Houston is experiencing its third '500-year' flood in 3 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/29/houston-is-experiencing-its-third-500-year-flood-in-3-years-how-is-that-possible/?utm_term=.1ffa35d284d3 <comment><USER2> While the article obliquely makes reference to this, I wonder if this is somewhat similar to the "birthday" problem in statistics. Any given person has ~1 in 365 chance of being born on a particular day. Yet, if you have 30 people in a room, there is a greater than 50 percent chance that at least one PAIR has the same birthday. Given the hundreds of cities (thousands?) in the US that may be affected by a flood, it's actually quite likely that at least one of them could have a pretty high probability of experiencing one in 500 chance of something each year. I haven't run the numbers, of course, but we're looking at Houston in isolation - it needs to be seen in the broader context of all possible cities. We're focusing on the individual probability of Houston having this improbable string of events, rather than looking at Houston only being the city that experienced this phenomenon.

Of course, the "once in 500 years flood" may also be an inaccurate probability as well, but if its not, then I'm not surprised this is happening SOMEWHERE.

<comment><USER3> A 500 year flood event is very likely new data that tells us our prediction it was a 1 in 500 year event was wrong.

      http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2008/07/13/500-year-floods/

It is of course possible, it was actually a once in 500 year event. I just believe it is much more likely our previous conclusion was faulty. Our prediction of 500 year floods is not very good, we rely on way less than 500 years of data. Also in most places where this happens the massive changes to the environment (roads, cities, paved over wetlands, constrained rivers...) are not factored in well at all. Add to that global climate change and 500 year flood estimates are likely still poor today. The birthday problem doesn't relate to us getting new data that changes what we used to know. A 500 year flood probably is new data (that gives us a strong indication our previous belief was wrong).

<comment><USER4> This is part of the reason few private insurers offer flood insurance. They understand they there isn't enough information to properly price the risk. The historic data is spotty, we don't understand the geography well enough, you have to understand how construction and urbanization affects water absorption over long distances. If everyone who claimed to know what a 500-year storm looked like had to pay out every time one happened, we might have better models.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, that isn't why. I worked in insurance. Not homeowners insurance, but I had a certificate and processed claims.

The reason is that most human settlements occur in flood plains because we cannot live without water. We drink it. We bath in it. We irrigate crops with it. Flood plains have fertile soil. We use rivers and oceans for essential cargo transit.

Insurance is about risk management. It is a form of betting. And there is no bet here because there is no question of _if_ it will flood. The question is only _when_ will it flood?

That's a fool's bet to say "I will pay you X amount of money _if_ it floods" when it is guaranteed to flood sooner or later. That amounts to charity, not insurance.

<comment><USER5> I find this a little confusing, because one can also purchase life insurance, and _mors certa, hora incerta_.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of life insurance is term insurance. So the bet is "will you die during the years that your policy is in force?" Whole life is much, much more expensive.

<comment><USER5> Could you then have the same kind of structures for flood insurance policies? I had to pay every year to renew my renter's insurance policy, it only covered losses during the course of that year, and the insurance carrier had discretion to adjust the premiums or not to renew it.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the US, flood insurance is provided by the government. And the premiums still jump insanely sometimes.

It gets handled this way for the same reason our government provides welfare et al: it makes no sense as a business, but the cost to the nation to do nothing is a bigger problem.

<comment><USER6> There is some private flood insurance these days, but I don't know who offers it, in what locations, what the premiums are, and what kinds of exclusions there are. Since it's a new thing, I think the claim that it'll be vastly better than NFIP is invisible hand waving. Nevertheless... [http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/features/2017/07/1...](http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/features/2017/07/10/456390.htm)

I think the bigger issue is that there is an inherent incompatibility between free markets (or strict laissez faire, non-intervention of any kind) and democracy. Of course people, in the millions, are going to say "help us" and direct it at their various layers of government, and punish those who don't at the election booth.

Therefore it stands to reason in major floods like this, that everyone is going to get some kind of relief even if they didn't have flood insurance. What I'm not sure of is whether the insured get 100% payouts and those not insured get partial payouts? What's the incentive to have flood insurance, except in smaller, localized, 50 or 100 year floods?

This is asset destruction and the only way to properly handle it is through savings. So it's either made compulsory or you do end up with something of a free loader problem. Whether that free loader problem is a real problem, I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Climatologists say the mechanism by which this is happening is fairly > straightforward. "Warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air," > according to the 2014 Climate Assessment produced by the U.S. government. > "Global analyses show that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has > in fact increased due to human-caused warming. This extra moisture is > available to storm systems, resulting in heavier rainfalls."

This is just so totally obvious. But I've rarely seen anything in news coverage about increased mean atmospheric _water_ concentration. Also, increased water content is (of course) the expected multiplier for increasing CO2.

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER8> I wonder if there are maps of predictions of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A similar thing has happened on the Mississippi river, which has had '500 year floods' in at least 2011, 2009, 2008, 1993 and 1927. I may be missing a few.

Assigning probabilities to rare events is meaningless unless you a) have data over a much longer time period than the recurrence time and b) the mechanism causing flooding is not changing.

Neither of these holds in the case of Mississippi flooding, for which we only have about 150 years of observations.

Unfortunately, multi-billion-dollar decisions about flood risk are made using these manufactured numbers. For example, in Missouri, land behind a 100-year levee is not required to have flood insurance.

<comment><USER10> Should any land be required to have flood insurance?

The NFIP supposedly reduces taxpayer cost (with the shaky risk management you mention), but it currently has huge potential liabilities compared to the premiums it collects (and owes the government a bunch of money from past payouts).

<comment><USER11> Hey we've got a legal mandate to fund insurers now with our 'public private partnership' healthcare system.. pick this up as your issue and you might have a lucrative career in lobbying lined up..

<comment><USER12> "Now"...

The National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 established the government-backed flood insurance scheme. It has Ronald Reagan's signature. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Act_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Act_of_1968)

The idea was and is twofold: first, it was seen as the only possibility to actually provide such insurance because insurance companies (even together) lack the financial strength to be able to insure risks that are statistically extremely dependent. Something like this flood costs dozens of billions, and it would bankrupt the whole industry.

Secondly, it's in the national interest to promote such schemes that allow for more areas to be used productively.

<comment><USER13> > _insurance companies (even together) lack the financial strength_

high deductible policies and reinsurance are other tools that can be used to help with this problem

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe we should change the nomenclature, 500-year flood denotes once every 500 years. As opposed to a 0.2% chance. This, in turn, causes people that don't pay attention to floodplain maps to say, "we had a 500 year storm last year, we are good for another 500 years".

That, my friends, is a prime example of the gambler's fallacy.

<comment><USER9> The nomenclature is not the problem, the problem is making numerical estimates of low probability events based on just 150 years of data and a raft of modeling assumptions.

<comment><USER15> The problem is not making numerical estimates of low probability events or how such events are modeled: it's completely ignoring the statistical probability distributions of the model. All of the models are extremely "long tail" distributions and just about entirely ignoring the long tail.

We shouldn't be referring to this as a low-probability flood but as a high sigma flood.

ETA: Disclaimer: Day job includes rainfall statistics analysis.

<comment><USER16> I don't know much about the field, but I'm curious. How much are estimates based on normal distributions, and how much does the model consider other distributions?

As you say, I don't think we know much about the tail. More than ten inches of rain may be a once a year phenomenon, but that once a year event might be twenty or fifty inches?

<comment><USER15> Disclosure: I am not a subject matter expert, I just do the programming they tell me to do. Mistakes/oversights here are likely my own, not my employer's or the software I work on.

The rain gage analysis the software I work on does is largely based on USGS data. [1] Almost all of that data is publicly accessible and you can explore the data down to individual monitoring stations if you wander through the site far enough.

The application I work with is primarily concerned with two bits of analysis from the data in a given station: average peak annual flow and mean daily flow. The distribution used for analysis of both (beyond linear interpolation and best fit line options) is fitting to a Gamma distribution [2], and plotted on a logarithmic scale. (Rainfall is specifically mentioned under applications of that distribution on Wikipedia, so it seems to be the industry standard even outside of the specific application(s) I work on.)

[1] [https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt](https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The elephant in the room has been mentioned somewhere else these days: severe lack of planning and crumbling infrastructures.

Remarkably how ne of the few non-partisan issues on the table goes under the radar time and time again. Tongue in cheek, we might think only polemic issue get the attention of the public.

There is also the notion of national pride. We built our infrastructural base earlier than pretty much anyone else in the world, but we don't invest consistently on them anymore. Today our roads, dams etc. pale in comparison with any western country's but it seems like it's an affront to our national pride to acknowledge that.

Houston is ill prepared to face any kind of emergency like this one, and only the bravery and tenacity of the people is preventing a humanitarian disaster in the scale that would keep us awake at night. That's not the American way: planning, preparing and executing is. The sooner we start taking this leap the better.

<comment><USER18> Which other city in the US can handle 40 or 50 inches of rain, and 15 trillion gallons of water, within a one week timespan? That's as much rain as most US cities get in a year.

