Kids? how many people try and pay IRS debt with Apple Gift Cards? How many people just dumbly trust sales people? Its best they learn at this early age rather than later in life when they grifted for $1000s.
A company paying half a million annually to ensure this employee is retained. It's not meant for joe sixpack making $100k/yr as an underpaid consultant.
Signing bonuses almost universally have a 1-year clawback (or are otherwise only doled out periodically and not all up front), so not a good analogy here.
They had no problem offering 7-figure salaries to PhDs with research experience in AI a few years ago. Those are the exceptional workers the program was supposed to be bringing in the first place, not dime-a-dozen JS vibe coders.
> my US mazda cx5 center brake light flashes when you press the brakes.
That is not a factory feature, it's almost certainly a dealer-installed piece of junk like this (https://pulseprotects.com/product-info/) which the dealer almost certainly charged a stupid amount of money for, and as noted it's not actually legal in the US.
Around me the local Hyundai/Kia chain loves to install those, and I hate them.
As you may be aware, the US is a confederation of states. The type of light that flashes several times at the initiation of braking is specifically authorized by the California Vehicle Code, and perhaps in other states.
Do you have a reference as to where it's allowed in the CVC? FMVSS section 108 table I-c specifies this for the stop light:
Steady burning.
Must be activated upon application of the service brakes.
When optically combined with a turn signal lamp, the circuit must be such that the stop signal cannot be activated if the turn signal lamp is flashing. May also be activated by a device designed to retard the motion of the vehicle.
(a) Any motor vehicle may also be equipped with a system in which an amber light is center mounted on the rear of a vehicle to communicate a component of deceleration of the vehicle, and which light pulses in a controlled fashion at a rate which varies exponentially with a component of deceleration.
(b) Any motor vehicle may be equipped with two amber lamps on the rear of the vehicle which operate simultaneously with not more than four flashes within four seconds after the accelerator pedal is in the deceleration position and which are not lighted at any other time. The lamps shall be mounted at the same height, with one lamp located on each side of the vertical centerline of the vehicle, not higher than the bottom of the rear window, or if the vehicle has no rear window, not higher than 60 inches. The light output from each of the lamps shall not exceed 200 candlepower at any angle horizontal or above. The amber lamps may be used either separately or in combination with another lamp.
(c) Any stoplamp or supplemental stoplamp required or permitted by Section 24603 may be equipped so as to flash not more than four times within the first four seconds after actuation by application of the brakes.
> According to a document by SafeLite of America, Inc., that you enclosed, its product Safe-T-Stop "will pulse [the center high mounted brake light] for approximately 6 seconds and reactivate if the brakes are reapplied." You read S5.5.10(d) of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 as requiring "that the third brake light must be wired to be steady-burning," and that you believe that Safe-T-Stop "contravenes this requirement of the standard by varying the brightness of the light."
> We confirm your interpretation. S5.5.10(a), (b), and (c) list the motor vehicle lamps that may flash when they are operated. No stop lamp is among the lamps listed. S5.5.10(d) requires all other lamps to be wired to be steady burning, thus including all stop lamps. Standard No. 108 does not allow a stop lamp that pulses, and a vehicle with a stop lamp that pulses does not meet Federal requirements.
It's clear that there's not much enforcement, since all the dealers I've visited near me install these things by default. If you commit to a car that's not yet delivered, you can negotiate to exclude these, or you can have them remove it (but they'll most likely have cut into the factory harness to install it, so the wiring harness has been modified, which is a negative IMHO).
Personally, I find these devices to be pretty terrible. I would be fine with flashing for high intensity braking, but the flashing is attention grabbing by design, and it's inappropriate in a lot of situations as it distracts from gathering awareness of the surroundings.
No one cares, not all states have mandatory inspections, and many inspectors just check if the brake light comes on when they press the brake pedal which would not reveal such an aftermarket device.
The only way to catch something like this would be a road driving test by the inspector, and even here in Europe this is not required.
IIRC in the USA there are features allowed to be installed aftermarket that aren't legal to be installed as a dealer option (like front side-window tinting)
For OTR trucks, you have to factor in the battery degradation. A OTR truck easily gets to 1 million miles on an engine. Often times significantly more, and then its only a rebuild, not a replacement. While electricity is much cheaper than diesel, battery replacement cost amortization is a real thing to include in the accounting. I haven't done an OTR, but I did do amortization for a Ford Lightning. While a "battery fill up" is $2-3. The replacement battery is $30k iirc. That's $3000/yr in costs assuming 10 year lifetime. At that rate, its $62/wk in battery amortization. So, you're really spending $62+3/wk in "energy". That's still less than a tank ($90-100 at current prices), but the savings is significantly less than originally anticipated.
