You can ignore politics but politics will not ignore you. Electric vehicles, for some reason, have joined the long list of concepts, objects, and cultural artifacts that have become extremely politicized (just ask David). And they just might influence the next election, but not necessarily in the way you’d imagine.
Stick around for the first story for a truly bonkers quote that I think nicely sums up the whole thing. Also, stick around for Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares blaming politics for possible production cuts.
While we’re at it, did you know that Ford’s super-discounting Mach-Es? They are. Also, lithium prices are down.
I’ve been up for five hours. Let’s do this.
The Big Blue Plasma Beam Of Jobs Is Coming
If you believe recent political polling, then it’s going to be a tight race for President next year. This isn’t a surprise. They all feel like tight races these days. It seems like it’ll be especially tight if it’s going to be a geriatric rematch of President Biden versus former President Trump.
Because of the Electoral College, it’s going to come down to a handful of states that become must-wins for either party: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan.
Do you wanna guess what those four states also have in common? Massive investments from the EV-spending bill that Congress called the Inflation Reduction Act. Like, huge. Check out this graphic from Reuters and you’ll see what I mean. Each state has more than $9.7 billion in EV-related investment.
In fact, if you take those four states, they’ve gotten about a third of the total combined planned investment from the IRA to date. You can scroll through this report from progressive comms/paid media shop Climate Power, which shows where all the investment is going.
This makes total sense, obviously, and some of it can be attributed to the role Michigan and Georgia play in automotive manufacturing. But there’s more to all of this IRA investment than that. The Democrats have seemingly outperformed in almost every major election since 2020, most recently in Virginia, which is a state where the Republican Governor rejected a large battery plant and then lost the state house of delegates. Low unemployment and more jobs has likely helped.
There are few single-issue voters anymore, though some of the success the Democrats have had can be ascribed to backlash against the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Given how tight the margins were in Virginia and elsewhere, the Presidential campaigns will be trying to grab every voter they can.
Democrats, for their part, seem to be rolling out a strategy that can be summed up as: JOBS, JOBS, JOBS. This especially works in places like the four states mentioned above.
Now time for the quote from this Reuters piece on the topic that absolutely blew my mind:
In some communities where EV manufacturing has made an impact, it can be difficult to find a Republican who speaks ill of the industry’s local growth, even if they are wary of the underlying technology.
“I don’t know if I’ll go around on a lithium battery, so if I’m in a wreck I burn in a big blue plasma beam,” said Jesse Williams, the head of the Republican Party in Decatur County, Georgia.
Still, he supports an $800 million EV battery plant under construction in his community – and has no problem with tax credits that help bring the plant to what he describes as a “low-income” area.
That’s amazing. Here’s a Republican from Decatur who is so steeped in anti-EV rhetoric that he thinks a “big blue plasma beam” is going to vaporize him if he wrecks a Tesla. And, yet, he can’t ignore the jobs coming to his district.
Here’s an ad in Nevada, tying a vote against the Inflation Reduction Act to trying to kill the middle class:
According to the Climate Power data (which, it should be noted, made the ad above), there are about 200 proposed investments in districts held by Republican members of the House totaling about $241.19 billion.
What’s key here, though, is that ads like the one above don’t mention electric cars. The messaging is “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS,” which is much harder to demonize than EVs themselves.
Stellantis CEO Concerned Elections Could Change Company’s EV Plans
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares seems to lack the charisma of his former mentor Carlos Ghosn and, frankly, he’s not as amusing as his blunt and tobacco-infused predecessor Sergio Marchionne.
To his credit, he does seem to say what he means and means what he says. This week? It’s all about how elections could impact EV production.
Here’s what Automotive News-affilate Automobilwoche picked up from a press conference:
“There are two important elections next year — the European Parliament elections in June and the U.S. elections in November. It could be that politics will be different then,” Tavares said.
Stellantis may have to change its strategy “if political and public opinion tends toward fewer EVs,” Tavares told Automotive News affiliate Automobilwoche on the sidelines of a press conference at the Mirafiori plant in Turin.
That’s absolutely a thing that could happen. British Prime Minister Richie Sunak made a populist plea to roll back electrification and, you know, just look at The Netherlands.
It would be foolish to not at least be thinking about it.
It Might Be A Good Time To Shop Mach-Es
S&P Global Mobility is out with its November inventory report and it’s about what you’d expect: 2023 models are starting to get replaced by 2024s, EVs are mostly plateauing, and hybrids are killing it.
On the EV trend, it seems that total advertised inventory (outside of Tesla) peaked in October at 135,00 units and slightly tailed off in November. One big exception? F-150 Lightnings. Those have jumped to 10,000 units for sale. There are also a lot of Mach-Es for sale.
But this bit about the Mach-E caught me out:
However, Ford’s commitment to making the Mustang Mach-E a sales success has come at a price – or rather a price cut. More than half of Mach-E’s retail advertised inventory is carrying a below-sticker offer. In Maryland and Virginia dealerships, Mach-E has an average discount of more than $5,000. Big discounts on the Mach-E can also be found in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Kentucky.
