Don MacKenzie
@donmackenzie.bsky.social
110 followers 330 following 12 posts
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donmackenzie.bsky.social
If @trb.org is censoring research paper topics at #TRBAM, that's bad. But what's worse is them not clearly articulating the criteria up front, thus wasting everyone's time.
donmackenzie.bsky.social
Tons of reputable researchers would be happy to do studies like this, if anyone was willing to pay for them. Who's job is it to fund work like this?
donmackenzie.bsky.social
Public EV infrastructure in the US mostly sucks, but non-EV drivers don't seem to realize this. In a new paper, we quantify how much of a drag on EV adoption it would be if everyone caught on to this fact. Spoiler: it's a lot. authors.elsevier.com/c/1lQGs,L-HR...
authors.elsevier.com
donmackenzie.bsky.social
Of course you do. I would have called them a backwards shithole, vowed never to return, and told my friends. Our current administration is doing permanent damage to America's role, cultivated over decades, as the world's center of scientific progress.
donmackenzie.bsky.social
You know what I would have done if any of these countries had denied me entry (or even hassled me upon entering) while coming for scientific exchange?
donmackenzie.bsky.social
I have traveled to a number of foreign countries for this same purpose, and have never been denied entry. These countries include Switzerland, Finland, Greece, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Brazil, China, and Saudi Arabia.
donmackenzie.bsky.social
Today the University of Washington hosted a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation. One of our featured afternoon speakers, an MIT-trained Italian, was denied entry to the US and was unable to lend us his expertise.
donmackenzie.bsky.social
I'm in the same boat. It creates perverse incentives in that researchers are expected to make theoretical and methodological "advances", even if they best way to study a phenomenon is with established theories and methods. So people contort their work to meet this expectation, at the cost of clarity
donmackenzie.bsky.social
Per DOE, the US has:
- 11,720 DCFC stations
- 2,748 (23%) offering J3400 (NACS) charging
- 2,491 (21%) on the Supercharger network

So 18% doesn't seem unreasonable. The Supercharger strategy has been to build fewer, larger, more thoughtfully located stations.
donmackenzie.bsky.social
The WSJ reported Tesla bidding at half the price of others for DCFC stations. But the bid price isn't necessarily the same as the cost. Tesla has $30B of cash on hand, whereas EVgo has $150M. Tesla could be bidding low to grow its network while boxing out competition. www.wsj.com/business/aut...
Tesla Leads Race to Draw Federal Money for Charging Networks
Elon Musk’s company is beating out rivals to win millions of dollars in federal grant awards
www.wsj.com