Are you gonna get an electric car anytime soon? (Or do you already have one?)

[Leo Enticknap]

Even if we don't buy electric cars en-masse, lithium battery packs won't go a way as the hunger for more compressed power storage is only increasing year after year. So, I guess we need to come up with better ways to prevent and extinguish those kinds of fires.

IMHO, it's becoming clear that the use of lithium ion batteries to power transportation is the c21 equivalent of hydrogen-filled airships. Until 1935, there was no other technology available that enabled a man-made aircraft carrying an economically viable payload to cross one of the major oceans. But as soon as the Martin M-130 (the first airplane capable of carrying a payload greater than the weight of the aircraft itself over a 2,500 mile range) entered service, the writing was on the wall, because the safety and operating cost gains were staggering. You could buy six M-130s (Pan Am paid $417K a piece for them) for what it cost to build the Hindenburg ($3m), and their operating cost per mile was around 20%. Likewise, Toyota and Samsung have just started to put solid state EV batteries into mass production, and unlike other projects that didn't get further than proof of concept in a lab, they are investing seriously in scaling that production up to mass manufacture.

So in the short term, preventing and managing lithium ion battery fires is going to be a significant problem. But with any luck, large li-ion battery packs will be history within one to two decades.

Still, I personally see no reason why high-speed rail won't work in the U.S. other than "politics". Countries like Japan, France, Spain and to some extend China have proven that high-speed rail, while being expensive, will work if done correctly.

AFAIK, China is the only country that has tried to do it over the sort of distances that would be involved here. Paris to Bordeaux or Madrid to Cadiz is a much shorter distance than New York to LA. The scale of development in China in the last two decades there, combined with a system of government that made such a huge infrastructure investment in such a short timescale possible, has made that scale of railroad building uniquely possible. The only other nation of a similar size and that uses railroads as its primary method of long-distance passenger transportation I can think of, India, has not tried to network the entire country with 200mph lines, even though it is also developing very quickly. An additional hurdle here in the USA is that we already have large and advanced road and civil aviation infrastructures. The headwind is as much economic as it is political.

[Bobby Henderson]

Even if we don't buy electric cars en-masse, lithium battery packs won't go a way as the hunger for more compressed power storage is only increasing year after year. So, I guess we need to come up with better ways to prevent and extinguish those kinds of fires.

Lithium-Ion batteries will probably be used for many years to come in various kinds of consumer electronics. Prices may even start to fall once new Lithium extraction plants come online in Arkansas. But I think L-Ion batteries are proving themselves to be pretty lousy for powering vehicles. Note the glut of used Tesla cars the owners have abandoned after just a few years of use. The staggering cost of replacing the battery packs is a deal breaker. It's like having to replace the engine and transmission in a gasoline powered vehicle after 50,000 miles.

For people like me who occasionally have to drive long distances the limited range of 300 miles at best per charge really stinks. If I'm driving from Lawton to Colorado Springs I don't want to be stuck for possibly hours at a time in Amarillo and Raton not only charging my vehicle, but waiting for an open charger.

Trains indeed are bad at covering suburban sprawl efficiently. Still, I personally see no reason why high-speed rail won't work in the U.S. other than "politics".

There is a much bigger problem than "politics": Cost. The United States just does not know how to build any kind of rail line without it costing a mega-fortune. Just look at the tens of billions of dollars going into the Bakersfield-Merced HSR project. And IIRC that train line doesn't have any tunnels.

When it comes to tunnel building, firms in the US know no bounds on how far they're willing to let costs escalate. The 2nd Avenue Subway project in Manhattan is the most expensive commuter rail project in the country. It's currently costing around $4.5 billion per mile to build. Any high speed rail line that would span a long distance in the US would end up having to incorporate a significant amount of tunnels and elevated viaducts in order to maintain the grades and curve geometry required for high speed operation. The US can't seem to be able to build tunnels of any kind without it breaking the bank. We're getting just about that bad with bridges too. A number of major highway projects are stalled mostly because of costs. The Interstate 69 project in Southern Arkansas and Mississippi has a big stumbling block: The Great River Bridge. I think the costs of the proposed bridge have surpassed $2 billion.

Nations like China have another advantage with building high speed rail lines. They tell anyone living in the path of the proposed rail line to GTFO and move. Authoritarian regimes don't have to spend years or decades filing Environmental Impact Statements and holding public hearings either. They just start building. Since the US has so freaking many attorneys any new infrastructure project represents a big money-making opportunity.

If the Interstate Highway System in the US didn't already exist and we set about trying to build it from scratch today the effort would be laughably impossible.

