Panos for Progress: Thoughts and Selections

GM Cruise, the second most advanced driverless technology company in the US (the first is Waymo ) is now history and a $10 billion sunk investment .  Some of the lessons learned and technologies are incorporated into GM's advanced driver assistance system or ADAS for its regular vehicles, such as Super Cruise . For the foreseeable future, outside China and a handful of other places, driverless vehicle deployment will be marginal, and much smaller than the share of EVs.

This 5-point news brief by the CATO Institute is a must read. Excerpts below to whet your appetite. 1. “ We are a sovereign currency, we can print all the money we want to serve the people whom we serve .” By Former House Budget Committee chair John Yarmuth (D‑KY), testifying to Congress on October 19, 2023 CATO : Ignoring the threats posed by our ever-increasing debt will only exacerbate problems for future generations, burdening them with slower economic growth, runaway inflation, and higher interest rates. Panos : for a decade now, China and Russia are trying to dethrone the US$ as the main world currency, with some limited success. This will be huge help to them. Recall that up to WWII the British sterling was the leading currency. 2. “ It is time to scrap the cap, expand benefits, and fully fund Social Security .” By Senator Bernie Sanders (I‑VT) CATO : Despite the dismal outlook, leaders on both the left and right have failed to offer realistic solutions, while some law...

Easy to pack to work, school or hikes. Goes great with morning coffee! In a bowl, mix 1/3 cup pumpkin seeds 1/3 cup sunflower seeds 1/3 cup sesame seeds 1/3 cup chopped pistachios 1/3 cup chopped peanuts 1/3 cup chopped almonds 1/3 cup tahini 1/4 cup maple syrup Optional: add a 1/4 cup of raisins or chopped dates Lay mix thin and flat on parchment paper Spread the choc morsels on top (1/2 cup) Put it in the middle of the oven Bake for 14 min at 350F after preheating Spread the morsels with a flat knife or spatula after baking Let cool  Refrigerate, cut in pieces and store

Sample quotes : Germany’s auto industry is trapped in a vise between higher energy prices that drive up the cost of production, and electric-vehicle mandates that drive down sales. Germany’s auto industry is trapped in a vise between higher energy prices that drive up the cost of production, and electric-vehicle mandates that drive down sales. Politicians are forcing the companies to sell cars that consumers don’t want.* Europe’s auto-industry travails are painful evidence that net-zero climate policy is the worst act of economic masochism in the West since the 1930s.  (*) A big part of the problem is cost. I'm a fun of VW's newest minivan, the ID.BUZZ , but the all wheel drive version starts at over $69,000!

The bullets below are direct quotes from The New York Times . It’s a damning assessment for university DEI programs. My view of the bottom line is that university DEI tend to be expensive, make-work policies and practices that foster grievances and largely provide lip service to those that they were built fo r. A lose-lose endeavor. I personally experienced the culture of preference, discrimination, grievances and accusations during the last third of my 31 year career at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (2010 to 2021). It took away a big part of the fun teaching large undergraduate classes. It also enabled hypersensitive faculty, staff and students to create mountains out of molehills. I was lucky to be in Engineering which has only a small fraction of DEI issues as other colleges, but the DEI presence was looming large, particularly in my last six years as a department chair.  The DEI climate was one of a handful of factors in my decisions to step down from Chairman after six yea...

"The Charles Pankow Foundation has funded a study to assess parking garage safety in light of the heavier weight of electric vehicles compared to traditional cars. Led by researchers from the University of Colorado and University of Massachusetts, the investigation will evaluate whether current design standards for garage live loads, set at 40 pounds per square foot , remain sufficient." A standard US parking stall measures 18x8.5 ft or 153 ft2. The standard parking stall area times the 40 lb/ft2 weight standard yields a maximum of 6,120 lb or 2776 kg. A large US parking stall measures 20x9 ft or 180 ft2. The large  parking stall area times the 40 lb/ft2 weight standard yields a maximum of 7,200 lb or 3266 kg. The largest light duty EV sold on the US is the Hummer EV by General Motors. It weighs 9,640 lb. Clearly, many of them parked in the same parking deck of a parking structure will pose a problem. However, the rest of the EVs on sale, as of end of 2023, as shown in th...

[Part 1: Costco – Part 2: Amazon ] The “big news” in the 2021-2024 time period was inflation and the cost of products, foods, and household items. Most of the inflation occurred soon after the Covid pandemic was under control. The rise in prices was due to high demand and limited supply because of labor shortages and supply chain issues in the harbors, etc. We moved to South Reno in late 2021 from Honolulu. Establishing a new household requires many purchases, several of which from Internet retail giant Amazon. Actually, Amazon has a large warehouse in the Reno-Sparks area. Unlike the 4+ days it took even for small shipments to arrive at our place in Honolulu, several of our orders in Reno arrive within 18 to 36 hours! I looked at my orders in summer 2021 and then re-priced the same exact items in summer 2024. (This is why my table is not very long. Some items have been superseded by newer models.) The table below presents a sample of 21 items; click on it to see a clear version. As ex...

Strange finding, but it comes from a paper in a well regarded, peer reviewed journal. Do EV cause more at-fault crashes? The answer based on data from The Netherlands (only) is yes. See:  Are electric vehicles riskier? A comparative study of driving behaviour and insurance claims for internal combustion engine, hybrid and electric vehicles ( Alternate link ) Research Paper Highlights Electric and hybrid drivers exhibit different behaviours than traditional vehicles. Electric vehicles record higher at-fault claims than traditional vehicles. Hybrids do not display a statistically significant increase in claim likelihood. Electric vehicles are 6.7% more expensive to repair than traditional vehicles.

[ Part 1: COSTCO – Part 2: AMAZON] In summer 2018, my family and I went on a trip to the Reno-Tahoe area, mostly for vacation but also to get an idea if the greater Reno area may be a suitable one for relocating from Honolulu, after my retirement from the University of Hawaii. During the visit, I took pictures at Reno Costco of some of the products and items we used to buy at the time in Honolulu. I wanted to compare them with Honolulu’s Costco (at Iwilei). I was expecting that the “price of paradise” would hit again, and many items would be more expensive in Hawaii. I was planning to blog about it. Much to my surprise, the prices were basically the same … nothing to write about. Fast forward to 2024 and the “big news” is inflation and the cost of food items. Actually, most of the inflation occurred soon after the Covid pandemic was under control. The rise in prices was due to high demand and limited supply because of labor shortages and supply chain issues in the harbors, etc. Food i...

Tesla's Full Self Drive (FSD) or Robotaxi is all camera based. No radars, no lidars. It'll hit the wall of unacceptability and never launch, or it'll launch with cameras only and kill people, or it'll go in a re-design phase with added radars. Any way you cut it, Elon Musk's pronouncements about Tesla robotaxis are mostly fake.

  The September 7, 2024 issue of the Economist has this provocative title on its cover page.  Strong words but they back their statement up with substantial research: They used data from 7.5m crashes in 14 States for ten years (2013-2023. They found that "for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles kill 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest." Vehicles have been getting heftier over time, but a big culprit are pickup trucks, large SUvs and EVs. For example, ehe Ford F-150 Lightning weighs ~40% more than its gasoline version. EPA figures show that the average new car in the US weights 4,4000 lbs compared to 3,300 lbs in EU and 2,600 lbs in Japan. "Individually, it is rational for people to buy bigger cars. As Tony Soprano once said to his son A.J. when discussing SUVs, So you want to be the sucker in a regular car who gets decapitated? Yet the sum of those decisions is much more lethal roads, as well as...