This is not the fault of poor planning or poor infrastructure in Houston. It's freak weather event that shouldn't just be given partisan rhetoric.

<comment><USER19> Probably none, but it's not a matter of what city could survive unscathed, it's a matter of what city has minimized the consequences. Houston has allowed for basically unfettered growth constraining their bayou's and preventing flooding infrastructure to be built. Hopefully Houston uses this disaster to rezone and allow for appropriate land management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The big news in the Galloway report, based on a global review of scientific > and engineering data, was this: All of the money the United States had paid > for massive public works to control flooding over the previous half-century > not only had failed to improve flood safety at all, but the spending and the > big public works projects actually were making flooding much worse.

> The Galloway report was no global warming screed. Like the Dutch national > policy based on many of the same findings, it dealt almost entirely with > land use and population growth. Or to put it in more accessible terms, the > 'burbs.

[http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/harvey-not-only-can- happe...](http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/harvey-not-only-can-happen-in- dallas-it-will-9816590)

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone notice the comments for this article on WP? There appears to be a poster called "The burning bush" who is commenting with lengthy comments about every 6 minutes. All of the the comments from that user are sceptical of man made climate change. Washington post does not appear to let you sort by anything other than "newest"... which means that this commenter's posts are always the top comment. That's concerning!

<comment><USER22> That's normal. You'll find the same thing going on in the HN comments for '24/192K audio is silly': there's a class of people who fight for their arguments not with science or discussion, but through brigading and suppressing other people's arguments to get 'em out of sight. It's very much the case with climate change denialists, and it's also in play with '16 bit audio is enough for every possible person!' audio pundits: they will brigade to suppress opposing arguments to make it seem like their views are unopposed.

Pretty sure the WP comments from the climate skeptics are more organized. There's a lot more money in climate denialism, from traditional energy companies with enormous resources and a clear agenda to continue their present mode of operations. I've never understood why the 16-bit audio guys are so similarly quixotic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem is that the person who judges the probability at 1-in-500 doesn't have any skin in the game.

The judgement of the US meteorological office affects where people can build houses and how much they pay for government insurance. Homeowners have a strong financial interest in underestimating the probability of a severe flood, so there is likely subtle political pressure applied to the met office assessments.

For a more accurate assessment, the government should buy a sizeable insurance policy from several reinsurance companies and use it to calculate the implied probability.

<comment> tuna-piano And the reinsurance folks seem to say that there is absolutely no evidence that there has been an uptick in these big disastrous storms. People are constantly thinking of global warming, so when they see a storm, they say "Aha! Global Warming!". Of course there have always been hurricanes, and human perception/remembering is not a replacement for statistics and math.

From Warren Buffet (One of the largest insurers of this type in the world) "...climate change had not up until then [2016] produced more frequent nor more costly hurricanes nor other weather-related events covered by insurance.""

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27/warren-buffett-global- warmin...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27/warren-buffett-global-warming-not- impacting-berkshires-insurance-biz.html)

<comment><USER24> Markets also did not collapse when Donny won. But, hey, what do markets know?

<comment><USER25> They also didn't collapse till 2008. Then they did.

Markets are stupid.

<comment><USER24> Do you have a suggested alternative guide and judge? Perhaps religious leaders and liberal journalists?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bad shit happens when you fuck up the earths temperature. Why is anyone surprised? This has been said by climate scientists all over the world many times.

Warmer climate will result in more drought on some places and other stronger storms which result in heavy rainfall and floods.

[https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/](https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Fort Bend County Judge Robert Hebert stated that Hurricane Harvey is more like a 800-year event, as quoted from the statement from Monday, reported by the same newspaper WaPo[1]

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post- nation/wp/2017/08/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post- nation/wp/2017/08/27/harvey-is-causing-epic-catastrophic-flooding-in-houston- why-wasnt-the-city-evacuated/)

<comment><USER28> "Fort Bend County Judge Robert Hebert stated that Hurricane Harvey is more like a 800-year event"

500 years, 800 years ... even 1000 years - none of those are timetables that planning for city ^H^H^H^H region the size of Houston should be operating on.

A city that large, that populous and with that much economic activity that is crucial to the world should be using risk models to 10k year events.

This is not unprecedented - Holland's dykes are designed and built to withstand 10k year events:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/15/world/europe/...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/15/world/europe/climate- change-rotterdam.html)

<comment><USER29> Sounds like the city fell asleep at the wheel, or rolled the dice and didn't want to pay for proper drainage. Now the citizens get to pay.

Sounds like the Judge is preparing the country for the fact that nothing will still be done about it.

<comment><USER30> There was an article from 2016 also on HN today about the risk. Three different experts were quoted saying something along the lines "nothing will be done now, we need to wait for the big flood and 2-4 years after we will build a wall".

The "wall" (actually a more complex thing) was projected to cost 8 bil. A bad flood like the one from today was projected to cost 70+, but people were hoping that we have around 10-20 years to prepare

<comment><USER31> Models actually showed a disaster of this scale as far back as 2005: [http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Models- show-...](http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Models-show-massive- devastation-in-Houston-1950585.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cue discussion on the works of Tabeb, and what a horrible job humans do at predicting the frequency of rare events.

<comment><USER30> He just tweeted about it:

"When people talk about 500 y floods or 100 year rain, they are klueless abt tail distribution. The empirical distribution is NOT empirical!"

(and a picture with math equations)

[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/902632121407299585](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/902632121407299585)

<comment><USER33> The problem isn't the understanding of statistics, the problem is a grossly- misleading name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This article reminds me of Nate Silver's book [1] which has a far more scientific and in depth look on the failure/success of these types of predictive statistics.

The chapters on the many attempts (or many failed hopes) in predicting earthquakes was particularly interesting, including many times the media has bought into hyped up new charlatans who say they finally figured it out but which ultimately failed to survive under basic statistical scrutiny.

It also has a useful soft introduction to Bayesian statistics and other useful concepts from the field of prediction that I hope more journalists read about. As this seems to be a very common theme in reporting.

Even this journalist couldn't help themselves with this line (combined with some scary looking charts described with an alarmist tone farther down):

> Was there some miscalculation of how frequently these massive flooding > events occur? Or, most alarmingly, is something else happening that suggests > these catastrophic weather events are becoming much more common?

The failure to mention the effects of El Nino/El Nina seems like a big oversight in this article, especially when we're just coming out of a particularly strong one. Climate stats are an easy one to get wrong - or to shape into any narrative - especially when timeframes and location are easy things to be viewed too narrowly.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Signal-Noise-Many-Predictions-Fail- bu...](https://www.amazon.com/Signal-Noise-Many-Predictions-Fail- but/dp/0143125087/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Howdy! I work in cleantech, and I guess it's that time again for a what-can- you-do-about-it post :)

To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

==So what can you do about it?==

The biggest thing that is most relevant to the HN audience is that you can work at a new energy technology company! Our industries are out of the R&D stage and are currently focused on scale and growth[1], and we need as many smart people as we can get. There are lots of companies hiring software engineers.

==How do I find a job fighting climate change?==

I'd recommend browsing the exhibitor and speaker lists from the most recent conference in each sector (linked below). Check out the companies that interest you and see if they are hiring.

        * Energy Storage[2][3]
        * Solar[4][5]
        * Wind[6]
        * Nuclear[7]
        * Electric Utilities[8][9]
        * Electric vehicles[10]

Also, if you're in the SF bay area, I'd recommend subscribing to my Bay Area Energy Events Calendar[11]. Just start showing up to events and you'll probably find a job really quickly.

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new- inte...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new-internet/)

[2]: [http://www.esnaexpo.com/](http://www.esnaexpo.com/)

[3]: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy- stora...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy-storage- summit-2016)

[4]: [https://www.intersolar.us/](https://www.intersolar.us/)

[5]: [http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/](http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/)

[6]: [http://www.windpowerexpo.org/](http://www.windpowerexpo.org/)

[7]: [https://www.nei.org/Conferences](https://www.nei.org/Conferences)

[8]: [http://www.distributech.com/index.html](http://www.distributech.com/index.html)

[9]: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge- world-f...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge-world- forum-2016)

[10]: [http://tec.ieee.org/](http://tec.ieee.org/)

[11]: [https://bayareaenergyevents.com/](https://bayareaenergyevents.com/)

<comment><USER36> The alternative approach to working directly towards solving the problem is to work at a mature tech company with higher pay, and donate 10% or more of your income every year to a non-profit like the Natural Resources Defense Council.

<comment><USER37> Work where your skills have the highest impact. Sometimes it translates into labor -> dollars.

<comment><USER38> Unless you're a lobbyist I feel like donations to lobbying organization would have the greatest impact. Many politicians are bought for what is comparetively a small amount of money compared to the impact they have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There used to be a calculator by NOAA:

[http://www.srh.noaa.gov/epz/?n=wxcalc_floodperiod](http://www.srh.noaa.gov/epz/?n=wxcalc_floodperiod)

that is now here:

[https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_floodperiod](https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_floodperiod)

According to it, the probabilities of a 500 year event in the _next_ 500 years is 63.2%.

