There's a weird parallel between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars. In both cases, the historic "new year" is in spring (Hebrew Nisan, Gregorian March), perhaps to coincide with planting? And in both cases intercalation happens right before that, at the end of the year - the Hebrew calendar duplicates Adar, the month before Nisan, and the Gregorian has an extra day of February. (Historically this was February 24 happening twice, not an additional day numbered 29, which is a whole other story.) But in both cases the year number increments at a different time - Hebrew Tishri in the fall, Gregorian January in the winter - so the intercalation appears to happen at some "random" moment within the year.
My hesitation with hybrids is that I keep all the associated maintenance costs of an ICE engine. Now I have two power trains and energy systems to maintain instead of just one.
Well, hybrids sometimes get to replace the transmission with EV bits, like Toyota's system. Imagine an engine and exhaust system; now multiply the complexity by 100 and you have a modern transmission. Toyota hybrids (and GM/Chrystler/Honda) replace all that with a single planetary gearset, or with Honda, one clutch.
Other systems, think Volvo, pop the EV bits in the back of the car and replace where the drive shaft used to be with batteries. That seems like a decent trade to me as well. Still have a transmission, but at least it's not purely additive.
AND one man's added complexity is another's redundancy. If the charging module goes bad in a hybrid, you can still drive. Or if you run out of gas.
All that said... I still prefer EVs to hybrids. Do one thing, do it well, I say!
Modern transmissions can’t be two orders of magnitude more complicated than a modern ICE. If they are then I need to get into transmission design. An automatic transmission is basically just a series of planetary gears anyway. I would expect the marginal complexity between an ICE transmission and a hybrid transmission to be within a multiple of 2, but closer to parity. They’re both extremely reliable but an EV transmission (gearbox) will be even simpler.
The thing that mechanically totals modern crap cars (think cheap Nissans and Subarus) is often the CVT. Ford and GM have transmission problems pretty often. GP is totally right that the planetary eCVTs actually make cars way simpler. Look at Ford's (horrendous reputation with small cars) hybrids from the 2010s, lots of them running around with 300k on the clock.
You don't even need to limit it to the lower end models with Subaru. The top trim Outback and Ascent have a CVT these days. If you want an automatic transmission in your WRX, same thing - a CVT. Anyway, you're not wrong.
I dunno, maybe 100x was an exaggeration, but not by much! Take a look at this transmission from 2007. They haven't gotten simpler. Lot's of cars are sporting 10-speeds these days.
The number of speeds is a function of the number of planetary gearsets. They’re just connected in series. More speeds isn’t more complex, it’s only a larger part count. By the time the transmission is computer controlled and has two speeds it’s as complex as it’s going to be.
Modern ICE are also extremely complex. Turbo systems, sensors, air management, heat management, the list goes on.
So yeah, a modern transmission is complex but a modern ICE isn’t simple. By comparison they’re very similar in terms of complexity, the ICE possibly being even more complex.
>By the time the transmission is computer controlled and has two speeds it’s as complex as it’s going to be.
I don't disagree with your posts greater point, but I disagree with this.
There is an endless amount of variable complexity in the engineering behind friction materials, actuation styles, the control systems within the computer control, the material selections.. the list goes on.
I mean entire branches of metallurgy were more or less founded in the pursuit of finding stronger alloys for gearbox work. entire branches of metrology were developed for the sake of gearbox failure analysis -- there is a lot of complexity.
It's stupid to get into a pissing contest between engines and transmissions, they're both astoundingly complex.
I don’t buy that transmissions are somehow unique or even exceptional in motivating improvements in design and materials science. The ICE will benefit from the same improvements and has even more opportunities to utilize those improvements.
Look at a workshop maintenance manual to get a rough idea. One car I had, about a third of the book was dedicated to the automatic transmission. Auto transmissions are very complex.
Other than spark plugs, belts, oil changes and other such consumables I don't remember having to do any engine maintenance on my cars for the last 10 years. Of course, it helps that I am buyer of boring Toyotas and Hondas.
But all those costs are correlated with engine hours, in a hybrid used most of the time for commuting, ICE engine hours would be really low
A lot of maintenance items simply don't exist in a modern full hybrid. Typically there is no accessory belt, no alternator, no starter. Filters, coils, spark plugs and engine oil will last longer since the engine doesn't run nearly as hot (usually it's "atkinson" cycle) and isn't used constantly.
