Lucid Air EV's Battery Will Be 113.0 KWh - <AUTHOR> https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33797162/2021-lucid-air-517-mile-range-113-kwh-battery/ <comment><USER2> "...when it comes out in 2021."

My rule of thumb when it comes to all breathless headlines around battery technology is that "I'll believe it when I see it". It's one thing to achieve these specs for batteries when n = (small number), but can they be affordably built at scale?

<comment><USER3> 2021 starts in less than 5 months. I think a lot of people are still so used to seeing 202x dates as "far future" that it's really easy right now to lose perspective that that future is already here.

<comment><USER4> Oh come on, you jinxed it. Now, 2020 will never finish!

<comment><USER5> Unless it's actually the year 2525, and we are all just trying to stay alive, but we are in a virtual reality meant to hide the truth from our eyes. Oh what a time to be alive

<comment><USER6> My pet theory is we're part of a simulation to understand whether 2 days is the optimal weekend length for the future of mankind.

<comment><USER7> So far is the evidence pointing towards more or less than two days?

<comment><USER8> When I'm president of the world I'll keep the weekend at two days but shorten the work week from 5 to 4. This feels sort of like a 20% reduction in work but actually you'd only need ~7% more time-efficiency to make up the productivity gap. A lot of industries would recoup that for free just due to having a less exhausted work force.

Sorry, Thursday.

<comment><USER9> Please dump Monday instead. The name has a stigma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The sheer storage capacity of the battery is less interesting than the cost. Getting below $100/KWh will reduce EV price to FAR below ICE vehicles; while BEV's are already at parity with ICE on total cost of ownership, BEV's are going to continue the long descent to MUCH cheaper, and $100 is going to be an important milestone.

I think new ICE vehicles are going to be banned in most major economies by 2030, so really, ICE is having its last decade of relevance in new vehicles. Given vehicle replacement cycle is around ~20 years, by 2050 the ICE vehicle stock will be reduced to 99% specialty machines like classic cars, motorcycles, and various heavy equipment for industry.

<comment><USER11> I have been a TSLA investor for a few years, I believe in electric vehicles. At 100$/KWh we're talking 5000$ for a 50KWh battery back, which is plenty enough for most people. This could allow us to see $15K-20K electric cars in just a few years, maybe before 2025, which is awesome. Very soon buying a gasoline vehicle, in a modern economy, will have people giving you weird looks.

What does have me a little worried though is that most of the world doesn't live in a wealthy city. As electric cars rise, gasoline prices will come down, which will keep gasoline attractive for a while, particularly in poorer countries. Failing ICE vehicle companies will try to sell their gas vehicles to these poor countries as well, and our used cars might end up there too. In other words, poorer countries could keep gasoline cars going for another 30 years after they've been banned here. What are we going to do about that? We're all breathing the same air.

<comment><USER12> Bigger problem: More than half of Americans do not have a garage to park their car in to charge. Fast charging is great for road trips but it's got nothing on gas fill ups..yet.

<comment><USER3> Street level charging is very possible (and growing quickly in Europe). Any street with lamps or parking meters already has easy opportunities for chargers to be added.

<comment><USER12> In America this would require some pretty high-level rework of how city infrastructure works.

<comment><USER3> Not really? We have electricity at the streets. We want additional plugs on the streets, and _maybe_ a credit card reader on those plugs (even that's not a given, really; cars themselves can transmit their payment information these days, or costs could be rolled into existing city taxes/parking fees). This isn't rocket science, this is infrastructure America has been building since the early 1900s.

<comment><USER13> > Not really? We have electricity at the streets. We want additional plugs on > the streets, and maybe a credit card reader on those plugs

Your parent was not saying that it'd be difficult to have a few charging stations on streets, but rather that it would be difficult to add a lot of densely packed chargers on the street.

Today, there just isn't that much use for electricity on the street: traffic lights and the occasional parking meter are pretty much it from what I can tell.

What you're proposing is adding 100's if not 1000's of amps of electricity to the sidewalk. For many, many streets.

The situation is even more dire in the north: while it's not too bad to charge in a garage, particularly if it's insulated, EVs on the street will have to expend a substantial amount of energy keeping their batteries warm during the winter months, meaning that the minimum charging rate for those areas will have to be solidly in the Level 2 range.

All of this work isn't impossible or even conceptually difficult. But it is a lot of work, and it's not as simple as just setting up charging stations and hooking them into the already existing infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> Most American street lamps are already "Level 2 range" for historic reasons that many of them are high powered sodium lamps or extremely early fluorescents.

In most major US cities the combined density of traffic lights, street lamps, and parking meters (especially parking meters!) is extremely high; much higher than average in Europe from what I've seen. Plus, most US cities don't have historic preservation laws that apply to "street furniture" like street lamps and parking meters, as opposed to European cities that have _already_ done a lot of work into shaping EV plugs to look more like historic street furniture and fit within preservation law limits. Europe has a slight advantage that their default plug output is closer to "Level 2" than America's paltry "Level 1" wall outlets, but even that advantage isn't as huge as it seems to some of these discussions. (Especially, again, given America wired most streets and parking lots for "Level 2" in the first place because those styles of street lamps were more convenient for more decades.)