What I like to call flippism point, i.e. when you have the same chances as flipping a (perfect) coin is _next_ 346 years.

A three consecutive years series does seem a bit "queer".

</comment><comment><USER40> I saw a TV programme a year or two ago which was discussing the increase in hurricanes etc in the Gulf of Mexico area.

They were saying that the storms aren't increasing due to global warming but are actually regressing back to their natural levels. The previous decades of pollution had been suppressing the storms and by cleaning the air the storm ferocity is heading back to normal.

I can't see the article at the moment but I think it was Cloud Lab on the BBC, they floated around on an airship.

</comment><comment><USER41> [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/opinion/harvey-the- sto...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/opinion/harvey-the-storm-that- humans-helped-cause.html)

On climates impact on extreme flooding.

<comment><USER42> "Some version of Harvey probably would have happened without climate change, and we'll never know the hypothetical truth."

But let me write an op-ed about it anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I hope the city will require houses to be elevated when rebuilt.

</comment><comment><USER41> The fundamental takeaway from this article is about half way down. Major flood events are occurint more frequently. What was once likely to hit a city every 500 years is happening to more cities on a planetary scale more frequently.

<comment><USER44> I know it's easy to blame climate change for anything and everything, but that's simply incorrect.

The actual takeaway is that our data is wrong, these floods occur more often than we thought. With only 150 years of good data, it's impossible to calculate "500 year" events accurately. You would need around 5,000 years of data to do that, and we don't have it.

So we ended up significantly underestimating how often these events occur.

<comment><USER41> You can see in graph that floods are occurring more often and that clouds are able to absorb more water as temperatures rise. This hurricane would have happened. But this flooding is worsening because of climate change that is irrefutable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Are random events evenly distributed? ......

</comment><comment><USER46> Maximum likelihood ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER47> I feel sad when people use statistics like this. It makes no sense to call this 500 year flood because floods do not follow any kind of distribution. Not to mention the human beings have been changing their environments drastically in last 200 years.

NN Taleb would say this is fat tail event. It does not follow empirical distribution.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this like when reporters say, "Trump won. We now think that Clinton's lead wasn't as strong as previously reported."</comment>


Cisco security researchers disable big distributor of ransomware - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/06/us-ransomware-cisco-idUSKCN0S01F020151006 <comment><USER2> My question is, if they located the servers, do they have the private keys for those affected? And will they open a system to help those people?

A friend of my mom's, a person who is not computer-savvy at all, lost the photos of her recently-deceased mother to this malware. She couldn't pay the ransom.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do companies like Cisco carry out this type of work ? Do they do this out of the goodness of their hearts ?

<comment><USER4> It's in the interest of the industry to keep the internetworks as free of malware, scams, blackmail, etc. as possible in order to keep the confidence of an open system. This is why Cisco, Google, Microsoft, fsecure, etc. are out there contributing to making the internetworks more secure from criminal activity. (note this is different from the eff agenda, which is on a different plane) this is more commercial concern versus rights concerns, but equally valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love reading these stories. Hat tip to the faceless white hat</comment>


Google to Launch Chrome Web Store and Chrome OS - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/12/google-to-launch-chrome-web-store-and.html

<comment><USER2> I have been looking forward to checking out Chrome OS, but haven't had time to download one of the installers out there right now. It will be nice to have an official, easy to install version, if they release one. Do they plan to make it easy for people to download and install the OS, or are they mostly going to market it to device manufacturers?

<comment><USER3> Chromium OS is the open source version and is available for download in source form right now. You'll have to compile it yourself, I think. I'm pretty sure things will stay that way.

Chrome OS is the closed-source version that is sent to vendors to be installed on computers. I'm pretty sure Google won't make Chrome OS available for download, since there will be no single "Chrome OS" image; it'll be customized for each hardware option.

(I think.)

<comment><USER2> That makes sense. I will just have to take the initiative and compile it or download one of the unofficial builds.</comment></comment></comment>


Why President Obama Won't, and Shouldn't, Pardon Snowden - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-president-obama-wont-and-shouldnt-pardon-snowden <comment><USER2> Obama will never pardon Snowden.

The popular perception of him is liberal, but he is in reality one of the most hawkish men in Washington. He sends Hellfire missiles like the rest of us send email.

Obama will never go against the security state. He is the progeniture of the security state.

His belief is that if we wish to avoid large-scale wars, then some people must silently disappear, or be quietly erased from the sky.

Is he wrong? I don't know. It may be lesser of many evils. President Obama is strategically brilliant. Is he going to condone someone who endangered his entire philosophy of national defense?

No way.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR; His revelations of unconstitutional government surveillance activity were valid and beneficial to all, but also "the damage to U.S. intelligence operations [were] enormous". So he shouldn't be pardoned.

Frankly, a disgusting argument.

</comment><comment><USER4> Carefully read the author's bio and decide for yourself what biases he may have.

The author says that a pardon decision hinges on what is good for society. So, the question is: does the benefit of the disclosures outweigh the costs?

I considered the pros and cons and decided to sign the pardon Snowden petition, for what little that is worth.

</comment><comment><USER5> So what he is saying is that we don't know what the damages are, and that we know that the revelations did a lot of good, and then says that the damages are huge.

Ok then.

</comment><comment><USER6> So many basic errors! Sharing is not stealing. Disclosure is not loss. Secrecy is not security. Information is not intelligence.</comment>


Ask HN: How to decide who should be CEO? - <AUTHOR> If you have a 2 person startup, how do you decide who is CEO? <comment><USER2> In broad terms, the CEO typically does fundraising and marketing. Realistically, both people will be working on many aspects of the business -- it's not always prudent to silo duties early in a business.

Based on other replies, equity and control may be issues that concern you. Spolsky's post on this matter is widely cited as a response to this question. There are also quite a few posts that dispute his thesis. These are relatively easy to google. This is one example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493356)

Here is a list:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4941933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4941933)

Note that there can be issues that 50/50 doesn't appear cover cleanly -- supplying cash, full time versus part time, building, selling, contacts/network, etc.

Some would say that all of these other things, if they lead to something other than 50/50, may suggest the business is doomed from the start. While I will remain neutral on that question in this reply, it's certainly a good thought exercise.

Most of all, I wonder if you would choose to marry your potential cofounder. If your response is not "hell yeah!", you may want to reconsider. You will effectively be married to this person for quite a while, and any weaknesses in your relationship will be amplified.

Best of luck!

(Edit: answered the original question)

</comment><comment><USER3> The CEO should be the one who is pushing the other. The one who goes the extra mile to do all the millions of little, insignificant things that a startup requires.

source: long experience with co-founder teams

</comment><comment><USER4> If the two of you cannot easily answer this question then your journey is going to be a troubled one.

<comment><USER5> >If the two of you cannot easily answer this question then your journey is going to be a troubled one.

I came here to say the same thing.

But then again I want to give you the benefit of doubt and assume you're two wet-behind-the-ears teenage kids in a garage building the next MSFT :)

Toss a coin. Whoever wins is CEO for 3 years then the next person can take over.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if I'm the one with the technical skills, and the other founder is not?

<comment><USER5> Then let him be the CEO while you be the CTO. That defers the issue for 3-5 years. I am assuming of course that he is qualified to run a(the) company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Titles aren't the most important thing to me in the beginning, but I'm more concerned about control. Since I'll be building the entire product, I feel that I should have a larger equity stake. Do you agree?

<comment><USER5> No.

You should split the equity in proportion to your individual contributions to the company.

Your your partner brings something to the table which you do not possess (the ideal situation) then he should be compensated accordingly. You should weigh your perceptions against his expectations and arrive at compromise that is acceptable to both parties.

If you can build the product and guide it to a successful launch ( irrespective of who conceived the idea), you should do so without him because strictly speaking you do not need him. There is no place for an "idea guy" in a startup

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't have an answer to the question...but a follow up question.

If you are a 1 person startup (and don't want to be a CEO), how would you decide on the CEO as and when that may be? (say you decide you want to be a CTO / COO)

<comment><USER5> > If you are a 1 person startup (and don't want to be a CEO)...

If you are reluctant to do any job required in your startup, the viability of said startup is in question.

You could always ask your dad or uncle or whomever to fill the role for you. But beware - large oaks grow from small acorns and ceding control/ shirking responsibility at such an early stage can have negative consequences down thre road; one of which may be a lack of familiarity with how your business truly operates. When your little hustle is ready to become a pre-IPO giant, what then?

