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Popular opinion around EV tech is approaching PowerPC-era Mac apologists. "Yes, it's less performant, but it has {insert special, unmeasurable and/or unproven

by ethbr0 5y ago

Popular opinion around EV tech is approaching PowerPC-era Mac apologists. "Yes, it's less performant, but it has {insert special, unmeasurable and/or unproven magic here}."

jjoonathan 5y ago
(Oh, this is fun! I haven't done this in a looooong time!) Unmeasurable? Like, you would have had to run an actual editing, encoding, rendering, or simulation task to measure it, but you only had the skills to read how many GHz were on the box, so you personally were unable to measure it? I suppose I'd have to hand you that one. How well did the "clock speed is all that matters" rhetoric age over the last decade? When was the last time that Intel's claimed perf boost wasn't IPC driven? My favorite part of this story is fifteen years later, when Intel's CEO says: We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino makes LOOOOOOOL! Whipped at CPU design (and manufacture -- who pays for those new kingmaking TSMC nodes?) by a company that doesn't even specialize in it. Whipped so badly that they have to admit it, even to themselves. Ouch!
simondotau 5y ago
That's not really a good analogy. Every interesting technology has its share of unhinged fanpeople. And it's not interesting to judge a technology by the behaviour of its fans. There's only one real Achilles heel of EV tech and it's a big one—the limited supply (and the consequent high price) of batteries. If there was an unlimited supply of battery cells at a low price, EVs would be generally superior to comparable ICE vehicles in core objective metrics. There are numerous secondary limitations of EVs, such as the availability of charging facilities where they are needed. But this class of problem is directly aligned with uptake. They solve themselves as more EVs are adopted and market share increases.

by ethbr0 5y ago

Popular opinion around EV tech is approaching PowerPC-era Mac apologists. "Yes, it's less performant, but it has {insert special, unmeasurable and/or unproven magic here}."

jjoonathan 5y ago

(Oh, this is fun! I haven't done this in a looooong time!) Unmeasurable? Like, you would have had to run an actual editing, encoding, rendering, or simulation task to measure it, but you only had the skills to read how many GHz were on the box, so you personally were unable to measure it? I suppose I'd have to hand you that one. How well did the "clock speed is all that matters" rhetoric age over the last decade? When was the last time that Intel's claimed perf boost wasn't IPC driven? My favorite part of this story is fifteen years later, when Intel's CEO says: We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino makes LOOOOOOOL! Whipped at CPU design (and manufacture -- who pays for those new kingmaking TSMC nodes?) by a company that doesn't even specialize in it. Whipped so badly that they have to admit it, even to themselves. Ouch!

simondotau 5y ago

That's not really a good analogy. Every interesting technology has its share of unhinged fanpeople. And it's not interesting to judge a technology by the behaviour of its fans. There's only one real Achilles heel of EV tech and it's a big one—the limited supply (and the consequent high price) of batteries. If there was an unlimited supply of battery cells at a low price, EVs would be generally superior to comparable ICE vehicles in core objective metrics. There are numerous secondary limitations of EVs, such as the availability of charging facilities where they are needed. But this class of problem is directly aligned with uptake. They solve themselves as more EVs are adopted and market share increases.