478 from the street to the headlines



Above, my first Rivian sighting. They're real.

Overall, it wasn't a bad looking truck. It seemed mid-sized, which is perhaps better than being super huge. Everything but the front end blended in pretty well with the other vehicles around.

But that front end...

They seem to be going for "different" or "distinct" with a little bit of "from the future" or "happy robot face" thrown in. 

While it's supposed to be futuristic, there's something nostalgic about it for me. What does it remind me of?

The Renault LeCar? Maybe.

An AMC Pacer? Yes, a little bit.

The robot from Buck Rogers? 

Anyway, it's an electric truck. Why it took fully a decade for someone to make an electric truck when trucks are America's top selling vehicle and electric vehicles are exploding, I don't know. It's tough to make a vehicle. 

Electric drivetrains promise to make designing and manufacturing new models easier. On the small scale, that is proving to be true.

At $5k, this scooter doesn't really shine in affordability. Why did I screencrap it? I think I liked the name, a friend and I wrote a screenplay with the same title years ago.

This one, I think I liked the style. Plus, it's a step forward in industrial design. That body is made from folded metal, and gets it's strength from the folds. Kinda cool.

And now onto exciting battery news.

Not entirely sure how I feel about this. I guess I'm pro-electric, compared to gas. But I'm also pro-small, and anti-car, and this move to spend tax payer money to support big corporations building new service stations is, well, more cars. So, yeah, progress, but maybe not quite in the right direction.

Those charging stations might look a bit like this, although they'll likely have more conveniences, like a Starbucks with a line to the bathroom and no edible food.

But did you know that solar awning is basically an expensive roof? 

It would take a few acres of solar panels to actually supply the energy to that rapid charger.

Meanwhile, Toyota has been pulling some headlines for refusing to fully embrace electrification.

Their argument, which makes a fair amount of sense, is that we can also make cars more efficient, and look at alternative zero waste power plants.

Unfortunately, one of the technologies they're betting on, hydrogen fuel cells, require even more infrastructure than electric chargers. This, unfortunately, reduces their efficiently from 90% (what the car gets) to about 25%, what the whole system gets.

A grid-tied EV, on the other hand, converts about 69% of the power put into the system into actual driving. (Or listening to the radio of whatever.)


It uses copper coils instead of rare earth metallic magnets. 

Really? No one thought of that before?

Our next door neighbors, a French family, had some friends visit the other day. They all arrived on electric bikes.

They were American brands, but all featured an external-mounted battery and mid-drive motors.

I've heard these ebikes are tremendously popular in Europe, and I can see why. They looked like they were having some serious fun! 

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