An engineer working in JHB told me the stolen battery business is a R 1b a year market (15 ZAR = 1 USD; so USD 65m a year) in South Africa so you are probably right.
Power only being turned on a few hours per day is supposed to save power, and act as a form of rationing.
If everyone buys batteries and charges them when the power is on, and uses them the rest of the time, it doesn't save any power, and just costs everyone far more money.
Interesting fact about Zimbabwe's economy: they had one of the worst hyperinflation stories in human history. Then in 2009 they switched to a mix of foreign currencies (mostly USD). It stopped the crazy inflation, their markets calmed down and started working.
This year they switched to their own currency again. 40% inflation already.
I think you mean that using USD and ZAR enabled people to start buying products again. They still have and had major inflation; but instead just had a means to buy things again.
Exactly quantifying inflation there is a problem due to government intervention, but the fuel price is at about R 50 per litre (ZAR 15 = USD 1); biscuits that cost R 12 in South Africa is something like R 60 there and the way I understand it it doesn't matter whether you pay in USD or ZAR you'll still see the effect of inflation it the actual relative cost of products. Again, a lot of this is artificial due to taxes, shortages, government, etc.
The comment about telecommunications is on point though, all of the Zimbabweans I know are critically dependent on phones and especially cheap smartphones. Somehow, by getting the cheapest data options (in South Africa data is relatively expensive for no particular technological reason other than the companies ripping you off), they use whatsapp to get jobs, talk to their family, arrange money transfers, etc.
Zimbabwe's story is a very sad one, especially when taking into account the potential that the country once had and the ingenuity and willingness to work hard of its peoples.
Wow: It was redenominated three times (in 2006, 2008 and 2009), with denominations up to a $100 trillion banknote issued.
The final redenomination produced the "fourth dollar" (ZWL), which was worth 10^25 ZWD (first dollars).
It would be a fascinating case study if they were to switch to a crypto currency. Is anyone aware of any countries with hyperinflation (or otherwise unstable economies) that have attempted to do so?
There are problems with that. For one, consider that if all of a country's debt were denominated in bitcoin. For instance, the government issues bonds that can be redeemed when they mature for some quantity of BTC.
Now consider what happens if the value of bitcoin goes up suddenly. The government now is much deeper in debt than they were planning to be.
Sometimes having your own currency has benefits, for the country and for the world economy as a whole. For instance, if a country goes into recession and the value of their currency drops, then their debt can shrink (if it's denominated in local currency) along with the economy so that it doesn't bankrupt the country. Also, when the price of local goods drops with respect to other currencies, it encourages exports which usually helps the economy recover.
If you use a currency controlled by some other country or institution (i.e. the Euro), you don't have these safeguards. That's true as well if the currency is controlled by no one in particular (e.g. Bitcoin).
I don't know what Zimbabwe's particular problem was with their own currency. Sometimes using an external currency makes sense (like the Bretton Woods system in Europe before the Nixon shock in 1971). But it can be dangerous as well.
(A real economist could probably explain this all better. I just recently happened to read a book on all the problems with monetary policy in Europe written by Yanis Varoufakis, who served as Greece's finance minister for three months.)
These mechanisms you mention are all mechanisms that have historically been used, but there is a widespread consensus that it's not the right thing to do. Best practice is that a central bank should be independent of government and their mandate should not be to meddle with the valuation of a country's debt but to keep the value of the currency stable. For example, for the ECB it would be completely impossible to make monetary policy to suit the fiscal needs of all Euro-area countries since they are in wildly differing situations as far as their debt-levels and fiscal policies are concerned. Fortunately that's not part of the ECB's job description, though. Their job is: Keep inflation at a target that's close to but not exceeding 2% over the medium term. In theory the Fed should be just as independent from the U.S. government as the ECB is from any European government.
Of course if you believe anything you just said about the ECB you are really delusional. They are very much dependent on a few European governments (primarily France and Germany), this became readily apparent during the financial crisis of 2008. The Bundesbank president at the time had served in the Kanzleramt before.
The national central banks don't have all that much to say within the ECB system and are basically a historical remnant of a system that has been superseded and made obsolete (like the queen of England).
