matilija

matilija , 55 minutes ago

You’ve articulated well a lot of good points, but you’re missing a few key considerations. One elephant in the room is that the Investor Owned Utilities (which cover the vast majority of accounts in California) are abusing their monopoly powers as much as possible (including regulatory capture). That is sadly inextricably linked with the resentment felt by their solar customers, even as it is also felt by all of their non-solar customers.

You’re talking about the kind of tradeoffs that make sense in an ideal system, pricing things according to what they actually cost to provide. But the IOUs price things at “how much can we get the CPUC to allow us to charge?” And they love to stoke class warfare politically when it suits their business purposes. It’s just one more area where the actual problem is the billionaires (or just call it capitalism) against the 99% but they keep the water too muddy for most people to see it.

I believe it’s also still generally either illegal or at least infeasible to disconnect from the grid entirely in most of urban and suburban California, because it’s tied to occupancy permitting. I think the best hope of ending the madness does lie in that direction though. Solar customers tend to be much wealthier than non solar customers, which in aggregate means many of them will have the means to go full battery off grid as the pricing disparity continues to grow. This loss of legally-mandated captive market is the only chance to force monopolies to behave better.

matilija , 47 minutes ago

If the carpool stickers had come with a 20 year guarantee then nobody could reasonably be upset about the rules changing later because “forever” turned out to be too good to be true. This would be like solar, except that they want to change the rules later anyway.

If they simply left the original EV carpool stickers grandfathered but stopped giving out new ones, people who missed their chance would be upset. But the program would have worked exactly as intended, to incentivize early addition of EVs by giving out a priceless benefit. It should never have gone on as long as it did, but government reacts slowly.

matilija , 2 hours ago

This article strokes my confirmation bias!

I love my 2010 Toyota with 140k miles, and I hope it runs forever. I could afford a new car if I wanted one, but all of the options have been getting worse for years! It’s just a car, but it’s a car from the perfect era of technology to be stuck with forever, and it drives beautifully.

I wish it got better gas mileage by 2024’s standards, for both financial and environmental impacts, but I believe it’s net better on both fronts for me to keep driving it than to replace it early. Fortunately it doesn’t snow where I live, so road salt won’t inevitably rust out the undercarriage.

There’s an aux in for the factory stereo, and I have a $25 BLE audio adapter with a ground loop isolator so there’s no alternator whine despite it being powered by the car. It’s not the most quiet for speakerphone calls, but it’s perfectly functional, and I’ve easily replaced it multiple times. It’s so much better than having a bad native Bluetooth audio system from that era.

I have a really solid dashboard mount for my magnetic phone mount, comprised of pieces from three different companies for maximal awesomeness. Then there’s my USB C PD supply that meets the charging standards of the present day relatively inexpensively and upgradably to any brand, powered by the “cigarette lighter” power socket. The existence of this simple medium wattage automotive DC power port is the greatest legacy left to us by the tobacco smokers of yesteryear. Is it gone yet in the latest cars?

A really slick trick I learned somewhere (maybe on reddit during the good years) is to use tiny zip ties on a cable that must run across your dashboard, such as the one to my mag charger. Put them at very strategic locations on the cable and facing the right way, and snip off the zip tie ends while still leaving a tail maybe about 1/4”, then jam that tail in between two pieces of dashboard trim. Do that repeatedly and the cable will go neatly and orderly around all your buttons and knobs without ever getting in the way.

An aftermarket dashcam is one thing that felt very worthwhile but was actually a decent amount of work to install, since I pulled a bunch of trim and ran wires through the headliner for that clean look with a rear facing camera mounted on the outside of the back. But I think those aren’t quite yet standard other than in Teslas.

2010 was the pinnacle of car technology, change my mind!

matilija , 1 hour ago

Only in electric vehicles. Gasoline and diesel engines generate a lot of waste heat, which is why they have radiators at the front of the engine compartment for water cooling. The cabin heater in most vehicles is an optional air path though a small heat exchanger on the radiator water loop, so it’s as efficient as possible. That’s also why the car has to be running for a few minutes before the heat starts working.

matilija , 1 hour ago

I used to have one of those and loved it but 3 head gasket replacements was too many and it was time to move on. Good luck with yours!