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Think 'keeping warm'.

A great number, that one. The main riff is based on John Lee Hooker's Boogie Chillen. I must admit I prefer ZZ Top's use of it if I had to choose between the two.

The sad news today was that an 18 year-old young woman who had been missing in bushland southwest of Sydney was found today, deceased. Police participated in a meeting with members of the Press. It appears that all the Press could focus on, and seek to blame Police for, was a report that a message had been passed to her parents that she had been found alive. However, within eight minutes that error had been corrected and the parents given the sad news. The members of the Press, who struck me as being young, posed questions that seemed to be aimed at making the police look incompetent. The senior officer who was speaking to them obviously did not have every minute fact, since the deceased had been found in wild country. I know that country as it was part of my patrol when I was a policeman. It is what some call 'tiger country'. Dense bush, steep cliffs. If any of you has flown west of Camden, or come in on the Bindook locator, you will know how bad the country is. Searchers, who were SES, Police, Army and volunteers were using handheld radios for communication. Ther would have been no 'line of sight' from down in that steep country to the Command centre above. Mobile phones would have been useless. Nevertheless, these budding journalists, none of whom were likely to have any knowledge of the terrrain searchers were working in, kept plugging away with a line of quesioning that seemed to have only one object - to make out that police incompetence had cause undue distress to the parents. This would have been held in the afternoon since the deceased was located about 11.30am. The Police officer tried to give as much information as was available, but I doubt if by that time he had to details that the Press might have been seeking. The deceased is in such an inaccessible location that recovering her might recuire her to be carried out as an air lift does not seem safe. I noticed that the evening news broadcasts concentrated on that incorrect information. Here is the report of the meeting.

Cooking up at home

That's why the ARENA research advises going for the low hanging fruit - small trucks. These are rarely far from base and do lots of short trips so could recharge at night. They said electrifying 30,000 - 50,000 would save a billion (or more) litres of diesel annually.

When you do, some of your questions might be answered. I thought the information in the video was straight-shootin' (unbiased).

Not quite that simple.

Yes.. they are.. In terms of thread drift, I meant not changing it solely to a discussion about Tesla.

Why did I write that? Calling in at home

I must have been to busy working and studying to Know Much about Pop Stars. I know nothing about all these People. Nev

Surely EVs are a big Part of the climate change debate? Nev

Back to climate change and combating it.. I haven't looked at the video yet, but as I understand, replacing the tanks with batteries and the ICE engine with motors, we are looking at c. 677 kms with a fully loaded truck. I did a google search and a Kenworth loaded to 44000lbs (number sticks in my head for some reason) will have a range of 1200 - 1800 miles - so around 2,000 to 2,800 kms give or take. I doubt any truck driver would do that in a day, but then I thought road trains loaded to their max weight after which AI told me it was 1,400 - 2,400 kms. I am guessing a truck with a single driver only will not do much more than 677kms in a day. But without changing stations, it would be interesting to see how long it would take for those big batteries to recharge sufficiently. Over here, the smaller commercial fleet is electrifying rapidly. This will put pressure on the grid, but will have to drive renewables to help.

At the risk of thread drift, they may be, but the used EV market is, at best, immature still. Also, I guess the used market is a measure of what has been, not what is coming. And, although not a fan boy, I like Teslas.. My point is that Tesla's engineering - once pioneering - seems to have been well overtaken. Yes, the Chinese have the state subsidies Tesla doesn't directly get (and probably indirectly reduced significantly since Musk's spat with Chump), but even in the innovation stakes, Tesla seems to be falling behind.. The Cyberfluck was a vanity project gone massively wrong., so let's discount that one. But, they have been at EV trucks for years and it looks like they have yet to crack that one. Their EV car offerings don't seem to have moved that much, and their quality control (at least in the USA plant) is apparently still woeful. And we shoudl remember, Tesla is a single company, not some institutionalised dev and research centre. Of course, they are a single company that is multi-faceted facing a whole industry (or number of industries). and I should have contextualised my observation to the EV market rather than everything Tesla does.. And maybe that is part of the problem for Tesla (not including Spacex in that).. They are in so many pies, will they be tha jack of all and master off none. So, I asked Chat where they stood against their competitors for innovation. There were too many categories to take a screen shot, so here is Chat's analysis (lazy, I know): AI Driving (autonomous I guess): Strongest commercially scalable but competitors have better proven tech Robotaxi/Cybercab: Middle of the range AI hardware: Most vertically scalable - ahead of the pack Batteries; Middle of the range on technology (still leading commercial position). Fast charging: Has been overtaken - Now at the lower end of the pack. Note, that could be commercially - Chat didn't say, so lets say it is in the middle of the pack now technically Charging Ecosystem (I am guessing this is the commercial bit): Ahead of the game with over 80k installations Grid batteries: Still ahead of the game Commercial humanoid robots: Potential there; behind the pack for deployment. Solar home energy - Still ahead of the pack. This was the prompt I used: "what are teslas latest technology innovations and how do they compare to the competition" So overall, they are they are still technically innovative - yes.

ABC published some analysis on this which I posted somewhere before - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-16/how-much-might-it-cost-to-electrify-road-freight/106956614 One of the findings is that $3b in subsidies could assist in replacing 30,000 - 50,000 light trucks with electric equivalent.

getting on at home. Nev

Just found this video filmed at the Janus facility in NSW. Very interesting. It does mention the fact that most trucks on our roads are involved in local work only. It also shows how a battery exchange depot could be set up. I'm less cynical of the idea now.

It's no good having service stations if there's wars on either and you can't guarantee supply. .. Nev

Pretty much correct.. Corner the Market and there's no competition. If you can't compete. Put tariffs on. Whinge about everyone one ripping you off on trade DEALS you signed and not under duress either. Nev

Used to be that you only got advertising on free products. Like the majority of apps which are free, make their money through ads. However recently even the paid services show ads. Netflix and Prime especially. If you don't want ads, you pay more. Basically it's because billionaires are arseholes.

La Grange is still one of my favourites.

I always thought that was a bit ironic, being the only band menber without a beard and having the name Beard. One year he had a very short one for a while, but the rest of the time just a mustache. Billy Gibbons would really feel the loss considering they've played together in ZZ Top since 1969; a long time. A good rocking band in their day with that distinctive Texan sound.

Watching Foxtel last night. Fourteen adverts or program promotions per ad break.

I still carry two Avgas cards for flying but havent needed them for years. Most sites use a phone app or credit card. But if I ditch the Avgas cards I am bound to get caught somewhere. I guess it is the same with EV charging.

We also need to remember the grid infrastructure has to be up the task. 10 x 100kW chargers is a MW. The cables that supply the facility need to sized for this plus what ever the wider community needs.