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Aptera completes low-speed drive in its first production-intent solar electric vehicle (electrek.co)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But the city already has highways. If we started fresh sure let’s do more rail.

My point is just, what infrastructure can you do with say <$1b? It’s a lot of money but not building a whole new railroad kind of money. You can get a few station upgrade projects, a couple of electric trains, etc.

There’s room for private funding of a new electric car company. Save the tax dollars for big infrastructure projects.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

New electric car companies only intensity the always insufficient highways & daily rush hours adding time to peoples commutes.

Also cars cost money, we tend to forget that when talking about rail.

With less than 1bn you can build railroads between cities.

Some random sniplet (californiapolicycenter.org:

According to the HERS analysis, adding a new lane to an interstate on flat terrain in a rural area costs $2.7 million per lane mile. To do the same thing in a major urbanized area costs $62.4 million per lane mile, more than twenty times as much. Even minor projects display wide ranges in cost. Resurfacing an existing lane of a principal arterial in a flat, rural area costs $279,000 per lane mile. To do the same in a major urbanized area costs $825,000 per lane mile, three times as much.

(That is without car related costs with fall on individuals, or environmental costs that arent counted at all.)

California at the same time is building high-speed rail between LA & SF at 66 million per mile - that is including the railway stations & the city tunnels mentioned previously at billions per mile.
And that's also a stupidly mismanaged project with 200+ million dollars in literally just planning mistakes and human errors (or sabotage).
With low maintenance & basically unlimited capacity I can only see that as a cost efficient project that should have been done 50 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why would a new company increase traffic? Like people just have extra disposable income and love going out to drive when everyone else does?

If your argument is, someone who would have bought the car would instead switch to using rail. Then there is no place in the US that has heavy traffic that can also have a new railway built for under $1b.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why not say that if you can't build a railway system for 20$ then you should stick with the current system that is just so great?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because you have to approach the two problems differently. If you want to support the expansion of railways, you’ll need political willpower.

But if you’re an individual who needs a vehicle, wouldn’t the best choice be the most efficient one available?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Using 1bn of gov money for car production isn't political willpower?

And political willpower is already finally literally building new rail. Why take that money away and back into cars?

Also, the two issues; cars with or without solar panels, and solar panels on buildings are separate. And panels are ultra cheap.

So cars with solar panels are more efficient simply bcs there is more solar palens that way, regardless of your building having panels or not.

Every panel is a net positive, super effective or slightly less super effective ones.

And you are not putting any more or less panels on your house if you buy a car with or without the 200$ solar panels on/in it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

What government money? Aptera is privately funded. They’ve won some government grants but most of their funding is from investors. They’re not taking money away from rail projects.

And even if we went all in on rail, what are we supposed to do in the years it takes to make the transition? Keep using ICE vehicles?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sorry, I didn't see any other connection from when you said this:

My point is just, what infrastructure can you do with say <$1b? It’s a lot of money but not building a whole new railroad kind of money. You can get a few station upgrade projects, a couple of electric trains, etc.

There’s room for private funding of a new electric car company. Save the tax dollars for big infrastructure projects.

My bad, but I don't see the relevance otherwise - the tax dollars are already being saved & spent on big infrastructure projects, and the privately funded car company is also underway. Both are already facts.

Nobody is getting rid of cars or making any transitions overnight. How did you come to this anyway?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The very original post I responded to says:

Please just do trains.

Which implies don’t do cars.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

We share that sentiment!