Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What's slowing down the AI buildout

worksinprogress.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–237 of 237 posts

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#231

Post by Yizahi »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #201
Yizahi wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are people so convinced that we need an EV charger per car at every home? > After a week of just running the 1.5 kw slow charger I realized that was fine. Wait, did you tell that you were using EV charger at home actually? I'm confused by the wording.

Yeah. My point is that I never bothered to install anything more than the super slow free charger that came with the car. If you have a good fast charger network available you don’t really need to have a 240v charger or even a charger at all.

I still don't understand. So you do have an EV charger at home? Just a slow one? The issue with EVs is that a majority of people doesn't have any EV charger at home at all. These is almost no one who would willingly downgrade from a convenient car to a car which requires driving to some far away gas station and sit there for hours in a parking lot in a cold or in a heat, if it's even working in the first place which they often aren't.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#232

Post by Yizahi »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #196
Yizahi wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are people so convinced that we need an EV charger per car at every home? > After a week of just running the 1.5 kw slow charger I realized that was fine. Wait, did you tell that you were using EV charger at home actually? I'm confused by the wording.

120v slow charging, only needs a dongle perhaps. Fine for most people who aren’t road warriors. 240v medium charging often needs a wall mount charger, though can plug into a dryer/oven outlet. More expensive but meets the needs of everyone.

Both of these are fine. The problem is that a majority of people have neither option at all.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#233

Post by bloak »

Macha wrote: post #151
dghlsakjg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so convinced that we need an EV charger per car at every home? We need enough high speed chargers in the right places. The average American drives 37 miles per day. That pencils out to less than 30 minutes of charging per week using current high speed standards (which will continue to drop). Your friend could take their car at 20% if they knew that they could charge quickly at their destination. We don…

I don’t have a garage, as is common in my country. Charging my car off a regular socket would thus require leaving a ground floor window open all night (undesirable from both a security and wildlife intrusion perspective) or installing a socket outdoors (at which point why not just get a charger?)

There are so many different options, it's confusing. But a "proper" 7 kW charger can cost over £2000 to install if your house isn't wired in a convenient way, while installing an ordinary socket outside might cost about a tenth of that and give you 2.3 kW. You might get about 4.5 miles per kWh, so potentially more than 80 miles from an 8-hour overnight charge from an ordinary 230 V socket, which can deliver 10 A for a long time if it's a modern one and properly installed though you need to be a bit careful because it's not normal to take that much current from an ordinary socket and you'd be doing this at night so you should worry a bit about something overheating and catching fire. Worth getting someone competent to take a look at the wiring, I'd say.

Basically, as far as I can tell, you can take 10 amps off lots of places in an ordinary modern house, but to get 32 amps for a "proper" EV charger you probably need to go back to where the power supply enters the house and start there afresh with new and rather more expensive equipment and cables.

(US readers note that I'm talking about GB where domestic wiring is all 230 V.)

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#234

Post by 59percentmore »

constantius wrote: post #131
59percentmore wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many tons does it take to make a dirty bomb that irradiates a city center or small downtown? To poison an aquifer when storage fails? How much does it cost to make sure neither of these events, or any other similar hypothetical, doesn't happen, not even once?

As far as I know, it hasn't happened, not even once. Your objection appeals to emotions, not to reason. The very kind of objection that has enabled fossil fuels to be seen as less dangerous. FYI, nuclear energy has killed single digits of people. Fossil fuels kill around 10M annually through pollution alone. Granted, your lament aims to make people privilege clean energy over nuclear, but in nature it is still the ki…

You're attributing elements to my post that don't exist in it. I think this is perhaps projection.

Further, as a proponent of nuclear power, you should be aware of the eforts that have gone into preventing deaths from the multiple nuclear plant accidents that have taken place. This is in part because of an awareness that a single major accident would kill support for nuclear power globally. The more plants exist, the higher the probability of this. It is therefore in the best interests of nuclear power proponents to limit its share and to replace the majority of fossil fuel power with clean renewables.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#235

Post by mixmastamyk »

Yizahi wrote: post #232
mixmastamyk wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120v slow charging, only needs a dongle perhaps. Fine for most people who aren’t road warriors. 240v medium charging often needs a wall mount charger, though can plug into a dryer/oven outlet. More expensive but meets the needs of everyone.

Both of these are fine. The problem is that a majority of people have neither option at all.

If there are lights in the garage or street (there are 95%) then install is cheap. An untapped business opportunity.

Shortsighted defeatism is not compelling.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#236

Post by Yizahi »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #235
Yizahi wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of these are fine. The problem is that a majority of people have neither option at all.

If there are lights in the garage or street (there are 95%) then install is cheap. An untapped business opportunity. Shortsighted defeatism is not compelling.

Sure there are lights. It will cost me somewhere around 3000$ (Eastern Europe btw) just for the work, wiring and meter. And I will need to get approval of the home owners, and I will need to pay out of pocket for the whole building complex insurance difference, because apparently it will increase from a default "all ICE parking" to a "shared ICE and EV parking" and the latter costs more. I didn't even ask yet, there are 200 parking spots in a contiguous space, I imagine costs would be prohibitive.

I'm actually considering EV as my next car, and due to some legal BS and my own mistakes I will likely need to quickly sell my ICE car at a loss next year and buy something in replacement, which I otherwise wouldn't do for at least five to ten more years, my car is just fine for me. But without ability to charge my car at home, EV is an absolute non-starter and out of the question, I will likely get a hybrid Corolla instead. Taking vacations at a gas station or walking for an hour there and back or paying for an expensive public transport twice for every charging is not my dream really.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#237

Post by JackSlateur »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #175
kulahan wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how public works funding would look if 90% of the nation wasn’t painfully far behind in maintenance. But also, AI data centers have been around for like 3 years. It’s not surprising they haven’t reached a high level of efficiency yet. IMO they are not an argument against excessive power use (I know this is not your argument, just a common one), but rather and argument FOR better (read: nuclear) power generat…

Why do so many otherwise seemingly rational people pretend that nuclear is the answer to our energy needs? It doesn't make sense economically, it's just wishful thinking. The only cheap nuclear energy is from plants that have already been built, because it won't help if we tear them down. But as soon as you factor in the costs of building, insurance and storage of materials, it's always more expensive than renewables…

"as soon as you factor in the costs of insurance"

This is a self-inflicted cost for a state

Post reply on HN