I'd avoid any car with two powertrains, but there are systems that have an all electric powertrain with the ICE being used as a generator instead. It is a simplified system that, if designed correctly, can allow all battery or all generator to move the vehicle.
That is just a meme without substance. The ongoing maintenance cost of a mature Japanese ICE drivetrain is negligible compared to the overall operating costs of the whole car. There is a reason why Toyota hybrids are by far the most popular cars for Uber drivers.
True. I think people just over-estimate the cost of an ICE drivetrain. Yes, they have thousands of parts. But they don't cost anything to build. It's Japan's whole thing. You can get an entire Prius long block engine in a crate delivered for $2k. This is about half the cost of 1 headlight assembly from a Model S. Cost is not about complexity, it is about scale.
You do, but at least repair costs should be low because typically you won't put very many miles on that engine.
Suppose 90% of your miles are electric. After you've put 250K miles (400K km) on the car, you've only got 25K miles (40K km) on the engine. Rarely do you have significant engine trouble at that mileage.
Also, the engine design can probably be simplified if it's just acting as a generator. You don't need a turbo to provide extra bursts of power. Nor things like variable valve timing for good performance across a wide range of RPMs. Maybe you could even use an air-cooled engine like old VW Beetles and Porsches.
I know that tesla's won't allow you to drive while charging the car. It throws an error if it's plugged in, so, that's a no-go without significant hackery.
That said, they certainly have tow-behind generators, and they're certainly available for rent, it's just without modification you'd have to stop in order to charge. I've seen people with a model X doing exactly this out in the desert. Seemed to be an ok solution honestly, because they were camping and had genset power for camping needs, assuming of course that the whole electricity while camping thing is something you're into.
But how often do you have issues with the engine. My last 3 cars never had a single engine issues for at least 175.000 miles. Its very rare today to have big engine issues.
Clearly you're not buying quirky over-engineered German cars loaded with exotic but mostly useless luxury features. They are well built and last forever, but typically require very frequent tinkering to keep them working.
It's the powertrain that's far more apt to be the problem. Hence a plugin hybrid generator style should be far simpler than a system with both an ICE and electric powertrain.
I'm not actually sure how many plug-in hybrids go for an all-electric power train, versus a dual power train.
I know the Chevy Volt had an all-electric power train, and the ICE is purely a generator that dumps power into the electrical system, and the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid has a dual power train, but I wasn't able to find a concise list of which hybrids have taken what strategy.
parallel versus series hybrid. Series will have ICE generate and the only thing attached to the wheels is electric motors. Parallel (like the prius) the electric motor and the ICE are connected to the wheels. There are reasons for both, but freight trains in the US are series. In my opinion, series is probably the best, since you can engineer the ICE to be as clean and efficient as possible at exactly 1 RPM setting - making them last longer to boot.
I apologize for forgetting the benefits of parallel hybrid systems, but i know there are some, including needing a smaller ICE, all things equal.
For most Toyota hybrids they use a single planetary gear set to combine electric motors and a gas engine into a single unit. That's the entire transmission. It's far more efficient than bolting a generator on an electric car.
For climate control, they are nearly identical to a gas Toyota.
The funniest part is that the way Toyota hybrid powertrains work, if either the ICE or electric motor doesn't work, you cannot go anywhere. It's LESS systemically reliable than either a purely ICE or purely electric powertrain, and yet STILL Toyota hybrids are some of the most reliable cars you can buy.
Their engineering is just that insanely conservative. They just make giant, absurdly understressed engines. You can pull a 2.5L 4cyl engine out of a Camry, designed to make 180 horsepower, replace only a few components, and make 400hp with the reliability you would normally expect from an engine built for endurance racing. They are super popular in drift racing leagues.
At the time the Mormons arrived (1847), it was officially Mexican territory. But the US annexed it in 1848. By the time of the Utah War, it was US territory.
(BTW, the canyon by which they entered the Salt Lake Valley is Emigration Canyon. Emigration is when you leave, immigration is when you arrive. They were consciously leaving the US. They weren't really "going to Mexico", though; they were intending to form their own independent country. But a year later, the US annexed the area.)
Being a pessimist is easy and lazy. You don’t have to lift a finger. Things can actually get better and do when people believe it and do even just a little bit.
