onetrack

Here's a short news video on Ford's new EV move - which goes against everything the Tangerine Toddler has been promising, as regards fossil fuel power in America.

I should've added to the story above, that the trailer was a van body trailer, not a flat-top, so it was already somewhat top-heavy, which would've aggravated the loss of the set of duals.

Back to EV's - the original subject of this thread. Ford are going all-out to try and beat the Chinese EV onslaught with a new EV pickup. It means starting a whole new style of assembly line from scratch. The Wall St Journal has the original full story, this part below is merely an excerpt. You need to pay a subscription to the WSJ to read the full article, but the excerpt provides the "guts" of the story. QUOTE: "Crews are preparing Ford's Louisville factory to make a planned line of EVs. Photo Credit: Houston Cofield for WSJ The secret is now out as Ford races toward building its first model, a new truck it says will be nearly as fast as a Mustang, travel around 300 miles on a single charge and feature in-car technology to compete with Tesla and China. It’s aiming for a 2027 launch and a price tag of around $30,000, the cost of a Toyota Camry. Getting there means tearing up a century of manufacturing practices in a notoriously hidebound industry. At stake for Ford is securing a future beyond the gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs that have long defined its bottom line. The project had been kept quiet from its 2022 start, led by veterans from Tesla and Apple who worked on designs out of a California office. Ford eventually brought in some of its own employees to help execute the vision. The process was filled with misunderstandings and distrust as the techie outsiders worked to win over the risk-averse industry veterans. To build these new EVs, the company must use fewer people and simpler parts, and dismantle decades of engineering inertia. Chief Executive Jim Farley is calling it Ford’s new “Model T moment.” Rival automakers say overcoming China on EVs can’t be done, given their advantages: extensive government backing, low-cost labor and a massive head start. With its new truck, Ford says it has eliminated thousands of feet of heavy copper wiring, cut out hundreds of parts, and made it 15% more aerodynamic than its other pickups. The process included rethinking the assembly line, which Ford helped to pioneer. That process is traditionally iterative, slow and depends on scores of outside partners. On Ford’s new “assembly tree,” a modular system stamps out two massive, aluminum castings and a battery that get merged at the end of the process—closer to how Tesla and China’s automakers build EVs. “We’ve never blown the whole thing up before and just started over,” Coffey said. “If and when we build this, we will rewire Ford.” For a year, a team of 17—tiny by Ford standards—worked out a design for the first new EV. Their vision collided with Farley’s. He nixed the first vehicle the California team was developing, an SUV-type model. Build a midsize pickup instead, he told them. It fills a void in the EV market and will be a bigger hit with car buyers, he said. Then they attacked Ford procedures and mandates the team deemed obsolete, or even nonsensical. Field described one such rule. All Ford vehicles must be built with a slight lip above the opening to prevent rain from spilling in the window when a driver or passenger cracks it to smoke a cigarette. Nicknamed “smokers window,” it added aerodynamic drag, costing battery range. The new truck won’t have it. Managers were fanatical about keeping Ford’s ranks away from the project. “There were so many times that I protected the team,” Clarke said, fearing that outsiders could slow the building momentum. Dreaming up a design was one thing. Building it was another. That’s when Clarke and Field started recruiting company veterans to join its ranks. They sought out the misfits and malcontents within Ford—the type of people, Clarke said, chafing under Ford’s often-rigid structure. The freewheeling phase is over now. At a sprawling factory in Louisville, Ky., where Ford used to build gas-powered SUVs, crews are working to set up tooling and the new trio of assembly lines to build the EV. The company tested about 30 hand-built prototypes to try to root out problems earlier in the process. Later this year, they plan to start building—then road-testing—the first factory-built models. Ford says the truck’s interior will be roomier than a compact crossover SUV’s. Hyundai Motor CEO José Muñoz, asked recently whether it’s possible for an automaker to build a vehicle in the U.S. that competes with the Chinese, was unequivocal: “It is impossible,” he said." The future of Ford will likely hinge on how effectively it can counter the Chinese car onslaught. I guess Ford is hoping this EV will pull a rabbit out of the hat for them. IMO, they have left their run too late, the Chinese have a massive head start, and have virtually unlimited financing from Xi and the CCP. Only time will tell.

