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The fossil fuel industry has done great work and I hear it often, statements like:
- "I don't like the idea that kids in Afrika are digging for Cobalt for EVs.", said by an NRMA driver who replaced my 12V battery in my Kona electric.
- "EVs need so much water to mine the Lithium for the batteries." and the Chile Lithium mine fields are shown with poor people having less water.
Tagesschau (that's the ABC News in Germany) has a very interesting "fact finder" page for this. I do cite Fefes Blog here, as I can't do it better.
Have you heard that too? EVs are bad because so much water is used for the batteries? 12,000 liters for a battery with 60 kWh!!! Well, the fact finder has a helpful classification for that:
"Approximately 15,000 liters of water are consumed per kilogram of beef. You have to put that into perspective."
Ah. I say. But wait, what about the cobalt? That is also full bad!!1!
"Main uses of cobalt are metal alloys, magnets and in chemistry like desulfurization of diesel fuel, but this is often not pointed out," Plötz said. "It's a bit strange sometimes when some raw materials are only discussed in the context of e-cars."
Yeah, uh, then we should stop desulfurizing diesel ASAP!1!!! Because, uh, cobalt and stuff! Their conclusion:
"No vehicle is good for the environment. But if you compare them with each other, the electric vehicle is the least harmful."
By the way, did you know that the world's largest exporter of Lithium is currently Australia, where Lithium is primarily mined from solid rock, in contrast to Chile, for example, where it is extracted through the evaporation of saline brine. Water consumption is significantly lower in the former.
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It's simple: It takes
- 10 seconds to plug in the car for charging and another
- 10 seconds to unplug your car.
In the meantime you can spend quality time of your choice.
Compare this with about 4 hours you spent at the petrol station each year where you have to smell all the fumes of petrol and listen to unpleased noises (not to mention the amount of cash you spent there). Remember, only because you are used to it, doesn't make it a necessary experience .
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Spoiler: Really not much, in practice it does not matter.
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Today there was a nice surprise. Two years ago we got a Solar PV Diverter to heat our hot water with as much solar PV energy as possible. It did cost almost $1,000 (installed) and I wasn't really sure how long it would take to pay off (ROI = return of investment).
Surprise after two years the ROI has been almost reached. Of course that depends on your energy providers tariffs and your hot water usage.
Usually electric hot water is heated at night time with so called "Control Load". This is basically the "base load" of our dirty coal power stations which has no other usage since most of us are asleep and don't use much electricity at night. Therefore it's cheap, currently about $0.176 / kW/h (incl. GST).
A Solar PV Diverter uses only the excess electricity (you would otherwise export to the grid) to heat your hot water. The better diverters do this dynamically on the fly in real-time, in other words: They can exactly divert only the excess electricity without delay to your hot water tank.
In the last two years we used 4.5 MW/h (on average 6.25 kW/h = 2-3 showers per day) to keep the water hot, so we saved 4,500 * $0.176 = $792 or $396 a year.
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Have you ever been concerned that your 'faceprint' will be (mis)used without your consent?
You should! Clearview AI rejects to delete any 'faceprints' (biometric face recognition profiles) collected from public posts of Australian citizens (on facebook, Instagram, ...). They simply argue: It has not been published in Australia, so any Australian jurisdiction is not valid, full details here.
Here goes your biometric face profile and will be used by Clearview AI (a private U.S. company) for their commercial interests. Feel free to let your phantasy go wild.
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to publish any of your family pictures to public feeds, they will and already have been used as free training data for machine learning to get the so called AI (artificial intelligence) working.
As a bonus: You can now be detected with great confidence on any image. May this image be taken with or without your consent, from strangers with their mobile phones, in a zoom video call, from a hidden camera in a live advertisement panel. You can't hide any more! They know for certain it's you and provide you all the tailored services you (do not) need.
Face recognition technology is dangerous and will be (mis)used. In some places on the planet it's already banned. Even facebook, sorry Meta, just gave it up (for now) to get some good news after all the bad news in recent weeks.
Update 10/11/2021: Adelaide council to ban SA Police using facial recognition tech on new CCTV network.
Update 30/11/2021: UK privacy watchdog wants to fine Clearview AI $31m.
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Microsoft employs 10,000 of people. I wonder how many only have to think about how to collect more data from you.
We know Windows 10 is collecting a lot of so called telemety data, you can't even turn it off (unless you are an enterprise customer). There are ways to surpress these telemetry transmissions, google it or contact us for an appointment.
Microsoft also does it's very best to almost force you into an Microsoft account to run Windows. No you do not need such an account but they making it harder with every Windows release. Look like the upcoming Windows 11 Home Edition really needs a Microsoft account!
Now they try a new way to collect even more interessting data. It's so barzen that I couldn't belive it!
The new "News and interests" popup in the latest Windows 10 update
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A great video which summaries the Electic Vehicle policies of our Australian government(s). Enjoy!
Click here for more background information about this video.
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Interestingly people often ask this question.
It would be obviously great if you could really do this because you stored your solar production at day time (while you are away at work) in your home battery and at night you like to charge your EV.
The short answer is: Yes.
The long answer Is: Yes, but it doesn't make too much sense. Here is why:
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EVs (Electric Vehicles) are expensive, no question. They still cost almost as twice as much as the same car with ICE (Internal Combustion Engine). It is soo much money that most people don't even consider it.
So did we, even it was a kind of dream for a long time. But there are different ways on looking at it.
Doing the math for reaching the point of Return of investment might help or simply frustrates, depending on how much kilometer you drive annually.
Crises
Eventually interest rates got very low, Holden out of the blue didn't exist anymore and the new Kona electric had a real range of 450+ kilometers.