Let me rephrase: “good luck having your accident claim accepted when they’ve been billing you for the zero miles you’ve allegedly been driving.”

Yeah, but good luck filing a claim when you haven’t logged in for months.

I think these companies enforce compliance by hiding behind the fact that insurance fraud is a felony most places.

Don’t worry. The next paragraph provided an email address where you can send reports of inaccuracies for them to review.

Though it also has the potential to flash boil. https://youtu.be/0JOxuS0SBHc?si=BnKVZWw5xcjalQy_

So be careful out there.

Alibaba is talking directly to the manufacturer. At least in my experience. Haven’t heard of trade wheel.

Yeah, I hit up a few on Alibaba. Even one who can apply the black border on the glass. No responses so far and it’s been a few weeks.

That just means they could be selling the full range version cheaper.

No. The additional price of the full-range version is partially subsidizing the lower priced version. People are willing to pay the current price for the longer range version, why would they lower the price?

proprietary software gives the developer power over their users.

Agree here, but that’s a much larger issue than just this particular pricing structure.

When it comes to things that are trivial to include but locked behind exorbitant paywalls (i.e. heated seats), I agree.

However, range/battery capacity is the primary price differentiator for EVs and also the primary cost for manufacturing. Finding a way to offer options that suit the needs of different people at varying prices just allows more people to enter the market.

to become the de facto standard

I feel like it might be nice to have a sliding scale of ranges available for people who have a sliding scale of needs. If I need a second car strictly for my 20 mile commute, it might be nice to have an option to pay less for 100 miles of range over 200. And I assume if a market is established for low-range EVs, manufacturers will compete with each other on how to deliver that for the best price. Perhaps if the market is large enough, Tesla will find it better to actually remove the extra batteries and put them in other cars.

You don’t have to buy the car. People aren’t getting conned here… They would buy a more expensive version of the car with a higher range if they thought that would suit their needs.

It’s funny how frequently this business model is used in the digital space, but when it comes to physical hardware, people freak.

Like look at movies. Does anybody really think it costs substantially more to deliver the 4K version of a product over the HD version? Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is $12 on Blu-ray on Amazon. It’s $20 on 4k UHD.

The movie was mastered at 4k or higher, so why not just give you the UHD version with the Blu-ray version? The physical disc can’t cost more than a few cents to manufacture.

It’s because some people have decided they don’t need 4k and are happy to take a shittier version of the product for a lower price.

Don’t get me started how much people hate when content is included on the game disc locked behind a paywall yet somehow have less of an issue when there’s day 1 downloadable content also locked behind a paywall.

It’s tricky. It’s not like BMW locking heated seats, a trivial feature, to nickel and dime the owner out of $300.

Reducing the battery capacity severely alters the value of the car possibly dropping it into the range of more budget conscious buyers.

There are benefits too. Less wear on the battery by not using its whole range, faster charging to “100%,” and more potential value when it comes time to sell should the buyer want to unlock the extra range.

Leave it to Tesla though to bungle the PR and completely lose the narrative.

Your drawing is a little confusing. Here’s what you need:

There’s nothing special about a setup with a light in the button. It’s literally just an incandescent bulb across the button. If you connect your circuit across the button terminals, it’ll work fine.

The 4 diodes in a loop is a “full bridge rectifier” that gives you DC from AC. The 5V regulator could be something like an LM7805.

The “large capacitor” is to keep power applied while the button is pressed, though you might be better off in that case with some small onboard battery. You just have to make sure that your battery charging circuit doesn’t draw too much power.

So a doorbell transformer steps 120VAC down to a lower AC voltage. That’s what you’re measuring (surprised you can’t tell if it’s AC. Your multimeter should have an AC/DC setting).

The circuit puts the transformer, the button, and the bell (classically an electronagnet that accelerates the hammer) in series. When you close the switch (push the button) the hammer strikes the bell.

An electromagnet is just a coil of wire, and it is possible to pass a small amount of current through it without activating the hammer. If you’ve ever seen a doorbell with a light up button, the light bulb is placed in parallel with the button. That way it’s always on drawing a small amount of current. It also explains why the light switches off when you press the button. You’re shorting across the bulb, so it’s voltage is zero.

If you want to use this power for an electronics project, you’ll need to find a way to draw just a small amount of power from the transformer. It has to be very small or you’ll activate the hammer.

Drop a full bridge rectifier in parallel with the button, then a bunch of caps to give you a steady-ish voltage and then some kind of voltage regulator to make it useable.

Just remember that you can’t draw too much power, and you’ll lose that power whenever the button is pressed.

Well if you scale the snail up by about 1000x (1" to 80 feet), you have to scale the speed too. So 0.03mph snail’s pace becomes 30mph.

Not crazy, but no walking speed.

Cute comic tho.

and nobody knows how to code anything and read datasheets anymore.

You seem a bit bitter which I can relate to. As someone who cut his teeth writing assembly for an 8051, I remember feeling a bit cheesed by people using arduinos to do what could be done with a 555.

My career has gotten comfy, but I can feel my skills stagnating with all this new stuff coming out. I of course would never ship a product with a Raspberry Pi embedded in it, but I’d like to have a feel for how to solve problems using newer more advanced hardware. With that in mind, do you have any recommendations?