It _is_ just as simple as adding plugs to the streets. People keep acting like car chargers are some sort of futuristic new electricity component, but at the end of the day it is a slightly smarter US dryer plug and maybe a meter. Maybe we need to beef up those circuits to support future demands, but just starting with the demand we have today we don't need to worry so much, the capacity is already there, and we know how to scale the infrastructure for demand as we add it, because scaling electricity infrastructure is a well solved problem. So what if it is a "lot of work"? That's not a "huge high-level rework", as suggested above, that's an "expand what's already there, eventually as needed/demanded". We're not moving to some foreign concept of a new energy grid, we are taking the energy grid we have and expanding it as demand happens (again, nowhere conceptually any different than what cities have done since the very first electric street lamp rollouts in the 1910s).

<comment><USER14> Amperes for charging EV is outrageous compared to other electric devices. It shouldn't be easy to deploy massively for power grid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The title should be updated as it is misleading in a critical way.

The word "big" suggests the size and weight of the battery is bigger, which is not the case. That would be entirely unremarkable. Their quote directly states this: "It's relatively easy to achieve more range by adding progressively more batteries, but gaining 'dumb range' that way increases weight and cost, and reduces interior space." He continued, "Lucid Air has achieved its remarkable range whilst also reducing battery size"

A better title: "Lucid Air's EV 113.0 KWh Battery Is More Powerful, Efficient, and Lighter-weight Than Tesla's"

<comment><USER16> Let's not jump the gun though. We still don't know enough about Tesla's 2021 and later batteries. Your suggested headline is built around a comparison to missing information.

Also Tesla's best battery will be 200kw, not 113kw... I guess they missed that. And Cybrtrk may be higher than that.

But yes reducing size and weight and improving efficiency are all great things! Kudos to them if they can get it into a shipping car at volume.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck](https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck)

I had to check - they've not gotten rid of the vowels and a c

Having seen what Elon's at least half to blame for naming this year, I could've fully believed he'd gone that route!

<comment><USER16> Could have sworn an earlier version did but maybe it wasn't official. Thanks for pointing that out. I do like it better with vowels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > The vehicle is more efficient than the Model S Long Range Plus, which has a > 100.0-kWh capacity and 402 miles of range.

It always makes me cringe when I see headlines which compare potential products to a shipping product. It shouldn't be surprising that a future product is better than a currently shipping one.

A year ago Lucid was bragging that they would have a 400 mile range. Now Telsa is shipping a car with a 400 mile range. So Lucid has to up their game.

<comment><USER12> Whats interesting is that they are focusing on the current Model S and zero mention of the 3, which has a significantly better efficiency due (in addition to the smaller size, admit-ably) to the fact that the newer 3 design, powertrain, and chassis was a rework that is far superior to the, basically, 9 year old, Startup-developed, Model S. Next-Gen Model S will bring not just larger packs but Model 3 lessons in weight and their claims probably wont pan out, even if true.

<comment><USER19> The current Model S is actually on par with the model 3 in terms of battery and drivetrain. They continuously update it.

They stuck the Model 3 motor type into the front of the Model S and primarily uses that for driving. You get to use the less efficient induction motor in the back for high accelerations. The chemistry in the battery is also the same but in a slightly different format.

I have a Model X and it's also updated in this fashion. They have come a long way since the 2012 Model S.

I suspect they will come out with a 100 kWh Model 3/Y though and it seems that the efficiency/range should be compared to these as you say instead of the big cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The first sentence of the article:

>After surprising many with the Air's 517 miles of EPA-estimated range...

A few paragraphs later in the article:

>During a real-world ride along with Lucid in one of the company's prototypes traveling at 70 miles per hour on the highway, the Air achieved 458 miles before depleting its battery. The automaker still needs to deliver a production vehicle to the EPA before it has an official EPA number. It expects to do so in early 2021 when the Air goes into production.

Isn't that opening incredibly misleading? The car does in fact not have 517 miles of EPA-estimated range. The company is projecting 517 miles of range once the EPA tests it, which has not happened yet. So why are they calling the 517 number "EPA-estimated"?

<comment><USER21> Even 458 miles (737 kms) of highway EV driving at 70mph (112 km/h) is phenomenal. If this is coupled with a relatively fast charger infrastructure (150KW+) this means game over for fossil cars. When you can drive for 6 hours or more on a single charge there is absolutely no inconvenience factor in owning an EV at that point.

<comment><USER22> A lot of countries are still interested in fossil cars because they can slap their bullshit taxes on them and the gas, so I wouldn't expect an instant transition, as it's going to severely impact lobby-backed revenue streams

<comment><USER23> Most countries once EV's are cheaper than gasoline and diesel cars are going to outright ban gasoline and diesel cars so they don't have to import oil and pay for it in dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The number of kWh of a pack is kind of a meaningless number for comparisons. A larger pack may actually be worse as it adds weight.

They key numbers I want to see are volumetric density (wh/l), gravimetric density (wh/kg), and cost ($/kwh) at the pack level and the cell level. Other key numbers are operating temperature ranges, max charge rate, maximum charging curves, idle energy loss or leakage, and overall efficiency of the vehicle (wh/mi) in many specific testing regimens (different speeds/air resistance, temperatures, and weather conditions.

<comment><USER25> Very true.

There are EVs with inferior cell gravimetric power density, who in the end manage to have superior pack gravimetric density, and superior mass fraction (cell weight/car weight) than Model S.