<comment><USER6> I didn't mean I didn't want to do any job required for my startup, it's just that I enjoyed coding more than I enjoyed the rest of the stuff (which I always looked at as more of the CEO's responsibility)</comment></comment></comment>


The Electric Car - <AUTHOR> http://blog.geoffralston.com/the-electric-car <comment><USER3> I can't believe he's comparing a $70,000 electric car to a huge bucket labeled "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Of course the $70,000 car is better in almost every way. I've driven a lot of electric cars in the $5,000 to $10,000 range and I assure you they are not better than "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Our last gas-powered car was a used Lexus that cost us $8,000. It's an extremely comfortable luxury car that seats 5 and can easily be driven across the country. A new electric car [1], on the other hand, costs approximately the same but can only seat 2 people and can travel 160 km on one charge. It's top speed is 80 km/h. It takes 6 hours to fully charge. The costly lithium-ion batteries will have to be replaced at some point. True, it is convenient for trips around town without much luggage. I'm fairly confident that the used Lexus will outlast and outrun the new electric car.

1\. This is the car: [http://chinaautoweb.com/car-models/zotye-zhidou- zd-e20-ev/](http://chinaautoweb.com/car-models/zotye-zhidou-zd-e20-ev/)

<comment><USER4> For 10K (+3) if you live in USA, you can buy a Nissan Leaf that came out the 3 year lease, and it is a decent car that seats 5 people with a range of about 80+ miles. Batteries are expensive and will continue to be till the turn of this decade and not a whole lot can be done. The better analogy would be laptops vs desktops, laptops gave mobility but they were heavy did not have the power etc. but by 2004 - 2006 they started to eclipse the desktops, EVs will slowly eclipse, they are expensive with range limitations but as they mature over couple of generations the efficiency gains coupled with economy of scale would make them eclipse ICE. 10 years from now, you will not find a Pure ICE vehicle in new cars, every car will have battery of some meaningful size.

<comment><USER5> We just bought a used leaf for 12k at carmax. It was a 2013 with 16,000 miles on it and it easily gets 80 miles to a charge. All of the great things you read about them have all been true for us, super quiet, surprising acceleration, convenience of charging at home. It was hard to get our hands on one as they kept selling them as soon as they'd come in at carmax.

<comment><USER6> Second hand electric cars, as long as the battery is solid, should be an excellent deal if you're in the sweet spot for commuting distance. 50 miles a day equates to $1000 a year in US gas costs, and £2000 ($3000) in UK petrol costs. Especially in the UK, if you can get a used Leaf for £10-12k* , that's going to be by far the most economical way of running a second/commuting car.

* That seems to be the going rate for a two year old Leaf on Autotrader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish people would be _slightly_ more honest about technological change. Smartphones are very special. They are very cheap, easy to mass produce, and you can iterate on them very quickly. Cars on the other hand have a much longer life cycle, involve much more capital, and in general are going to follow an elongated investment / replacement cycle. Comparing these two systems, while enthusiastic and great for a college term paper, seems premature.

I am really excited that there may be a fleet of self driving electric cars in urban areas in 10 years. It's going to be awesome. But I am willing to bet for the rest of us its going to be a more conservative change that is going to evolve over decades.

<comment><USER8> I hope things pan out the way the article predicts and I'm a massive optimist for EV adoption in the long term. However, there's some obvious wrenches in the plan for such quick adoption, including:

\- No great options currently for charging in apartments. Virtually the entire world is on an urbanisation trend, so this segment of potential EV owners is really important for adoption, and isn't being currently served.

\- People replace their cars at much slower rates than smartphones.

I think there is a lot of potential for disruption in the transportation sector. Trucking companies and taxi fleets don't care if their vehicles are big, ugly and heavy (as they would be if outfitted with batteries), cost is the main factor. When EV running costs dip below the cost of ICE vehicles (and when battery density improves the range sufficiently), these guys are going to have a huge incentive to invest in EVs quickly.

Also, if someone figures out how to build an electric jet in the next few decades, it will transform the airline industry who are currently held hostage by the price of oil. Perhaps airlines can compete on service rather than price gouging on "extras" that used to be covered by the cost of a ticket, to make up for razor thin margins. Airports could also be built closer to city centres, as the noise and air pollution concerns disappear.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure why you'd expect that apartment owners wouldn't put chargers in their garages? I'm guessing that a metering or coin operated overnight charger wouldn't cost that much more than a normal charger. There's also the possibility of workplaces providing chargers. Mine does but we're sort of weird.

EDIT: Remember that a parking spot can easily cost over $10,000 so the extra money for a charger isn't that much.

[http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/HighCost.pdf](http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/HighCost.pdf)

<comment><USER10> > I'm not sure why you'd expect that apartment owners wouldn't put chargers in > their garages?

I've lived in many apartments, but I've never lived in an apartment that included access to a garage. Many of the apartments I've lived in only had parking available on the street.

<comment><USER9> I guess it's a matter of density? If you've only got two or three apartments in a building street parking works but for more than that it's really not feasible. If you like living in less dense areas that's great but my sense is that most of the urbanization that's happening is at densities where street parking isn't feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The reason electric cars will take over our roads is because consumers will > DEMAND them. Electric cars will be better than any alternative, including > the loud, inconvenient, gas-powered jalopy. The iPhone demonstrated that > smartphones are infinitely better than the feature phones which dominated > the world in 2007.

The smartphone revolution analogy makes me cringe. Electric cars are currently playing catch up to their gasoline counterparts in almost every metric except emissions. When the iPhone was released it quite literally leapfrogged the competition (with the exception of battery life). What gives author?

<comment><USER12> That's not quite true. In 2007 you would see 90% of the Internet comments talk about how feature-less an iPhone was compared to the Nokia N95 (or whatever was its Nokia competitor at the time). In fact there were some memes comparing the iPhone with a _rock_.

The original iPhone didn't have video recording, had only 2G support (Nokias supported 3G for a while), didn't support MMS, and it didn't even have apps! And of course something like 1/3 the battery life of Nokia phones with 2" screens.

The iPhone at the time "only" had the benefits of a big screen, touch, and an "easy to use interface". But that was about it - which of course _was_ game- changing. But the point is it didn't have "many" benefits over the phones at the time. Quite the opposite (especially from the perspective of Nokia/Blackberry/etc phone users at the time - which were 99% of the people).

Electric cars have maximum torque (and usually much higher than your average gas-powered car in the same class) from the moment you put your foot on the pedal, they give smooth _liniar_ acceleration (no gear changing), are very silent, cost much less to recharge (about 1/5), have 1/3 the maintenance costs, an order of magnitude fewer parts that can break on you, and have the potential to use 100% renewable energy in the future.

<comment><USER13> > and have the potential to use 100% renewable energy in the future.

Except when it comes to manufacturing them.

<comment><USER14> Recycle them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think people full comprehend the price drop that is imminent. The total cost of ownership per mile for a car in the U.S. right now is about $0.60. I was watching a panel the other day where someone calculated the cost per mile of a fleet of self-driving on-demand electric cars at $0.08.

That an 86% reduction. People might have their misgivings about any of this stuff... electric, self-driving, carshare, and of course many people will go their own way. But for an 86% reduction in your monthly auto bill, it's going to be an avalanche.

<comment><USER16> If a Tesla Model S costs $70000, even if electricity and maintenance are free (and there's no premium for self-driving) you would have to drive it 875000 miles for it to cost $0.08/mile. This seems like the type of thing that is literally unbelievable without more evidence than "I heard somebody on a panel say this".

<comment><USER17> What's crazy about 875,000 miles?

Most personal gasoline cars last approximately 200,000 miles, but people rarely keep them that long because for the average driver the car is 10-20 years old. The interior will wear out long before the engine. If the car manufacturers built the drivetrain to last 400,000 miles, they would just be wasting money.

If the car is running 24/7 at 30 mph, you would top 250k miles per year. I imagine they will design the cars to last more than a year, potentially a few, so 750,000 miles is not off the table.

Also in the world where a car is an autonomous income producing asset, initial cost matters a lot less and total lifetime cost matters a lot more. Businesses will do the math and buy vehicles that minimize their cost. Automotive engineers will put more effort into reliability because fleet owners will have data to measure.

It's a different world. A lot of our current assumptions will get rethought.

<comment><USER18> I find it hard to imagine a conventional petrol powered car only lasting 200,000 miles. Which manufacturers only build cars to last 200,000 miles?

I can't think of a car I, or my family, have owned which hasn't lasted at least twice that long.

My current car is a 2002 BMW E39 530D. It has almost 900,000 kms on the clock and is still going strong on the original engine. The cloth interior is still in quite reasonable condition. There has of course been the need for minor maintenance (rear shocks were required at the last inspection). Right now I need new door seals and there is some minor rust attended to. However, at a consumption of approximately 7 liters per 100 km on the autobahn, I don't see any need to buy a newer car for quite some time yet.

<comment><USER15> In some sense, if a vehicle is well built, properly maintained, and driven gently, it will last forever. You just replace the car part by part over time.

The issue is if it's poorly maintained or it's abused, or if it's not well built. And a sizable percentage of cars in the fleet fall into at least one of those categories. The number that we need to worry about from a policy perspective is not the life of the car in the best case scenario, it's the life of the car in the expected scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The real story my be that car sales may decline, gas or electric:

* People drive less; I saw a study showing that significantly fewer millenials are licensed to drive than their predecessors.