That makes sense. Google wants users to be easily identified and tracked; elsewise their primary revenue model, surveillance capitalism, would be under threat.
So basically everyone affected will have their hours cut without a change in hourly wage. All these people are then going to have to find a second job to avoid losing 20% of their income. How is that not going to happen?
“The current text of the bill would mandate” is more accurate, it hasn't passed out of the policy committee in the first house yet, much less become law.
No, it's two different things, the hours and the wage. It's not just hourly wage. I can tell you companies are super square, making no deals where an employee can work a bit fewer hours a week, for a bit less money. If you want to work even 10% less hours, they cut your salary in half. And usually they start there and work on ways to cut you down again and again.
And modern jobs aren't productive for 40 hours per week of ass-in-seats. I can tell you my case is more extreme, the best work of my career as an algorithmist (like an inventor) amounts to like an hour over the course of over a decade. So Chilean ingenegreros comerciales (pathologically avaricious businessmen) see that and say, OK for that decade with one productive hour, we'll pay you one hour of wages. If you want a decade of wages, perform what you performed in that miraculous hour 30,000 times.
And in fact, now that the company gets 32 hours out of people, people can spend more time working the job market, and might need more Bobs and Charlies altogether to have the amount of authority their egos crave, so the job market tightens up, raising wages. I think this happened with previous hour decreases in like the twenties and thirties, it's been shown that is great for workers. That just came to a complete stop in the forties, no progress since then, despite Keynes for example predicting by now we'd be working twelve hour weeks. And getting more time outside the office, in particular by commuting one less day, that's huge. Employers lose 8 hours of the in fact negative returns on time spent in the office, so really they're losing nothing but power (which to be fair is what being a boss is truly all about), but they gain money from more creative workers, and then the worker doesn't gain 8 hours, he gains 11 hours, of the worst hours he spends in the office, when he's most tired. Then he goes home and does things that make him more creative when he goes back to the office, like a hobby or woodworking or homeschooling and charges his boss nothing for it, the boss ought to be grateful, do you know any who are?
So France imposed fewer hours specifically to get companies to hire more workers. California is not doing it with that in mind, but it will be a side-effect. French companies hated that, in fact making sacrifices to make the statistical results of that move look bad, diametrically contrary to the enormous benefits shown in the early twentieth century. You think companies can't collude on statistics?
So Purdue Pharma may call itself a pharmaceutical company but it's not, it's a mathematical research institute that uses brilliant new theorems involving the equals sign to make billions of dollars. So for OxyContin, they demonstrated to FDA that 7==12 and that theorem made them tens of billions, then they tried 60==100 and eureka! They made great money too with methylphenidate hydrochloride with that innovative theorem, how do they keep coming up with this stuff?
So then, theorem in hand, they first lobbied and who knows what else to reduce methylphenidate chlorhidrate dosage limits from 100 to 60, then they introduced methylphenidate hydrochloride as the only methylphenidate available above 60 milligrams, up to 100 mg, and made it extremely painful just motherfucking brutal for doctors to complete the form for patients who were prescribed more than the new limit that were grandfathered in. Like it's the most horrible thing you can ask a psychiatrist to do, nothing compares with that form literally bureaucratic sadism, Kafka for doctors. Their shit costs $500 a month, whereas methylphenidate chlorhydrate is under $20, generic. Basically patented methylphenidate chlorhydrate again seventy years after it was patented by Novartis.
This is all phrased in the context of a creative professional in an office environment.
What about teachers? office administrative staff? tech support? data center operations? building facilities and maintenance? bus drivers? health care professionals?
There are many situations where this represents an increase in labor costs or a reduction of services for that role. Tech support working only 32h/week means that the company needs an additional 20% staff to maintain the same coverage (or do you not offer external tech support on Fridays?).
Similarly, bus drivers working an 8h day means that either you need 20% more bus drivers or you are paying the existing ones an additional 12h of work (1.5x overtime for 8h) to maintain the same level of service.
Creative office workers will likely not see too much of a hit - especially if it means removing less productive meetings. However, the rest of the world that isn't working in an office would be severely impacted by this - especially people who depend upon parts of the industry such as public transportation or health care professionals where this represents an increase in costs.
You gave me two beautiful examples, the best examples, thank you very much.
Medicine (healthcare's real name) and driving.
