Retain and restrain
I'm trying to follow the Morris model. Retain and restrain my biases. Hold onto valid stereotypes but track the exceptions.

A podcast debunking Elon mostly hits good points. Elon is a classic stock faker. He spends most of his time on Twitter trolling his critics and emitting new Disruptive Innovations that end up Disrupting his own business more than anything else. All of his ideas are old ideas.

True. Validates my biases.

BUT:

The latest podcast mocks Tesla's video showing a battery exchange. It's full of trickery. The Tesla is on stage over a trapdoor, which opens revealing four columns or posts. You can't see what's happening under the car, and the camera doesn't stay on the car continuously so you can't tell if the process really takes 1.5 minutes or 1.5 hours. The debunker doesn't believe the process can be that fast.

Well... Battery exchange, like all of Elon's ideas, is 100 years old. It was commercially practical in 1910 and became popular among fleet operators of electric trucks.

Here's part of an account from Automobile Topics, Oct 1915. Page 901 of the PDF.



EV makers had agreed on a standard form of battery cradle to enable exchanges. The process involved four hydraulic columns under the car, raising and lowering a dolly.



The 'Cowen truck' (dolly) was lifted up to hold the cradle; the cradle was unhooked and disconnected; then the hydraulics lowered the dolly. A fresh battery cradle was ready on the other side, and was pushed into place. The hydraulics raised the new cradle, and the workers hooked and reconnected it. Elapsed time 3 minutes or less.

So: Elon is using the old idea verbatim, complete with the four hydraulic columns, and a 1.5 minute exchange is plausible if not proved.

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Another article in the 1915 magazine shows a genuine difference between modern Insatiables and the 1915 rich.



Before 1970, the purpose of becoming rich and important was to work less. Short hours, short year. Work 10:30AM to 3PM, four days a week, ten months a year. Those were the marks of status, the proof that you had arrived.

Modern Insatiables insist on working all the time, or at least staying busy 25/8. (24/7 is for losers.) They can't resist starting up dozens of new enterprises and NGOs, most of which have no purpose.

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One of Elon's latest purposeless ideas is a fake-news detector. He wanted to call it Pravda but ran into RUSSIAN_INTERFERENCE in the form of trademarks, because he apparently didn't know that the real Pravda was still running. So he called it Prav-Duh instead. Cute.

He should have called it Peepuls Dayley.

Here's a typical Chinese news article from the Great Leap Forward, 1958:

"We have mastered the running of such a complicated modern enterprise. Production is well co-ordinated and strictly according to schedule. Output is steadily on the increase, while production costs have been cut 33%."

In reality: The plan called for 13000 vehicles, but only 7000 were produced. Mass production was never fully reached; each unit was essentially hand-built.

Sounds familiar.

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Tech sidenote: Why four columns instead of the familiar single hydraulic column with platform? It's a clever use of self-adjusting soft power. The battery pack needs to be pushed into place evenly, with equal force against the chassis at all corners, so the release latches can be opened and closed properly. A single platform can't do that unless the chassis is always exactly level. Each of the four columns was pressurized from city water, giving an upward push of 60 pounds. Each column would move as far as it could go until its 60 pounds was matched by an equal pressure from above.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 11:43 PM