My GE air conditioner does the same damn thing. I am uncomfortable in overly cold rooms and usually set my AC between an ecologically-friendly 73 and 76 degrees. But I still have to take that extra step of switching between Eco and Cool, despite the fact that I'm already doing my part to save the environment.
In the grand scheme of things it's not a major inconvenience. But as you rightly noted, it's an example of companies trying to force me to conform to their standards. Even when I'm not only meeting but exceeding their standards.
Yes, I have noticed this, and it's maddening. Apple recently changed their "Focus" mode so if you want your phone on Do Not Disturb, you have to schedule it. No more simple toggle-on, toggle-off switch. Something comes up, unscheduled, where you want your phone off, and you don't know how long it will last? Go fuck yourself. All you can do is guess. Why would they do this? To make it as difficult as possible to put your phone on DND and slow down their data pipeline. It makes me so furious that if my hearing aids weren't an absolute necessity for my life, and if they didn't work so seamlessly with the technology I use in my job in conjunction with my phone, I'd have switched phones.
That irritated me almost to the point of throwing my phone, but I figured out if you pull down from the upper right corner it gives you the option to turn on and off. Although, sometimes it's "sleep" and sometimes it's "do not disturb". I don't know what the difference is and don't care enough to figure it out.
He is talking about Control Center I believe. Just put your finger in the upper right corner and swipe down. If it's not on there, I believe you can customize it and add it. Look carefully at the screen after you have swiped.
I agree with you. If I had to change the settings every time I turned the a/c back on it would drive me crazy.
Eco mode is one of the dumbest things ever. I'm sure it actually makes the unit less efficient, especially considering most people probably have no idea how it works. You can tolerate a warmer room with air movement. So, no air moving, people will just turn the temp down lower to be comfortable. So much for "saving the environment".
I understand what you mean about control, but I think the utter stupidity is what really makes me rage.
YES TO ALL OF THIS. After realising in June that my 2 year old laptop keeps freezing when I'm not even running say programs, I ran updates. It was still bastard slow, but the main difference was Microsoft had added a "progress pride" flag to the search function. If I clicked on search, it brought up articles about the Alphabetically Oppressed from Bing.
I was incensed at the idea of a software computer pushing political nonsense on my machine, that I bought, and I use. I tried removing it with no success. I wrote some very angry feedback to Microsoft. Next time I opened the computer, the hideous thing was gone. I am still enraged.
I love Christmas, love celebrating it. I don't want my computer to tell me to celebrate it. So the thought of being told to celebrate the QT brigade and cheer the current fashion for self-abuse and grooming of the mentally ill and underage to partake in the same is beyond hideous to me.
OMG yes -- "Everything" has saved my bacon on more than one occasion when I absolutely had to find a file I had squirreled away seven layers deep on a backup USB drive.
My thoughts are you are spot on with this one. Its deliberate ideological, statist nudging, Cass Sunstein style nudging. The nudging unfortunately, increasingly is being done to Harrison Bergeron levels of idiocy. Sorry Kevin, Eco mean Ecology. Full stop. Eco=Ecology=Environment=Social Engineering. I wish more people would grasp that “ Environmental “ anything is code for steering the masses. Its been sold as Mother Earth etc but it has a very different meaning to those who would rule us all. WE the People are the Environment to be controlled.
Read my essay on wilderness preservation v.s. environmentalism. I think you may find it interesting. Part of the trick is to make people on the right so correctly frustrated with "environmentalism" which is indeed evil WEF shit, that they will side with crony big business against it. But this is part of the con to justify mowing down small towns and the few remaining wilderness areas.
So many examples of this. Digital anything is an absolute bugman plague. Why does everything need a clock? Who cares if the fridge has wifi? In fact I'd rather it didn't. Analogue technology was perfectly functional, easily repaired, and far less likely to malfunction because it was tied to physics rather than the programming skills of subcontinental H1Bs. But globohomo inc. loves digital due to the control it provides them.
Electric motors are the newest example of pointless innovations. Internal combustion engines last longer, take much less time to refuel, and can actually be repaired. No matter. Everything will be electric, not because electric motors are a superior technology - they are inferior in essentially every way - but because it forces everyone to buy new stuff.