I've seen the rear bogie on the last trailer of a badly-set-up triple roadtrain, sway as much as 1.5 - 2 metres out to each side. The bogie was actually tearing up the gravel road surface with the amount of sway it was doing. Top-heavy trailers will also indulge in sway, especially if the suspension is in poor shape. However, the most interesting story I got was from a truckie neighbour next to my workshop, who told me how he did in a wheelbearing on the centre axle of a tri-axle trailer one night, on the Nullarbor. He decided to remove the offending hub, chain up the end of the axle, and to keep proceeding, until he could make it to a biggish town where proper repair facilities were - such as Kalgoorlie. But he said he was staggered at the trailer performance with a missing set of wheels on one side of the triaxle set. He told me, "the trailer was all over the road" - he couldn't make it go in a straight line, no matter how hard he tried! But he had little choice to keep going, at a much reduced speed, until he could reach Kalgoorlie. He said it was a real eye-opening exercise.

More info on oil benchmark pricing ..... https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=18571

Roadtrains don't sway if they're properly configured with long drawbars. Short drawbars create trailer sway, and short drawbars came about due to roadtrain length restrictions. Spring suspensions are the hardest on road pavement, air-ride suspensions have been proven to be kinder to road pavements and bridges - to the point where you can get higher axle loadings in trucks and trailers with air-ride suspensions, as compared to spring suspensions.

Show me the country that has "first past the post" voting, and which has a far superior style of Govt to the one we have here in Australia? FPP voting is highly susceptible to gerrymandering due to unfair electoral boundary distributions. This is the reason why Trump and the Republicans are seeking to alter electoral boundaries in many U.S. States to favour the Republicans. In FPP voting, smaller parties get no representation at all. The Republicans want the poor, the blacks, and Democrat voters to have no say in what they want to do, and to have no power to oust any Republican Govt. It's gerrymandering at its best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Because even though America produces all the oil and fuels it needs, American oil companies don't set the "global benchmark" for oil pricing. This is done by international oil traders, and especially oil futures traders. The benchmark prices for oil are Brent crude ("Brent") and West Texas Intermediate ("WTI"). As a result, American oil prices go up when the benchmark prices go up. American oil companies will sell their product to the market that is paying the most. If that market is somewhere else in the world (such as Europe), American refineries have to pay more to acquire their crude oil supplies. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2026/03/20/america-produces-the-most-oil-so-why-are-gas-prices-surging/

Knowing Trumps total lack of strategic planning abilities, with his off-the-cuff, instantly-reversible decisions usually catching all his staff and operatives off-guard - I'd have to say definitely not.

Your social status is defined instantly by the vehicle you drive. So you buy the biggest 4WD dual cab you can, regardless of the economics or running costs or practicality of the vehicle. Plus, nearly all the owners of these vehicles are operating businesses and they're simply a big tax deduction, paid for by business income. Add in the fact that when you're a business owner, able to quote an ABN, you can get "fleet" discounts, as well as factory-backed low interest rate financing (as low as 1%) - so the dealers have to knock back buyers with a stick. The waiting list for nearly all 4WD's is huge, up to 6 to 12 months for some "high range" models. And the factories keep production at precise levels to ensure that the demand is just being met, and that there's no oversupply. However, the Chinese are flooding the market with their new vehicles, so people who can't wait, simply go and buy a readily available Chinese car.

The U.S. has more than adequate oil reserves themselves to provide all their domestic needs. They actually export fuel. They have no need to import Middle Eastern oil, they only do so to acquire the more desirable "light crude", which is easier and less costly to refine. All American refineries are built to refine both light and heavy crude. They have access to all the Venezuelan oil they want, after ensuring the Venezuelan Govt became more compliant to U.S. demands.

