Technology

I've been losing money on Dragonfly for months. Unfortunately, the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent.

People are just so obsessed with cars

It's hardly an obsession among the vox populi. Highway construction is dogma produced by the Church of the Petrochemical Company. We continue to cling to low density, high cost cement roadways because that's why billionaires and their lobbyists tell elected officials to pay for.

Where rail exists, people flock to it. But you have to build before people can come.

It's not just cars. Electric cars became somewhat widespread before electric scooters. Those are awesome for getting around town quickly and are only feasible because of how cheap batteries have gotten. Cars could hide the battery cost easier than scooters, which you expect to be cheap.

And of course other forms of electric mobility too.

I don't think it's an "obsession with cars" or that people are "ignoring" electrified rail.

The problem is that there are things that are in your direct control, like buying a car and using the roads which exist. Then, there are things outside your direct control, like trying to get your government to install electrified rail. Even if you have a really responsive government that isn't captured by special interests, getting rail built and up and running can take a decade. And, if you need to get from A to B, you can't wait for a decade. Even if you're really pro-rail during that decade you still need to travel, so you're likely to be forced into getting a car. Once you have a car, then rail might become less of a priority because you are now a car user. Maybe eventually you'll still want to use the rail system, but for now you have a car, so your priorities are still going to include car priorities.

This all changes if you live somewhere where there's already great rail service. In that case, you might already have rail available when you move somewhere and all you need to do is encourage your local government to keep funding rail and not subsidizing cars. At that point, the car driver demographic is small and easy to ignore.

The problem is in switching from one system to the other. You need a government that is going to weather the complaints from drivers for years while the rail infrastructure is being put in place until you get to a point where drivers can start selling their cars and switching to rail. That's really hard to do though, because going from poor rail infrastructure to good rail infrastructure can take a decade, and politicians often have terms lasting only 4 years or so. That means that they have to take on the expense and pain of starting a rail project and then facing an election long before the system is up and running. It's actually surprising how many politicians are willing to do that, given that it's so hard on their political careers. It's unsurprising that most of them don't want to do it because it means getting re-elected is much more difficult than if they just stick with the status quo.

Meanwhile, the special interests like car companies, car dealerships, gas stations, etc. are all going to be lobbying against any rail projects. In North America it's even harder because car companies are local, whereas the companies that make trains are mostly European. So, the car-related lobby can talk all about the impact on local jobs, whereas the rail lobby has to deal with the jobs mostly being in Europe. Even without that, it's hard to change things because of the issue of diffuse costs and concentrated interests. Hundreds of thousands of commuters might benefit from a rail system, but it's probably not their #1 priority, it's something they care about, but at best it's #4 or #5. Meanwhile for car companies, etc. it's a top priority. While you might not want to go to every city council meeting where this is being discussed. It's almost certain that the auto lobby will ensure their voice is heard because it's at the top of their list.

In the end, it's a lot more complex than just people being obsessed with cars, or ignoring light rail.

A la corporate profits.

There is a reason why the United States government blocks the sale of Chinese EVs. It would destroy the American car sector.

North America has little competition because of the tariffs on everything not made in USA.
AFAIK Canada is getting out of that shadow. I read an article about a month ago, how Canadian imports were routed through USA, and that it stifled EV adoption in Canada.

There are plenty of EVs below the median price Americans are paying for new cars ~$50k. People aren't buying EVs because they don't like them / the dealerships aren't pushing them, not the price as they're willing to shell out even more for a top of the line pickup.

If only prices were related to costs ... 😄

Also, have you bought 9volt batteries recently? Batteries are NOT cheaper in the real world in any use case in my experience.

All the shit happening may lead to an earlier transition into renewables, ironically trump to help reduce the impacts of climate change. We should name the new wind turbines in his honour. But yeah the US will be fucked, power in the new currency in electrostates and renewable is significantly cheaper

Lithium ion batteries are far cheaper now at a consumer level than they were thirty years back.

EDIT: I'm actually surprised that a higher proportion of laptops today don't ship with 100 Wh batteries. Go back some years, and shrinking the battery had a much larger difference in cost than it does today. The larger battery gives you longer battery longevity (makes it more reasonable to charge to 80%, say), can be used to make a laptop run more quickly, can power more devices. The only drawback is weight, and it isn't that heavy.