Right so, that ties in to what I was saying, you do need more people for the menial jobs, 20% more bus drivers hired. It doesn't increase COSTS, it increases WAGES, not the same thing! Throwing away half the good food just for the sake of wasting it increases costs, hiring 20% more bus drivers increases wages, the money goes to a person, not to the garbage. And then, too, you have fewer people out of work as a percentage of society, so in fact they're much more productive because instead of resorting to theft and drug deals and borrowing money from good people to pay it back to usurers, and all the costs in uncertainty of being unemployed long term, the bus drivers share a job and are never unemployed.
And they're never depleting their body while unemployed, have you ever thought of the costs of poverty if they were actually charged? An employee can have his back broken in three minutes to make the employer thirty cents in additional profit and complain nothing for fear of being fired (happened to me in Mare Island at a brewery, I had to do all these defensive maneuvers to avoid work that would have caused spinal injury in hours). Like yeah there's the lawsuit, supposedly, tons of lawyers handy to give the employee the run-around, so fine there's a settlement, but does the boss ever completely repair the harm to the worker whose body he considered his like he rented it, good-as-new? He could right! So that's more than what the boss pays, a back injury Amazon-Warehouse style, I figure the suit goes for $300,000. But that's not what it costs to get it good-as-new, that would cost like $15,000,000 for a spine, if that, I think they can never fix a spine for real. Medicine cannot fix that. By having two drivers share the wage, none is ever unemployed and therefore desperate, so they never sacrifice their backs to the boss for a millionth of what it costs to repair them, what's the ROI on that, -99.9999%. So splitting a $70,000 job in half saves millions of dollars, I think that might just cover the "costs" you're talking about.
So that takes us to healthcare in America. As a matter of fact, doctors pretend they work crazy hours, and that's what you see in the felatory TV series like Dr. House and ER, Gray's Anatomy, but many just don't. Surgeons--it depends. I think old doctors in their extreme hazing of young doctors make them work fucked up hours but after the hazing they don't do shit. Don't work shit. Like don't work Fridays a lot of them, and even when you go see them, they are always fucking late. So that's time too, they're not working during those thirteen minutes they keep you waiting, then they take breaks between patients, their hours are mostly empty. They generally cut you short on minutes, like if you want to ask them three things they get pissy, they get pissy for all kinds of stuff, they're actually a boss, doctors are bosses, they boss around the nurse and the pseudo-nurse staff. They even boss around the patient, give you "doctor's orders" as they put it which are not orders in a legal sense. They nag you. They extort you. They judge you. Ask you super personal irrelevant questions. Few put themselves at the patient's service.
Sure some doctors are fine, but if half the waiters put flies in your soup deliberately you're not going to praise the other half for not putting flies in your soup, that's just what a waiter is supposed to do, does he want a 50% tip and praise for not putting a fly in my soup? No, instead it is legitimate to focus on the half that do put flies in your soup, don't correct me for not being fair and balanced. Like why do the other half of waiters tolerate the fly inserters?[1]
In fact 32 hour work-weeks, making doctors actually FUCKING WORK 32 FULL HOURS, and do their job for real, and answer questions for real, not play dumb so they don't do icky work they don't like, not try to shunt you into shitty treatments, not lie about side effects, not misdiagnose, no sadism like that's asking so much, basically not commit what is morally (and much more often than they realize, legally and provably) malpractice and negligence day in and day out would improve healthcare enormously. But it would reduce costs, unfortunately, and they want the opposite. Doctors are a union, they are always on strike, they've been on strike for a century. They make United Auto Workers look like sweatshop workers, Milton Friedman said so.
So thanks so much for those two examples, healthcare and transportation, in both of those the ROI for 32 hour work weeks is gigantic. I would have never realized how strong my arguments secretly were without your comment.
[1] In fact, the fly-inserting waiters are in charge and tolerate the normal waiters to deflect accusations, make those felatory TV series easier to be deceived by, do marketing calling themselves heroes, and release the pressure from the public hating them. They don't want that hatred. And to pin the blame on them when there's a scandal. And the fly-inserters hate them for doing their job properly.
Reducing the hours to 32h/w doesn't increase the amount of employment when there are currently openings and the current staff is working overtime to meet the commitments.
Going to 32h/week and then overtime increases the amount of overtime that the currently employed get and makes the existing budget for public transportation worse (currently running a deficit - https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/SFMTA-s-budget-defici... ).