* More people live in cities, where the cost of cars is higher (insurance and parking) and the demand for them is less due to the proximity of destinations and the availability of alternatives (public transport, taxis, ride-sharing, car sharing, bicycling)

* Energy costs likely will increase.

* As awareness of climate change grows, people will be less willing to cause greenhouse gas emissions (and the energy in your electric car battery must come from somplace, probably a fossil-fuel in a power plant).

<comment><USER20> According to FiveThirtyEight, the urbanization trend is largely exaggerated. The more accurate statement is that college-educated millennials are somewhat more likely to live in a handful of particularly dense urban locations (think Brooklyn).[1]

In fact, among all adults 25-34 the percentage in urban locations overall has actually declined. The data is a bit hard to interpret for a variety of reasons but the bottom line is that, according to this data: "Millennials overall, therefore, are not increasingly living in urban neighborhoods. Rather, the most educated one-third of young adults are increasingly likely to live in the densest urban neighborhoods. That's great news for cities trying to attract young graduates and a sign that urban neighborhoods have become more desirable for those who can afford them. But the presence of more smart young things in Brooklyn is not evidence that millennials are a more urban generation."

[1] [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are- less...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are-less-urban- than-you-think/)

<comment><USER19> Thanks; that's useful to know. I should point out that I wasn't only talking about millennials.

<comment><USER20> The urbanization trend outside millennials is even less however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _The Tesla Model S has demonstrated that a well made, well designed electric > car is far superior to anything else on the road._

I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. What the Tesla Model S has _actually_ shown is that a startup-designed $100k electric car can be comparable to $100k luxury cars (S-class, 7-series... etc) and that classic car makers got complacent on certain features (like electronic UI elements). Much of what he said is true, or could easily be true, for $100k gasoline cars too!

In fact, I think that's enough of an exaggeration for me to question his whole conclusion. He made a good case for why _Tesla_ could be the next big thing, but just like Android popped up against the iPhone, I could see gasoline cars copying many of the advantages—anything that's not a direct result of an electric drive-train.

This isn't to say that electric cars _won 't_ take over—I think they very well might—but the blog post doesn't make the best case for it.

I also really dislike that whole argument style of cherry-picking a "disruptive" innovation that happened to succeed but ignoring all the others that either failed or didn't deliver for decades. You can't generalize the smart-phone's success that easily! It feels like a pernicious case of what poker players call "results oriented thinking"[1], which is something I see _a lot_ in business analysis.

[1]: [http://www.toppokersites.com/strategy/results-oriented- think...](http://www.toppokersites.com/strategy/results-oriented-thinking/)

<comment><USER22> Too true. It's classic case of "seek and ye shall find."

OP wanted to see all the reasons why something he hopes is true, and he found them all.

He did _not_ want to see any reasons why his hopes might not be true, so he sought none of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting article, though it forgets the elephant in the room: self-driving cars.

The two will probably work hand in hand, but it is unlikely, in my opinion, that any electric cars will be charging at home very much, because most electric cars will be owned by companies, not individuals. Why own a car when you can pay a tiny percentage of a cab fare to go anywhere? When a journey that currently costs $50 costs 20 cents, private car ownership will plummet.

<comment><USER24> What if the self-driving electric cab gets soiled with the last passenger's bodily fluids?

<comment><USER25> It will probably have facilities for identifying that condition and either self-cleaning or notifying the central dispatch system that it needs to be taken out of the rotation until cleaned.

Pretty much the same thing as a human-driven cab.

 _Worst_ case, all those things fail, and a dirty cab shows up, and you reject it on the hailing app with an explanation of why, leading to some delay till you get the next available cab. Its not like unexpected failures and delays don't happen with personally owned and operated owner-driven vehicles.

<comment><USER24> People are still disincentivized from soiling taxis by the presence of the driver. Though at the very least, you'll have to have a membership/accountability system in place, and that becomes harder and harder as you scale.

<comment><USER26> Cars can drive autonomously, but they can't sense a spill?

<comment><USER27> Person has a drink inside their bag, no tech that let's the car see through solid objects, it doesn't even know the drink is there.

That's unusual, butnot even the only problem. Someone needs to write something to recognise a liquid container. Not just the one, but all of them, some of which it's never seen before. Not simple.

<comment><USER25> Doesn't need to recognize liquid containers, hidden or otherwise, just needs to detect spills.

And, AFAIK, moisture sensors for the kinds of materials used in cat interiors already exist, so it's not particularly novel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Ten years ago a prediction that this would be the future would have been met with scorn or laughter"

... this sounds like bollocks, I guess I am an outlier as I worked on J2me apps at the time, but mobile phones where _everywhere_ in 2005, the US was a bit behind, but certainly in the UK mobile wasn't the future, but the present - many of those people used apps and games, they just didn't know what an 'app' was although they used them.

<comment><USER29> Specifically smartphones. The landscape for which in 2005 was absolutely abysmal. The iPhone was revolutionary in almost every way down to the silence switch and visual voicemail.

<comment><USER30> The iPhone was evolutionary, not revolutionary, it pulled together a bunch of ideas from a ton of different places (visual voicemail for example was seen in various TAPI applications in the 90's) - what made the iPhone slick, was not what it did - a 2006 era palm did everything the iPhone did - its that it worked better than all of its progenitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While I agree with the author that electric vehicles will in not long time dominate the car market, I strongly disagree with point #3:

> Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are > sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient.

Gas stations even today don't make money with gas, it's next to a loss leader to get customers into the store and spend money on snacks and car parts that won't go away with e-cars (windshield wipers, wiper fluid) - and in many regions gas stations are exempt from normal store opening hours and serve as 24h-supermarket. The convenience of a readily available store, even with a hefty markup, simply is too good to avoid it.

<comment><USER32> Aren't they convenient because they're only a few yards from your car? If you no longer need to drive to the gas station to get fuel, it's a lot less convenient, isn't it?

<comment><USER33> They're convenient because they're right off the freeway. The gas pumps will disappear and be replaced with superchargers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> One element Geoff doesn't cover in the comparison, which I think will slow the take-up, is that the lifecycle of a phone (<2 years) versus the lifecycle of a car (4-5 years?).

And those (from memory, please correct with data) are median averages. For every person still toting an iPhone3 I imagine there are scores still driving a 1993 Camry.

Smartphones exploded in use over the timeframe described, because the technology improved rapidly AND consumers upgraded 2-3 times so could choose the newest and best. Even if cars had similar tech trajectories, the market is moving more slowly.

Of course, electric cars have a secondary market that's much stronger than used phones, which will work against my numbers.

<comment><USER35> 4-5 years? Try more like 10. Cars have only gotten more and more reliable, and that, combined with the economic recession have meant that people hold on to cars for longer and longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I see a very simple story: Among friends and family, I don't know anyone who would not get a Tesla, who doesn't already have one, once it reaches their price range. I also want to add that most folks I know are planning to make their cars last until such time as they can switch them out for a Tesla ( Model X preferably as a minivan replacement ).

<comment><USER37> Once they release a true offroad type vehicle--preferably a pickup, I'll be buying one. I'm not sure the model x does it for me, though it'll be a "maybe."

I live in an area that can have limited access in bad weather, where 4x4 & high clearance are requirements, and right now a Tesla wouldn't cut it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Thanks to Sam Altman for having read an earlier version of this post.

Does this add anything to the article, or is it just a way to say "I'm friends with Sam". Do people proofreading a short article expect this sort of thing?

<comment><USER39> It's there to suggest that he agrees completely with the article, and if you disagree with any of it, you must be crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> An excellent but longer and more detailed piece in the same vein is "How Tesla Will Change The World" at

[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your- lif...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> To be honest, this misses the point in urban areas (which is increasingly where everyone wants to live).

There's too much congestion for cars to work in urban areas, at least for commuting. It doesn't matter whether they are autonomous, electric, petrol, hydrogen or whatever. The capacity of a multi-lane freeway vs a heavy rail commuter line or metro is so small, even with carpooling.

Unless suddenly this trend reverses and everyone wants to live in the suburbs, the car is really in trouble.

I use public transit nearly all the time and for the times I don't, I take an uber. I tried uber once when there was a problem with transit, and the door to door time was something like 4x the metro due to traffic. Never again.

<comment><USER34> Isn't a big part of congestion due to inefficient human driving?

While it won't be v1.0, I could see autonomous vehicles taking half the cars off the road (car pooling) and then providing much more efficient transit regarding speed, lane changes, real time route selection etc.

This will definitely be more valuable for the suburbs, or cities with poor public transport infrastructure. Perhaps in some places your autonomous Uber will take you to a much more efficient bus hub (departing every 5 minutes) on the city fringe, but I do believe it will work in urban areas as well.

And don't forget, comparing Uber in a time of transit problems isn't really a fair comparison as those are the times when many other people, not used to making that drive, flood the roads. If I drive to the right train station, transit is about 30% faster for me during peak hour so I agree with your point.

<comment><USER41> Maybe in some cities, but the roads in London are gridlocked all the time and there is something like a 98:2 ratio of people using mass transit vs driving. I would assume it is the same in NYC, etc. No amount of lane selection, car pooling will ever make that better. And unless people carpool from the exact same place to the same workplace, there's going to be duplication of drop off points which probably makes things worse as they'll be downtown with the most traffic.