See also: replacing perfectly good incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents, which are more expensive, put out ugly light, and incredibly toxic.
My hypothesis is that our degraded corporate sector, for far too long run into the ground by Midwits of Business Administration, has lost the ability to produce anything usefully new, and has therefore aligned itself with the state to force everyone to buy the uselessly new.
It's not even environmentally sound, it takes as much energy to make a car as it uses over its lifetime. It's sheerly a ploy to keep the crony transport industry afloat and of course literally plugs in nicely to the whole 15 minute cities WEF thing. An electric car is perhaps tolerable in urban areas with temperate climates for short trips, but it's utterly untenable for rural areas where there are temperature extremes that require air conditioning or heat that sap range quickly, long hauls, and heavy loads to haul. Any extremely cold weather like I have in northern Michigan also drastically saps range. It's orientation towards urban areas with temperate climates is arguably by design, as many of us "regressive" reactionaries already live in marginal rural northern areas or hot neo-tropical areas like Florida.
Yes, and now they’re noticing that because the batteries are so heavy, tire wear happens much more quickly, with an as-yet unanticipated impact on roads and highways. After I’m gone these used batteries will be a huge environmental issue.
Not to mention strip mining lithium. It's all a giant con. I am actually an old school Earth First! wilderness preservationist, and aghast about what "environmentalism," has become.
Uncle Ted couldn't take it anymore, god rest his soul.
That's an interesting wrinkle. Have they factored additional road work into their environment impact and energy efficiency analyses? Lol we know the answer.
It's similar to when heating bills increased following the ban on incandescent light bulbs. The "inefficient" "waste" heat was helping to heat people's homes; in its absence the furnace had to work that much harder. But this never occurred to any of the midwits who mandated their use.
Too funny. There’s a proposal to build a so-called “protected bike lane” in my area. But they can’t reduce lane capacity or remove the street parking on the street. So they have to purchase additional right of way in the empty and undeveloped canyon and widen the road. All that of course requires earth work, concrete, asphalt.
But they insist “we” must build this to get more people put of cars to slow the climate crisis.
That's insane, a preservationist which is the right kind of green gets outraged by the machine destroying local pristine areas that is local wildlife habitat and areas to hike.
Edward Abey spits on that shit from his high porch in the sky daring to call that green or a legacy of Uncle Ted and old school Earth First! Sometimes something used to happen to equipment like that, preservation is not a left wing thing. Connect the dots.
For a long time, bicycles have been the low man on the traffic totempole. Without supporting the climate narrative, I do think it's ok to give them a proper lane.
Electric motors and lithium batteries are great for micromobility (ebikes, scooters, powered wheelchairs, etc.). My battery-powered screwdriver is my favorite tool.
My wifi thermostat has been a life saver to help diagnose what was wrong with our central AC. Multiple contractors came and failed to figure out the problem but the thermostat has a little website that includes graphs with on/off and temperature history.
That data plus a temperature sensor on the outlet vent helped me pinpoint the fact that the heater was sometimes turning on when the thermostat called for cooling. It turns out heat was triggered by a too-sensitive freeze protection sensor...
Ironically (in the context of this article), the thermostat brand is ecobee but it never caused trouble.
It's not that adding electric motors to things that didn't have them isn't great. It's that they're a shit replacement for internal combustion engines in almost every case, and no one would be making the change if the state wasn't leaning on them to do it.
I agree that the state is leaning too hard although every lie has a kernel of truth. With electric cars, that kernel of truth is smog in polluted cities.
Tailpipe emissions are a hard-to-quantify negative externality of internal combustion and catalytic converters full of precious metals are not so realistic in developing countries.
I've been following the Contrarian for several years. All common sense, facts and fearless facing of reality, and the comment section is generally just as informative.
I soooo agree. Not only have they not made basic appliances better, they have planned obsolescence built into them and made it almost impossible to repair economically so that you have to buy an even less functional appliance. Since they can’t/won’t improve them they make them throwaway.
What pisses me off most is the "auto-off" feature on modern cars. You know, where the engine automatically stops until you start moving again. Usually, when you disable this feature, it turns itself on again the next time you start the car.
