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I'm not really familiar with how the electoral system works in the US with regards to this, but there's something about this that really confuses me (even leavi

I'm not really familiar with how the electoral system works in the US with regards to this, but there's something about this that really confuses me (even leaving my own politics and literally all science aside with regards to climate change and particulate pollution). It seems like it would be really expensive to roll all of these policies back just to reinstate them later, but isn't that inevitable when the pendulum swings back to the left? (i.e. Won't the next left-leaning administration move to redo everything that's been undone under your current administration?) Is there some structural feature of your electoral system that would prevent this kind of flip-flopping? (This isn't a put down by the way - I say this being from Northern Ireland, where our entire political system is based on a single divisive issue, at the cost of getting literally anything else achieved.)

patentatt 9y ago
Yes, the structural feature you’re looking for is the informed, intelligent electorate. There seems to be some issues with that particular subsystem at the moment, we’re working on a patch to fix it ASAP. Make sure to read the release notes of the next version that comes out, there’s sure to be a ton of bug fixes.
- jey 9y ago
  Who's actually working on that patch? I thought all that funding was shifted to the Ministry of Truth and Public Enlightenment?
  - patentatt 9y ago
    We have our development teams hard at work in the background to fix all the bugs, but some of the erratic behavior seems to have been caused by a nasty malware infection too. Luckily our system has a great antivirus named Bob Mueller that is cleaning up that mess too.
richmarr 9y ago
[Edit to clarify what I was saying "not necessarily" to] I wouldn't necessarily assume that manufacturers will waste that time. I did a day's worth of policy work with the UK Department for Transport and the regional heads of some manufacturers so know a little bit about how they're thinking about the problem. In the past there's been a progressive reduction in emissions, pushing manufacturers to work fairly hard in the short term to meet the targets they've been set. There've been some noteworthy examples of cheating because it's not easy to balance emissions targets against cost and all the other constraints on manufacturing. One of the policies they're already discussing is to give manufacturers short-term breathing room in emissions standards so that they stop chasing local maxima and dedicate some proper R&D time to making super-low emissions possible in the medium term. So yeah, I think manufacturers will try and get away with what they can, but they're not stupid. They know this problem isn't going away (both from an environmental and a regulatory perspective) and solving it will be a competitive advantage.
- patentatt 9y ago
  That’s actually good to hear, and a reasonable stance. I’m not a mechanical engineer, what’s the difference beteeen local maxima and more long term solutions when it comes to ICE though? My lay perspective is that there is no big breakthrough on the horizon that will dramatically change ICE tech, am I uninformed?
  - richmarr 9y ago
    I don't know. The context of the policy day was around encouraging adoption of EVs and HEVs rather than better ICE vehicles. Perhaps that's a signal. I personally see it as mostly a marketing challenge so spent most of my time chasing things like charging point standardisation & visibility, and pushing approaches that might change perceptions of EVs, such as changing the standard yellow for blue (or green, jury's out) to make them stand out whilst driving to address the perception that it's unusual.
    - headmelted 9y ago
      The blue-tinted badges seem wrong somehow, if only because "blue" is assocated with Diesel (BlueHDI, BlueMotion etc). I would expect them to be green-tinted (although there may be a counterargument to that based on something I'm not seeing), although I acknowledge that it's nitpicking.

patentatt 9y ago

Yes, the structural feature you’re looking for is the informed, intelligent electorate. There seems to be some issues with that particular subsystem at the moment, we’re working on a patch to fix it ASAP. Make sure to read the release notes of the next version that comes out, there’s sure to be a ton of bug fixes.

jey 9y ago
Who's actually working on that patch? I thought all that funding was shifted to the Ministry of Truth and Public Enlightenment?
- patentatt 9y ago
  We have our development teams hard at work in the background to fix all the bugs, but some of the erratic behavior seems to have been caused by a nasty malware infection too. Luckily our system has a great antivirus named Bob Mueller that is cleaning up that mess too.

richmarr 9y ago

[Edit to clarify what I was saying "not necessarily" to] I wouldn't necessarily assume that manufacturers will waste that time. I did a day's worth of policy work with the UK Department for Transport and the regional heads of some manufacturers so know a little bit about how they're thinking about the problem. In the past there's been a progressive reduction in emissions, pushing manufacturers to work fairly hard in the short term to meet the targets they've been set. There've been some noteworthy examples of cheating because it's not easy to balance emissions targets against cost and all the other constraints on manufacturing. One of the policies they're already discussing is to give manufacturers short-term breathing room in emissions standards so that they stop chasing local maxima and dedicate some proper R&D time to making super-low emissions possible in the medium term. So yeah, I think manufacturers will try and get away with what they can, but they're not stupid. They know this problem isn't going away (both from an environmental and a regulatory perspective) and solving it will be a competitive advantage.

patentatt 9y ago
That’s actually good to hear, and a reasonable stance. I’m not a mechanical engineer, what’s the difference beteeen local maxima and more long term solutions when it comes to ICE though? My lay perspective is that there is no big breakthrough on the horizon that will dramatically change ICE tech, am I uninformed?
- richmarr 9y ago
  I don't know. The context of the policy day was around encouraging adoption of EVs and HEVs rather than better ICE vehicles. Perhaps that's a signal. I personally see it as mostly a marketing challenge so spent most of my time chasing things like charging point standardisation & visibility, and pushing approaches that might change perceptions of EVs, such as changing the standard yellow for blue (or green, jury's out) to make them stand out whilst driving to address the perception that it's unusual.
  - headmelted 9y ago
    The blue-tinted badges seem wrong somehow, if only because "blue" is assocated with Diesel (BlueHDI, BlueMotion etc). I would expect them to be green-tinted (although there may be a counterargument to that based on something I'm not seeing), although I acknowledge that it's nitpicking.