Personally I don't have a problem with somebody serving in government administration moving on to a role that's independent of government. Not everybody in administration is a political entity, and it is very possible for somebody who had been a political entity to leave politics behind. The same people who like to spin everything into conspiracy were also keen to point out that Mario Draghi had previously been with Goldman Sachs. ...so if it is somebody from public administration, there's a conspiracy theory. If it is somebody from business, there's a conspiracy theory, too. In that case where are these people supposed to come from? In my opinion it's a good thing that people need a proven track record of some kind or another to be eligible for offices like that, you can't just pick them up on the street just because, for political reasons, you require that they should have no past of any kind.
And, finally: European sovereigns weren't particularly in trouble in 2008. It was in 2010 that the crisis had made its way into the accounts of sovereigns, most notably the Greek debt crisis which later expanded into a debt crisis for Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. During that time, this mechanism was, indeed, a much discussed topic, but precisely in the sense of what I previously wrote: It was a historical precedent for how a sovereign debt crisis plays out when you can't just inflate your way out of it.
Wow, this article is reall interesting to me. I am actually an extreme critic of Tesla.
However, I also am an ardent supporter of cost-efficient technologies (anyone who knows what an Acer C720 is knows what cost-efficiency is). So, it is really awesome to me that a country that has been ravaged by corruption and health crises is able to run vital services with repurposed hardware that isn't anything to do with glitz and glam like Tesla cars.
Hope they continue to build what they need with whatever they can continue to get their hands on.
There is a community of Tesla critics out there, but they are so vocal because they've done something very strange.
They mostly exist on Twitter, but they all share the same block list. Anyone who argues with them or says anything positive about Tesla gets put on that blocklist by anyone else that shares it.
Their reality is very skewed. All they see on Twitter is hatred against Elon, 'proof' everything he does is a scam, misleading sales numbers and hype about competitors.
The only thing they can possibly see is basically a conspiracy theory.
And so they are very vocal because they can't believe anyone could support Tesla/Elon, because they have never seen a good reason to.
There is one guy that runs an investment company, 70% of his investment is shorting Tesla and he consistently complains about losing money doing so, but always saying the scam will finally be revealed 'soon'.
Autopilot's exact suite of sensors from Mobileye was in plenty of other cars and just not pushed to it's limits and was marketed as something that augments the driver in exceptional cases, rather than having the driver augment the system in exceptional cases, something we know kills people.
Additionally, it's shortcomings with stationary object detection were already well known, this is why full AEB on many cars is disabled at highway speeds.
And I didn't make this comment to say I dislike Elon, I could say that with three words.
Instead I take issue with the above comment's characterization of his detractors.
The above comment goes out of it's way to act like Elon's vocal opposition is a bunch of crackpots, which is silly.
I know this goes against culture on here, but I'll say it anyways.
It's _very_ strange that my comment above was flagged, while the comment it replied to was not.
I didn't say "I don't like Elon because he's a big stinky doodoo head", I gave legitimate missteps he and his company have made, some of which came at the cost of human life.
And it wasn't non-sequitur, I am replying to a comment about his detractors and thought it plenty fair to show my rationale for being one of them
If anything the comment it's replying to attempts to denigrate a large group of people in the hand-waviest way possible. I mean "they have the same blocklists on Twitter", really? This is the level of discourse that's acceptable while my comment is somehow unacceptable?
And to be clear, I don't think any comment in this thread should be flagged, it's silly the parent post to that comment is also flagged. People often say "We're all adults" to imply somehow no negative commentary should exist. To me "We're all adults" means we should all be capable of reading a comment with a negative tone without having a meltdown. Especially if the negatively toned comment has actual objective content.
Seems purely extraneous to me. The comments could have stood on their own without a blatant declaration of (anti)fandom that so often surrounds this company. The strawman you pointed out exhibits similar declarations in the opposite direction.
AFAIK they told Tesla to stop publishing their exact ranking of car safety, when they are only allowed to use a more vague "quantile" ranking of sort. Doesn't mean they lied about the ranking, just that they weren't supposed to share and use those detailed ratings for marketing purposes in the way they did.