<comment><USER24> Yes exactly. Going further than that they may even choose a lower density for cost reasons. Elon responded to me about this when I tweeted him about LFP which have worse density but a lower cost, better thermals and safety. In China they are going to use LFP on the low cost SR+ Model 3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 500+ miles range. Nice.

At a constant 70mph, that is over 7 hours continuous driving (...although I wonder how much range decreases at that speed?)

I do wonder what the magic numbe needs to be before people stop complaining that x00 miles is not enough and that they reguarly drive 19000 mile a day etc.

<comment><USER27> I wish we had a standardized test for range at continuous 70/80/90 mph instead of the EPA and WLTP tests. Those are designed for overall efficiency testing when what people really want to know about EV range is how long they can go on road trips. For everything else charging at home every night makes pretty much any EV range enough for the commute and the efficiency is always great compared to gas.

<comment><USER28> > efficiency is always great compared to gas

This isn't a given. Money-efficiency in the UK at least is only good if you charge at home. If you pay on-street prices for electricity, you can easily spending more per mile than a gas car.

Eg. An electric car might do 330 Wh/mile. A recharge on the road would cost £3 (connection fee) + £0.30 per kWh. That means if you top up 25 kWh, you'll end up paying £10.50, and able to travel 76 miles, or £0.138 per mile. A typical 2018 gas car gets 50.8 imperial mpg costing £0.108 per mile at todays gas prices in London.

Overall, unless you can charge at home, an electric car will cost you more per mile for fuel/electricity alone.

<comment><USER27> The efficiency is still great in your example. You're just paying outrageous prices for electricity. That's not an efficiency problem, it's a price problem. EPA/WLTP also doesn't help you measure if your electricity prices are reasonable or not compared to your gas prices.

<comment><USER29> Ionity is even more expensive than that in most of Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this will become the new high end luxury EV, at least until Tesla does a refresh of the S. My impression is that right now the current Model S isn't really that popular because the 3 is functionally similar at a much lower price point, but clearly that segment of the market willing to pay 120k+ for a top tier vehicle exists because they paid it when the S was the only game in town.

<comment><USER31> I have a Model S and a Model 3, and I actually prefer the 3 (though I generally prefer sportier cars to luxury cars). The smaller size makes it more nimble, the lack of air suspension gives better road feel, the horizontal orientation of the central screen seems more effective, and I don't miss the dash at all. The only things I do miss from the Model S are the much more comfortable steering wheel, AM radio (weirdly missing on the Model 3), and a hatchback. If I were looking for a new EV today, I'd probably be looking at a Model Y.

<comment><USER32> What is more comfortable about the Model S steering wheel?

<comment><USER31> The Model S steering wheel has a nicer surface texture, a rounder cross- section that feels more comfortable in my hand, and is (slightly) padded. The Model 3 steering wheel is hard plastic, and the cross-section is a narrow ellipse that creates a hard edge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Excited to see more competition in the EV space. Still, press releases are free...

</comment><comment><USER34> I procrastinated for an hour and did some quick research to see how much the drag coefficient and rolling resistance affect fuel economy:

[https://www.nap.edu/read/11620/chapter/5#39](https://www.nap.edu/read/11620/chapter/5#39)

Specifically a) city (top) and b) highway (bottom):

[https://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309094216/xhtml/images/p2000f6...](https://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309094216/xhtml/images/p2000f633g40001.jpg)

For an internal combustion, midsize passenger car, including standby, here are the losses:

City:

      Engine + driveline + standby: 85%
      Aero: 3%
      Rolling: 4%
      Braking: 6%
      Accessories: 2%
      ---
      100%

Highway:

      Engine + driveline + standby: 78%
      Aero: 11%
      Rolling: 7%
      Braking: 2%
      Accessories: 2%
      ---
      100%

Looks like Tesla motors are 93-97% efficient:

[https://www.pcmag.com/news/report-tesla-model-sx- upgrading-t...](https://www.pcmag.com/news/report-tesla-model-sx-upgrading-to- more-efficient-electric-motors)

And regenerative braking is 80% * 80% = 64% efficient, or 36% costly (about 1/3 as much energy wasted):

[https://www.tesla.com/blog/magic-tesla-roadster- regenerative...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/magic-tesla-roadster-regenerative- braking)

I'll just run the math for an electric car with a 95% efficient electric motor, assuming 0% driveline losses with direct drive and no transmission, with no standby losses:

City:

      Engine + driveline + standby: 5%
      Aero: 3%
      Rolling: 4%
      Braking: 2%
      Accessories: 2%
      ---
      16% (already 6.25 times more efficient by going electric)

Highway:

      Engine + driveline + standby: 5%
      Aero: 11%
      Rolling: 7%
      Braking: 1%
      Accessories: 2%
      ---
      26% (already 3.85 times more efficient by going electric)

Rescaled to 100% by multiplying each term by (100/total):

City:

      Engine + driveline + standby: 31%
      Aero: 19%
      Rolling: 25%
      Braking: 13%
      Accessories: 12% (rounded down to make 100% total)
      ---
      100%

Highway:

      Engine + driveline + standby: 19%
      Aero: 42%
      Rolling: 27%
      Braking: 4%
      Accessories: 8%
      ---
      100%

So we can see that city driving is dominated by engine efficiency and highway driving is dominated by aerodynamic efficiency. But both lose about 25% (1/4 of the energy!) to rolling resistance.

