Most people have the option of plugging in where they live and/or work. The only argument would be for apartment complexes. Townhouses, single family homes, etc. are easy to switch to electric.

Or you could just get a Plug-in Hybrid, if that’s a concern.

If the company is able to scale this technology large enough for consumer vehicles while keeping prices down, it could easily double the range of the farthest-driving EVs on the road today.

That’s a big IF. TL;DR: They haven’t developed a means of making this scalable and able to be mass manufactured. Until they do, this is another “revolutionary” battery tech that may or may not actually be used due to cost of production. Most likely in the “not” category.

If you want to make EVs more popular, make them with Sodium-Ion batteries that are cheaper than ICE vehicles. They’ll sell better as a result.

Hardly anybody needs an EV with more than 200 miles of range if they’re plugging in each night. Most people’s commute is round-trip sub-50 miles. “Range anxiety” is 95%+ of the time a “problem” that stupid people have for their theoretical future that never actually happens. Most people are impractical idiots.

This is like reading my uneducated Republican mother’s ramblings on Facebook. Completely incoherent and gave me a brain aneurysm.

Same reason people get their WiFi from their ISP Modem+Router combo, even though it’s stupid to do so: People often confuse initial convenience for good.

Do you have a Raspberry Pi, Mini PC, or media center PC that you already have running? Home Assistant sells a ready-made Home Assistant box (Home Assistant Green) if you don’t. It has HASS pre-installed ready to go.

Yeah it’s rather unfortunate that heat pumps aren’t more common in the Midwest. As someone formerly from Michigan, I know it gets cold, but heat pumps can operate below 0 easily without aux heat nowadays and you can get gas or electric aux heat to supplement when you get below the operating temps of the heat pump.

Change is also hard for humans, so companies still throw in forced air systems that burn natural gas or propane.

Unfortunately, you’re very right. I try to do my part in convincing people to choose otherwise, though.

Are they called something else in other places? Heat Pump Mini Splits are pretty common in the Americas and Europe.

If you want a smart home/devices, only opt for locally controlled, non-cloud, open source, and self hosted options. Home Assistant is great for home automation.

My mini splits used to be controlled by an Alexa dongle with no other choice from the manufacturer. After some research, I discovered that there was an ESPHome module for controlling them with about $8 worth of stuff. It’s more responsive, reliable, will never stop working because some company decided it’s no longer worth their time, and has more elaborate controls than anything the manufacturer provided. And I can control three mini splits for half of the cost of one “cloud dongle” from the manufacturer.

The best way to combat enshittification is voting with your wallet. Support projects by people who produce open source solutions. Donate the money you would have spent on the “turnkey cloud” option to help fund the open source project through donations. Until we stop giving these companies money, they’re not going to stop screwing us.