onetrack

In related EV news, Ford's EV division is suffering severely from the Chinese EV onslaught. Look for Chinese-built, Ford-branded, "badge engineering" EV's in your near future. FORD NEWS: Ford is pulling back on its electric vehicle (EV) plans, announcing major cuts to its Model e division. In a statement released on Wednesday, the automaker confirmed that it’s cancelling a 7-seater electric SUV and delaying the launch of a new electric pickup truck. The brand revealed that it’s slashing its overall EV investment by 10%, redirecting resources to focus more on hybrid vehicles. Ford will now allocate only 30% of its budget to future EV investments. This change is partly driven by the need to stay competitive with the Chinese car industry. To do this, Ford is revamping its battery supply chain to cut costs and improve efficiency. But this shift comes with a hefty price tag. Ford, already losing about $140,000 on every electric car it makes, expects to take a $400 million hit in write-downs, alongside an increase in costs of $1.5 billion. Despite these challenges, Ford's CFO John Lawler emphasized that the company is focused on building a profitable business. "We are committed to creating long-term value by building a competitive and profitable business," Lawler said in the press release. With this new strategy, Ford will put more emphasis on hybrid vehicles, a move that could significantly impact its European operations by 2027.

Who would've guessed that Boy George could be so prophetic!?

The Aborigines did have extensive knowledge of the physical properties of the plants and products they came into contact with, and which determined their use. The use of tannins in trees and tree bark for treating animal skins, was obviously known to the Aboriginals. But this is still not farming, nor can it be classed as agrarian. https://australiancurriculum.edu.au/TeacherBackgroundInfo?id=56645#:~:text=Tanning is the chemical process,durable and to prevent decomposition.

I read it as "Dickin' Jane" - and the message is quite clear!

I know the EV's usually have plenty of power - I'm querying what numerous overtaking moves would do to battery reserves. Like, several overtaking moves in half an hour of driving might reduce your range by 150kms or more, and bugger up your trip planning. A power burst has to consume a lot of battery power and affect the range.

That would be a real worry, not being able to account for missing items, when you're building an aircraft.

Nah, we haven't forgotten - it's just that politics and U.S. politics in particular, can get pretty boring and done to death. I do await the next Trump tantrum, though, as he sees his popularity under siege. A sentencing for his NY crimes soon, might ring the bell for another round of tantrums and a popularity reset.

I reckon the price of oil will drop once the oil barons see their market shrinking. The cost of production of a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia is US$3. That leaves a lot of room to lower oil prices and kick the EV's in the nuts.

Octave, thanks for the link, I was unable to find any mention of the ANCAP EV testing and ratings on the automotive news websites. Here's the ANCAP list for the "green" vehicles. https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.ancap.com.au/app/public/assets/32251a92f70da062227e5c5bf8e9c499c3d35949/original.pdf?1721792864

I read it was a Thai bloke, and he got bitten on the cojones, by a snake in the dunny! Now I've heard of going to "syphon the python", but this is a whole new level again!! https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/offbeat/thai-man-bitten-on-testicles-by-python-after-sitting-on-toilet-c-15787013

One of the interesting things I've discovered is that many new EV's do not yet have an ANCAP safety rating - possibly due to ANCAP being behind the 8-ball when it comes to testing them. I would imagine a whole new set of crash-testing rules will have to be drawn up for EV's. It appears to me that many of the EV's that have IC-engined "brothers" are using the ANCAP rating that has been applied to their IC-engined counterparts. That doesn't seem right to me.

We had a Canadian bloke (Joey Barnes) on one of the tractor forums, who was a bit dyslexic, anyway - but he always signed off with "thansk" - because he made the typing mistake so often, it became his trademark ending! He wrote a pile of books about his life in the "Great White North" - they're straight from his fingers with no professional editing, and they make entertaining reading. https://www.amazon.com/King-of-Obsolete-Series-5-book-series/dp/B08YXZNW7D

Another factor the above article didn't mention, was the EV's ability to indulge in numerous overtaking manouevres. Every overtaking move requires a great deal of grunt, regardless of the type of power source. And in my neck of the woods, we run double road trains into the city, and you soon run into triple road trains on the outskirts of the urban areas - as close as 43kms to Perth, for example, at Muchea - where there's a road train assembly area for triples. Overtaking road trains requires a lot of road space and plenty of reserve grunt - regardless of the type of power source. As several of the EV owners interviewed appeared to be doing rural tripping with their EV's, I would've liked to see reports from the EV owners as to how the EV's handled multiple overtaking moves, and whether the battery drain was rapid, when doing so.

I was reading an article earlier today that was somewhat misleadingly titled, "What I wish I’d known before buying an electric car". It was simply interviews with 8 random EV owners. Their information wasn't particularly revealing, and the motoring journo produced a pretty lightweight article. What wasn't mentioned - which item is a very important part of car ownership for most people - is the cars resaleability, the strength of the resale value of the car, and what it means, when vehicles have a far lower resale than owners expect, when it's time to quit them. The resale value of EV's is not holding up, like it does for say, the example of Toyotas. Used Toyotas sell themselves, you have people flocking to buy them if they're anywhere near reasonable condition. But the EV's resale value is poor, and it's a factor mentioned by Hertz when they declined to take up the remainder of their huge, original Tesla order. The Chinese EV's will have even less resale value or resaleability, than used Teslas. https://www.drive.com.au/caradvice/electric-car-advice-what-i-wish-knew/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=21_08_24 Drive weekly newsletter&utm_content=21_08_24 Drive weekly newsletter+CID_8d408d7e63f0890202ddf070ff141627&utm_source=cm

I had an old RAN bloke tell me, with insistence that it worked, after I scoffed - that peeing on your feet in the shower cures tinea ("athletes foot"). I can honestly say I've never tried it as a specific tinea cure (I occasionally suffer from it) - but like many people, I occasionally relieve myself in the shower, so it should've shown up as a cure by now! - but I've never noticed any curative effect. One product that I can mention, that DOES work very effectively on curing tinea is an anti-fungal product called Lamisil (cream). The stuff is brilliant, I used it as recommended, and I haven't had a bout of tinea, for maybe 3 years.

