Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Surprise, surprise

 The same kind of electronics reliability issues I've dealt with for my entire career are plaguing electric vehicle recharging stations.  What a shocker.

Where am I coming from here?  Simple.  The same economics that shift production of electronics to Asia--save a nickel per widget with dollar an hour labor--are in place for electronics reliability.  So things that ought to be done to protect the business simply aren't done.  You see it in data storage (my industry), lightbulbs (I noticed bathroom CF bulbs didn't last worth beans about ten years back), appliances, and more.

The question arises "OK, why doesn't this cause problems in gas stations, too?", and the answer is "it does".  But the trick is that when one gas pump goes out, that doesn't generally take out the whole gas station.  Plus, it takes five minutes to fill a car with gasoline, and hours to recharge an electric.  Hence troubles with electric chargers impact drivers far worse than do troubles with gasoline pumps.

Maybe it's time to take a good look at the risks of going all-electric.

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