[ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2025 at 12:50 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>    Intermittent power sources are great if you can use the power at the
> time, and if you have enough baseline generation capacity to cover all
> power demands with the requisite reliability when the wind isn’t blowing
> and the sun isn’t shining.
>

### Absolutely, solar and wind without batteries are at least 70% useless.
With batteries however, it's a different story. Once we start installing
multiple gigawatt scale batteries every year all competing energy
technologies will have absolutely no chance of survival on purely economic
grounds, even without any distortionary government involvement.

BTW, catastrophic global warming is a lie and it's wrong to decarbonize the
economy - but it will happen, because money talks and SWB
(solar-wind-battery) is a clear economic winner.


>
>
> Moral of the story: the price of power was 22 cents when the measure
> passed, and now it is 41 cents.  I never even notice my power bill before,
> but I damn sure notice it now.  I don’t have an electric car.
>
>
>
> The tax incentive for EVs expired, and the EV driver no longer gets to use
> the carpool lane.  Without those incentives, the fraction of car sales is
> now way down from what was forecast by now.
>
>
>
 ### The TAM (total addressable market) for EVs is extremely dependent on
the purchase price - at around 30k the TAM goes exponential. We are still
in the slow phase of the adoption S-curve. Once the 25k Tesla is on the
market you will see a major acceleration of the transition to EVs.

Rafal
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