Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[Gale Hawkins]

Walmart is using fully driverless trucks to ramp up its online grocery business

"Taking the driver out is the holy grail of this technology," Gatik CEO Gautam Narang, who founded the autonomous trucking company in 2017, told CNBC.

www.cnbc.com

A wholesaler CEO says he's having to turn down truckers in the labor shortage because they can't pass drug tests

Who would have thought drugs would have made FSD go mainstream?

 

[EarPlug]

The two biggest differences are that 110 years ago we didn't have the pollution problems that we have now... and those of us who are skeptics will always find problems.

In the 1840's in New York City there was 2.5 million pounds of horse manure and 60,000 gallons of urine left in the streets PER DAY!

And, take a look at the air pollution due to the Industrial Revolution Water and Air Pollution

By the late 18th century and first part of the 19th century, coal came into large-scale use during the Industrial Revolution. The resulting smog and soot had serious health impacts on the residents of growing urban centers. In the Great Smog of 1952, pollutants from factories and home fireplaces mixed with air condensation killed at least 4,000 people in London over the course of several days. A few years earlier, in 1948, severe industrial air pollution created a deadly smog that asphyxiated 20 people in Donora, Pennsylvania, and made 7,000 more sick. Acid rain, first discovered in the 1850s, was another problem resulting from coal-powered plants. The release of human-produced sulfur and nitrogen compounds into the atmosphere negatively impacted plants, fish, soil, forests and some building materials.

 

[kenmbz]

I am sure in the late 1800's you could find clean air not too far from London.
Today there are few areas of the world that the air is free of pollution..

We have become much more efficient at polluting.

When I was young, the sand on Long Island was pink and the snow was white.
Now the sand is gray and the snow, not so white.

I remember acid rain though from the 70's, nasty stuff. Still exists in most parts of the world.
Rain does not leave my car clean, even in the woods.

 

[PuffyC]

I don't know about that. I'd imagine most cities were rather squalid places to live turn of last century, between raw sewage being dumped in any available body of water, the air thick with wood and coal smoke, horse turds everywhere in the streets, etc.
Might not have reached the critical mass it did mid-20th century, but we were well on the way. Very little was done to remedy this until the 1960s.

While I don't buy most of Gale's "dawn of a new enlightened age" visions, the good old days weren't all that great either.

This idea that 'the good ole days' were better is maybe the most widely held false myth today. Sure not every last thing is objectively better but on the whole the world is far better today than it's ever been. Crime getting worse? Nope, it's down by a lot. More war? Nope, there's far less today than at any point in human history. More poverty? More people going hungry? Less education? Less freedom and democracy? Nope, nope and more nope. Not even close. Even pollution is better, just don't confuse pollution with climate change because they're not the same.

If you're curious about all that, check out a book called Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World. It's heavy on data but written in a way that makes it an easy read.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

One way of judging air quality is moss. If you see long strands of "Spanish moss" hanging from trees, the air is pure. If you don't, air pollution is a problem in the area.

 

[Fuddy1952]

Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe since we have horses I've never thought of horse manure or urine as pollution. Fertilizer yes!
Cars today put out way less pollution than years ago, but when it comes to pollution (and no I really don't care about Wikipedia or internet "statistics") common sense says anything considered, wind turbines for example, from start to finish each turbine creates lots of pollution (materials, manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, then final disposal. Although some say recycle...which that in itself creates pollution. Same with batteries, nuclear, hydro, solar, etc.
We have new "farmer" neighbors. They drive a UTV every time going to the barn. Twice their age I walk, which is weird to them.

 

[Fuddy1952]

One way of judging air quality is moss. If you see long strands of "Spanish moss" hanging from trees, the air is pure. If you don't, air pollution is a problem in the area.

I always thought Spanish moss was a Southern thing. In Virginia all my life I never saw it except once we get into South Carolina. Mount Rogers in Va pollution (acid rain) is decimating evergreen trees.

 

[PuffyC]

Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe since we have horses I've never thought of horse manure or urine as pollution. Fertilizer yes!

In the late 1800s NYC was having to remove over 3 million pounds of manure and 40 rotting horse carcasses from city streets every day. Most big cities back then were essentially toxic waste dumps filled with incredible amounts of disease and filth. Ironically it was the gas powered car that was their savior.

 

[Fuddy1952]

In the late 1800s NYC was having to remove over 3 million pounds of manure and 40 rotting horse carcasses from city streets every day. Most big cities back then were essentially toxic waste dumps filled with incredible amounts of disease and filth. Ironically it was the gas powered car that was their savior.

And per WHO 11,806 DEATHS PER DAY from air pollution alone.

 

[Jstpssng]

Nope. And no one heard of Ford's plans to recycle soot and carbon monoxide 110 years ago either.....

Based on the comments since my last reply to this, perhaps they should have thought of it sooner.

On a lighter note about horse manure...
A few years ago I read a book about the early days of horse racing. The jockeys had to be under a certain weight at weigh-in time. There was a huge manure pile at a track down in Mexico where they would burrow to their neck for an impromptu sweat bath. Hopefully they showered off afterwards...