Analyst, futurologist, part-time mathemagician™. Support here https://teapaw.org/t.co/SOcZxmgIRK. Use my buddy's code & save https://teapaw.org/t.co/Z4ZivmmJkQ
Pacific Northwest
Joined June 2015
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I'm heading back to Nepal, then on to Ethiopia in December. This is where the big stories are and I've got a lot of high level exclusives in the works.
Thank you to all of you who support me on X, Patreon, and YouTube. Without you we couldn't make this happen.
Was very fortunate to get a chance to sit down and talk about the details with the head of engineering. Exceptional insights on the paths before them for electrification.
Nepal is quietly winning the bus war.
Brian from @FutureAZA went to Kathmandu to visit @SajhaYatayat and see how they're electrifying their public bus fleet.
Nepal's electricity is about 99% renewable, from hydropower.
Diesel has to be trucked into a landlocked country, and it costs about $6 a gallon.
So electric buses just make sense.
Their CHTC buses cost about $87,000 each. A BYD bus in the US can run $400,000 to $500,000.
They run 120 to 150 km a day on a 161 kWh battery and charge once a night.
And there's a diesel bus they converted to electric themselves.
Great look at what electric transport looks like in the Himalayas.
youtu.be/M8MWwN9zn-8
Interesting perspective. – at Longview, WA
We need an LCOE for transportation.
LCOT! LCOT is the levelized cost of transportation.
LCOE tells you what energy really costs over its whole life. LCOT should tell you what a trip really costs, and that has to include your time.
Run that math and it becomes obvious that what @boringcompany is doing with the Loop and what @Tesla is doing with @robotaxi is a huge deal.
Most arguments for bus and train depend on the potential capacity of the vehicle, not actual behavior.
Actual passenger behavior is the most important thing in transportation.
Most trips are 1 or 2 people going point to point. USDOT puts average car occupancy at about 1.5 people.
Trains and buses require people to gather and wait. That is a lot of wasted time.
And they almost never run full. Federal transit data shows the average US bus carries about 6 or 7 passengers at any given moment.
My rough LCOT estimates, per passenger mile, with your time included:
Robotaxi: about $1.00
Personal car: about $1.15
Light rail: about $5
Bus: about $6.90
Loop: a 2 minute ride instead of a 45 minute walk saves about $14 of your time
We need a way to move people point to point, without wasting your time or your money.
That's what LCOT would prove. @elonmusk
Notes:
Time valued at $19.40 an hour (USDOT), doubled for waiting and walking.
Transit is operating cost only (NTD 2024), no capital cost.
Car is AAA 2025 cost split across 1.5 people.
Robotaxi uses Tesla's 30 to 40 cent target fare, not today's price, and counts ride time as yours to use.
Wait, walk and speed numbers are my assumptions.
Fires, (Accidentally) Flying Cars, & some INSANE Engineering - Tesla Beat Podcast. Join me, @SjvTesla, @teslaownersSV, @matthewdr, and @Amy787 teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1nJOLQMXR…
Who the heck are they consulting to find these these partnerships? – at Longview, WA
Today, we’re announcing the next phase of our autonomous driving collaboration with @ToyotaMotorCorp to scale a fleet of bZ4X autonomous vehicles in Japan, beginning with testing and validation in 2027.
Read more about our partnership here: waymo.com/blog/2026/10/toyot…
__
本日、@ToyotaMotorCorpとの自動運転分野における協業を新たな段階へと進めることを発表します。2027年に開始する試験および検証を皮切りに、日本国内で「bZ4X」の自動運転フリートの拡大を進めてまいります。
パートナーシップの詳細はこちらをご覧ください：
waymo.com/blog/2026/10/toyot…
Here's why Waymo's approach simply can't compete with a clean sheet vehicle like Cybercab. Am I wrong @EricETesla @larsmoravy
Can anyone match Tesla on cost per mile?
@FutureAZA put it bluntly: the self-driving upfit on a Waymo alone has as many parts as a Cybercab, costs as much as a Cybercab, and pulls as much power as an entire Cybercab.
Then there's service. Tesla already has service centers that sit quiet overnight, plus the largest charging network in the world at wholesale cost. A new Waymo market means finding and vetting outside shops first.
A penny here, a penny there, and per mile it adds up fast.
$TSLA
You can't hand wave away the Waymo cost problem.
Their upfit alone has as many parts as an entire Cybercab, it costs as much as an entire Cybercab, and it consumes as much power as an entire Cybercab.
