sister division that built boats asked us to bid on building the next big windmill. I had been observing the build of the first one that ended up along highway 580.

That is, essentially, some peak colonizer bullshit.

“That is, essentially, some peak colonizer bullshit. The mindset that nothing actually exists until you, a human, arrive to make meaning out of it is the exact thing humans have been doing for ages. When European folk started crossing the pond and settling in America, they saw it as a “free planet,” too, one that…

ElOn BaD

Who will be first to the actual hybrid truck market, Toyota or stellantis

Plugin hybrid is the way forward. Just have to put a cork in all of the BEV zealots who won’t settle for 95% emissions reduction and are holding out for 100%.

“Americans aren’t spoiled for choice when it comes to their pickup trucks”

It’s really just a way to fake-out the computer, as you do NOT want the friction brakes to work.

Amy, tell the Rivian brass that tow-charging is downright genius. All EVs should have this feature. 

This. I’d say watch the series, and that’s the first “off-road review” of the Rivian. The fact they basically finished the prototypes and shipped them off to the bottom of the world - and they made it back (I’m assuming - I’m only on episode 4) is remarkable. 

Hi! Amy from Rivian here- I’m our PR Director. Emme was using a pre-production battery pack with limited capacity, and our engineers tracked vehicle performance in real time. In a production vehicle with our medium-sized pack, you should expect at least 220 miles of range in conditions this difficult- and we’re…

I thought this was interesting

It’s just regenerative braking, no? And a really complicated way to turn gas in one car into electricity in another, but if you need it juice up the Rivian, sobeit. 

Matt Farah had Emme Hall on his podcast a few weeks ago, and she explained the tow-charging. It’s batshit. You put the truck in reverse while hitting the throttle, and somehow (IDK, I’m not an electrical engineer) the resistance of the truck being pulled forward by the towing vehicle and fighting the reversing of the…

The Rivians used on “The Long Way Up” had some shakedown issues for sure including lots of problems with extreme cold, but overall they worked. Pretty impressive technology.