And no, there was no surge on uber to get that journey. There was other transit routes everyone else will take but I was in a real rush (even routing round the disruption would've still been way faster than driving).

To be honest though, if you're driving to the transit station then you're missing the point. I'm really talking to the masses of people that have giving up/will give up their car entirely and rely on public transit & the occasional taxi (uber, autonomous, whatever) for when they've been out partying or what not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If electric cars are going to become mainstream we certainly need something far more affordable than Model S. With the money it costs I could buy a Mercedes S-Class which is unparalleled in terms of quality and ride comfort. Furthermore in regions like Europe you can run in all short of inconsistencies with incompatible sockets/recharge stations. Just the other day I was watching a video [1] of a car journalist who tried to make the trip from UK to Amsterdam in a BMW i3 Rx and it took him twice the time it would with a conventional car.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0f0_hqWdTk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0f0_hqWdTk)

<comment><USER43> ... no wonder several manufacturers are working on long-range cars more affordable than the Model S. Examples: Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Seems that this article fails to mention that owning a house is a prerequisite to buying an EV (electric vehicle). If you rent a room in a house, it's unlikely the landlord is going to install a charger just for you, and the same goes for apartment complexes. So that already excludes a large portion of the population from buying an EV. I bet 90% of EV owners are not renting their residence. (The other 10% can charge at work or other places, but relative to the number of parking spaces, count how many charging stations there are at BigCo)

<comment><USER45> If you're just commuting; charge it at your workplace? park it anywhere you can access a power outlet? If absolutely nothing is available, spend an hour of your time on the weekend using a supercharger.

<comment><USER46> Fine for the handful of spaces at work that have a charging outlet. Most workplaces don't have any. Nor will they want to pay for the electricity to charge everyone's car. It's all fun and games to do it for two or three cars as a novelty. It will be an entirely different matter to do it for hundreds of employees. And even if they wanted to do it, and have a payroll deduction or something to pay for it, the electrical grid will need to be upgraded to deliver that kind of power.

I believe that scaling up the electrical grid is going to be the biggest impediment to mass adoption of electric cars. It may happen, but not in 10 years. It will take many decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The original iPhone had a lot going for it, but I think it was the call-the- Starbucks example that really sold it for me. Remember Steve Jobs on stage looking up the GPS walking path to Starbucks, and having the phone number ready with one-push? It just made perfect sense - a smart phone eliminates the yellow pages.

I don't know if I can find such a feature for an electric car. It's nice that you can plug it in at home, but this is just replacing one need (visit a gas station) with another (remembering to plug it in / staying close to home).

</comment><comment><USER48> Someone has to be working on battery swaps instead of charging, right? That seems like such an easy solution to what most people consider the biggest problem with electric.

<comment><USER49> Tesla is working on battery swaps. The problem with it so far is that you have to return to the location where you swapped your battery to retrieve your original battery later, or be hit with a hefty fine.

<comment><USER43> Tesla has now apparently invited everyone who's ever charged at the Harris Ranch charger, on I5 between LA and SF, to use it. Personally, I tend to stop for dinner there, so supercharging isn't a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> One point not addressed in this article: gas will get cheaper and fuel efficiencies will rise. Internal combustion will not just lay down and disappear.

</comment><comment><USER51> My big qualm with the electric cars that I don't read about is the 40minute-1hour charging. People complain that charging stations aren't near them, but the convenience of pulling into a gas station filling up and being ready for another 400 miles in less than 5 minutes is hard to beat. Even if the charging stations were all around, 5 versus 40-60 min is a big difference.

<comment><USER52> There's no way you fill your car in 5 minutes, and Superchargers are noted to take 30 minutes, not 40-60.

<comment><USER53> It takes no more than 5 minutes from the moment I drive into a gas station to the moment I drive out to refill my Honda civic (10 gal). EPA dictates a maximum pump rate of 10 gal per minute [1].... so the actual pumping phase of fill-ups is just 1 minute for my car.

[1] [http://www.epa.gov/OMS/regs/ld- hwy/evap/spitback.txt](http://www.epa.gov/OMS/regs/ld-hwy/evap/spitback.txt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> If this prediction is right, the electric grid will have a tough time catching up. Power plants take a long time to plan, fund and build.

<comment><USER55> But the electric car can be the tool to enable wider use of intermittent- supply renewable energy, like wind or solar! With some smarts, the cars can be charged at high supply/low demand times, and even feed energy back to the grid when demand is high and supply is low.

There is money to be made in making this happen, people!

Also, I did the math once on how much extra power a city will need if all cars go electric. It is not that much: take Perth, Australia, as an example. We have about 5.5 GW installed power generation capacity (there is a huge gap between this and the actual usage which peaks at less than 3.5 GW usually, but that is another story...). We have say 500,000 cars, driving 40 km/d on average... that's 20 million km driven, at 5 kwhr/km we need an extra 4 million kwhr/day. If the charging is spread over 20 hours, that is an extra 200 MW required to supply them all. A 200 MW power station is small-ish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> "The iPhone demonstrated that smartphones are infinitely better than the feature phones which dominated the world in 2007."

The iPhone had predecessors, some Apple, some Microsoft, many tiny companies with good ideas but no business brains. It like the electric car stood on the shoulders of giants.

The electric car still has two major hurdles (I wish it weren't true I really wish that the prediction comes true): 1) the Oil industry is powerful 2) batteries.

With a car, if I want to take a short trip to the local gas me up station then decide to drive 300 miles just to say hey to a friend...I could do that. With an electric car and today's batteries, each "filling" station would have to be able to provide a fully charged, safe battery pack that is compatible with my vehicle.

If better batteries could be made with oil, adoption for electric cars would be overnight and the prediction manifested.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are > sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient.

That's a great point that I've never considered before.

> On the other hand, the potential exists for a huge rollout of home solar > power over the next decade.

Electric cars will convince their owners to install rooftop solar panels, too, which will then convince them to get Powerwall-like batteries for backup, which will then decrease the price of batteries, which will then make electric cars cheaper and more appealing to more people.

It's a beautiful feedback loop.

And wow DOE's predictions are _terrible_ (first source). It's almost as if they went around surveying car manufacturers about their plans to make electric cars in 2013 and then made their predictions for _27 years later_ based on _that_. Just terrible.

And 11% cars will be using ethanol in 2040? Really? I'll be surprised if 0.11% of them will use ethanol by then.

> The current range of a Model S tops out at about 300 miles. Even GM is > extending it's Volt to 200 miles to effectively compete with Tesla.

Volt is the range-extender, and it doesn't come near that (for battery mileage). You're thinking "Bolt" which is not really meant to be the successor to Volt, because it's a full EV and doesn't have a range extender. That's what they claim it will do on battery alone. It will compete with Model 3, not S.

> Battery technology is difficult, but it would be extremely surprising if the > available ranges don't double again in 5 years or less.

I agree. Part of it will be from the natural evolution of Li-ion batteries, and part from Tesla's Gigafactory coming online. I expect battery prices to drop in half again to around $100 in another 5 years, after Apple has launched its electric car, too, and Tesla has made a couple more Gigafactories + the natural progress in density of the batteries. After that we might need some breakthroughs to go to $50 or less per kWh.

$100/kWh should be enough to switch the "Early Majority" to EVs, which is half the population. The other half will need batteries to be $50/kWh (or less) to make EVs cheap enough but also with long enough range for the more conservative gas-powered car drivers, who probably won't accept anything less than a (real) 500 mile range on an EV.

</comment><comment><USER57> Must be nice to live in the first world.

I've always wondered if the realization of this electric car utopia in the first world will eventually lead to Lamborghinis and Porches being dumped on us poor people in the third world like hand me down clothes.

</comment><comment><USER58> I can't imagine what the iPhone has to do with an electric car. The post just refers to a software interface (which all cars now have), a network conncetion, and automatic updates. None of these relies on the powertrain of the car.

<comment><USER59> TFA is drawing a parallel between the way smartphones, as heralded by the iPhone, transformed the mobile phone market, and the way electric cars, as heralded by the Model S, will do to the car market.

That's what the one has to do with the other.

<comment><USER60> But it's a really poor parallel. People wanted a smartphone because it was a total game changer. Electric cars are not.

I'm an electrical engineer and I only sort of give a shit what kind of powertrain by car has. My mom? Doesn't know or care how her car works. My dad? Probably against electrical out of old man-back in my dad behavior.

Cost will be the big change. Once an electric car is cheaper than gas, the public will switch. But that is not why people switched to smartphones.

Also part of the reason for the smartphone revolution is the market psychology behind carriers subsidizing very expensive phones. People think their iPhone 6 costs 200 bucks.

Finally, the short upgrade cycle for phones is totally different than cars which last for like 15 years on average.

