Holy smokes!!! I made a joke, and then this comes in …
… but that will be epic! 
From the Guardian:
OK… this is going to be interesting.
I bet that Musk is going to take the chance to “streamline” all the agencies that have been giving him a regulatory hard time and telling him he can’t just blast something into space whenever he feels like it (and he feels like it a lot). Interestingly they seem to have found a way to allow Musk to hold this position (or act as an advisor) and retain control of all his businesses. That I don’t like, and it’s nothing to do with political leanings. Musk’s situation (or anybody else’s in government) should be such that there can be no questions about whether or not his decision making is influenced by his business interests.
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Here is my bet … Elon Musk will one day run for President … place your bets …
Nah. Much better to own the president. All the power, none of the responsibility.
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He can’t. Not born in the USA. He can get quite influential positions, even become a state governor (as Arnold Schwarzenneger did) but he can’t be President or VP.
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I wish that there was a way that he could come and do the same for our guavamint in terms of wasteful expenditure.
But then the same fate as De Ruyter will befall him such a death threats and attempts on his life.
The sad part is that it was not only aimed at him, even his wife and kids could not move around without armed bodyguards escorting them. I dont want that kind of life, being targeted for doing the right thing and not keeping quiet.
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So today it was my turn. They were getting pretty close to minimums anyway, after owning the car for 18 months. This morning I went over something sharp. My own fault, I took a shortcut down a short stretch of dirt road into my neighbourhood and immediately knew something was wrong. I made it home just barely.
Bridgestone Ecopias are not cheap 
Back in the mid 60s, when we lived in England and I was a nipper, our milk, indeed the whole village’s milk, was delivered by a battery powered milk float.
Probably only did 10 mph. But considering the number of bottles it had to carry, straight line speed was probably not prioritised at design stage.
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And to this day, people who dislike the tech still like to call EVs “milk floats” as an insult.
Is this anything to do with Jeremy Clarkson?
Having celebrities who don’t realise the world has changed in the last 30 years doesn’t do anybody much good. But in a democracy, how do you shut them up?
Clarkson has made a fortune out of acting like he doesn’t understand any innovation from the last 20 years, and because he can’t understand it then it’s probably not necessary. He’s a sort of anti-expert, pretending that the common man knows enough already to sort out any given problem.
No, just something I see frequently on social media.
I mean, I just love it when people tell me how the race was lost a 120 years ago already and the problems are all still the same. So… battery energy density is still at 50Wh/kg then? We’re still using a switch and a resistor to have two speeds on the motor? We still use mercury arc rectifiers to make the DC? Microcontrollers didn’t quite make it into the new cars?
As for Clarkson, I am inclined to give him a pass. A small one. He has a very specific idea about what he likes, and he has said it as far back as the 90s. In this old episode, which I also enjoyed as I have owned many Corollas myself, he admits that his hate for the thing is not rational.
Interesting … Electric cars waiting to be loaded at the International Container Terminal, Taicang Port, in Suzhou China.
Reading that I wondered about those big corps that went bust because of individuals who made decision that in the end caused the demise of that corporation.
Nokia, Blackberry, Kodak, to name a few famous cutting edge companies that no longer cut anything, came to mind.
This much power held by one person, goes down in history to warn the later generations.
… not that history is read much.
Wonder if this Musk/Trump “affair” the final straw for either, or even both.
Gonna be a rollercoaster this coming 4 years.
Without reading that article (I will, later), I am actually not sure that an EV is really cleaner when charged with Eskom-generated electricity.
The reason is this: Our coal makes 866g of CO2 per kWh generated. Then you lose about 8% in transmission and some more in the conversion when charging the battery, so it is delivered into the battery at somewhere over 1.1kg/kWh, or almost 200g/km (assuming 18kWh/100km, which is what a Volvo XC40 recharge does).
If we look at something like the Volvo B4’s numbers, same car but with a petrol engine, they make 149g/km. So the EV is already 50g/km behind. But I have not accounted for the cost of making that petrol, so there is still a chance here.
The “well to tank” CO2 emissions of making a liter of petrol, is 720g, according to this article, or 77g/kWh, or 14g/km if we round up, which means the EV loses this one. It is actually dirtier if you charge it with Eskom power.
Then on top of that, there is the additional footprint of 4 to 6 tons of CO2 (or thereabouts) that building an EV has over the equivalent ICEV, which also has to be repaid, and obviously doesn’t happen in this picture.
That’s unless I missed something. And believe me, I dearly hope I missed something.
This does not mean, however, that the entire thing is a hoax, we should all just go back to petrol and diesel, and all the myriad reasons the anti-EVers always bring up. It means our grid is in dire need of cleaner energy!
It also means, that as a home owner, if you want to lower your CO2 footprint, you need to invest in solar first, and in an EV later… maybe.
I say this as one of the biggest EV advocates you guys probably know… 
What is missed:
And …
I would argue a productive residential SSEG feeding back during peak times and then charging during off peak makes the difference. They offset other users using Eskom during Peak (double dipping, in a goo way, given they also use their own power then) and then also charge from their own PV when they have the capacity. The mix is important so it’s not a cut and dried argument.
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