Indeed, it’s not hard to find deals in the $4k to $7k range. With the partial federal tax credit of $3,750 for qualifying vehicles, that brings the vehicle closer to price parity with the Model Y.
Battery Packs Keep Getting Cheaper
After a brief rise in 2022, inflation-adjusted Lithium-ion battery prices are falling again, according to the latest battery analysis from BloombergNEF led by @EvelinaStoikou. Pack costs fell 14% this year (largest annual decline since 2018) to $139/kWh. https://t.co/kGMGK1UB2b pic.twitter.com/WriU6Jorxh
— Jesse D. Jenkins (@JesseJenkins) November 26, 2023
Here’s another source basically confirming what Wall Street said, which is that the price of battery packs are starting to fall.
From the article linked above:
The big question, as always, is what happens next. BNEF’s energy storage team expects prices to closely follow the trajectory of raw material prices. We’re projecting pack costs will fall to $133/kWh next year in real 2023 terms. In the long-term, based on the same learning rate as the previous year, battery pack prices are expected to fall below $100/kWh in 2027.
$100/kWh is a nice round number, so curious to see when we hit that.
The Big Question
Have you seen any IRA-related advertising in your district? Pro or con? Are you in a swing district?
Top image: Climate Power
There has to be tremendous cognitive dissonance for any politician to not see renewable tech. Both as ever more so the present as well as the future.
Assuming the sources Tony Seba cites are correct, solar became the cheapest way to generate electric energy in 2019 at 2 cents per kilowatt generated. Nothing else comes remotely close to this price, even the Operating costs alone to run a gas or coal plant Or the costs that transmit power from a gas or coal power plant aren’t this cheap. This a tremendous opportunity for Local job creation and energy independance.
And yes the sun don’t always shine, grid scale batteries will be needed but they won’t have to be li-ion, could be flow, liquid metal (Ala Sagaway), thermal (heated sand) or any host of other technologies.
So if you are a politician that has has taken money from the oil/gas/coal energy sector you have a choice…
1. You can lie, create and support crazy conspiracy theries and attempt to count on your supporters being uninformed at best (or in on the conspiracy theories), which seems like a short term solution which will only get increasingly difficult
2. Switch to support renewable energy and look for financial backers here (which may be a lot of work, but there is also tens-hundreds of billions or more money going this way…)
3. Try to claim or feign* ignorance about the largest shift in energy technology in over 100 years & hope to sway voters with positions on other topics
*the feigning part may not be necessary for some of our representatives, although I think a lot of them are smarter than they appear
One minor proofreading note: “Richie” Sunak is a fitting typo, but his name is spelled “Rishi”. (:
I am seeing many pro IRA ads in Lansing Michigan. Unfortunately for Joe the new battery plant will not be finished by the time votes are cast. The 6 month delay getting shovels in the ground while waiting for an EPA permit looks pretty bad now, because without that delay it would be finished before voting.
One correction: Jesse Williams is from Decatur County, Georgia, a deeply red area on the border of Florida.
Decatur, GA is a wealthy progressive town just outside Atlanta.
I have a dear friend who is a Trump supporter, and the reason we remain friends is because we can have civil discussion regarding politics, and I really do appreciate hearing his perspectives so that I can (try to) understand them.
We talked about this stuff for several hours last week, and my takeaway is that if Trump wins next year, the United States will effectively be destroyed by his ideas and policies. And if Trump loses, the United States will effectively be destroyed by the Civil War that his supporters are already planning.
All in all, 248 years seems like a good run for a system of government in an individual country. Let’s see what’s next.
Well, we’ll have a year to see how it plays out in Argentina, Belgium, and Ireland to an extent, to get an idea anyway
No need to wait that long. Hungary under Orbán, Turkey under Erdoğan, or Russia under Putin are recent examples
Years ago, reading about pogroms in Eastern Europe, I thought “damn at least horrors like this will never happen in the USA. We fought the Nazis!” Now I’m not so sure.
(Edit to Add: Only in my adulthood have I learned the true extent of our slaving history with things like the Tulsa Massacre, so I guess I should never have been so naive.)
We’ve been getting political ads on the local TV station in NH for at least a year, and the number and stridency are only worsening.
It’s pretty ridiculous how early they – I live in an area that gets crossover from New Jersey (since that state doesn’t really have any of their own media markets), and their ads are especially nasty and exaggeratedly alarmist, in addition to being totally irrelevant for me
Here in Canada, the cross boarder ads we get from Rochester and Buffalo seem to all be for sketchy pharmaceuticals and personal injury lawyers. Some angry political attack ads might actually be welcome. 😉
I usually try and stay away from all political conversations here, but just read something somewhere else that has me feeling this way:
Fuck your politics, fuck my politics! Stop arguing over stupid shit and believe in Humanity for one fucking minute. One of the 3 Palestinians shot in Vermont over the weekend was going to college a 1/2 mile from my house, went to visit with family for Thanksgiving and was randomly tortured by a bigot. This shit hits too close to home sometimes, and this is one of those moments.
