Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.
Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. A lot of people didn't survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account's cake day, too, so that's cool.)
recently learned about electrofuels. it's a hypothetical rube goldberg scheme where you put enough energy to propel 5-7 EVs in, and pull out enough gasoline to fuel one car. it's sold as a green technology, because now gasoline is green somehow. this spin ignores that it would require massive buildout of renewables + nuclear, and just by doing this electrification of many energy end uses just makes sense, including transportation. (what the fuck is train??) it's also sold as a long term storage for renewables, but i struggle to see how scheme that has less than 30% roundtrip efficiency can be considered "storage". just build more renewables and don't use them all if needed
cui bono?
it's a complicated pr campaign by volkswagen group (and some other usual suspects). this is a nonexistent magic solution to a real problem, so it fits a common pattern (and also makes it stubsack material) that also attempts to shank electric vehicles adoption.if anything, it's backwards because EVs are adopted faster than renewables buildout happens (cars last less than powerplants). if realized, this allows volkswagen group to manufacture regular cars for a long, long time even after oil refining stops. originally, it was proposed as a hypothetical luxury product for antique car owners, because it's physically possible, but doesn't make sense in energy or cost terms. but then someone spun it into potential regular retail good, and also maybe this pr campaign was a part of reason why internal combustion car ban was axed at eu level recently. now that it happened, they don't need to push it so hard
it is something ironic in there that last time this process made sense was in nazi germany, just this time source of syngas is different
If VW is trying to mainstream this, that tells me they're scrambling to keep milking the premium end of their portfolio that relies on extravagant IC engines (Porsche, Lamborghini, Audi etc.). Very bad sign for them, as the ID Buzz van looks to be a complete failure to the point of "pausing" production, and VW Commercial Vehicles is their backbone in Europe, much like Ford relies on truck sales in the US. I watched a video a few weeks ago that discussed how their European van/utility vehicle portfolio is aging and totally fragmented, to the point that they are selling rebadged Ford Transit vans manufactured in Turkey. I thought it was bad when they were badge-engineering Dodge Caravans for the US market for a few years, but totally bungling the EV van rollout in Europe is seriously bad business for them.
It was also hilarious how the rich guys on the Porsche forums were bad-mouthing the rather sexy Mission X EV supercar concept a couple years ago. No matter how cool a 9,000-rpm flat-six is, letting yourself be driven by the guys who just want you to keep making that forever will not stave off everyone else (now including China and Vietnam!).
i don't know if they started it. what i suspect as their contribution is bold claim that electrofuels might be cheaper than regular petrol in the glorious future, while currently they're much more expensive. (30x?) strict prerequisite for their competitiveness is cheap electricity, but at this point they're not needed. there was also Porsche owned wind power to methanol plant, and while methanol works as petrol replacement, all the plastics in contact with it must be resistant which is not a given. i guess the main value of it for them is propaganda, they're not ready for EV manufacture