This is TERRIBLE for your engine, and most wear in your parts comes from starting the vehicle. Soon enough, this will be a mandatory feature and won't be able to be disabled.
Modern cars are turning into iPhones. There are still cars from 1968 putting around, but today's cars are practically unserviceable by an amateur mechanic due to the sheer amount of electronically controlled parts.
Insightful essay, I just have one small quibble and this is this.
"These are design choices, not inevitable outcomes of “progress.”
I would argue that "progress" in the most dastardly sense of that word is built into technological systems. Jacques Ellul calls this technique by which he means not just the technique of building machines, but the social rules that are required to allow them to run. It's more clear if I use a large scale example, which is you don't get jet air travel in a vacuum, it requires an FAA so the jets don't crash into each other which in turn is predicated on a large intrusive government, an international transport system to transport the raw materials to make the jets, technical training of the pilots, etc, etc, in short it is part of a large bureaucratic system. Any bureaucratic system is in turn easy prey of terrible incentives through bad leadership, lack of accountability, the perverse incentive to grant gibmes, etc. This is what Curtis Yarvin means when he says Chthulu always swims left.
At any rate as an oil lamp enjoyer I think you would also enjoy Jacques Elul's "Question concerning technology," book if you have not already read it.
Like cars that stop the engine when you stop, even when you’re still in drive. I almost died when I borrowed my mom’s fancy new luxury car. The engine took a while to start up when I was trying to make a left turn. My beloved 2008 Subaru doesn’t do that crap!
My 2019 Kia Sorento has three "drive modes" -- Normal, Eco, and Sport. Compared to Normal, Eco shifts gears at lower RPM and reduces throttle responsiveness; Sport does the opposite while also tightening the steering. Josh probably already knows the punch line -- despite one of the modes being named "Normal" the car defaults to "Eco" every time you start.
(No, I didn't buy the car because it was "good to the environment". I bought it for practical durability and cheap cost to operate, which it does well.)
"Look at the ridiculous Ford F-150 Lightning, the all-electric version of the famous work truck. Nobody wants it. It has shitty range. Load it down like you would any truck, and its range is even worse. And it costs much more than the normal truck.
Ford isn’t making these because of customer demand. Ford is making them because of US and increasingly international demands—demands they have no moral or legal right to make—to service ESG goals."
Yes, Josh, yes!! I work for a company that is... reliant... on the automotive industry and is positioning itself for our "inevitable" EV future of anything with wheels. As a stated goal, the company is doing a fantastic job of positioning towards this. But, I try to gently point out - exactly what you have here - this forecasted future of "EV everything" is not the traditional trajectory of "industry innovates and ignites consumer desire." Western governments are, essentially, making internal combustion engines ("ICE") *illegal* or close enough at some pre-determined point in the future. Consumers are responding to that threat, not a real desire for EV technology in its current state.
A big growth area is commercial vehicles - think buses and semi-trucks, and agricultural and mining equipment. These are industries that are *very* cyclical, as fleets are often replaced in large swathes. If you know that, barring any changes, the EU or US or China or whatever is going to make it illegal or prohibitive to keep buying ICE vehicles, then any replacements you buy today are likely to already conform with laws hitting maximum effect in, say, 5 years. That's why these segments are on the forefront of the EV industry. People replace passenger vehicles much more frequently (and the masses are lower information than say, trucking industry insiders), so the impact to the passenger market is not significant yet (at least compared to the other segments).
NOW - what is taken to be "fact" is that these laws and mandates are inflexible and permanent. What I've tried to ask leaders in my company is - what do we do if these EV subsidies and mandates are simply reversed? You would think that you asked (literally) "what if the Earth suddenly started rotating in the opposite direction?" It's not even on the radar as a risk. To them, it sounds preposterous. Perhaps that's due to close reading of the tea leaves and insider knowledge that my concerns are met with confusion. But, the broader point remains - this is government action, not consumer demand.
It's this "arrow of progress" leftist thinking that acts like this is settled. We're seeing enough centrist and right-wing push back and movements across the Western world. Hell, Trump or DeSantis or whomever could simply get elected and decide to kill this stuff in the US - then what? Supporters would say that's only prolonging the inevitable once "right thinking" lefties are back in control.