<comment><USER61> Smartphones _weren 't_ a "total game changer", they were a jump in CPU power and interface smoothness, but the trends were already there (maybe not in the U.S., I dunno).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The future's already here. A 2-3 year old Nissan Leaf, top trim with all the features, with 10-20K miles on it and a 7-year factory CPO warranty, costs just $10-12K. That's thousands less than the average price paid for a used car last month. If your commute's less than 40-50 miles each way, you can have all the advantages of owning an EV today, not X years down the line. Zero gas, zero maintenance, zero emission inspections, and damn fun to drive. And you don't need any special charging hardware; you can plug it into any old 120V wall socket overnight.

<comment><USER63> Eh, I'm not sure the Leaf is the future for most people. Based on what I've heard from Leaf owners, even a commute of 35 miles can be iffy depending on travel conditions. And even if your Leaf can make the trip today, common levels of battery degradation on the Leaf will place that commute out of your range within a couple of years (the users at mynissanleaf.com estimate that a battery can be expected to lose about 10% of its capacity after one year, 15% after two years and 26% after five years under moderate conditions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> For gas stations, the profit from gas is ~1%, but the profit from snacks etc. is much higher. So gas stations could easily add electric charging stations and continue making profit. Source: worked at Sheetz during high school and college, sat through their corporate presentations from time to time.

Now, it is true that the electric charging stations have to compete with an additional category: people charging at home, so there will be gas station closings. The first franchise to add electric chargers should still be profitable, though.

</comment><comment><USER65> While I'm all on-board for the importance and awesomeness of a wholesale transition to electric transportation, I think this essay leaves out some important considerations.

The primary one that pops to mind for me: people replace their phones every 2-3 years. ([http://www.phonearena.com/news/Americans-replace-their- cell-...](http://www.phonearena.com/news/Americans-replace-their-cell-phones- every-2-years-Finns--every-six-a-study-claims_id20255))

How often do people replace their car?

<comment><USER66> Just shy of 6 years for a new car: [http://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the- latest/average-length-of...](http://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the- latest/average-length-of-us-vehicle-ownership-hit-an-all_time- high/2000007854/)

Obviously a significant portion of those cars remain on the road, just with new drivers. As of 2012, the average age of cars on the road is 11 years: [https://www.mainstreet.com/article/how-long-do-you-keep- car-...](https://www.mainstreet.com/article/how-long-do-you-keep-car- americans-are-driving-them-ground)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Eeeeeee, coming from a country where average age of a car on the road is 10+ years, I would say absolutely no. And about fuel stations becoming less profitable and closing...how do you think stations survive in remote places of the world where there is very few cars? They increase their prices. And some of us will still gladly pay those prices,because we have to drive petrol/diesel powered cars(trucks are not going to be electric powered for a long time).

</comment><comment><USER68> I find even this view to be pessimistic and limited, because it assumes we need to keep fairly conventional (but electric) cars around, which we don't!

It's likely we'll rapidly end up with something like the computer controlled "carpods" Google is building, which could be radically cheaper than any car people have to be able to drive. Even if they can only go 45mph, that's enough to navigate most major cities at an optimal speed.

<comment><USER14> Vehicles driving at most 25 mph are regulated much lighter than `cars' in the USA, that's why Google chose that speed limit for their `carpods'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I have test driven a Model S and I will strive to never purchase a ICE driven car again. I, quite literally, changed my perspective on transportation and my life. Previously, I've been lusting after a used 911 or S4 but no more.

Tesla has my business, especially if they can pull off a ~$35k in a couple of years. All I have to do is make my current A4 & Honda Odyssey make it a bit longer. :)

</comment><comment><USER70> I think this is a tough discussion to have without discussing the following engineering realities and understanding how the needle moves for each of them over time.

Key Metrics:

Specific Energy Density

Cost/ Unit of Specific Energy Density

Liquid Hydrocarbin Energy Density vs. Galvanic Battery Density

Simplicity and Maintainability

[http://qr.ae/7L89on](http://qr.ae/7L89on) (everyone should read this post.)

</comment><comment><USER71> Part of the iPhones success was the base of iPod users with music collections in the ecosystem that could only get it on the their phone with an "upgrade". No such thing exists for Telsa. Now when someone figures out drive as a service and it cost <$200/mo for the average user with a commute. You have a disruptive scenario.

</comment><comment><USER72> We just need to add outlets everywhere. I'd love one, but I don't have a place to charge it.

<comment><USER73> The electric car is actually fairly inconvenient if you don't have a garage or a parking spot that you rent / cannot install an outlet on.

The cycle time on vehicles is far higher than a cheap smartphone mainly due to their expense. And a large amount of the article's bullet points are not something that would be unique to an electric car.

When you take public transit, as long as the train/bus isn't loud, would you care to notice if it was electric or gas based? Or how fast it got you where you wanted to go with comfort?

<comment><USER74> Boston has added hybrid buses to their fleet. They are much quieter. I'm a fan.

But I agree about the parking spaces. Even now in new construction, it is considered forward thinking to have 2 or 3 spaces with outlets out of 100. For the future of electric cars, they should at least have conduit to spaces where outlets could be installed.

<comment><USER43> New construction in Palo Alto, including single family homes, is required to have that sort of thing pre-installed. Conduit only for single-family homes, a lot of conduit and some actual chargers for multi-family and commercial buildings.

<comment><USER73> If you own a single family home, then electric cars are ok. If you live in a multiunit, rent, do not have a garage or similar, then charging at home is not practical.

<comment><USER43> Well, you just responded to a Tesla owner who rents in a multi-unit apartment. I charge, overnight once per week, in a city garage 1 block away. I didn't say it was easy or common, but that it's possible and getting more common.

(And if I ever get short, there's a new supercharger in Mountain View.)

Palo Alto's new law mandating chargers in new construction just recently passed; in a few years it will begin to take effect. And they'll probably extend it to renovations of older buildings, etc etc.

<comment><USER72> I want a Tesla, but you are far and away more dedicated to the idea that I am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I though the lesson from the iphone's success was that a product with less features, easier to use and more integrated make great products. With that reasoning plug-in hybrids are the future, although I'm personally rooting for pure electric to win in the end.

</comment><comment><USER76> To me the best parts of an electric car is that the power-train assembly is much simpler then with a gas powered one and it can be powered with pretty much any kind of energy... whatever feeds your home. and the downfall is of course the range.

</comment><comment><USER77> A big problem is that battery's require lithium, which is quite rare(not supper rare but still rare enough for it to be a problem).

My prediction is that sales if electric cars wont become exponential until we get cheaper and greener battery technology.

<comment><USER78> That lithium is rare is a common misconception. It is actually one of the more abundant elements on Earth, especially in seawater [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial)

<comment><USER55> Also, the on-land lithium deposits considered commercial already have enough lithium to make every car in the world electric, plus provide battery storage (like tesla power wall) for every home in the world. See:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/m4r/stupid_questions_may_2015/cbjf](http://lesswrong.com/lw/m4r/stupid_questions_may_2015/cbjf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> > In fact, in 2005 few if any of the futurists would have even been able to > imagine the kind of device most of us now depend upon.

Well, let's be honest, mod the implementation details, Star Trek pretty much got this correct with the PADD.

<comment><USER80> If I may nerd out for a moment, the technical manual [+] for the Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) even specified that the entire craft could be piloted from a PADD. This is entirely reasonable based on today's mobile device hardware (I'd argue, if you're offloading computationally expensive tasks to a central processor and using a mobile device solely for taking in aggregated sensor data and outputting navigational commands).

[+] [https://cudebi.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/franchise-star- tr...](https://cudebi.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/franchise-star-trek-tng- technical-manual1.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Without cheap batteries, electric cars are a niche product, unfortunately. And with the Iran deal, oil and natural gas are going to be even cheaper so electric cars would become even more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER82> I can't believe he said electric cars are more fun to drive. There're fun to drive electric cars such as tesla and fiat 500e, but they're never more fun to drive than most (if not all) other cars in it's price range. The only advantage of an electric car in terms of performance is torque. And it doesn't necessary has more torque. Yes electric cars has maximum torque at 0 rpm, but do anyone actually bother looking at it's torque curve? Different from gasoline cars, the torque of electric cars goes DOWN when rpm goes up. I do believe electric cars make a lot of sense for normal people, especially commuters, but please do not say it's more fun to drive because it's absolutely not.

<comment><USER17> Do you own one? Everyone I know that owns a Tesla says it's insanely fun to drive. That includes a couple guys I know that own gasoline powered race cars in the same price range as well as Teslas.

<comment><USER82> I've test driven one and that's why I didn't bought it. Look at all those car medias who put good words on Tesla, is there any one of them said it's more fun to drive than things like the new Mercedes S class? I don't even compare it to sports cars in that price range like corvette or 911. What kind of "race car" are your friends talking about? A charger?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This _might_ happen, but I think Geoff is a little too breathless here. Smartphones cost up to $200 with contract. (Approximately nobody buys unlocked phones in the US.) Almost anybody could scrape up $200, and for those who can't, there are $0-with-contract smartphones by now and <$50 prepaid smartphones.