Have decency and listen to people. No need to always agree, but discuss and learn. The sooner we stop supporting and rooting for political organizations like they are sports teams, and condoning everything they do, the sooner we can actually make improvements and start making an impact for the people that need it the most.
TLDR: I don’t care about your politics, and you shouldn’t care about mine. Lets have a drink and figure some shit out.
“Do unto others” informs most of the political/social decisions I make, but as a concept it seems to be totally lost in this country. Listening to each other is another lost art. I’m all for sitting and discussing things like rational people, but let’s make it a burger instead of a drink.
Oy vey, that ClimatePower.us infographic appearing in the hero image conveys no meaningful information whatsoever.
My whining aside, there may be factors other than IRA directing investment in low-carbon energy. For example, the state of Nevada has granted tax breaks for these project types. I didn’t read the ClimatePower report in total, but what I skimmed the report’s authors seem to ignore state incentives in favor of viewing investment through a voting district lens. That’s a really limited perspective, IMHO.
Chartjunk®
Yep. Someone at ClimatePower didn’t read their Edward Tufte.
Watched way too much YouTube over the long weekend, and was inundated with Mach-E adds. I didn’t notice mention of incentives, but the commercials seem to be aimed at 20-somethings and emphasis was on their active social life zooming around glittering cities. Apparently a 3.8 second 0-60 gets you to the next Beautiful People Bar quickly and with laughter or something.
Why do you subject yourself to ads on YouTube? It’s pretty easy to avoid them for free.
Partly because it reminds me to stop watching stuff after a bit, but also because I’m a cheap bastard who will not deal with Cox for internet, so I use a pad from work which is constrained as to what I can put on it like ad blockers. Mostly the first bit so I don’t couch potato as inclined.
Fair enough, lol. I’ve been in a death battle with Xfinity for years now. I switched to T-Mobile internet at $40 for a minute after Xfinity raised my plan to $107. I told them where to shove it and they magically called me and said I could come back for $45 a month w/no contract. I was pretty pissed that they hid that plan like the scumbags they are, but the T-Mobile service (while adequate) was spotty with speeds depending on the time of day, so I’m back to dancing with the devil.
I cut the cord 20+ years ago—then two years later get a collections agency coming after me for Cox’s box completely out of the blue. I had the receipt from turning it in, which I had the clerk stamp when I handed it in. Of course, the thermopaper receipt was blank by then, but I had known enough to Xerox it & staple receipt to the copy at the time. Still took months to get them off me.
Waiting to see how Glofiber shakes out before I sign.
Funny you say that. FIOS just did the same thing to me this week. I haven’t had them in 8 years and it magically appeared on my credit report on Friday. I still have the receipt from turning in the box way back then because I just had a feeling I’d need it someday. The battle never ends, lol.
I thought 2 years (and it’s not like Cox didn’t have my phone number!) was bad. 8 is nucking futz!
Justifiable righteousness can be so satisfying, though
Had this happen with (long gone) AT&T BB for a box after someone else in the apartment building I was living in moved out and maybe didn’t return it. We didn’t even the same damn address, just the same building (each apartment was a different number as if they were separate residences), assigned box SN didn’t match, and of course not the same SS# on the account for the missing box, plus my account was still active at the time, so WTF would I return the one box I needed in the first place? Still took me 6 months to clear up, with the collection scumbags and AT&T passing the blame back and forth. Finally solved by demanding I get faxed (this was a while ago) the confirmation from AT&T that the box wasn’t mine and that I would call back that very CS rep every 20 minutes until I received it. Got it within a few minutes and sent it to the other jerk-offs. I figured it’s got to be some kind of scam as there’s probably a number of people who will give up and pay just to be done with the aggravation and keep their credit intact.
20-somethings have no money. If you have at least $500 in the bank as a 20-something and/or don’t have to skip meals to make ends meet, you’re in the minority.
When I was a 20-something, even the least expensive new car on the market would have been an absolutely foolish purchase that would have destroyed my financial future, and I made a wage in the upper 25% individually back then. I lived in the ghetto splitting rent with roommates, brown-bagged my lunches, cooked meals at home, used bicycles for most transportation, owned a $1,200 clunker car, and it was still a struggle, between repeat layoffs and long times between jobs draining my savings and student loan debt.
Today, things are generally worse for this demographic than they were back then.
These commercials showing 20-somethings driving high-end new cars are utterly laughable. The vast majority of 20-somethings driving anything like this Mach-E or any new car in general probably grew up in a gated community and had mommy and daddy buy it for them.
