Used Bolts are a hell of a bargain right now, especially with the tax credit. I have an EUV Premier and that’s got a lot of little things that add up to a really nice car (ventilated seats!)

The only catch is slow DC fast charging (some older ones don’t even have that). No problem at all for commuting and short trips out of town (living in southern Denver, I can easily go to Colorado Springs on a charge) but you need to know what you’re getting yourself into for longer trips

That, plus a couple other things I saw in different places, ended up doing exactly what I wanted! I posted my final solution above. Thanks for finding a piece to the puzzle!

That just might work! It’s definitely an easy way to control both at the same time. I just need to figure out a way to change the group’s dimness when the dimness on one light’s physical switch (a Kasa, unlike the Zigbee one next to it). Maybe an automation for that, targeting the group instead of a single device

Taking a different approach of starting simple and working up,

100.0 works

{{100.0}} does not work

“{{100.0}}” also does not work

Combining this with similar comments, plus adding in the math to convert to a percent, I tried this:

brightness_pct: "{{state_attr('light.kitchen_sink_ceiling', 'brightness') | float(0) /255*100}}"

Still getting the same message

Message malformed: expected float for dictionary value @ data['brightness_pct']

For what it’s worth, if I try to set brightness instead of brightness_pct, I get a different message

Message malformed: extra keys not allowed @ data['brightness']

(I’m assuming that device just doesn’t accept a brightness attribute - not a big deal to math it out though)

Some of his advice (mainly the first “baby steps” of paying off debts and getting some money saved) is reasonable enough. Snowball method of paying off debt may not be the most mathematically advantageous, but it does give psychological quick wins to those who may need it most. Paying off high-interest loans first doesn’t mean much if you get frustrated and give up. Setting a budget is also important.

Once you get past that his advice is pretty awful though. Yes, I use credit cards but I pay it off. Yes, I have a car loan but its interest rate is so low I pay a rounding error’s worth of interest through the life of the loan. No, I’m not paying my mortgage off on a 15-year schedule because its interest rate is plenty low as well and I’ve got better things to do with my paycheck.

This is a thing? My wife texted me some wonderful legendary nonsense when she took some Benadryl for a cold several years ago!

Yesterday I accidentally commented in .ml and mentioned that voting third party in our current voting system is playing with fire to get a worse candidate in office. I was told I must therefore start a grassroots movement for ranked choice voting, because apparently I can’t have an opinion without a movement.

Normally I let a few downvotes get under my skin more than I care to admit, but in this setting it was kind of a badge of honor. Honestly it was kind of “fun” to see what people were saying.

Ah so now it’s elaboration and credible sources.

Uh, yeah? If you’re going to make a vague claim without evidence it’s fair to ask for details and some assurance that you’re not making things up

I’m already one up on this with an article from the FT about insurance costs being higher due to the increased likelihood of an electric car write off.

How about some actual evidence they’re more reliable? Other than your bizarre hypothetical arguments.

Again, you’re talking about fragility - something being easy to break when acted on by an external thing. Reliability is about a car breaking down on its own. Something can be fragile, unreliable, both, or neither.

Tied to the dealer. There’s very few independent EV garages. 95% of the time you’ll have to take the price for any repair they offer you. You can’t shop around.

Still has nothing to do with the likelihood of a car breaking down with normal use - in fact, you’re kind of proving my point because if they did break down all the time, maybe you’d see EV shops opening up? Or existing shops branching out? Not sure why you think they’d refuse the business opportunity

Complexity. Although they often use the “one moving part” argument with all the extra infrastructure for charging etc they can have very bespoke electric parts. Which means no simple of the shelf pattern parts that are as good for much less. Dealer parts only.

Delay in these parts. There just isn’t enough of a parts infrastructure at the moment. This can even cover simple things like lights or trim.

Not enough technicians.

Again, NONE of this has anything to do with the likelihood of a car breaking down. You’re predicting (maybe accurately, maybe not) what would happen if a breakdown were to happen. And your points aren’t really inherent to electric vehicles as much as they are to less-common ones. Much of what you said could apply to a kei truck brought in from Japan, a decades-old car, a supercar, or a car you just don’t see on the road as often like a Smart car or Mini Cooper.

Far more issues with long term EV ownership than just battery age

Would you care to elaborate and show a reasonably credible source backing up whatever you think is such a big problem?

My point is, something can be more durable but also more fragile. The original article was talking about the durability, and the original commenter couldn’t comprehend that because of an entirely different variable that was never part of the original point.

I didn’t mean “sitting in a garage not getting used”, I meant “getting used, but not getting in an unpredictable accident”

Accidents are an additional variable outside of what the original article is talking about

You’re comparing two different scenarios. Let’s say you have two cups, one is made out of paper and the other is made of glass. They’re 6 feet off a concrete patio. Wind isn’t an issue.

Let them sit forever, and the paper one will disintegrate long before the glass does. Tip them over, and the glass one will shatter.

For that reason I’m annoyed at large SUVs losing their boxiness in recent years. Like, I get it for sedans and stuff, but if I’m driving a big SUV my main concern is utility (you know, the U in SUV) and a curved back side makes it that much harder to fit my grandma’s kitchen table in the back when I give it to my cousin.

In theory a decent QA team will catch things being done by shitty developers. If your dev and QA is shit, management is shit for letting it happen.

Admittedly I use gas for both those things, so yes, I did forget about them. The point largely remains: it’s highly unlikely that you’ll have all loads going at full blast, and for that reason the load calculation is far more complex than simply adding up the breakers. It also understands that circuits are generally only partially used, and that the worst case scenario is a nuisance, not a hazard.

GM had a similar deal when I bought my Bolt. It was pretty awesome, since my panel is on the other side of my house from the garage and it would’ve cost about $1500 otherwise. Lots of horror stories with the middleman they used (QMerit) and people having “non-standard” installations over silly little things though. Hopefully Ford has a little better implementation.

That would be cool, but really? They could have also sold the car and nothing else. They do a promo that should make EVs a little more approachable for a lot of people, and you’re demanding a (probably) 5-figure addition to that?

“up to” 60 amps per the original snippet means you could do less if a load calculation needs it. Really, damn near any panel installed in the last several decades can take an additional 240V 20A circuit, which is still a lot of juice if you math out the kind of use you can get over a year.

What are you talking about? 200A is a HUGE panel as it is. You’re going to have a hard time getting bigger than that on a residential connection. If you go balls to the wall with the big stuff in your house, you’d be looking at about 30 amps for AC, 50 for stove and oven (by the way, that’s all burners and oven running at the same time. Happy Thanksgiving?), 30 for a clothes dryer, and you still have 90 amps at 240 volts remaining.

Oh, and realistically that’s two 90-amp sets of 120 volts. And really, most people charge their car at night, when demand and rates are lower. Maybe your AC is going to run occasionally, but you’re probably not making that Thanksgiving feast while laundry is going