There is no route to cost parity for Waymo.
You Can See Everything really was fantastic. Fielder has a way of telling a gripping story, and the whole thing was just so strange and claustrophobic. So well done.
The stats are pretty clear. Semi fires occur about once every 20m miles EXCLUDING test vehicles. Tesla is around 18m miles, and this is the 2nd fire. Both of them are early test vehicles.
Might be more informative to consider Tesla's overall fire safety record, which is exceptional.
The rate of Robotaxi service area is amazing, and the total miles covered is getting huge...
I mean, Starbase, Louisiana is still bigger, but I'm told frogs and gators almost never request rides. At least not on the app.
Tesla Robotaxi's Houston service area just grew to 254 square miles, about 10x bigger.
All of it fully unsupervised. No one in the driver's seat.
"Regarding Robotaxi, we're seeing the... fully autonomous miles driven scale exponentially, meaning scaling very rapidly. And it would be hard to overstate this point. It really is an extremely fast week over week growth in autonomous miles." @elonmusk on Tesla's Q3 call
Even the Houston Police Officers' Union is now pointing people to Robotaxi to get home safe after a night out.
I'd love to see this factory.
5,000 unicastings and counting!
For our new affordable midsize electric truck, the @Ford Fathom, we aren't stripping out features customers want. We're innovating. We have fundamentally reimagined how we design and manufacture vehicles to make them more affordable.
These aluminum castings replace 146 structural parts with just two, reducing weight, improving efficiency and enabling our new Universal Production System at the Louisville Assembly Plant, which allows us to build major sections of the vehicle simultaneously before bringing them together.
Great progress by our teams! Excited for what's ahead!
fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/a…
I was lucky enough to meet SE at the X Takeover (well, at a few of the events around it first, but still,) and he's a fascinating dude.
New Future Link Interview 🎙️ with @serobinsonjr, the man behind @elonchron, his daily no-spin chronicle of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, X, The Boring Company and xAI.
We talk about:
🛒 How years in retail management trained him to dig through the BS
🚀 Why SpaceX is the hardest company to cover
🧠 Neuralink's speed, and why "patients are not props"
✅ Elon replying "Not true" under his posts (twice!)
🛣️ Standing next to a Starship on a public highway, while you still can
Thank you, Steven, for doing this with me. 🙏
Wait wait wait... Neuralink can empower people to tidy up themselves?!?
I mean, it sounds obvious once you point it out, but it simply never occurred to me.
Neuralink This Week, episode 2 🧠
🕊️ Remembering Nick Wray, Neuralink participant P8. "Be good, do good."
🧹 @DeadManRolln drove a @maticrobots vacuum with his thoughts
🎤 @PairedWith_P7 on the X Takeover stage with @esherifftv and @RyanTanaka
🇬🇧 One year of Neuralink in the UK
Thank you @NeuraPod for sharing episode 1 🙏
@neuralink
Silver lining: it wasn't the current version of the Semi.
But the cloud itself is thick and acrid.
Well darn.
$TSLA
[Tesla Semi catches fire on I-880 in Hayward, CA]
- On Oct 27, around 5:35–5:45 p.m. local time, a Tesla Semi's lithium-ion battery caught fire in the southbound lanes of I-880 near Route 92 in Hayward.
- The California Highway Patrol (CHP) closed both directions due to the risk of hazardous chemical smoke. Northbound reopened at about 8:40 p.m.
- CHP said the battery fire could burn for 15–18 hours, and southbound would stay closed until it was out and the truck was safe to remove.
- No injuries were reported and no other vehicles were involved. The driver said the truck simply caught fire. The cause is under investigation.
BORING TUNNEL WILL NEVER WORK!1!
Except, you know, it already does. Looks like they'll have both directions of tunnel open in time for F1 racing, which is going to be great for a whole lot of riders, and there will be three new stations as well.
Yeah, dunno what to say. It's real.
The Boring Company, this week 🕳️🚇
🎰 Vegas Loop: both Paradise Road tunnels to open together before F1, with 3 new stations
🎸 Nashville: digging reaches the Music City Center, plus a new report on the city's limestone
♿ San Antonio: an anonymous donor is funding Morgan's accessible tunnel
📦 Freight truck: 45,000 lb now, 75,000 lb in January
💰 SpaceX books a $561M gain on its stake
@boringcompany @vegasloop @MorgansOrg @elonmusk