But we are likely not the demographic even back then. I suspect most of the crowd here are closet hoarders and cheap to boot, so buying a vehicle that will depreciate precipitously the day after purchase, versus maybe buying two vehicle in the reliable/expense goldilock zone is way more likely, it was then and is now. I also tended to buy cars for the seasons to avoid rust or to include 4X4 as deemed necessary.
I think that is the part that many are ignoring though. friend’s 20 something bought a 2014 Camry Hybrid, because the assumption is Toyota is reliable and a good value. A month later and the ABS pump failed and they Battery in the hybrid is putting up warning lights. The Bill from the dealer is $4,000 to repair. That is heart breaking for a 20 something to deal with to be honest. I imagine a basic 4 cylinder NA Camry of the same vintage would not be requiring a 2500 dollar battery and would in fact go another 100k or so on a rebuilt ABS pump that would cost much less since it is not integrated into a regen brake system.
Ads about 20-somethings driving the cool new car are usually selling youth, not selling to the young. You don’t throw the target demographic in the driver, you show people who are young and attractive, like your target demo wants to feel.
“You can sell a young man’s car to an old man, but not an old man’s car to a young one.”
Don’t remember who…. maybe Bill Mitchell?
Where does that leave chick cars?
Pretty similar place. You can use an attractive woman to sell cars to both men and women, but if you suggest it’s for women, a lot of men will hate it. Still as true now as when Homer accidentally bought the “wrong” Canyonero.
That said, Subaru really found something valuable in actively marketing toward lesbians, and men still drive Subarus.
At the VW dealership…
Scion has entered the chat
When 20-somethings are seen driving a new vehicle these days, many now assume the person is a trustafarian living with their parents, a young corporate sales/finance slave, or is into something illegal.
That’s been my personal observation, rather than assumption.
Or all three!
On one hand 20 somethings have a long life ahead to keep rolling over their sub-prime auto loans. On the other, it mystifies me how they can afford insurance. Even over 30 years ago, when I was in that age bracket and gainfully employed, auto insurance was one of the biggest costs.
I was shocked to learn how much a coworker’s car payment was on a pretty junky used car and told him it seemed like he’d been ripped off. He then explained he meant his car payment and insurance. I was still in my early thirties, but this 21-year-old’s monthly was more than my six month premium. He’d had a couple big speeding tickets, I think, but it was shocking. (It was long enough ago that I don’t remember the numbers, but it was something like 800/month for the insurance several years ago).
Unsurprisingly, he lived with his mom and she paid most of his bills and expenses. Otherwise, I don’t think he could afford it.
Seriously. I just turned 30 this year, and no one I know in my age bracket is rolling around in a high end car. I think the newest car owned by a friend of mine is a 2020 Kia K5. My fiancee has a 2018 Mazda3 hatch and it’s probably the newest, nicest car in his whole friend group. My best friend was absolutely thrilled with her purchase of a 2012 VW Beetle last year. I could go on with examples. The cars most of my coworkers buy are used crossovers. When acquaintances post on Facebook about buying a brand new car, it’s usually a Honda or a Toyota, maybe something domestic. But it’s a big deal for them, and it should be if it’s your first new car purchase! I don’t care what it is.
Of course, I don’t have any truly wealthy friends either. The ones who do have some money have invested it in nice homes and are having kids, not buying expensive cars.
Everything you described sounds like your friends are making smart financial choices.
I got replaced at Widgets Factory by a Tesla Model X! They took our jobs!
Here in the People’s Democratic Republic of Maine, Conservatives not named Susan Collins stopped being a thing. They do still exist, but like a mountain lion on Katahdin, pretty rare. Unfortunately, that means no advertising money is sent this way. Real shame to be missing out.
We all live north of Augusta. Everything south of there is really just north Boston
and its getting worse, half of my neighborhood has sold and its all Mass and CT buying it up
While im only 20 minutes north of Augusta I live on 100 acres so I dont have to worry to much about neighbors giving me grief for much of anything.
After decades of being reddish or purple, CO went blue 15 years ago and ain’t going back anytime soon. So no ads here at all.
Sadly Florida is largely red. That’s the bad news. The good news is less ads.
Yet somehow, I keep reading of the escapades of Lauren Boebert
Every family has its black sheep.
My area of NY state is islands of blue in a sea of red. On road construction in those red areas I’m seeing signs mentioning the Infrastructure law but no mention in the blue areas. Lots of solar farms are popping up as well as more wind turbines. The remaining local news outlets do mention the IRA when talking about green projects.
Looking forward to battery prices continuing to drop. I don’t have a lot of interest in an EV, but I am looking to gridtie my house with battery and solar, and it keeps getting more and more affordable.
I actually don’t get too many political ads in DC. The city is pretty perpetually blue in varying shades. Things locally usually come down to centrist, largely corrupt, establishment Dems who want to maintain the dysfunctional status quo and enrich themselves or Sanders-esque Green Party type candidates who want to change the busted system. I tend to prefer the latter personally because our local government is remarkably dysfunctional.