Many municipalities with lots of suburban development operate more like a Ponzi scheme than like a sustainable business. They often can't pay for the upkeep of the existing infrastructure of those suburban developments with current tax income. They essentially pay for the upkeep of their existing infrastructure by selling land for new developments. Once those new development opportunities dry up, they end up holding the bag. The end result is what you can already see in many older suburban areas, where infrastructure maintenance has been deferred for years and is now showing its age.

The problems run deeper than that. The build quality in many of these big homes in suburban developments is not very good. The houses and streets all look pretty when the homes are new. Check back 20 years later and most of the homes will have serious problems. In states like Oklahoma it doesn't take even that long. Our red clay soil is ruthless at attacking any home foundation that wasn't installed properly. Our weather wreaks havoc on structures where the builders cut corners to boost their profit margins.

That's another factor which will make the situation so much worse 10-20 years from now when many current owners of big homes want to sell and downsize. They're already going to face a shortage of buyers who need houses with 3 or 4 bedrooms and huge amounts of space to heat and cool. The big homes may also have a mountain of maintenance needs. They'll be forced to sell at steep discounts if they can even unload the properties at all.

The real estate situation in Japan is indeed pretty absurd. There are many thousands of "akiya" around mostly rural parts of Japan that are falling into ruin. Yet even with a shrinking population the living costs in the cities is very expensive. Anyone can see the same thing already happening here in parts of the US. We have lots of small towns that are literally dying. If they're not within a reasonable commute distance to a large population center and jobs base they're not going to be able to attract or retain any working age residents. In the case of Oklahoma, when you have a state superintendent of schools that is a complete moron and media whore it hits these small towns with a double whammy. They're trying like hell just to keep one single school open. Yet they see their funding cut, so it can be redirected to charters and other things. Parents are forced to live in bigger cities to give their kids any chance at a decent education. A bunch of other young adults who can't afford to buy a home in a good school district may give up on having children at all.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

It was interesting to see video of Teslas, and other Electric cars that were submerged in Ashville, N.C., and other areas of Eastern Tennessee... all were on fire while under water.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The future is not to simply dump your flaming EV into a container filled with water, but to let it burn to the ground in a controlled environment:

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Well, in the case of East TN where the Tesla was in the water, the flood water that breached the dam came in at 1.2 million gallons per second. That's twice the flow rate going over Niagra Falls. Glad I wasn't out that way. Some people had mere seconds to get out of the way.

On another note, special battery assembly - service tables are being built where if there is any battery fire, then the entire shelf containing the battery pack plunges into a special chemical of some sort that can extinguish the fire...

[Bobby Henderson]

I just can't believe the level of devastation in parts of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. It's just staggering. When I was a kid and Marine Corps brat my family made numerous road trips on I-40 through North Carolina. A bunch of Asheville is just ruined. Both I-40 and I-26 have serious damage that will take at least months, if not years, to fully repair.

The death toll is already very terrible (at least 128 confirmed dead as of Monday). Hundreds of others are missing. I hope the people who are missing are alive but just not able to call anyone due to dead mobile phones and no Internet service.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I just can't believe the level of devastation in parts of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. It's just staggering. When I was a kid and Marine Corps brat my family made numerous road trips on I-40 through North Carolina. A bunch of Asheville is just ruined. Both I-40 and I-26 have serious damage that will take at least months, if not years, to fully repair.

The death toll is already very terrible (at least 128 confirmed dead as of Monday). Hundreds of others are missing. I hope the people who are missing are alive but just not able to call anyone due to dead mobile phones and no Internet service.

You forgot Florida and Georgia. As far as roads, TN may be able to get I-40 open the quickest. The 5 bridges will take at least three years. New bridges have to be designed first. The interesting thing about the I-40 washout is that geologists told them not to put 40 along the river back when it was built in the mid 70's because of this very thing happenning. Same FEMA guy said tonight at least a decade to get stuff back to normal in Ashville. He also said this was the most devastating storm to ever hit the US.

[Bobby Henderson]

I know Florida and Georgia got a bunch of serious damage; I just didn't mention them. Before the hurricane made landfall I took note of Albany, GA getting hurricane warnings since I lived there over 30 years ago. Still, it looks like parts of Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina suffered the worst damage (and possibly the worst loss of life).

It looks like a bunch of Asheville will have to be completely demolished and re-built from scratch. I'm sure more than a few of the homes and businesses that were flooded won't be re-built for various reasons.

Hopefully the repairs to I-40, I-26 and other roads can take place on an accelerated schedule. What I mean by that is bypassing years worth of Draft EIS and Final EIS filings along with the usual lawsuits filed to block highway projects. They may be able to do some temporary things to at least allow traffic to pass through some locations on the Interstates in 2-lane configuration. Considering portions of I-40 in the Smoky Mountains have been washed out at least twice they probably need to re-think how the Interstate is designed and get it re-built properly.