A LiFePo4 battery gets > 750,000 miles. That's what people are going to be putting into high mileage trucks.
Nobody is going to put a $30K battery into a Ford Lightning. After 10 years that battery is probably $3K. If it isn't and you're unhappy with the ~80% battery capacity it has after 10 years of usage, you sell it on to somebody who is happy with ~80%. You don't spend more than the truck is worth replacing the battery.
Sweden and Germany have phantograph-powered semi-electric trucks [1] that would make this less of a factor. The trucks do the bulk of their driving off grid power with batteries for exits/lastmile components of the drive.
I feel setting this up and maintaining is far more expensive than extra batteries. Maybe it does enable some new possibilities tho so might be worth it.
Of course you have to take that into account. But it doesn't really change the math a lot.
BTW. I was talking about semis, not pickup trucks which is not really a common vehicle class in Europe where I live. People that use vehicles for work tend to use vans and trailers instead.
In any case, diesel engines get a lot of servicing (and unplanned down time) before they reach their 1 million miles. And the engine has many parts that need regular attention & replacing. An electrical motor is basically going to be fine with little to no attention until its end of life. Batteries do degrade depending on the chemistry. But decent LFP batteries are available now with many thousands of cycles before they start degrading. Other than that, the whole drive train just features a lot less moving parts that can break or wear out. Things like brakes, suspension, hydraulics, etc. of course work the same way and still need servicing.
And again, if you are burning > 100K$ fuel per year, replacing the battery once every few years is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. And this wouldn't come as a surprise either if you run a fleet of these things. You'd plan and budget for that to happen.
And it's not like the old batteries are a complete write off. They have a lot of residual value. Even if they are completely dead, which they typically aren't, they would still contain a lot of valuable minerals (like a couple of hundred kilos of lithium), lots of copper, etc.
With battery cost now dipping below 100$/kwh and actually trending towards 50$/kwh, we're talking about component cost of 25-50K$ for a half mwh battery for the manufacturer. The real price would be higher of course (labor, various suppliers taking a cut, electronics and other stuff) but over time that should get closer to the cost price than is the case today. And that cost price will come down further.
There's an Australian company that converts trucks and says "the Janus fleet electrification solution will provide for up to a 60% reduction in maintenance and operating costs over the vehicle's lifetime." https://www.januselectric.com.au/
They are in operation on a number of large trucks.
this is more of a problem with trucking in general than with electric vehicles. shipping goods long distances by road is just inherently wasteful of both material and labor.
Rail is not scaled to do transport of consumer goods, and is not scalable to a higher level in North America. What are those who don't live on the coasts supposed to do, do you think?
Neither of these would be illuminating. Switzerland's like the size of Rhode Island. And the United States prior to 1980 had much the same rail as today... not much was added at any point in the latter half of the 20th century.
Rail at best connects major cities, and a few minor ones. It is largely at capacity for the industries it serves, and moving retail freight to big box stores simply isn't possible. There are no knobs to turn or levers to pull to change that.
US freight railroads used to carry a larger variety of goods and serve a larger variety of customers than they do today. They were never in the business of delivering finished goods directly to retail stores, but they did transport a large amount of single-carload and less-than-carload deliveries between factories and warehouses. This is why if you visit older industrial areas you will see train tracks everywhere, including in the middle of the street and sometimes directly into buildings.
When the trucking industry was deregulated in 1980, trucking companies undercut railroads on low-volume high-profit routes, leaving the railroads to focus on low-value bulk goods like coal. The total volume of freight actually went up, but both revenue per unit and gross revenue fell. The railroads struggled to justify the cost of maintenance on now less busy lines, so they abandoned many of them and neglected the maintenance on others. That made it impossible to win back the lost business from the trucking industry even as the cost of trucking skyrocketed. Everyone is now worse off except for the owners of the trucking companies.
As for Switzerland, they invented a special kind of shipping container and that can be loaded/unloaded from a train or truck with no need for a crane. This allows them to make carload and intermodal deliveries without building any new infrastructure.
baseball is a very complex game. That's what makes it so great to spectate. The footwork, the defensive organization, the dynamics between pitchers and hitters. Its expansive. There's so much to learn about, there's so many opportunities for unique play.
its less about even taper and more about moving weight/center of mass around. Youth bats have been doing that for quite a while. Camwood bats is a great example of moving weight around. In their case, its a training bat.
while I don't know the details of your situation. However, my experience says there's always an alternative. Sometimes it means networking yourself. Sometimes it means changing industries while still leveraging your skills. Sometimes it means getting some education/certifications (even at night). Good luck on your future.