It won't stop raining here, day after day of rain, showers and drizzle. After 7 months of Spring, Summer and Autumn with barely a skerrick of rain, it's making up for it now. May and June rainfall was below average, but we got our average of 180mm in July, and August is well on it way to reach average rainfall or exceed it. The further North you go in W.A.'s South, the wetter it is. It's a completely ar$e-about season. The South coast should be flooded out by now, they're still largely been driving around their paddocks. But the SW corner got a good drenching last weekend, and there's a fair bit of water laying around down there now. The crops in the far Northern Wheatbelt are too wet, and some are turning yellow because of too much rain. The farmers can't get into their paddocks to spray for crop diseases or to spray fertiliser, so they've turned to aircraft, helicopters, and drones! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-12/drone-spraying-crops-western-australia-weatbealt/104170826 The crops are looking great nearly everywhere I travel, the forecast total tonnage for grain for the 2024 season keeps increasing every month. The forecast is currently 17.4M tonnes of grains in total, above the long term average of 16.5M tonnes. I wouldn't be surprised to see this year produce a crop total tonnage of 20M+ tonnes.

Pete - Yes. Not so much amongst the desert Aborigines, AFAIK. But the Southern tribes in the wetter regions, made and wore, animal skin cloaks. https://www.nationalquiltregister.org.au/quilts/kangaroo-skin-cloak/

I reckon the foot planks must go through the wall.

We've got a "Fetch TV" set top box, it vastly improves the ability and options on a Smart TV.

Jerry, there's a major distinction between an agrarian society and a hunter-gatherer society - as the Aborigines were and are. One can easily make it look like the Aborigines were agrarian, by extrapolating some crude efforts at harvesting and replenshing naturally-growing plants. But the true definition of an agrarian society is that they cultivate plants and crops to produce FOOD SURPLUSES, to either store for future use, or to trade. The Aborigines did nothing like this - they had, and still have, no thought for tomorrow and little forward planning skills. My Father worked with "bush" Aboriginals on a Station N of Meekatharra, W.A. in the 1930's. This was the era when the tribes were still mostly uneducated, largely nomadic (going "walkabout" on regular occasions), camping in multiple places on the stations with the station owners tacit acceptance of their lifestyle, and with the station owners occasionally requesting if any of the Aborigines wanted some mustering work (on horseback) for a supply of tea and flour and sugar. There would usually be a few Aboriginal blokes volunteer for some mustering work, but they were largely unreliable due to the Aborigines idea of urgency being different to white peoples idea of urgency. The Aborigines on the stations in this era still largely lived on a diet of "bush tucker" (Kangaroos, Wallabies, Goannas, bush plant foods, etc) - and Dad often related how the whites would get a laugh out of the Aborigines stuffing themselves with any recently caught tucker - such as a Wallaby - even to the point of the blokes getting a gin to stand on their stomach, to force more wallaby in! So they'd end up completely bloated with the food (because it was there, and it all had to be eaten now, otherwise it would spoil) - and then they'd lay around under the shade of the trees and bushes for several days, doing very little - until hunger drove them to go look for more food! Dark Emu is largely a crock of sh**, and Pascoe tries to extrapolate a large number of Aboriginal food scenarios, into agrarian scenes, that don't fit the true story. https://www.dark-emu-exposed.org/home/ancient-australians-the-worlds-first-9p2h6-hmgfm#:~:text=We would argue%2C because Aborigines,in Australia by the colonialists.

Agreed - but it all adds to the supply from the grid - and the grid should be what is the major source of supply for the power to the EV's.

I love nice porterhouse steak - but I don't look like a steer yet, despite eating steaks for probably more than 60 years.

New 07 Outlander aftermarket headlights, $286 each, from a supplier in Harris Park, NSW. I'll give you my banking details shortly, as to where to send my commission. 😄 https://www.kwautoparts.com.au/mitsubishi-outlander-zg-zh-11-2006-07-2009-headlight-left/?srsltid=AfmBOop6e1bHah_-RnCO8sgUfaa8K2SkmXQmKTesVD6Rjl-JQGDlZQqS It's important that you acquire headlights for RHD, LHD headlights are set up to throw low beam to the right, RHD headlights are set up to throw low beam to the left.

Simply because they lacked knowledge of what was required for promoting plant growth. They usually understood that they had to limit the level of stripping a food plant supply, to allow it to recover - but that was about as far as they went. I can recall in a story about Harold Lasseter, how the native tribe that picked him up made their way to their favourite yam patch, to harvest more yams after their last digging of the patch - but the expected yam growth was not there, largely due to seasonal conditions - but also because the natives had done nothing to promote yam growth, just expecting them to appear naturally. As a result, the tribe had no food and they abandoned a sick and weakened Lasseter, because they saw him as an unnecessary burden on them, consuming meagre food supplies, and doing nothing towards helping the tribe survive.

What model and year Mitzi do you own, Pete? Anything over 20 years old becomes a bit of a challenge to source parts for.