Googling "mileage loss percentage due to drag coefficient" and "mileage loss percentage due to rolling resistance":

[http://www.arcindy.com/effect-of-aerodynamic-drag-on-fuel- ec...](http://www.arcindy.com/effect-of-aerodynamic-drag-on-fuel-economy.html)

      For passenger cars this means that aerodynamics is responsible for a much higher proportion of the fuel used in the highway cycle than the city cycle: 50% for highway; versus 20% for city. This means that if you make a 10% reduction in aerodynamic drag your highway fuel economy will improve by approximately 5%, and your city fuel economy by approximately 2%.

[https://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/NVS/Vehicle%20Research%20&%2...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/NVS/Vehicle%20Research%20&%20Test%20Center%20%28VRTC%29/ca/Tires/811154.pdf)

      A 10 percent decrease in tire rolling resistance resulted in an approximately 1.1-percent increase in fuel economy for the vehicle. This result was within the range predicted by technical literature.

Converting these for electric in city and highway by multiplying by 6.25 and 3.85 respectively:

City:

      Each 10% reduction in aerodynamic drag increases mileage by 13%
      Each 10% reduction in rolling resistance increases mileage by 7%

Highway:

      Each 10% reduction in aerodynamic drag increases mileage by 31%
      Each 10% reduction in rolling resistance increases mileage by 4%

Comparing drag coeficents:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient#Ty...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient#Typical_drag_coefficients)

      Lucid Air: 0.21
      Tesla Roadster: 0.35
      Tesla Model S: 0.24
      Tesla Model 3: 0.23
      Tesla Model X: 0.25

So the Lucid Air has about a 10% better drag coefficient than the Tesla model 3, which gives it (at most) 13-31% better range city-highway. I think this is a liberal estimate, and that drag coefficients will never be below about 0.20, so improvements here will probably be marginal from here on out.

It seems to me that a better return on investment might be to fix tires. Someone needs to think outside the box on this and create a tire that acts stiff at high speed, but still grips while cornering and braking. Eliminating this resistance would add 100 miles to electric car range.

I ran this math from a first order perspective, to give an idea of relative costs. I'm sure it's off (since drag is nonlinear), but it helps visualize where the energy goes. Seeing that accessories use as much or more energy than regenerative braking was eye-opening for me.

Oh and you don't even want to know about bicycles. The upright position is the worst possible, and wastes most of the rider's energy. I wish recumbants were safer and more affordable, although this matters less each year with improvements in electric assist, mostly from reduced cost and better batteries.

<comment><USER35> > _a tire that acts stiff at high speed, but still grips while cornering and > braking_

Having a higher PSI rating and an air pump + brake-controlled deflate valve could do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I do remember reading an interview with a guy in charge of the electric Clio development, and he basically said something along the lines of "we could have easily put 2x as large battery in the Clio, but then your average driver would need to drive it for at least 10 years before the car became a net benefit for the environment". These massive batteries have an environmental cost is what he was saying.

<comment><USER15> I agree that massive batteries have an environmental cost that has nowhere near been researched thoroughly. I too think that they are not advanced enough to be easily be called a "green" option.

That said, Lucid is not improving range through battery pack addition, but rather through increased efficiency which reduces the size of the pack, which is promising.

From their press release: "Lucid's (efficiency) breakthrough is not merely just a few percent; we are talking about a significant improvement, which I shall cover further on September 9th."

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do the EPA estimates account for weather changes (hot and cold weather, as opposed to moderate temperatures)? How trustworthy is the 500 mile claim?

</comment><comment><USER38> Lets just see what they announce on Battery Day... that nano-tech teaser image...

</comment><comment><USER39> Given the number of job openings (491) for the company, who actually works there now? By that I mean, how can they already have a car, or know these kinds of specs, when there are that many positions to be filled...

</comment><comment><USER40> does anyone know why EVs dont use gears for more efficiency?

<comment><USER41> Because they don't need them. Electric motors produce mostly constant torque across all RPMs.

That said, there usually is some kind of gearing as I understand it, but a static reduction, not in the way a combustion engine car is.

<comment><USER42> Yeah but the Taycan has a two speed gear IIRC to get some extra juice out of the lemon, so to speak.

<comment><USER41> Most EV conversions start with a manual transmission car and leave the transmission in, only because it's easier that way. (Just need an adapter plate to replace the ICE rather than replacing the whole gear box, etc.)

So in those cases, people do sometimes fiddle with gears while driving, mainly for fun I guess; but most often they just leave it in 3rd and drive that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What's special about selling a 13% larger battery pack for a much higher price?

<comment><USER44> It's not 13% larger. They purport to be making batteries that are more efficient, so they get 13% more power than Tesla's batter pack with a smaller pack.

Here's an article that talks about this some [1].

[1] [https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33797162/2021-lucid- air-5...](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33797162/2021-lucid-air-517-mile- range-113-kwh-battery/)

<comment><USER45> Regardless of their claims, I think it likely that their range gain is attributable entirely to reduced drag coefficient.</comment></comment></comment>


Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/14/refer-ly-lets-regular-folks-earn-affiliate-revenue-for-recommending-products-they-love/ <comment><USER2> I love it. It sounds like a few people here have been thinking about a similar idea, and you can count me in as well. The truth is, my company would be happy to pay out 10% of any order if it resulted from a genuine recommendation. Of course anyone experienced with the affiliate world can figure out a way to capture that money, but it's not really available to your everyday Facebook user. Maybe Refer.ly will fix that. Using Viglink is smart.