The company I work for, for instance, has invested an absurd amount of money into EV to the detriment of our immediate stock price and profitability, all on the back of government coercion world-wide. Some may ascribe a moral judgement to that - this is the right thing to do to pivot away from ICE vehicles - but we also have to be ready. The US is hilariously inept at fixing basic infrastructure, yet we're going to do what? Pop up a million charging stations in the next decade? And what happens when everyone plugs their cars in at night? We'll flood power grids.
Instead of slow-rolling this and acknowledging the obvious - that EVs are still too expensive and limited, and the infrastructure necessary is virtually non-existent - and focus on increased development of the tech, we have *governments* decide that the transition should happen and when, damn the torpedoes.
What if you support fighting climate change? What about the potential damage to actually effective "eco friendly" solutions, once you've tried and failed spectacularly to strong-arm the market to accept a technology that is simply not ready yet?
My GE air conditioner does the same damn thing. I am uncomfortable in overly cold rooms and usually set my AC between an ecologically-friendly 73 and 76 degrees. But I still have to take that extra step of switching between Eco and Cool, despite the fact that I'm already doing my part to save the environment.
In the grand scheme of things it's not a major inconvenience. But as you rightly noted, it's an example of companies trying to force me to conform to their standards. Even when I'm not only meeting but exceeding their standards.
The very fact that they purport to have "standards" that you, the owner, are obligated to service, is the outrage.
Yes, I have noticed this, and it's maddening. Apple recently changed their "Focus" mode so if you want your phone on Do Not Disturb, you have to schedule it. No more simple toggle-on, toggle-off switch. Something comes up, unscheduled, where you want your phone off, and you don't know how long it will last? Go fuck yourself. All you can do is guess. Why would they do this? To make it as difficult as possible to put your phone on DND and slow down their data pipeline. It makes me so furious that if my hearing aids weren't an absolute necessity for my life, and if they didn't work so seamlessly with the technology I use in my job in conjunction with my phone, I'd have switched phones.
That irritated me almost to the point of throwing my phone, but I figured out if you pull down from the upper right corner it gives you the option to turn on and off. Although, sometimes it's "sleep" and sometimes it's "do not disturb". I don't know what the difference is and don't care enough to figure it out.
I will sacrifice a baby goat to the deity of your choice if you can send me screenshots of how to do this. hollymathnerd at gmail.
He is talking about Control Center I believe. Just put your finger in the upper right corner and swipe down. If it's not on there, I believe you can customize it and add it. Look carefully at the screen after you have swiped.
I agree with you. If I had to change the settings every time I turned the a/c back on it would drive me crazy.
Eco mode is one of the dumbest things ever. I'm sure it actually makes the unit less efficient, especially considering most people probably have no idea how it works. You can tolerate a warmer room with air movement. So, no air moving, people will just turn the temp down lower to be comfortable. So much for "saving the environment".
I understand what you mean about control, but I think the utter stupidity is what really makes me rage.
YES TO ALL OF THIS. After realising in June that my 2 year old laptop keeps freezing when I'm not even running say programs, I ran updates. It was still bastard slow, but the main difference was Microsoft had added a "progress pride" flag to the search function. If I clicked on search, it brought up articles about the Alphabetically Oppressed from Bing.
I was incensed at the idea of a software computer pushing political nonsense on my machine, that I bought, and I use. I tried removing it with no success. I wrote some very angry feedback to Microsoft. Next time I opened the computer, the hideous thing was gone. I am still enraged.
I love Christmas, love celebrating it. I don't want my computer to tell me to celebrate it. So the thought of being told to celebrate the QT brigade and cheer the current fashion for self-abuse and grooming of the mentally ill and underage to partake in the same is beyond hideous to me.
Get rid of Microsoft. Moving to Linux can be a little intimidating, but it is really not that hard once you start.
I am so happy to be rid of it!
I second that if she isn't reliant on propitiatory software Linux is the way to go.
Microsoft Search is notoriously slow. 'Everything' from Voidtools is lightening fast, open source, and free.
OMG yes -- "Everything" has saved my bacon on more than one occasion when I absolutely had to find a file I had squirreled away seven layers deep on a backup USB drive.
