When you take into account that the original assertion was tht eighty billion was given to the auto manufacturers, I don't think my comment deserves the reaction it got, not a reply like yours.
For better or worse, it's one of those sticking points keeping many away from electric. I was like that several years ago, but I've noticed my driving patterns since then. I can't do electric because I can't afford a new car and even worse I'm an apartment dweller, so there's no infrastructure. But if I could, I absolutely would get a vehicle. Long as it had a couple hundred miles of range, that's all I need (we have a second car anyway, so if we needed longer trips, we're covered). And less battery means moving less mass means even cheaper to run.
But my dad went looking a few years ago and ended up with a gas car again - because they do take trips and drive sometimes, and so the idea of having to recharge, even on infrequent trips, was a sticking point. But with 500 miles of range, it's getting to the point where that's getting close to a day's comfortable driving for a lot of people, and if you can charge overnight, then it becomes enough for trips and it helps eliminate the range anxiety.
I think once people start transitioning over to electric, their second vehicle might have less range…
Well, it was $79.7B to be exact. And what the US government did with that was not cut checks, but rather, purchased stock in the companies.
When it sold the stock it bought from manufacturers, it sold for around $70B. When they sold the approximately $2.4B invested into Ally (an auto financing firm), it sold for $17.2B.
So the money spent in 2008 actually made a profit. It was not distributed to the manufacturers or finance companies at all. Just used to shore up their value to prevent them from going out of business – and more importantly, probably, make sure investors didn't lose money, or at least not too much.
Y'know, if that's true… I can't afford a new computer. I just got one last year after almost a decade of using my last box. I was lucky that this one runs 11 - I'm not anti-Microsoft - I like Linux and Windows...... but I've been perfectly happy with 11 (maybe just lucky, but none of the problems I've heard others having).
But yeah, if this box won't run 12, I will be staying on 11 until I can't, and then that'll push me to Linux. I could switch now, jsut about, but a few little things that run better with Windows for me. But I could survive under Linux if I needed to.
Basically, I've never been a big Microsoft apologist, but man… that would kill it for me.
Not that they care. They care about corporate uses, not home users. Which is why you can find any number of ways to get your Windows for free these days. They gave up on the consumer market.
I really wish there was a way to find where someone legitimately has a need to nest, like, 16 levels of USB devices and find out WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THEM. But also what possible legitimate need might force such a nightmare. lol.
Editorialized title aside… the thing about parking is that in the US, we're sparse and spread out and need cars in most places.
You want to eliminate cars? Build densely. Replace great swaths of our suburbs with medium to high density housing + commercial spaces where people don't need cars to go shopping or eat at restaurants or grocery shop. Then you're also dense enough to be able to support great public transportation. And then you can greatly reduce the number of cars.
It'd be great. I'd love to be able to walk^[well, roll, as a wheelchair user] to shopping and restaurants. I'd love to take good public transportation to my doctor visits and elsewhere.
But that requites a radical re-thinking about how we live, and then a radical re-building.
I'd be all for it - the cost savings of not owning a vehicle would be fantastic, and while electric cars wll help, congestion and pollution are even less of a problem with a great public transportation network.
Dr. Strangelove was not fucking supposed to be a manual of operations.