Unfortunately, the ecommerce company for which I work has had to completely abandoned affiliate marketing. Almost all of our affiliate fees were going to scammers who were using Google Adwords and bidding on our brand terms. Of course that was against our policy, but we had no way of stopping them out of the gate. They would even copy our exact ad so that when we searched our own name, it would appear at a glance that it was in fact our ad showing up (same display URL and everything). Eventually we just had to shut the whole thing down. I hope Refer.ly can figure out a way to avoid these scammers. I imagine it will be difficult.

With this business model, I wonder if it's possible to act as an aggregator for the Amazon affiliate system? Amazon pays out a higher percentage based on how much volume you bring in. If Refer.ly acted as a single affiliate with Amazon, but they in turn paid out affiliates to thousands of different Refer.ly users, then each user would then be getting the highest possible affiliate percentage from Amazon, right? Because together they would qualify for the volume bonus. I haven't looked into it, but I'm guessing Amazon must have some rule against this.

<comment><USER3> > I haven't looked into it, but I'm guessing Amazon must have some rule > against this.

That seems to be the case, so they'd have to make a special arrangement with Amazon to do so.

> 9\. ... nor will you create links formatted with your Associate's tag for, > or display such links on, a site that is not your site.

[https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/oper...](https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_t=501&ref_=amb_link_353005802_7&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=&pf_rd_s=assoc- center-1&pf_rd_r=&pf_rd_i=assoc_operating)

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't start with amazon associates, there are plenty of smaller affiliate networks who would love to help out and promote this service.

Amazon associates presents a big tracking challenge because their system seems to be designed to give up as little data as possible. It is by far the hardest network I have come across to login as a user and retrieve transaction data in an automated way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've spent a lot of time working with affiliate marketers over the past decade and I wonder how Refer.ly is going to handle compliance with the new FTC rules around compensation disclosure.

Effectively if you're promoting a product in exchange for compensation, that relationship must be disclosed at the genesis of the click and according to the FTC no compensation is too small to be in violation w/out disclosure.

<http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm>

<comment><USER6> Forget refer.ly, how is Amazon going to cope with this in general?

<comment><USER7> I might not be popular here for saying so, but I have to get this off my chest. I think it is a pretty great move by the FTC to make it outright fraud to shill, and I'll tell you why I think so. Please indulge me a little.

The reason is that information doesn't generate itself. If you Google _BlackHole5000 coffee extruder review_ , the BlackHole5000 coffee extruder being this great industrial high-pressure coffee maker, and you don't find a single review, that means in a way there is this 'commons' that is empty now. If there is no Wikipedia article on it (maybe there shouldn't be) there is also an empty 'commons' there. Now compare this with a Wikipedia article being there and being informative: (say the BlackHole5000 is extremely notable, as destiny would have in 20 years) if someone were to completely blank that page out or vandalize it beyond usability, then until this issue is rectified it's pretty clear that they have taken someone from a 'common good.'

Now my argument is that if people take the time to post their review of the BlackHole5000, for me to find, that is also kind of a public good. (After all, they're free to browse if you can find them, etc.) If Google and _every_ search engine were to be completely buried in SEO spam, such that the legitimate reviews are _impossible_ to find, no matter what, by anyone, then it's pretty clear the public loses something. It's like air that you can't breath anymore because it has too much pollution in it. A lake can literally be too toxic for anyone to camp by it, even if it doesn't belong to anyone.

Now what may irk some people here even more. What if we don't completely bury the legitimate reviews, but only adulterate them with paid shills? Before I get to this, let's take a simpler example of attacking a public scientist or activist's message by 'poisoning the well' (attacking their credibility in a false and underhanded way, just to keep the audience from appreciating the message.) In my world-view, there are whole fields and areas of human endeavor which have NO credible scientists and are ALL opinion. To me, the freely available opinions of credible researchers who have invested months or years into understanding to tell me about it is also a kind of 'public good.' There is no reason anyone has to lie to me about how photosynthesis works, and YET it is part of the public good that I can do a google search and immediately get to credible opinion on it. Luckily, photosynthesis is one of the few areas of humanity where there is simple, credible agreement.

If someone were to add a bunch of 'poisoning the well' type junk, then photosynthesis would be like the effects of smoking on the human body, would be like the causes of automobile accidents, would be like labor conditions in China, would like a million different subjects that just have opinions on them but no real credible consensus for anyone who searches. We should cherish credibility and it should be a crime to knowingly "poison the well" in my humble opinion.

Now we return to what I was saying about paid product reviews. In this case, genuine customer satisfaction is also a kind of "public good" -- if you dilute it, it disappears, and if you dilute it enough no one reasonable would ever search for "BlackHole5000 review", since the result is as good as guessing: no relationship with customer experience.

But if it becomes ILLEGAL to dilute it in this way, and these laws work, then something magical can happen. Suddenly, if people know that googling for reviews 'works', then if the BlackHole5000 is off the charts, then anyone who is curious enough to try the Google search will see this, try the BlackHole5000 and within a few years it is a cult icon that truly deserves a Wikipedia article. Which never would have happened if customers knew that searching for reviews online was useless.

