Thursday updates

Let’s talk about electric cars a little. Me, I like ’em in theory. No exhaust, low maintenance, in theory they can be wonderful. Except…

“If somebody looked at me and said, Mr. Semel, you are going to love this car but in about 7,000 miles you will have to pay 1,400 or 1,500 dollars to replace the tires, I wouldn’t have bought the car,” Semel said.

In fairness, he bought a used car with 2200 miles on it, so he didn’t just get 5000, he got 7200 miles out of his rubber. Problem is, all that instant screamin’ horsepower coupled with far heavier body weight is tearing hell out of the tires. Quickly.  Miami Herald

But at least everyone will have one and all the ancillary costs, like repairs, will come down. Maybe not – I would call this guy an authority:

“The enemy is CO2,” Toyoda said, proposing a “multi-pathway approach” that doesn’t rely on any one type of vehicle. “Customers, not regulations or politics” should make the decision on what path to rely on, he said.

The auto executive estimated that around a billion people still live in areas without electricity, which limits the appeal of a battery electric vehicle. Toyoda estimated that fully-electric cars will only capture 30% of the market, with the remainder taken up with hybrids or vehicles that use hydrogen technology.  Fortune

Well, and as Chicago showed us last week, charging when cold is problematic. Talk to me when they work as well as a Hyundai or a Honda.

On the plus side, apparently the B-21 has impressed the Air Force. Only a couple of months after its first test flights, it is reported the Cerebrus/Raider is already in low-number production (probably a manufacturing verification build.) Maybe we can get a plane built in less than 20 years?  TheWarZone

And on the long-in-the-tooth side – January 20, 1974 was the first test flight of an F-16. 50 years! They are still flying, still lethal, still being upgraded with synthetic aperture radar and some toys from the F-35 suite. They are currently on Block 70 – call it the 70th version. TheWarZone II Still flying, still bad-ass. And only about a third of the cost of an F-35. Hmm…

A writer in the Telegraph   says Ukraine should take some of those A-10s the Air Force says can’t survive over a modern battlefield.

The commander of Ukrainian ground forces isn’t satisfied that his country is getting scores of surplus US-designed F-16 fighters. General Oleksandr Syrsky also wants ex-American A-10 attack jets.

Russia’s wider war on the country grinds toward its third year. While Syrsky makes a good case for Ukrainian A-10s, America’s dysfunctional politics would probably trump any military argument.

Ukraine will be lucky to get any US aid this year, never mind entire squadrons of specialised attack planes. The Telegraph

The writer nails the politics involved, but it would be a good way to find out what the actual survivabilty would be .

Last but not least – remember I wrote about an FBI search of a bank vault in which the Feebies took it upon themselves to open and inspect hundreds of safe-deposit boxes not covered by the warrant? Then tried to seize much of the contents?

“The Ninth Circuit today held that the FBI violated the Fourth Amendment rights of hundreds of people by breaking into their safe deposit boxes to try to forfeit everything worth taking,” Robert Frommer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian legal nonprofit that represented some of the plaintiffs in the case, tells Reason.  Reason

Now, let’s hope someone takes good aim at the ‘civil asset forfeitures’ fiasco.

Category: Air Force