I do however sometimes get VA political ads, which are an absolute freak show. Despite being a purple state absurd MAGA politics have absolutely engulfed the right there and they’ve been running a wide variety of culture warrior extremists whose ads verge on fascist propaganda. This is essentially a long winded way of saying I’m exhausted with the current state of American politics and don’t see any IRA ads.
Also if Republicans ran an actual centrist they’d win in a landslide, and if Dems ran not-Biden they’d probably win in a landslide. But here we are throwing poo at each other, making fart noises, and fanning the absurd culture war flames again. I really wish we could just fast forward through 2024 because it’s going to be mind numbingly stupid.
Anyway, are they actually discounting Mach Es? There are plenty of cars that aren’t selling right now but I still don’t see significant discounts outside of Stellantis and the bro dozer market. At least in my area a lot of dealerships are desperately clinging to hope that it’s going to be 2021/22 forever.
time to rewatch one of the South Park classics: Giant Douche v. Turd Sandwich
I mean between shambling octogenarian millionaire who seems to care about people and our country and shambling fascist septuagenarian billionaire the choice seems easy enough for me….but I’m not going to sit here and claim either option is enticing.
Hasn’t the shambling fascist been proven multiple times to be lying about being a billionaire?
I believe so, but I can’t keep up with his nonsense. I’ve kind of tuned a lot of it out at this point.
I will die on the hill shouting that Cheeto45’s net worth is likely negative.
They aren’t just shambling. They’re both demented. Literally. One greatly moreso than the other to the point where he could legit be diagnosed, but still. And they’re both authoritarians of different colors, and are much more similar to each other than they are to you or I or most of their followers.
Not sure they are authoritarians as much as beholden to the financial powers that hold the real power. You are 100% correct in that they are very much alike in that way.
That sort of apathy is how the one authoritarian managed to strip half the country of reproductive rights and is seeking to strip LGBT people of their rights too. I don’t like the current offerings of the dems but let’s not pretend they’re as bad
We’re losing rights in all directions, not just reproductive rights, from all sides including and especially from the so-called “moderates”. One example: Try getting a drivers’ license or even just a basic photo ID in the U.S. without being put into a facial recognition database or a searchable photo database accessible by facial recognition software, even if/where your state has explicitly outlawed either or both practices. You can thank the bipartisan effort to slip the REAL ID Act into a bill originally meant to help the victims of a 2004 tsunami, and then passing this provision without debate in spite of widespread public outrage over the issue, never to be repealed, in spite of a majority of U.S. states being unable to fully meet the requirements.
Around here, they’ve been discounting the Mach E for a bit. EV6 has also been seeing substantial discounts. The Lightning isn’t getting discounts and all the dealers seem to be sitting on a pile of used Teslas and Lightnings that are priced far too high to sell, given new pricing.
The Hyundai dealer I talked to just before the Ioniq 6 dropped seemed to think demand would be through the roof, but they’ve started offering discounts on it, too, and they’ve been discounting the 5 for a bit.
Hyundai is also trying to entice current owners of their ICE vehicles to switch too. I probably get an email or physical letter about a special deal they have to trade my Kona N in for an Ioniq every week or two. And you know what? They’re not half bad. I love my car too much to seriously consider one but in the grand scheme of things they’re pretty decent deals that I’m sure some folks will jump on.
I thought I wanted the 6, but it didn’t feel as good as I hoped. I was going to jump on a smoking deal on that limited edition EV6, but it sold, so now I’m in a holding pattern. I don’t really want anything with my usual controls on a screen or capacitive “buttons,” my Niro is efficient (though boring), and not much is getting me excited. But, yeah, the deals are really making EVs look like a possibility.
If I were to suddenly need a new car leasing a luxury EV would be a real possibility. While I hate the beaver teeth grille the deals on the BMW i4 are particularly enticing. Last I checked you can get the dual motor/AWD one for $599 a month and have nearly 300 miles of range, all weather usability, and over 300 horsepower on the excellent CLAR platform.
That’s tempting. Admittedly, I haven’t really looked at BMW. Thanks for the tip.
Even the Lightning is seeing discounts (before incentives) up here in New England. I don’t know if it’s because the ’24 updates were announced or the bloom is falling off the rose.
Moved from a swing-ish state (Ohio) to one of the top 4 listed (Michigan) earlier this year and it’s going to be an interesting ride here. The strikes were telling (yeah we want our neighbors to be better off, and screw the Billionaire-class, but please don’t be so greedy that our local factory gets closed in a couple years) and the Democratic dominance/agenda at the state level the last couple years may result in a highly motived GOP turnout in 2024.
The IRA fund distribution is yet another depressing example of how incentives work in modern American politics. Elected officials have the primary objective of being re-elected, and a secondary objective of amassing more power/influence (because of seniority rules, these are often the same objective) while actually helping their constituents is only done insofar as it advances those objectives. Power has been consolidated to the point that we’re effectively buying votes now.
