What’s next? Hopefully domestic-component grid storage batteries and EV batteries for greatly reduced cost and less reliance on China.

Any serious effort towards a “green” future is going to require better home and vehicular energy generation and storage. We need gridscale batteries and EV batteries, cheaply, now.

Individuals should not be making their own medical or psychological diagnoses. Correct.

In my area last year I was legitimately looking at all options. Toyota lot was the biggest disappointment. They had 1 RAV4 that was completely stripped, cloth seats, barely any features etc. but somehow the payments were still $150 more per month than leases on better equipped EVs at that point (prior to the federal tax credit expiration). I asked the Toyota guy if he had any other competitive options and he tried to tell me I should get a massive truck (Tundra).

This continues to baffle me. Europe, the US, and likely even Japan was never going to be able to win the race to the bottom on price. China understands its supply chain and mineral strengths and has optimized its entire production towards churning out good (or good enough) EVs at scale.

Still, the US could continue to wall China out of its market with massive tariffs while also promoting alternative cheaper vehicle options, a large portion of which should and could be EVs. But the US hasn’t even done that… Domestic manufacturers have run screaming from EVs, seemingly ceding the entire field to China.

The idea being to choke off Iran’s ability to use it at all. This kills their remaining income stream and also incents the Chinese and others who thought they had a workaround (the tolls) to instead put pressure on Iran.

I just assumed it was a loot and repair system like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.