My thoughts are you are spot on with this one. Its deliberate ideological, statist nudging, Cass Sunstein style nudging. The nudging unfortunately, increasingly is being done to Harrison Bergeron levels of idiocy. Sorry Kevin, Eco mean Ecology. Full stop. Eco=Ecology=Environment=Social Engineering. I wish more people would grasp that “ Environmental “ anything is code for steering the masses. Its been sold as Mother Earth etc but it has a very different meaning to those who would rule us all. WE the People are the Environment to be controlled.
Read my essay on wilderness preservation v.s. environmentalism. I think you may find it interesting. Part of the trick is to make people on the right so correctly frustrated with "environmentalism" which is indeed evil WEF shit, that they will side with crony big business against it. But this is part of the con to justify mowing down small towns and the few remaining wilderness areas.
https://whispertrees.substack.com/p/a-wilderness-preservationist-cannot?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Agreed. It’s all wrap within a wrap. The Uniparty Is All.
I need to read your substack, but based on your comments on this thread, you’re welcome on my 78 acres when SHTF.
Much appreciate the offer but I have my own little off the gridable homestead.
Of course you do 👍
Please do read, and thanks for the compliment.
So many examples of this. Digital anything is an absolute bugman plague. Why does everything need a clock? Who cares if the fridge has wifi? In fact I'd rather it didn't. Analogue technology was perfectly functional, easily repaired, and far less likely to malfunction because it was tied to physics rather than the programming skills of subcontinental H1Bs. But globohomo inc. loves digital due to the control it provides them.
Electric motors are the newest example of pointless innovations. Internal combustion engines last longer, take much less time to refuel, and can actually be repaired. No matter. Everything will be electric, not because electric motors are a superior technology - they are inferior in essentially every way - but because it forces everyone to buy new stuff.
See also: replacing perfectly good incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents, which are more expensive, put out ugly light, and incredibly toxic.
My hypothesis is that our degraded corporate sector, for far too long run into the ground by Midwits of Business Administration, has lost the ability to produce anything usefully new, and has therefore aligned itself with the state to force everyone to buy the uselessly new.
Get rid of the microwave. Haven't used one for the last 4 years.
Probably a good idea. Mine is at least analog and I mainly use it to heat up frozen meat for my dog.
Your fridge has wi-fi so it can eventually refuse to open if you stock it with too much red meat, or if you read subversive literature on Substack.
Correct.
My fridge, stove, hot water heater, air conditioner (not using long story) and thermostat, are all analog and off the grid thank god.
It's not even environmentally sound, it takes as much energy to make a car as it uses over its lifetime. It's sheerly a ploy to keep the crony transport industry afloat and of course literally plugs in nicely to the whole 15 minute cities WEF thing. An electric car is perhaps tolerable in urban areas with temperate climates for short trips, but it's utterly untenable for rural areas where there are temperature extremes that require air conditioning or heat that sap range quickly, long hauls, and heavy loads to haul. Any extremely cold weather like I have in northern Michigan also drastically saps range. It's orientation towards urban areas with temperate climates is arguably by design, as many of us "regressive" reactionaries already live in marginal rural northern areas or hot neo-tropical areas like Florida.
Yes, and now they’re noticing that because the batteries are so heavy, tire wear happens much more quickly, with an as-yet unanticipated impact on roads and highways. After I’m gone these used batteries will be a huge environmental issue.
Not to mention strip mining lithium. It's all a giant con. I am actually an old school Earth First! wilderness preservationist, and aghast about what "environmentalism," has become.
Uncle Ted couldn't take it anymore, god rest his soul.
That's an interesting wrinkle. Have they factored additional road work into their environment impact and energy efficiency analyses? Lol we know the answer.
It's similar to when heating bills increased following the ban on incandescent light bulbs. The "inefficient" "waste" heat was helping to heat people's homes; in its absence the furnace had to work that much harder. But this never occurred to any of the midwits who mandated their use.
Too funny. There’s a proposal to build a so-called “protected bike lane” in my area. But they can’t reduce lane capacity or remove the street parking on the street. So they have to purchase additional right of way in the empty and undeveloped canyon and widen the road. All that of course requires earth work, concrete, asphalt.
But they insist “we” must build this to get more people put of cars to slow the climate crisis.