Also in Michigan. I have a hard time believing the polls that we our state is in a dead heat between the 2 candidates. We are solidly blue in state-wide elections.
But maybe my brain just cannot comprehend my neighbors choosing a second Trump presidency.
I really wonder how MI would show if we adopted ranked-choice voting. Would be one of the more interesting states to make the switch.
“It seems like it’ll be especially tight if it’s going to be a geriatric rematch of President Biden versus former President Trump.”
“IF” is doing a lot of work in this sentence. Putting the politics aside and just speaking on a human level, there is no chance Biden is gonna even make it to the election let alone 5 more years with anything resembling a coherent mental state. The guy is teetering as it is already, and that’s being generous.
I do think that Biden’s mental state is better than you’re depicting while also thinking all politicians should be forced to retire at 70.
Well, have you noticed lately that he needs someone to actually hold his hand when he walks, or sans the escort he does that funny half-assed jog for at least a few steps when he is trying to go to a certain spot (I assume that is on the advice of doctors to help with something)? I happened to see a clip of him from 2022-ish and the difference is striking even in his verbal acuity. It’s classic symptoms of dementia, the almost mirror image of what my stepdad progressed through.
I’m not rooting for it to happen. It’s a sad thing to watch for anyone. That said, it’s only gonna get worse and exponentially so.
I’m in my 50s and there are days when I walk like that. Mind you it’s usually the day after I have had a long run. Maybe Biden has just had too long of a run?
Biden’s delivering some real results, like the ceasefire that half his base has been screaming for (and wouldn’t have been possible if he had been pushing for it loudly in public, btw. Diplomacy isn’t a performative act.)
It’s just that his achievements seem to be buried in the news cycle while an overarching malaise narrative is constantly shoved down our throats by the so-called liberal media.
Eh, nevermind.
I mean are you suggesting Trump is in a coherent mental state? Biden certainly looks older, but Trump has been babbling nonsense for a while now. He just uses a lot of spray tan and pays his doctors to sign health reports that he writes.
Ha! No, Trump is a looney tunes moron, but he’s still got his (to use an old-timey term) “spit and vinegar” regardless of the word salad stand-up bits he loves to do.
Either way, neither of them should be running to run the friggin US. The last thing we need is another old man trying to keep up. The rest of the world is playing Djokovic-level tennis and we are heading towards deciding who gets picked first in a YMCA pickup pickleball match.
pickleball is such a perfect reference. Especially if you’ve had the pleasure of visiting a retirement/golf community in Florida.
eh, in the midwest it is the new Axe throwing waste of money for the 20 something crowd.
Visiting? Shit, I live here!
My friend I think you watch too much right wing internet content. You know how bad athletes can put together a great highlight reel and everyone drools over them and then they fail on the field? Media can do that with politicians. Biden isn’t great but he doesn’t have dementia. That’s just something the right is pushing to make you ignore the fact that Trump is a fucking idiot
I don’t watch a lot of TV but even the stuff on CNN makes Biden seem frail and a little slow. Not demented by any means, but enough to cause be shake my head and ask “can’t we do better then this?”.
CNN has taken a subtle editorial shift to the right since Discovery bought Warner, so I could easily see them making him seem that way.
I prefer “wiry” to describe Biden and “puffy” or “swollen” for Trump.
Your comment makes me wonder if it is the media shifting, or public opinion on the two parties polarizing faster than the media can or is willing to keep up. I live in a red state and have met many people who think Fox news isn’t “right” enough. Especially after the last election.
I stay out of politics, and agree with Taco above that it isn’t about one side winning or losing.
It’s more that 24-hour cable news is largely irrelevant these days and they are just throwing the kitchen sink approach to all of their coverage, trying to scavenge the viewers that are still clinging on, in order to keep their jobs (while not straying too, too far away from the specific corporate ethos). Except when a war is happening, then it’s a ratings bonanza!
So Fox is as far as it can get. Any further would be illegal. Unfortunately “further to the right” means outright lie about stuff and that is where the law steps in at least when it comes to what is put out in the public by responsible parties like large media companies.
I was hesitant to respond to the “responsible parties like large media companies” because the thread was dying out anyway, but in light of what has been revealed today and will be testified to on Thursday, I thought you should be aware of this:
https://public.substack.com/p/ctil-files-1-us-and-uk-military-contractors
Agree to disagree.
The Mach E looks pretty good on paper, but they made some decisions that make it harder to swallow. Changing drive modes is buried in a menu. The button to open the door is weird. The California Route 1 is positioned as though it’s loaded, but the Premium is actually better if you load it up. The whole thing doesn’t feel all that nice when compared against others that end up around the same price, like the Kia/Hyundai options.