Reducing the hours that nurses and lab techs work before getting overtime, again, doesn't increase the availability of the existing staff but rather increases the labor costs or wages depending on the term you want to use.
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The 32h/week proposal increases the amount spent without addressing the issues in a number of sectors - especially where there is an existing shortage. In areas that are publicly funded, this is going to increase the amount the government is spending or raise the corresponding costs to service those sectors (e.g. bus ticket prices go up 20%) or a corresponding reduction of services to meet the budgetary constraints.
Going to 32h would be good for society as a whole, but the flip a switch approach when there are existing labor shortages in key sectors is going to make those problems much worse until the underlying problems are resolved. Giving bus drivers and nurses an additional 12h of overtime pay a week isn't going to resolve that.
> There is currently a shortage of bus drivers in San Francisco.
Translation: there's a surplus of employers who don't want to bid up. Anything other than bidding up, no bidding up, no just no bidding up, never clear the market. No, drag the bosses kicking and screaming, not even, kicking screaming shitting their pants and swearing treacherous vengeance upon the auctioneer. The auctioneer, the worker who'll do the work, their enemy, for asking them for a raise instead of every single other thing they can do instead, which is everything, put a man on Mars before raising wages, invent a time machine before raising wages, elect a gestating fetus as Governor of California before raising wages, sell their sole to the shittiest loser among the demons of hell before raising wages, anything just don't ask for what makes perfect obvious sense.
Bid up or shut up, nobody can say there's a shortage, shortages don't exist. If you paid $10000000 a year for bus drivers would people go to California to drive? Yeah then there's no shortage.
Shortage. No, conspiracy to suppress wages. And if you can't pay what it costs to find someone, tell the truth that you're a shitty poor employer, don't say there's a shortage. There is just as much a shortage of bus drivers in California as there are Apple shares that cost one dollar. It's a surplus of poor and entitled...well not buyers, they don't buy anything, not even prospective buyers like I guess...bidders. Poor and entitled bidders, "pobres diablos de mala muerte."
Doctors there is a shortage because they restrict supply, that's a fair description. So in fact there's a commensurate surplus of medical-school applicants and foreigners who want to become American doctors, but they get turned away, that's a shortage. So in fact no amount of money can actually get America the supply of medicine it needs to have dignity, no amount of money can "incentivize" these overeducated losers to make America healthy. That's a shortage. Going back to the bus driver, would people move into California to drive for ten million dollars a year? Yes, and there would be more drivers, no shortage. "Oh but that's not a reasonable salary" It is if you say there's a shortage! Whereas with doctors, would there be more doctors if you paid ten million a year in salary? No, there would not. A billion a year? No, there would not. So in fact it would backfire, the more America spends on healthcare the less of it it gets, shortage.
I realized this is literal. America put a man on the moon to win the space race, meaning fight communism, meaning not raise worldwide wages. Also to prove they could do it and be historic beyond any appeal, but that's not why NASA got the budget they got.
The state of California cannot mandate “no cut in pay” by employers (although I'm sure they would like to, because a 20% cut to income tax would devastate the state's budget - which is why this idea is dead on arrival). Your pay will be reduced appropriately either based on an hourly rate or a cut to your salary.
> The state of California cannot mandate “no cut in pay” by employers
It can specify no cut in full-time pay for an employer for substantially similar work, on both an individual and overall basis (the current text only does this on an individual level, but that's not all the State could do. E.g., “The minimum hourly wage shall be the greater of $X/hr or the 5/4 the actual wage paid by the employer to the employee on date Y or the 5/4 the average wage paid by the employer to employees doing substantially similar work on date Y.”)
This formulation presents a host of federal (and state) constitutional problems (i.e., contracts clause, takings, equal protection, etc.). You're certainly right that California "can" specify this. California would not be able to successfully defend this type of law in court. Pedantically, I guess you're right in the same way that you can "sue" anyone for anything, provided "sue" doesn't mean "win the lawsuit."
> So basically everyone affected will have their hours cut without a change in hourly wage
From the bill text: “The compensation rate of pay at 32 hours shall reflect the previous compensation rate of pay at 40 hours, and an employer shall not reduce an employee’s regular rate of pay as a result of this reduced hourly workweek requirement.”
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2164005/jewis...
It was also the first month of the Roman calendar until January and February were added.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martius_(month)