Nordic countries have essentially eradicated homelessness by allowing the government to take an active interest in fixing the underlying issues that cause it. As a citizen, I don't want the burden of having to fix homelessness, that's what I pay taxes for.
The Nordic countries also tend to be brutally cold, dark or damp for a substantial chunk of the year. (With the exception of Denmark perhaps.) No one could survive sleeping outside in those conditions.
I live in the UK and would have to agree with these two. LLU was very successful but also forcing Open reach infrastructure like ducting to be used by Altnet companies such as Cityfibre who want to build out their own networks. I'm with a very small ISP too (Idnet - wonderful company), who provide a fast reliable service over FTTP for less than £26 a month.
On energy, we have many companies competing and offering really diverse products. Octopus were once a small little upstart but they became top dog by providing decent support, incentives and new products such as tariffs that track the wholesale rate - including negative pricing. They've got a REST API that you can use to pull all kind of data out for various home automation use cases - I can't ever imagine a government run company providing that.
I don't think any US cars are capable of being sold without a whole heap of changes. US cars in Europe have been modified to meet the regulations. Same of course for European cars in the US.
Right, I just meant that for most popular US car models, the manufacturers do all the checks and modifications needed to sell a European variant, but that's specifically not the case for the Cybertruck.
Either the design is fundamentally incompatible with European regulations, or they just don't think there's market demand. But note that other US truck do sell in Europe and the UK, e.g. the F-150.
There's something special about the Cybertruck. The special thing seems to be that it's a lemon.
Perversely they're higher partially because of pedestrian safety. More space between the engine and the bonnet and hinges that extend that space when a force is applied to the front of the car to cushion the impact. Euro NCAP has a whole category for pedestrian safety to test exactly these features.
You are correct, they are more dangerous. But the way the EuroNCAP test is constructed doesn't capture that danger. Leading to perverse, bogus results where SUVs are rated more safe for pedestrian collisions than small cars due to the artificial standard being applied.
Like every other safety regulation, it's a stupid game of stupid optimization. You "score best" by keeping the dummy's head off the windshield so you make a big giant flop/crunch zone full of engineered plastics and empty void spaces that is (ideally) at least as tall as the dummy's center of mass (belly button). This is why every car, suv, crossover, whatever that's expected to be sold in europe (including most of the small SUVs and crossovers that people complain about in North America) has a tall(er than it would have been 20yr ago) hood line these days.
It can’t be just that, surely? Or the more traditional sloped fronts would be gone completely.
I don’t think people are buying these because they’re safer for pedestrians, they’re buying them because they like the way they look, and/or because they (the drivers) feel safer when they’re in a huge box sitting high up, looming over the surrounding cars.
For the most part, cars are being designed to meet the required safety regulations in a way that constrains what they are able to build. Gone are more angular designs because sharp angles are all points which people get caught/trapped by - definitely no flip up headlights either for the same reason. Larger A pillar supports to provide roll over protection and door frame rigidity. Larger fronts to provide better small overlap collision deference.
All together it results in all cars kind of looking the same. Shame in a way because my favourite looking car of all time is the Golf Mk2, very angular and boxy but it wouldn't have been made now.
When they started it was mostly a styling thing, think like Toyota copycatting the Dodge Charger front profile. The big tradeoff was "but muh fuel economy" and those people got over-ruled. And now 10-20yr later the industry has adapted and optimized for them in the form of utilizing them for crash purposes (and big cooling systems). The safety people consider them integral and so they can't be gotten rid of and the aerodynamics people are no longer whining so hard because they've spent the years figuring out how to somewhat mitigate them.
I think in an alternative universe where none of that happened we likely would have invested the R&D elsewhere and found creative ways to get the same results (you can see inklings of this like the airbag style hood lift thing) with much lower more aerodynamics and visibility friendly hood lines.
But that's just my opinion from being on the fringes of the industry.
Does the Euro NCAP test for the likelihood of a collision occurring or only what happens if we assume a collision will occur? It's important, because if a class of vehicles is safer under the assumption of a collision but the collisions happen more frequently versus another class of vehicles, then it's pretty easy to imagine numbers such that the second class of vehicle is actually much safer for pedestrians in spite of a worse safety rating.
Except the NCAP test is flawed and everyone knows it. They are testing a SUV-pedestrian collision that doesn't actually happen and then rating the SUV's as super safe based on it when based on empirical evidence SUVs are vastly more dangerous to pedestrians in a collision as pedestrians (especially children) and vastly more likely to be dragged under than thrown onto the bonnet.
I use one peddle driving all the time and manage to keep a steady speed as I'm doing it. Why would you be constantly taking your foot off the accelerator unless you need to slow down?
I'll also throw another anecdote in for this thread, 500hp EV, 50k miles on the tyres.
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