Just goes to show, what a bunch of out-of-touch has-beens, the Liberal Party has become.

I can honestly say I've never seen an EV stopped by the side of the road after running out of charge. After all, you get plenty of audible and visual warnings in them, as regards low charge. But I've seen plenty of broken down and run-out-fuel IC cars and utes, parked by the side of the road!

Tyres are a far larger problem than worn-out wind turbine blades. You find tyres dumped everywhere you go - in remote regions, in urban areas, in rivers, and in the sea. Yet the wind turbine antogonists only see wind turbine blade waste.

GON - There's a classic old phrase, "a Pyrrhic victory". The saying comes from King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who defeated the Romans at Asculum in 279AD. But it was at horrendous cost to Pyrrhus and his powerful tribe, and the King was quoted as saying after the battle - "If we have another victory like this, we'll be ruined". The Americans, led by Trump, have just expended vast amounts of their high-tech war arsenal, had nearly all their Middle Eastern defence sites destroyed or damaged to the tune of multiple billions, lost billions in military aircraft losses, in Trumps attacks against Iran - and he has achieved very little, except to create an even more bitter and hardline enemy than he had before. This is simply due to Trumps lack of leadership ability, his lack of war strategy, his failure to consult his allies - who has constantly abused and denigrated since he came to office - and his failure to topple any of the hardline Islamic leadership in the country. This Islamic power bloc has 150,000 Revolutionary Guard troops, who are still largely intact as a resisting power force. Australia doesn't need an ally such as the America led by Trump, because he fails to treat any ally with respect, he fails to consult allies when he takes warlike action, and fails to produce a cohesive strategy for actually winning a war against Islamic hardliners. He always wants to go it alone as a King-like leader, but he fails to understand even the basics of military strategies, and the fact remains that America now always loses every war it ventures into, because it has no plan to deal with the aftermath of any warlike action. The full cost of this warlike action against Iran is yet to be felt by Americans and the American economy - but when it does, it's going to become another nail in the American coffin.

Boiled crawdads?? FFS, how would anyone get the answer to a question like that, unless they were Stalekracker the Crawfish Plug, doing the Cajun Two Step Festival? 😄

The house directly across the road from me, is rented at $1500 a week. It's rented by a couple in their 30's/40's with 2 kids, and I have no idea what they do for a living, but they both appear to work at good-paying jobs. She drives an Audi SUV and he has a Subaru WRX Sportswagon. They moved in last September. I haven't spoken to either of them, they tend to lead a busy life, and don't take much notice of us oldies opposite them. The house was built in 2009 by a Police Detective, replacing an early 1950's house that obviously didn't fit their lifestyle. This couple divorced in 2010 and the house was sold for $948,000 to a bloke who did Mining OH&S, he worked as an OH&S manager for one of the big miners and would have been on about $300,000 a year. He was married to a black Kenyan lady who was a social worker, and they had one young teenage girl who was "on the spectrum". He moved to Canada last year and rented the house out, while they decide if they will stay in Canada permanently. Apparently, they had been there before, and loved the place. The house is now reported as being worth around $2,000,000. The mining bloke put in the pool, it cost him $55,000, and they were quite proud of it. It appears the mining bloke was worth millions, his deceased father owned a farm that was sold for something like $6,000,000, and the mining bloke got a sizeable share of that as an inheritance. https://www.domain.com.au/property-profile/140-wood-street-inglewood-wa-6052

I've never seen anyone lose traction, chuck a burnout or do a wheelie in an EV, so I'm at a loss to explain how the higher powered EV's are dangerous. I have seen a Tesla zip away from the lights very rapidly, though - much faster than even I could keep up in a 2.5L Camry Atara, which has reasonably fast acceleration when you floor it. The Camry weighs 1465kgs and has 135Kw of power (180HP in the old money), so it's not underpowered. But that Tesla went like a cut cat let out of a bag. And my bottom line is - I went from Perth to Albany and back (over 800kms total) in early March, and got 6.1 litres/100km with two people and their luggage aboard, averaging around 105kmh, so it could be quite a while before I can warrant lashing out on an EV.