Basically, if we want to live in a world where better products win, then I think we should cherish the 'public good' that is customer opinion on that product. The most obvious objection about free speech already doesn't apply to being able to say whatever you want to sell your product (e.g. 'the BlackHole5000 cures cancer our studies find', without any mention of the FDA) so why should you be able to pay others to talk about your product as though they weren't paid?

Basically, it's hard enough to get people to put up a genuine review that is useful, period. (It takes work and thought). We should cherish the few results, when they happen.

<comment><USER7> And just to add something so it's not all about product. Imagine the surgeon who will do your next operation happens to have been sued for malpractice, and lost, on this very operation, by not one but three former patients. But you wouldn't know that by Googling his name, which you do, because rather than invest in training to better himself, he pays someone to SEO fake patient reviews of his excellent work, burying the negative reviews (which only a fraction of the affected patients take the time to write): these negative reviews could save your life or quality of life. But they won't. (This is especially true if you are very, very rich and can shop around for the true gem of a surgeon. Assuming you can find him or her...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool idea but a couple of concerns:

1\. With a sub-affiliate model, affiliate scammers will be all over this (especially if there is no real vetting process). These are the type of links that Twitter spammers would love to pump out in the wild.

2\. Would any of this traffic be incremental for a merchant? For example, if my buddy asks me what TV to buy wouldn't I tell him my true opinion regardless of the payout I received?

3\. Right now it looks like they're using Viglink (<http://www.viglink.com>) for affiliatizing (at least for eBay). I would seriously wonder how willing merchants would be to get onboard directly.

I'm excited for innovation in the affiliate space (which is sorely needs), but this is a really tough problem. Fraud and incrementality are two things that need to be addressed before a merchant would be willing to sign up (esp. if they don't have much budget free to work with).

</comment><comment><USER9> Ok, I signed up in hopes I could get refer.ly started for my company. I don't see any option for business owners.

Just found this: "How Can I Check Whether You Have Rewards Available for a Specific Link?

Referly provides rewards for purchases made on thousands of websites. Stay tuned, we look forward to offering a directory in the future. For now, if you have a specific question just drop us an email."

Are you kidding me? How do you launch without this feature? I feel like you just wasted 5 minutes of my time and that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

Edit: Where do I go to delete my account?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to disappoint you. For teh sake of getting this out the door and in the hands of users we haven't built our a directory page yet but its in the works - we move fast. You can also request a specific product/reward here (not yet publicly linked on the site) <http://refer.ly/business.php>

But if you still want to delete your account just email firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll take care of that right away

<comment><USER10> I think the issue is more that without a directory your product is useless. How can I see when I'm going to get a reward if you don't tell me? I've signed up like the person you replied to and I've shortened 2 links, but there's no indication if I'm going to get a reward and if that's the case what incentive is there for me to use the link?

At the very least can there be a tick or cross next to the links to confirm whether or not your system supports it? The cynic inside of me wants to say that you don't actually have all these companies signed up, but I doubt you would lie so brazenly... although how you had the time to sign up thousands of retailers and no time to build the product into a usable state confuses me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Providing a check mark or some kind of validation as to whether or not a link is covered for rewards is a great idea, I've added that to the list of potential features.

I understand the cynicism - the entire affiliate world is pretty shady, which is why I'm so determined to disrupt it. We are using 3rd party services to help us get reach across top merchants online. Sounds like this part of the service needs more attention earlier than we thought - thank you.

<comment><USER11> Saying the entire affiliate world is shady is intellectually lazy. There are many areas of the industry that are very stable and mature.

<comment><USER12> Which areas are stable and mature? Countering a generalization with another generalization does not an argument make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have this idea myself for many years and even had a friend build his funded startup around this concept for the past year or two.

The biggest issue is with compliance with the companies. There is a reason the affiliate process is vetted and takes alot of steps to make sure your serious about promoting. You indirectly represent the end company when promoting your aff link.

When you have someone blasting their affiliate link all around the web and on twitter it doesn't sit well with the end company and they usually bear the brunt of the compliants.

Good luck on the idea. If you can make it work the all the props.

As a affiliate who LOVED promoting on twitter and would see up to an insane $40 EPC on tweets, a freinds influence is great.

<comment><USER14> $40 EPC? That would be $40 per every click you get from Twitter.

<comment><USER13> yup i would get up too $40 EPC for some tweets but usually averaged in the $15-$30 range.

when you create value, people will click and most likely buy. on twitter, you can see what exactly is on their mind so it becomes pretty transparent what they specifically want when they tweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd focus more on the analytics than the affiliate revenues. Most bloggers I've spoken with on the topic say the visibility/analytics they have on their affiliate revenues is poor. Most affiliate programs will give you click data but beyond that you really have no idea what's being bought, what's driving your affiliate revenues, or the value of your visitors.

I had a blogger friend recently pitch a project to a luxury brand and one of the first things the brand asked for was ROI and purchase data on the blog. She could piecemeal some of it but it's a challenge.

On the flip side, advertisers/brands are asking for more ROI and conversion data to identify who is actually driving sales.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there not a US equivalent of Quidco (<http://www.quidco.com>)?