That's insane, a preservationist which is the right kind of green gets outraged by the machine destroying local pristine areas that is local wildlife habitat and areas to hike.
Edward Abey spits on that shit from his high porch in the sky daring to call that green or a legacy of Uncle Ted and old school Earth First! Sometimes something used to happen to equipment like that, preservation is not a left wing thing. Connect the dots.
For a long time, bicycles have been the low man on the traffic totempole. Without supporting the climate narrative, I do think it's ok to give them a proper lane.
I don't disagree with you in principle, but the devil is in the details on lanes and their design.
https://twitter.com/Supreme_Owl_FTW/status/1117052403910574080/photo/1
With respect, my experience has been different.
Electric motors and lithium batteries are great for micromobility (ebikes, scooters, powered wheelchairs, etc.). My battery-powered screwdriver is my favorite tool.
My wifi thermostat has been a life saver to help diagnose what was wrong with our central AC. Multiple contractors came and failed to figure out the problem but the thermostat has a little website that includes graphs with on/off and temperature history.
That data plus a temperature sensor on the outlet vent helped me pinpoint the fact that the heater was sometimes turning on when the thermostat called for cooling. It turns out heat was triggered by a too-sensitive freeze protection sensor...
Ironically (in the context of this article), the thermostat brand is ecobee but it never caused trouble.
It's not that adding electric motors to things that didn't have them isn't great. It's that they're a shit replacement for internal combustion engines in almost every case, and no one would be making the change if the state wasn't leaning on them to do it.
I agree that the state is leaning too hard although every lie has a kernel of truth. With electric cars, that kernel of truth is smog in polluted cities.
Tailpipe emissions are a hard-to-quantify negative externality of internal combustion and catalytic converters full of precious metals are not so realistic in developing countries.
Agree. We are the frogs.
So many good observations by Josh and the commenters.
Agree to all of this. If you haven’t checked out the Manhattan Contrarian’s blog, it’s excellent for pointing out what a scam the eco nonsense is.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/
Thank you for this. From the Manhattan Contrarian's "About" page, a quote from Milton Friedman:
""You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do."
I've been following the Contrarian for several years. All common sense, facts and fearless facing of reality, and the comment section is generally just as informative.
Josh Slocum knows the "F'in" score is what I think.
Apologies for the blunt language.
I soooo agree. Not only have they not made basic appliances better, they have planned obsolescence built into them and made it almost impossible to repair economically so that you have to buy an even less functional appliance. Since they can’t/won’t improve them they make them throwaway.
Which contributes to more (non-biodegradable) garbage in our landfills. Not exactly an “eco-friendly” outcome.
What pisses me off most is the "auto-off" feature on modern cars. You know, where the engine automatically stops until you start moving again. Usually, when you disable this feature, it turns itself on again the next time you start the car.
This is TERRIBLE for your engine, and most wear in your parts comes from starting the vehicle. Soon enough, this will be a mandatory feature and won't be able to be disabled.
Modern cars are turning into iPhones. There are still cars from 1968 putting around, but today's cars are practically unserviceable by an amateur mechanic due to the sheer amount of electronically controlled parts.
I replied before I saw this post addressing the same thing. In addition to being bad for the car, it’s dangerous!
Keeping my 23 year old BMW that is mostly analog on the road thus far, knock on wood.
I wondered about that from the beginning with that auto off thing. I don’t know much about cars but for Pete’s sake isn’t it hard on the starter?
someone's got to do an eco rewrite of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Insightful essay, I just have one small quibble and this is this.
"These are design choices, not inevitable outcomes of “progress.”
I would argue that "progress" in the most dastardly sense of that word is built into technological systems. Jacques Ellul calls this technique by which he means not just the technique of building machines, but the social rules that are required to allow them to run. It's more clear if I use a large scale example, which is you don't get jet air travel in a vacuum, it requires an FAA so the jets don't crash into each other which in turn is predicated on a large intrusive government, an international transport system to transport the raw materials to make the jets, technical training of the pilots, etc, etc, in short it is part of a large bureaucratic system. Any bureaucratic system is in turn easy prey of terrible incentives through bad leadership, lack of accountability, the perverse incentive to grant gibmes, etc. This is what Curtis Yarvin means when he says Chthulu always swims left.
