thelastgallon

US has ~250 million cars. If they are all EVs (100KWh), it is 25TWh capacity.

Reserving 20% of that capacity to supply power back to the grid is 5TWh.

EVs can be charged for free during the day, ~20% of solar is lost due to curtailment. Even if a significant percentage (10 - 20%) of the people decide they are going on long drives from Florida to Vancouver and turn off supply-power-to-grid-for-money in the app, its fine, there are plenty of cars. It is the cheapest, most resilient, distributed and self-healing energy ecosystem. Only one problem, it won't make the super billionaires money. Unless it can be packaged in a way to make the super billionaires money, its a no go in US.

This infrastructure buildout costs nothing, people buy new cars all the time (~20M/year), just buy EVs instead. Because people are providing the capital and the storage infrastructure, they should be paid for it.

This isn't [pro|anti] [biden|trump|abortion|guns|vaccines|facemasks|etc].

Its kids deciding for themselves about the world they want to live in and what features they want in it. Buildings last ~100 years and most likely they are going to live in a home that was built in the past. If they want modern features or amenities without spending a fortune rebuilding the house, its best to future proof.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Can we connect? Email on my profile. I run a non-profit, I teach middle/high-school and college kids about building codes and the first thing I have them do is find out the county building code engineers[1] and ask them to update the code: require 240V outlets in the garage for EV charging. After they know how to do this, the next steps are to require 240V outlet for heat pump water heater, induction stove (solves indoor air pollution), heat pump HVAC. Everything can be electric. Finally, build the house with solar panels on the roof.

Home circuitry, load center need to be redesigned for V2X (vehicle to grid, home, load, etc), plug-in solar and batteries, solar/batteries replacing generators, etc. You seem to have thoughtful ideas about these and it would help to have someone knowledgable articulate how it should be done.

[1]The idea is that they can change the world right now by understanding what they want in their world (clean and free energy) and that they need to ask for those changes because buildings last ~100 years. The lowest hanging fruit is future-proof all construction and have it be ready for incremental changes without needing any labor or permitting work.

The cost of solar is 1X - 20X depending on location. US has the highest costs, followed by maybe Western Europe.

The panels are dirt-cheap[1] straight from China, but your friendly govt adds tariffs.

The balance of the system is super costly in some locations, ridiculously cheap in other locations.

In Pakistan, they are laying out the panels on the roof without any structure.

In most of the third world, homes are concrete built, they already have structural elements and it isn't a big deal to add panels. It is a massive project in US, because of shingled roof. Labor is also available, available immediately, and permitting is either easy or not necessary.

I'd assume the cheapest total install cost would be (cheapest to costliest): China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, middle-east,, Africa, South East Asia, Central America, Mexico, India, South America, Australia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Canada, and finally US.

I'm ignoring the cost of land which varies a lot in each country. We also don't need land, just add vertical solar on every structure, fence and wall.

[1]or as cheap as plywood which a HN comment pointed out

What if antimatter is load-bearing?

They are opening it wrong.

I'm surprised that Anthropic and OpenAI aren't going for the obvious win. Apple is the only company which is vulnerable to AI, it has never done AI (everyone hates Siri) and can never do AI.

Hardware or software exists to let people do things. Apple sells hardware so it can sell apps and content, and a slightly easier UI than Google. Google search was also famously just a UI, a search box that lets you get in and out very quickly (it is all garbage content now).

Anthropic/OpenAI don't need Apple's hardware, their stack (hardware+software) is all in DCs, just need a dumb fashionable device in phone form factor (and other form factors). Just need a very simple device which delivers what Google search box originally delivered (let you do things) and let their AI handle stuff.