For genuine friend-to-friend recommendations, I'd rather refer a friend of mine to make a purchase through Quidco and have them claim back the full referral fee themselves (minus a £5/year subscription), than pocket the referral fee myself.

If I was linking to a larger group, why should I go through Referly and not set up an affiliate account direct with the merchant? In the UK, at least, there are large networks like AffiliateWindow, CommissionJunction, etc. that allow you to sign up with numerous merchants using a single interface...

<comment><USER17> Seriously, this. I just checked my Quidco account - I've made £283.13 cashback via Quidco in the last two years. The vast bulk of that from big ticket purchases (e.g. flights, hotels) where I've remembered to log in to Quidco first.

By contrast, the amount of money I could make from recommending books, movies etc to friends via a Referly would be in the pennies.

To sum up: Quidco, I just remember to login before I buy a big ticket item, and literally make hundreds of pounds. Referly, I have to convert all of my product links to Referly affiliate links in the hope of making pennies.

<comment><USER18> They have a Firefox add-on too, which brings up a little bar at the top of the page when you visit one of their partners, advising you that you could earn cashback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> sasha-dv First of all, congratulations on your new venture!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, refer.ly is basically a middleman. If that's so, I have a couple questions:

1\. What incentives do I have to sign up with refer.ly instead of going directly with companies that run affiliate programs?

2\. What makes refer.ly different from existing middlemen like Commission Junction?

<comment><AUTHOR> The key difference right now is that you have 1 signup, and you're done... that's our minimum viable differentiation (for now)

<comment><USER16> Are you sure you're not trying to simplify a process that just can't be simplified anymore than it already is?

For instance, how are you going to handle the veritable smörgåsbord of unique terms and conditions that come attached to each merchant's affiliate schemes? How are users going to be informed of these terms?

Perhaps more importantly, how are you going to deal with people who violate these terms? What happens when one of your users starts using your links as part of a Google AdWords campaign, bidding on keywords that a merchant specifically prohibits?

What happens when a user starts sending your links in the form of unsolicited emails, or starts offering an incentive for people to make a purchase through a referral link — both practices that are commonly prohibited by affiliate schemes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice idea. I see this benefiting influencers and folks with larger number of followers on social channels, but everyday folks are unlikely to see any significant revenues here IMO. The fact that influencers are more likely to adopt it means it has good odds of taking off in popularity though.

Someone like Pinterest doing this implicitly and crediting users (with non- monetary perks even) might have a better chance of impacting the average user I think.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses though. I hope the team shares how it's working out for users a few months down the road.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think non-monetary and group rewards will be huge, because unlike cash they are something that can be made available to a very broad set of users.

We plan to be as open as we can week to week about our progress, and how our users are doing with earning cash and other rewards. We'll be blogging...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how it works without signing up and gave up. The site is very skimpy on details. What are the typical commission rates? How do the commissions compare to Amazon affiliate rates? What is the advantage of using this service vs. existing affiliate programs? Feels like you are trying to appeal to the naive by just saying "magically get paid by talking about products"

<comment><USER21> And what % of the commission is Viglink taking since it's their affiliate links?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Judging by its appearance, I'm guessing this won't have any business options? Would be nice to have a centralized product like this that saves me from having to find/sign up for each individual affiliate program. Plus having all the analytics data in one place, too.

Right now it seems to be super early stage. No database of affiliate programs that they have and you can't even withdraw rewards (earnings).

<comment><USER3> > Would be nice to have a centralized product like this that saves me from > having to find/sign up for each individual affiliate program

<http://skimlinks.com/>

<http://www.viglink.com/>

<http://www.123linkit.com/>

<comment><USER22> This is super helpful. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I believe it would be best if the company gave users Karma as opposed to money. When someone suggests a store and you know they will earn $ if you buy from it, you start to doubt their motive. With karma, I do not have to worry about this, and latter the score can be used to spot "influencers".

</comment><comment><USER24> There are a few problems here. FTC disclosure, affiliate tax laws and mostly that icky feeling people get when they get spammed, especially by friends.

But in the eyes of YCombinator, I don't think this matters, because they aren't betting on refer.ly. They're betting on the woman who's founding it. PG's been pretty open about betting on the people and not the idea. Based on the article (and Dave McClure's glowing recommendation) it seems like a pretty sound bet.

</comment><comment><USER25> Now, all I need is an API that a service like Ifttt.com can hook into.

I'd like to use this service in between the others I use. (When I Like something on facebook, it gets tweeted, for instance...) I want it to be able to shorten my link and it get tweeted automatically. Doable?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely doable, I love Ifttt and seeing Referly API + Ifttt would be a dream come true. API added the feature request list, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This just seems like a wrapper around Viglink? Not entirely sure what the value add is here other than shortening URL's.

Viglink IMO take 25% off the commission, which means 75% is available to go to Refer.ly/User. Not sure what percentage Refer.ly is planning to take for themselves but might not leave much left for the user.

As someone who has built a platform that aggregates all the affiliate networks into one place, it's a royal pain. Viglink take away that pain, but for a price & in order to provide the best value to your users in the long run you'll probably have to become an aggegrator yourselves.