I have never ever developed a "big spare tyre" around my gut, and I really don't understand how people can let it happen, and do little about it. If I gain even a couple of kgs during a period of slacking, I feel a lot more restricted in my physical movements, so I make sure I lose it, with some energy expending work.

You obviously haven't studied what is happening in W.A. The W.A. State Govt has thrown multiple hundreds of millions (possibly billions by now), trying to keep W.A.'s coal-powered power generation going. W.A.'s coal powered electricity comes from two coal power stations at Collie. Muja (owned by the W.A. Govt) provides 85% of W.A.'s coal power, and Bluewaters, a privately-owned power station, provides the other 15% of W.A. coal power. First, about 10 or 12 years ago, it was $380M of W.A. taxpayers money sent down the drain trying to refurbish a rotted out Muja power station, under a State Liberal Govt. Like trying to restore a rotted-out vintage car, the more they repaired, the more corrosion they found. They gave up and called it a day before a billion or two went down the drain trying to fix the wreck of a power station. Enter Griffin Coal and Premier Coal. Griffin Coal is one of W.A.'s major coal producers. It has lost $1.3B since 2011. It is owned by an Indian corporation, it has been in receivership for several years, and it's almost certainly facing bankruptcy. But the W.A. Govt keeps pouring endless amounts of money into Griffin, to ensure it has adequate coal to keep the W.A.-Govt owned Muja coal-fired power station going. Over $300M at last count. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-21/roger-cook-extends-griffin-coal-financial-lifeline/106250998 Then we have Premier Coal. Premier (privately owned - by the Chinese) has too much coal, and can't sell what it produces, so the W.A. Govt pours money into Premier Coal to ensure hundreds of Collie workers don't end up unemployed. Despite all that subsidising, Premier have just announced around 70 to 100 jobs are to go at the company as they "readjust production" to suit the declining coal market. All this State Govt money going into coal-powered electricity production in W.A. means power prices aren't rocketing, and the power cost rises are being kept to an acceptable level. But the subsidies are a major burden on all W.A. taxpayers, and a hidden cost to W.A.'s coal-fired electricity production. So much for the "cost burden" of going over to renewable energy. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-22/collie-job-cuts-coal-mine-merger-push/106591996

One for the fishermen amongst us.....

Causing an uproar.

As I said, there's currently no requirement for real estate agents, solicitors or conveyancers in the real estate business to meet the reporting requirements under AUSTRAC money laundering laws. However, typical of Govts shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted - all of the above people will be obliged to fall into line with everyone else under the cash money reporting requirements, starting 1st July 2026. QUOTE: "Tranche 2 reporting entities are businesses in "gatekeeper" professions - specifically real estate professionals, lawyers, accountants, conveyancers, and trust/company service providers - that will be required to comply with Australia's Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act. These new obligations take effect from 1 July 2026, requiring them to register, conduct due diligence, and report suspicious activities to AUSTRAC."

The construction of a wind turbine blade is extremely complex, and no doubt very costly. They don't lend themselves to re-usability very readily. Fibreglass is their major constituent. It seem to be the height of stupidity to just bury them.

Stopping immigration completely will not make the housing problem go away. Stopping huge investments in our housing by overseas investors such as the Chinese will go some way to help the housing problem. There are serious numbers of houses owned by Chinese investors that are purposely kept empty, because of the Chinese attitude towards property investing. This has to stop. Plus, all investors must be made to produce proof of the origins of their money in line with AUSTRAC reporting. As it is, real estate agents, solicitors and others in the real estate industry are not obliged to report people purchasing properties with suitcases full of cash money. It is legend here on the West Coast that Chinese buyers turn up to real estate agencies with suitcases full of cash, to prove they have the money and don't need to finance the property. This is a glaring hole in our control of legal money origins.