Lattepunk Air
Lattepunk
I've done stupid things in my life. Both personally and fiscally. I sold bitcoin on the dip instead of hodling. I believed that Google wouldn't kill a product I cared about. In our modern world that's dominated by short videos and algorithms, I asked you for your email and started a newsletter. But what I did last year...
I bought an expensive car. In itself, that's pretty dumb (terrible investment, only loses value, interest rates aren't favorable, blah blah blah). But what made it even dumber, being a "techie", I bought an electric vehicle (EV). Reader, I love the car. Hate...HATE...like, truly despise...paying for it. But I ultimately love it.
Electric vehicles have so many misconceptions about them. I had someone ask me if I was worried if my car would still work after the solar eclipse that happened. Earth rotates around the Sun. Moon rotates around Earth. Every twenty-something years, the Moon perfectly gets between Earth and the Sun. I think my car will be fine.
But there are things that kind of concern me. Everyone knows they drive amazing. Seriously, these cars are impressive! But even with the US Government trying to incentivize EV adoption, why are legacy car makers pulling back their production? Even lobbying against it. Apple canceled their EV that they never even announced. If this is the future, why is capitalism so uncertain?
Between you and I reader, it's money. It's an expensive market to enter when profits are your only concern. Just ask Lucid or Rivian. Even if you're in the business of loaning cars to others, EVs are hard to profit from.
But what about Tesla?!?
If rumors are to be believed, which are more believable than Musk himself, even they don't want to enter the affordable car market. Instead, they'd rather start another Lyft competitor. As much as the media wants you to hate China, they got that market figured out.
But let's role play that you got an EV that was affordable. These aren't just cars. They're computers with wheels. They connect to the internet. Which is cool cause it adds new features to your car, just like your phone! But what would happen if they pushed a bad update to your car? Or worse yet, what if your car gets cut off from their manufacturers' servers?
No I don't worry about my batteries dying. This is the stuff I worry about. Not enough to not recommend them. I don't think I can go back to a gas car. Imagine you were to lose power at your home. Maybe you own a generator (fancy), you go get gas, fill it up and get your three or four outlets running again. If you're like me, you just wait till the power comes back on. But in the relatively near future, we can just use our car to power our homes.
Change is scary. This new car type can be scary. I don't remember that many people being scared of the smartphone when that made it's way into the scene. If you ask me, I say...
I didn't ask.
Umm...I still recommend an EV. But go test drive one next time you're considering a new car, these problems will be solved by then. Just don't listen to people who talk about hydrogen, we definitely not ready for that.
But honestly, we need less cars, not more.
Still didn't ask.
I got one thing to recommend this week:
I don't watch TV or movies. So when I say you need to watch the Fallout show, you should probably give it a shot.
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