The next step is legalizing kei cars. Small cars, and small EVs especially - should have different standards for safety in order to open up lower speed, lower cost, efficient options. The Honda S660 in particular was always one I wanted…

Noah Smith got some hate in the past week in the endless, exhausting discussion of Elon but here Noah raises new, interesting points I hadn’t heard about how fed R&D is not only good - it’s especially good for new innovative startups…

open.substack.com/pub/noahpini...

Most sources show cooling as one of the biggest items. If you replace a 1990s AC (10 SEER?) w/ a new AC (20 SEER) it halves the electricity use. Moreover, if you include smaller mini splits and cool, say, only the upstairs - the savings can be even greater because the size of the AC matters too.

Yeah, I’d assume so, but has this been quantified? I think Hannah Ritchie took a stab at this and here she shows countries which expect declines (blue) vs increases in temp. related deaths… of course more ppl live in the red countries, but interesting www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/heat-cold-...

Remember that “kei” trucks (very small class of Japanese vehicles) are in many places not legal or barely legal in the US and this should be a priority to fix

www.caranddriver.com/news/a627366...

That gives me hope that they’re not all bad but given the number of Reddit threads on the topic it seems common enough (?)