The discounts are necessary to make it competitive, but a refresh could also help. Make it a little nicer, add physical controls for the most common uses, and maybe add things like ventilated seats and an opening sunroof, and you’re going to look a lot more competitive. This push to go all-screen seems to ignore that the main reasons people pick Tesla are range and charging network, and that offering something different from them might attract buyers.
It is weirdly refreshing to go back to the normal election issues like jobs, the economy, and cost of living. The detour into social conservatism that happened has been depressing but now that it’s starting to be an election loser hopefully we can go back to issues where reasoned debate is possible.
…and maybe we can make our decisions based off of facts, logic, and a desire to take care of people rather than extremely inconsistent interpretations of a 2000 year old book? A man can dream.
V10omous phrases your “a desire to take of people” to how the Right hears it: “we know better than you what’s good for you”, whether that’s what you intended or not. Plus, facts and logic aren’t what they used to be…
Correct.
Neither party has a monopoly on facts, and it’s dangerous to think they do.
That said, those are things you can have a reasoned debate on. I mean, we’ve disagreed on plenty of stuff on this website, but none of that is really stuff that would (at least from my perspective, and hopefully yours) think less of you as a person.
The problem right now is the hard swerve into social conservatism means you have stuff like human rights being up for debate for some reason – and I can’t abide that.
I yearn for the day when political debate is back to the stuff we might argue about here!
I mostly agree with you.
I have basically zero appetite for what’s on offer from religious/social conservatives. Some of their actions frankly horrify me.
***I very carefully and explicitly do not want to imply equivalence in severity between the statements above and the statements below***
I do worry there’s a slippery slope with “human rights” discourse on the left being expanded to include things it never has before, and then those topics being considered verboten (on pain of cancellation) for further debate of any kind.
Kind of like what the Green Party in Ireland is attempting to do literally today. As we speak.
This take is good and you should feel good
Oh, that’s already happened in some areas. Which is why I firmly believe we need a functional conservative perspective in our government, and we don’t have one right now. As much as I enjoy watching the Republicans take a well-deserved thrashing at the polls right now, I do not think this is good at all. There needs to be debate and compromise in politics, and right now you have one party that is so far off its rocker the other party is becoming the defacto choice for anyone sane, whether you agree with them or not. That’s just terrible.
Couldn’t agree more. There absolutely needs to be a coherent counterargument to whichever side is in power, to keep the worst instincts in check.
The Christian nationalist agenda isn’t going away from the GOP platform, even if it’s being kept a bit quieter. Look up Project 2025.
It’s not going away right now, no, but it is losing elections, and the more it loses elections the better off we are.
That said, I don’t think it’s time to complacency, it’s still important to show up, organize, and vote against it. But things have not been going well for the Christian nationalists in elections. Which is at least gives some hope.
Here’s to getting rid of the people who don’t want me to exist.
Elections of late no… Overlooking there is an extreme Maga Christian nationalist that is 2nd in line to the office of the presidency right now…
As for $100/kWh, if that price point is reached, I don’t think it’s going to last. The elements composing the batteries and electronics are bottlenecks in battery and EV component production. All of these oversized vehicles with crappy aerodynamics will ultimately consume all of the resources available, and since reparability was not a major design consideration in these vehicles, they are future landfill fodder. Which is a shame, because with the right design, these EVs could last “forever”(on the scale of a human lifetime, at least) with minimal maintenance and upkeep costs.
But you can’t get endless growth that way.
If I sell you a vehicle once a lifetime, that is not as valuable as selling you one every 3 years.
You won’t get endless growth no matter what. That’s the ideology of a cancer cell. An attempt to achieve this on a planet of finite resources will eventually yield a collapse of sorts, and massive impoverishment/pollution as a consequence for those living in this new future.
But at least for a short while a small group of prominent shareholders will have maximized their returns and the amount of numbers next to their name on a screen, right?
Elon will be driving a cybertruck around Mars in 2 years, tops. Then we can have infinite growth on two planets!!!! \s
I think you missed the implied sarcasm.
Nah. I was simply apathetic to it. Probably because the issue of environmental sustainability AND accessible inexpensive freedom of movement are issues I both weigh heavily, and both of which are under threat.
you say that and yet we still have plenty of instances where the longevity of the batteries, specifically individual cells can take out an entire car as the price to repair effectively scraps the car. Until they make the process of swapping out the cells and balancing the battery cells something anyone can do safely, that one issue will continue to be…well the issue,
I’m well aware. This is why I’m a proponent of high AH prismatic cells arranged as a single series string, with minimal electronics, and placed in an accessible location. EVs are not rocket science, and it is possible to design them to be simpler to work on than ICE cars from the 1950s, and that is precisely what you want so that illiterate high school dropouts can repair them while drunk. That is the ultimate in sustainability from a repair perspective. Modern EVs are the exact opposite, and getting worse, which only plays further onto the detractor side of the culture war.
