YHK - yet another hacker news clone

The development and building of newer, more efficient electric vehicles does not preclude the investment in more high speed electrified rail and busses. That complaint is a non-sequitor.

I like them, they are smoother and quieter than the ones they replaced (in fairness that was the oldest diesel buses mostly), I don't like the new on board announcement "Next stop <X>, You are at <X>" style but that's because I'm not partially sighted/blind and it's a small price for making life a lot easier for those folks (and headphones exist).

I'm not clear how something that ran up to 138 kmph (85 mph) during an (intentionally low-speed) efficiency test, would be equivalent to a golf cart?

The US is trapped in a local maximum due to history, geography and finally politics. There's a lot of local resistance specifically to highspeed rail because to stay highspeed the trains usually bypass smaller local towns so they don't get the benefit but all the negatives of it's construction.

Good luck convincing all those Americans the rail line has to run through their property to freely give up the right-of-way. You're already dead in the first few hundred feet of rail when the first person says "fuck off, no" and starts challenging your eminent domain.

coool interior and aero. all of the hyper efficient designs end up looking like the modern prius designs with the swan tail rear and hawk-beak nose.

Cybercab is most efficient electric production car, 165 Wh/mile

Waymo should have a mixed fleet of 2 adult passenger vehicles like this one, 4-5 passenger models as well as some vans. It'll save them a lot of money, and will make streets safer by normalizing small vehicles.

Great, you've designed and prototyped the vehicle. When will they be built at the rate BYD and other Chinese automakers are building EVs? Until then, it's vaporware. All that matters is deliveries (China EV manufacturing is currently at a run rate exporting ~3M more EVs per year than VW sells in a year entirely regardless of powertrain [~9M]).

this is not a global thing.

Yes, driving truck-sized cars with two-ton batteries the size of a french-door fridge also works and also easily moves 1.5 people per trip.

Sub-10-minute charging is going to be standard in new Chinese EVs very soon. There are already many new models on the market this year with charging times between 5 and 10 minutes. There will soon be cars with Megawatt charging speeds that sell for $15k.

As I understand it, Chinese manufacturers have optimized for a different set of parameters than European manufacturers. The Europeans emphasize range, but the Chinese are more willing to trade range for cost while optimizing charging rate.

I'd rather just bring my phone, which gets replaced every 4-years or so anyway.

https://photos.classiccars.com/cc-temp/listing/165/1814/3484...