> The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent Elon Musk a cease-and-desist letter last October over “misleading statements” Tesla made about the Model 3’s safety. The agency also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the statements “constitute[d] unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”[1]
You seem to be the one making the bolder claim -- that the NHTSA is either lying or wrong about their assessment of Tesla's marketing.
Since you're making the bolder claim, the onus is on you to provide some evidence, instead of making an unsubstantiated statement and childishly waving away your responsibility to back it up.
It could have something to do with the subsidy fraud or perhaps the fact that Tesla's might actually produce more CO2 than a traditional gasoline car [1]. Or perhaps it's because Tesla's art the 4th least reliable cars according to a Consumer Reports survey meaning they break down more often
The first link points to a press release that is dead (redirects to a home page), but based on the article, it doesn't look like they're giving it a fair fight.
> The research is revealing that these cars may produce significant CO2 emissions both in their battery production and their charging.
Important to note: "in their production and their charging"
> The study, for instance, estimates that driving a Tesla Model 3 in Germany is responsible for 156 to 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer. That is more than a diesel-powered Mercedes C220d which produces just 141 grams per kilometer.
The Model 3 is "responsible" for x grams, and the Diesel car (is diesel common in Europe? Very little US consumer cars recommend Diesel) "produces" x grams
Finally:
> Not only are there CO2 emissions generated in the production of electric vehicles, in addition almost all EU countries generate significant CO2 emissions from charging the vehicles’ batteries using their national energy production mixes.
There are CO2 emissions in the production of standard vehicles as well (this may be referencing the creation of the batteries, unsure, again the link is dead), and just as charging puts load on the grid, emissions are generated by the extraction, processing, and transportation of oil.
I'm not trying to invalidate the study, but the wording is suspicious (assuming it's not editorialized; the publication isn't one that only puts out critical TSLA articles).
At $6500 it's over a years worth over a years average salary [using numbeo.com rates] , and more importantly it's useful to anyone else suffering from intermittent electric which they all are.
doesn't look like it. it's not isolated from the ground, so any electricity is going straight into the earth. the bigger deterrent is the barbed wire, but you can get pass that (and the electric fence, if any) with a fiberglass ladder.
Friend when she was in a poor part of Africa noted that the local cell tower had two armed guards. Her host told that a few years prior they had a single guard. Thieves came and killed him with a chainsaw and stole the generators. So now the guards are armed with machine guns and there are two of them.
In South Africa, we're having a problem of heightened theft of battery packs that love in cellphone base stations. When desperation is high and crime rampant, there are no holy cows
Tangential but as an effort to go green- I'm considering not buying new Led acid batteries for my UPS and reusing the old ones from my old laptop. Does anybody know if this can be done?
Not going to work and probably not safe. The nominal voltages of different battery chemistries are often different and you can’t use lithium ion chargers interchangeably with lead acid chargers. They make LFP batteries that are backwards compatible but those aren’t used in laptops.
In the past, only privileged few used to have access to electricity in Southern Africa. Now almost everyone has access to electricity within two decades of ending of apartheid/colonisation. Having access to electricity is no longer a luxury for the privileged few. Electriticity infrastructure was built to provide electricity to privileged few. That's the biggest shift. By the way, I have access to electricity everyday and it isn't erratic.
> Electriticity infrastructure was built to provide electricity to privileged few
What group of people built the "electricity infrastructure" you now enjoy? And if they hadn't built it, do you think you would have access to dependable electricity right now?
All groups of people found in South Africa were involved in building the infrastructure that I am using and paying for. Beside, that shouldn't even matter because it was state's resources which were used. Even now, it is state resources which are being used to build electricity infrastructure to replace the old.
What matters is that now the infrastructure is built for all group of people. In 5 years'time, the infrastructure will be completely new [1]. But still, no group of people should claim that they did us a favour by using state's resources to build the infrastructure. It is their job to provide electricity for all citizens.
Fun fact: from the metal mesh grill (cabinet on the right next to Tesla) looks like it's Ericsson equipment being powered.