</comment><comment><USER27> I read the name as "reefer".ly

<comment><USER28> That's hilarious. I was jamming out this design all weekend and never once did it occur to me, then I get this and a few tweets about it. Let's call it an unintentional in-joke then :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know.. I'd feel a little sleazy sending a referral link to a friend.

<comment><USER29> I imagine this would self-correct eventually. If my friends did nothing but send me referral links... well, I think I could stand having one fewer friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That is going to burn down so fast when the affiliate sharks starts biting. Affiliate is basically the webs version of HFT -- millions can be made, and lost, in a matter of a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER31> If I was interested in having people refer customers for my SaaS app, is there a way to sign up for refer.ly to generate and track these sort of referral links?

<comment><USER32> I think you're looking for something more along the lines of "roll your own affiliate program" - check out <http://www.hasoffers.com/> (I have no affiliation with them, other than they're a local Seattle startup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if all these companies registering their domains in Libya will get bitten by it at some point.

</comment><comment><USER34> How is this different to LinkShare, TradeDoubler etc?</comment>


Building a Flask Single Page Application - <AUTHOR>

Video: Http://youtu.be/gegrALNqdro<p>Part 1 of a 4 Part Series on building a Flask Single Page Application. Purchase the Real Python at http://realpython.com courses to be part of the next session! We're building a Tinder for finding pair programmers! :) <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

[http://youtu.be/gegrALNqdro](http://youtu.be/gegrALNqdro)

and

[http://realpython.com](http://realpython.com)</comment>


The Wrong Right Way - <AUTHOR> https://explore.xoxofest.com/blog/2019-the-wrong-right-way <comment><USER2> >> _" Ultimately, we couldn't find a way to make the business viable. We explored a number of different options—voluntary subscriptions from users, premium features, increased fees—but the resources required to support a high number of lower-volume creators always outpaced our revenue."_

I wonder if Patreon ran into a similar problem trying to stay afloat without handing more control over to VCs.

<comment><USER3> Can someone help me understand, honestly, how a business gets started and funded without the answer to "how to make it viable" being answered already?

<comment><USER4> Because Google and Facebook and several others got started that way. VCs know that the biggest wins often emerge in unexpected ways. And they can pay for a lot of stupid ideas.

<comment><USER5> Google and Facebook both had technology that was obviously monetizable from the start. They just needed time to build the product and build the monetization features.

<comment><USER6> This is a rosy way to look at things after-the-fact, but, as far as I understand, the way Google monetized their search (by showing only relevant ads) was still a fairly new business practice at the time. And Adsense wasn't well tested either. Both were bets that ended up transforming the entire online Ad industry...

<comment><USER7> It was Overture that started doing pay per click ads on their search engine. Google copied that business model and actually got sued for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel like these platforms are catering to a very particular kind of artist, an artist who has an audience that is willing to pay for content and not just consume it. How do you make people pay for something they never paid for in the past?

Most interesting works of art are not acknowledged monetarily at least initially. Money means making compromises and artists really don't like making those. I suppose the Drip or Patreon artist is something YouTube helped create. An artist created by the audience for the audience. I just wonder how this all fits into the current needs of artists that are not musicians or YouTube stars.

Artists primarily need funding and space. They need a free studio to work in and work relief so that they have time to focus on their art. In Europe this often happens through government backed grants. Of course in the US there's a lack of funded for artists. What if these companies used their position and money to lobby for arts funding from the government? Obviously this would be hard in the current administration but maybe this could also be done privately. Imagine if the government or a bunch of tech companies were paying artists a living wage to create public works or art, teach in schools, and design our cities.

<comment><USER9> Companies can fund art directly (and many do, such as Google/YouTube), instead of wastefully routing it through government.

Government can provide UBI and healthcare to the whole population instead of picking politically connected artists to make government approved art.

<comment><USER8> Sure there's Google or Facebook residency, etc but they are specifically looking for artists that are using technology in their art or at least aren't questioning the companies / private interests that are funding them. There's so many artists that don't use computers to make their work. I mean a program that supports all artists. I also don't think government programs like the WPA were a waste.

I'd agree that UBI and healthcare could be one part of this. It's incredible that these aren't a given at this point.

I guess I just feel like Drip and Patreon are creating a commodity where there shouldn't be one. Funding an artist only when they have an audience that has the means to pay them monthly is a sure way of making some bad art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would be really interesting to hear what exactly makes a business like this not viable with, quote, increasingly insurmountable odds. In my observer naivety I'd expect growth / profitability to be hard, but not unsustainable operation from the start.

<comment><USER11> curious as well, seems cryptic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> i've appreciated andy & andy's choices for stepping up and doing what is right, even if it were unpopular or counteracted the "norm".

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a little unclear if they launched but didn't see engagement or traction or if the projections didn't match the cost to develop it. Anyone else has a clearer idea?

I'm also curious if this was Patreon + Discovery or a different direction.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does CASH Music do the same thing but gratis and FLOSS?

[https://github.com/cashmusic](https://github.com/cashmusic)

EDIT: Nah, not really. CASH Music gives a platform, Drip is for connecting platforms.</comment>


The case against too quiet fundraisings - <AUTHOR> http://patkinsel.com/post/37066489408/why-you-should-announce-your-the-case-against-too

<comment><USER2> Summary: The case against being quiet is that you won't build press contacts.

Press contacts can be "rented" easily with a good PR firm, provided of course you have a story people are going to care about.</comment>