At any rate as an oil lamp enjoyer I think you would also enjoy Jacques Elul's "Question concerning technology," book if you have not already read it.
Like cars that stop the engine when you stop, even when you’re still in drive. I almost died when I borrowed my mom’s fancy new luxury car. The engine took a while to start up when I was trying to make a left turn. My beloved 2008 Subaru doesn’t do that crap!
My 2019 Kia Sorento has three "drive modes" -- Normal, Eco, and Sport. Compared to Normal, Eco shifts gears at lower RPM and reduces throttle responsiveness; Sport does the opposite while also tightening the steering. Josh probably already knows the punch line -- despite one of the modes being named "Normal" the car defaults to "Eco" every time you start.
Same with my Prius.
(No, I didn't buy the car because it was "good to the environment". I bought it for practical durability and cheap cost to operate, which it does well.)
"Look at the ridiculous Ford F-150 Lightning, the all-electric version of the famous work truck. Nobody wants it. It has shitty range. Load it down like you would any truck, and its range is even worse. And it costs much more than the normal truck.
Ford isn’t making these because of customer demand. Ford is making them because of US and increasingly international demands—demands they have no moral or legal right to make—to service ESG goals."
Yes, Josh, yes!! I work for a company that is... reliant... on the automotive industry and is positioning itself for our "inevitable" EV future of anything with wheels. As a stated goal, the company is doing a fantastic job of positioning towards this. But, I try to gently point out - exactly what you have here - this forecasted future of "EV everything" is not the traditional trajectory of "industry innovates and ignites consumer desire." Western governments are, essentially, making internal combustion engines ("ICE") *illegal* or close enough at some pre-determined point in the future. Consumers are responding to that threat, not a real desire for EV technology in its current state.
A big growth area is commercial vehicles - think buses and semi-trucks, and agricultural and mining equipment. These are industries that are *very* cyclical, as fleets are often replaced in large swathes. If you know that, barring any changes, the EU or US or China or whatever is going to make it illegal or prohibitive to keep buying ICE vehicles, then any replacements you buy today are likely to already conform with laws hitting maximum effect in, say, 5 years. That's why these segments are on the forefront of the EV industry. People replace passenger vehicles much more frequently (and the masses are lower information than say, trucking industry insiders), so the impact to the passenger market is not significant yet (at least compared to the other segments).
NOW - what is taken to be "fact" is that these laws and mandates are inflexible and permanent. What I've tried to ask leaders in my company is - what do we do if these EV subsidies and mandates are simply reversed? You would think that you asked (literally) "what if the Earth suddenly started rotating in the opposite direction?" It's not even on the radar as a risk. To them, it sounds preposterous. Perhaps that's due to close reading of the tea leaves and insider knowledge that my concerns are met with confusion. But, the broader point remains - this is government action, not consumer demand.
It's this "arrow of progress" leftist thinking that acts like this is settled. We're seeing enough centrist and right-wing push back and movements across the Western world. Hell, Trump or DeSantis or whomever could simply get elected and decide to kill this stuff in the US - then what? Supporters would say that's only prolonging the inevitable once "right thinking" lefties are back in control.
The company I work for, for instance, has invested an absurd amount of money into EV to the detriment of our immediate stock price and profitability, all on the back of government coercion world-wide. Some may ascribe a moral judgement to that - this is the right thing to do to pivot away from ICE vehicles - but we also have to be ready. The US is hilariously inept at fixing basic infrastructure, yet we're going to do what? Pop up a million charging stations in the next decade? And what happens when everyone plugs their cars in at night? We'll flood power grids.
Instead of slow-rolling this and acknowledging the obvious - that EVs are still too expensive and limited, and the infrastructure necessary is virtually non-existent - and focus on increased development of the tech, we have *governments* decide that the transition should happen and when, damn the torpedoes.
What if you support fighting climate change? What about the potential damage to actually effective "eco friendly" solutions, once you've tried and failed spectacularly to strong-arm the market to accept a technology that is simply not ready yet?
Nicely argued post, thanks.
Love your name.
Oh yearh forgot to give props for the Rush reference. :-)
Seems even more apt when accompanying my comment, I suppose. Hahaha. Thank you!