The Tesla Model S costs $69,900. That is a hilarious amount of money to spend on a car. That's $18,000 more than a Mercedes-Benz E-Class. $20,000 more than an Audi A6. $45,000 more than a Toyota Prius. $50,000 more than a Volkswagen Jetta. You could buy a different, damn good used car for every day of the work week for the cost of a single Tesla Model S.

OK, you say, but the iPhone launched at a high price too. The difference is, the iPhone's price came down in a couple of years and the Tesla's price is still extremely high, even for a luxury car, seven years after the launch of the Roadster. Is the price of a Tesla going to drop $50,000 in the next five to ten years?

Has the Tesla sold well? About 50,000 Teslas have been sold in the United States since 2012[1]. In contrast, Toyota sold over four times that number of cars in June 2015 alone.[2] "Struggling" Volkswagen sold 30,000 cars in April.[3] Even in the luxury category, BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus all sell in excess of 300,000 cars a year[4]. 300,000 cars a year, vs. 50,000 cars in three years.

The author also notes a number of advantages of the Tesla:

> It's more fun to drive, with smooth, transmission-less acceleration. For > most of us it is the fastest car we have ever owned.

> It's quieter at all times and nearly silent at low speeds.

> It allows you to drive in the carpool lane

> It's more roomy and has a trunk in the front (the "frunk") AND a spacious > back.

I agree with these.

> [It allows you] to sign up for a cheaper energy usage plan at home.

> It is always "full" every morning one drives it and you never need to go to > a gas station.

This is true for people who live in detached houses. People who are ecologically conscious often prefer not to do this, and that makes it harder to gain a foothold among early adopters. In fact, among this segment, and among the younger segment overall, Tesla's biggest competition isn't going to be other car makers; it's going to be the decision not to own a car in the first place. Once Tesla reaches a point of economical mass production, they should seriously consider partnering with Zipcar to install charging stations at Zipcar lots and provide Teslas as Zipcar fleet vehicles; in the long run, they might get more Tesla drivers that way than they ever would selling vehicles to individual buyers.

If electric cars are the future, I'm going to despair that in the 21st century, we're still hauling around individual 300 pound Americans in 4,000 pound, 16 foot long cars. The trends towards young people returning to the city center and not owning cars are both better trends to encourage and more powerful trends than the trend of selling a really nice, $70,000 electric luxury car.

> It has a user interface - including, notably, its navigation system - <USER2> > superior to that of other cars as the iPhone was to earlier phones.

> It is connected to the Internet.

> It continuously gets better with automatic updates and software > improvements.

> It comes with an app that allows you to manage the car from your phone.

None of these are inherent to electric cars, and any luxury marque should be able to copy these, just like they've been copying from each other for years. And once the luxury marques copy these features, they will filter down to all new cars. (This is even assuming that the last three points are a positive, which I don't think they are.)

> Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are > sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient.

On the contrary, I think not actually having to sell as much gas would be a boon to the gas station. Gas stations make next to zero margin on actual gasoline, and all of their margin on the convenience store. People on road trips will still have to take breaks, use the restroom, and buy a Red Bull. The gas station doesn't really care whether you refuel your car along the way, but as long as they still exist and provide the service of refueling the driver (and how hard is it to set up some sort of metered power jack for your electric car at the gas station, too?), the business of actually selling fuel will be subsidized.

In fact, here's another way to look at it: diesel-powered cars are fairly rare in the US, and yet it's still easy to find a gas station that pumps diesel. Not every gas station does it, but it's not a barrier to diesel fuel sales.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Global](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Global)

[2] [http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+lexus...](http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+lexus+scion+june+2015+sales+release.htm)

[3] [http://media.vw.com/release/976/](http://media.vw.com/release/976/)

[4] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/05/us-usa-autos- luxur...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/05/us-usa-autos-luxury- idUSKBN0KE1RG20150105)

<comment><USER83> <i> $20,000 more than an Audi A6. </i>

I don't know where you're getting your numbers, but my A6 I bought 8 YEARS AGO cost more than $49,900. $70k is a lot of money without a doubt, but it's not out of line for a mid-range luxury car. Unfortunately I don't find the Model S to be as nice to drive or ride in (except in terms of acceleration) as the gasoline cars in the same price bracket. That will change, it's not a knock against electric cars in general, but I don't think the Model S is there yet for the price.

<comment><USER24> I literally googled "Audi A6". The base MSRP starts at $44,800.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Eh. i would like to see independent garages retrofitting batteries into classic cars.

but man, theres nothing like hearing carburetors on v8's.

<comment><USER85> There does seem to be a small group of hot-rodder hackers who are doing that, like this guy [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369h-SEBXd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369h-SEBXd8) \- the related videos on the side have a few more who are racing electric cars in old bodies. I haven't seen one with a really classic hot rod body, but that would be really cool.

<comment><USER84> Yeah i've seen that car, theres also this classic mustang that this texas company was working on. I think the biggest issue (like always) is battery location and storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Shell, Exxon, BP will pour massive lobby dollars to slow down the spread of electric cars. GM, Ford, Honda & Toyota (and the Dealer network) will get in on the lobbying action against electric cars when they see their current monopolies eroding.

Comparing the spread of the Smartphone (digital device by definition) to the Spread of the Car (physical) and then extrapolating a best case future is wishful thinking.

<comment><USER52> Smartphones are physical. They exist in my hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Then there is the whole theory that car ownership will go away as driverless cars take over.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Current predictions of the future of electric cars are as wrong as any > predictions about the future of mobile phones made in 2005.

I find it odd that Mr. Ralston says this while predicting the future of electric cars. Surely he meant "Everyone else's current predictions…"

</comment><comment><USER87> I would still buy a gasoline car just because there are no charging stations near where I live. Yeah you can charge at home, but if I have to take a longer trip? At least for me, I will wait until charging stations become more available. Could be a chicken and egg problem.

<comment><USER88> Interesting to think about small towns that lack electric car infrastructure: if many of those rely on tourism (thinking a remote seasonal vacation town), as their customers increasingly drive electric cars, they will have to change, which will bring more infrastructure to the whole city.

<comment><USER89> I'm thinking about visiting a friend ~8 years ago. He lives in a rural area, and back then cell phone signal coverage was _terribly_ spotty. Couldn't go around a curve without risk of losing coverage.

But the situation improved. When I visited a few months back, what a huge difference there was. I was amazed that out in the boondocks mobile phones worked just about everywhere. (Well, at least in that locality.)

Seems to suggest that once the demand for electric vehicle recharging begins to ramp up, the charge-station infrastructure will improve just as rapidly as cell phone towers have proliferated.

Tourism may be one motivator but seems predictable that once electric vehicles are good enough and affordable, small town residents themselves will generate the bulk of the demand for this infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> > and to sign up for a cheaper energy usage plan at home

Wait... What is this??

</comment><comment><USER48> > The future of automotive transportation is an electric one and you can > expect that future to be here soon.

The future is electric _driverless_ cars. How long until they are mandatory?

</comment><comment><USER91> I think the article is overly optimistic and derives some sort of future prediction based on a simplified past performance of a totally different market. Tesla is a luxury , many of us can't afford it and if we could we would most likely opt for BMW or Benz.

The reason these other car makers aren't moving yet is they are learning from Tesla. You don't want to be a first mover in this industry, you want to move so slightly close to what everyone is doing but still differentiate yourself on brand. Cars today have vastly improved across the board regardless of make. To say gas stations will go out of business is ludicrous at best, Tesla will go out of business sooner as established car brands move in and hurt bottom line for Tesla. In the short while the euphoria towards Tesla will continue but it's headed for a not so pleasant ending. Great for humanity, bad for Musk.

<comment><USER92> I think people in the 2nd hand car market (like me) will quickly switch to electric. They are simpler to fix and cheaper to fix. Nearly all my cars die with head gasket issues, or oil leaks or timing belt issues. _does quick count_ so that's 4 of my cars and 2 of my partners.

Electric engines won't die like that. And when they do, just grab a used one from a junked car and off you go. With 'in wheel' electric motors, this may be as simple as changing a wheel. This is huge for the 2nd hand market. Most people I know who aren't 'techies' are really looking forward to electric cars.

<comment><USER93> True, but there's at least one really expensive component of electric cars that needs replacement every 8 to 10 years: the battery. I think the current price is about $10000 for the battery if you order from Tesla in advance.

Maintenance and repair costs of a gasoline vehicle over 10 years can be less than that.

<comment><USER94> That's not a very good comparison, is it? After 10 years you'd have a nearly- new electric car (from a reliability/repair standpoint) but you'd have a gas car that was vastly more likely to break down and need costly repairs than when you first bought it.

<comment><USER46> So the electric car doesn't have an interior that will be worn out? Or worn suspension components like ball joints, tie rods, bushings, steering rack? Or air conditioning?

Electric cars also have highly sophisticated power control equipment. In 10 years of sysadmin work, the overwhelmingly most common failures I've seen have been power supplies, voltage regulators, and capacitors. Remains to be seen how well these components will hold up in real-world use in electric cars.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>