This may not be entirely appropriate to the reasons behind the article, but it feels tangentially related:

I'd like to say a brief thank you to what the brief, golden period of globalisation was able to bring us.

I hope that that level of international trade and economic cooperation across geographical, ideological, political, and religious boundaries can be achieved again at some point in the future, but it seems the pendulum is swinging the other way for the time being.

I hope that, wherever the current direction ends up, there are lessons that can be learnt about what we had, and somehow fumbled, such that there is motivation enough to get back there.

Also, counter to my own argument is that EVs can still be hacked with (although less 'mechanically') as per recent article and HN discussion:

http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/ev/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342185

Legit question (and one that I need to answer for myself as well):

Would it be cheaper to keep the EV and rent a car for when you need to do longer trips? (also taking into account the additional hassle of renting a petrol/diesel car)

Only speaking for myself, I'd seriously consider renting a (combustion) car for an interstate driving holiday if it's a rare occurrence, like once a year or once every two years. It will become an exercise in accounting[0].

My silly-ish analogy is: I don't own a plane because I fly rarely enough that it's not worth buying a plane to allow me to fly wherever, whenever I want.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQPIdZvoV4g&t=137

It was an enforcement of paying a (small) portion of the externalities as a result of the use of fossil fuels.

The "tax" was to be paid by the largest polluters, hence their lobbying against it. It wasn't something the citizens had to pay for unless the largest polluters decided to raise their prices as a result of this "tax".

Asking polluters to decrease their profits, as it becomes increasingly obvious that their profits are based on making life worse for the entire planet for the future, I think, is not too grand an ask. "That's how it has always been" is not a reason not to act to improve "how it could be".

> Humans really do not like change

This is definitely part of it. My personal opinion is that 'mechanical intelligence' is so intertwined with, cough, masculinity that EVs are a threat to these kinds of men at the very core of their being. There's so much 'identity' that people associate with the car they drive, the noise it makes, that they can take it apart and put it back together again despite its complexity.

The simplicity of the electric motor and the minimal servicing required of an electric car is potentially anathema to (toxic) masculinity. As is enforcing 'stopping driving for a rest and (literal) recharge'.

It's a super old school way of thinking, but aren't we in the midst of seeing exactly that bubbling up to the surface as far more entrenched in society than we thought it could be?

(May be overthinking this a bit, but the illogic from otherwise logical family members around EVs really twisted my mind into knots that I had to spend the time undoing)

> tiny new problems are made into massive, insurmountable ones

This is just cope. Clutching at the thinnest branches because that's the only thing on offer. It's the rationalisation of all of what I've mentioned above.

I'm not sure the failure modes are too significantly different. I think it's likely you may consider them 'easy to handle' is because there's been years to learn how to handle these failure modes (which is a positive, but for reasons not inherent to the power source itself).

It's always far cheaper to keep status quo X than move to new thing Y. Until it isn't. Especially if you don't take into account externalities. Increased instances of flooding, cyclones, and wildfires gets pretty expensive pretty quickly. Losing ground to competitors can be fatally expensive in the long term.

Such things require the ability and will to think and prepare long-term, and it feels as if humanity has been migrating in the opposite direction since the 70's.

Slightly tangential, we bought a 2014 Nissan Leaf about 18 months ago, against howls of protest from parents-in-laws and brother- and sister-in-laws with all the regular electric car FUD you hear (can't drive interstate on a single tank, can't tow a trailer, will explode and burn your house down).

For our use-case, 95% of our trips are to the shops, to various kids sports, to school, to the bus/train station, visiting (local) family, and all are very short trips easily within the relatively short range of the Leaf: ~100km. We still have our existing cars, they just get used less in favour of the cheapest option for the job at hand.

Even with our son being newly able to drive independently (so essentially needing to have three cars, rather than two, on the go at any one time), over the 18 months of owning the Leaf we've saved about 25% of the purchase price of the Leaf in spending less on petrol (including the electricity cost to charge the Leaf - which gets charged using the solar panels during the day, but more commonly using cheaper grid electricity non-peak overnight - yes, likely primarily off fossil fuels but from what I've read is more energy efficient than using petrol to power the car).

My point being, analogous to the "right answer" being to only using energy-dense fuels when necessary, we use the cheaper electric vehicle option when applicable, and only burn the expensive stuff when the better option is unavailable.

P.S. Looking at buying a newer EV with longer range, so there are additional and more flexible "better options", plus coming up to having a daughter who is also able to drive unaccompanied (four cars? :grimacing face:)

I wholeheartedly support GrapheneOS but, because of that, I very much hope they don't box themselves into a corner that's then easy to 'wall off'.

Having said that, the hardware being restricted to Pixel devices was always a tenuous proposition based on Google's design choices. If Pixels remain supported whilst adding Motorola, that's only a good thing.