As for longevity, at the other extreme, there ARE Tesla battery packs lasting 500,000+ miles. Imagine that coupled with longer shelf life plus reparability, with an electric motor that has one or even zero moving parts. Without the need for emissions controls, we could have EVs no more electronically complicated than cars from the OBD-II era, and they could be designed to be repaired with basic tools.
Do this, and 1 million mile cars before being sent to the crusher could become the norm…
So much of the EV backlash could be wiped out in an instant if the ill-conceived and impossible bans are rolled back or canceled, as they inevitably will be anyways.
So much of the right’s pathology is “someone is coming to take this thing you hold dear” (it doesn’t help that the left’s is “we know better than you what’s good for you”).
Threatening to take away someone’s truck, even if at some vague date in the future or in another state, is a toehold of truth where exaggerations and propaganda can lead to real backlash. No one believes the bans will stop at California or New York if Democrats keep winning elections.
EVs ought to be good enough to stand on their own merits. End the bans. Incentivize battery plants, domestic manufacturing of EVs, and clean energy, and emissions will fall on their own, with better buyin from all.
Very much this.
Future fossil fuel scarcity will limit truck/SUV use on its own. There is no need to ban ICE. If someone decides to make an affordable EV for working class people, and the car is repairable and useful, they will create their own market and take off on those merits. If the U.S. doesn’t do it, China will.
I’m not onboard with any EV subsidies though, but the same can be said for fossil fuels.
remembering when the right politicized light bulbs… your absolutely right. Idiots clambering for their incandescent bulbs. “We want to pay marginally less for something that will cost us more to operate AND not last as long.” Eventually rolling back the ban and absolutely nobody cared in the end. Bans are just fodder for politicians to control the feeble minded.
The lesson is the same as always, and ought to have been learned by now.
Consumers are willing to give up some convenience to ban things that have been proven as immediate and direct health hazards (asbestos, lead paint)
Consumers are willing to embrace green technologies if they save money in the long run and don’t reduce quality of life (solar/wind energy, efficient appliances, LED bulbs, hybrid cars).
No one other than weirdos is willing to make deep sacrifices to quality of life over climate change. Right now, banning ICEs for EVs is a deep sacrifice for a lots of people. So is going vegan, downsizing their homes, reducing consumption of Chinese goods, etc. That is why those things don’t have the same success record as the costless changes.
It’s incumbent on the people who care about climate change to make as many of the necessary societal changes as costless as possible, or they will never happen. Yelling, screaming, and shaming have never and will never work.
Yes. You hit the nail right on the head.
Asbestos and lead were restricted (not banned) without as much opposition because the harm was already present and visible, not because it was more significant or there was less of a quality of life impact. The problem with applying that to CO2 is that by the time the impact gets severe enough that it’s more painful than the immediate costs of reducing emissions it’ll be far too late.
LEDs are an interesting example – they got adopted so widely in part because incandescents were restricted, and there was plenty of political screaming about it. Without a nudge, plenty of people would have just stuck with incandescents because they were cheaper at the point of purchase.
I’d say that none of the ICE bans are in any way an inconvenience for anyone today, because they’re over a decade away. Unless battery technology and production abruptly stops advancing, by the time they do take effect ICE passenger cars are unlikely to be competitive with electrics.
except, I recall quite well that all of the curly cue bulbs that they suggested would last longer, in fact, did not.
The ban did not go into place until LED bulbs were well tested and widely in the marketplace. At that point there was little debate… except for tin-foil wearing types.
But yes, CFLs left a bad taste in some people mouths.
The fact that EVs have become a political football in some nonsensical culture war is definitely a trait of today’s clown world. It doesn’t help that the cars themselves are so heavily tech-laden, which plays right in to the agendas of various control freaks within major institutions that one side of the cultural war rightfully fears, but the technology itself has been more than ready for decades, IMO, which bolsters the arguments on the other side of that same culture war. Massive 100+ kWh packs in overpriced crossovers/SUVs/trucks is simply the wrong application for the technology. We need efficient platforms for EVs, as was necessitated by the less-dense battery tech of the 1990s, since it was good enough for 200 miles range back then in the right design.
I’m in an absolutely ignored state for most national politics. Idaho is assumed to be red, and the influx of more hard right folks has only strengthened that. I do live in a bluer part of the state, and the local politics are getting brutal as more right-wingers move in and liberals move out of state. It’s leading to nasty fights for control, seeing candidates and their supporters ignore campaign laws, supporters pushing conspiracy theories about their candidate being cheated because he lost and they saw more of his signs, and nonpartisan races filled with candidates running on partisan affiliation instead of issues.
The interesting thing for Idaho is that we’re seeing IRA money for solar and wind farms that would have likely been built anyway, as well as a bunch of money from the CHIPS Act, but it’s not likely to change the political landscape, so I do not expect to see much advertising emphasizing it.
Based on the words and actions of both our former and current president, it would seem that a “wait and see” approach is best for car buying. If Biden wins, I’d be looking to see what further subsidies are available and make my choice. If Trump wins, just buy a hybrid.