Ford $19B EV "Writedown"

Ford recently announced it's EV project is a failure. They're planning to "pivot" to AI datacenter energy storage in hopes of riding that hype wave after then "netzero" EV hype wave ran out of gas a couple of years ago. As part of that they are taking a "writedown" of $19B, whatever that means.

A few years ago the narrative was "EV's are inevitable" for various handwaving reasons. Many reality based observers understood there are huge problems associated with trying to switch the entire transportation fleet to battery power. Many executives at car manufacturers didn't. Are they stupid? Yes. They're stupid, delusional people who were insulated from consequences usually since birth.

"AI" suffers from the same problems. "Bitcoin" and "blockchain" suffer from similar problems. We really don't live in a world of endless plenty. There's endless ideas and endless funny money, but pretty harsh limits on the system. Burning resources to run a bureaucratic system is really foolish.

The economy has some inherent physical limit on energy production. In the US per-capita energy consumption has been constant for many years. There's no new source of energy. People get more efficient with energy use (like better insulation, LED lighting, etc...) instead of building new, very expensive infrastructure. The idea the overall economy can be re-allocated to build out a new grid with additional capacity is probably a crack-pipe dream. Here's an old post: "The 20 Kilowatt Lifestyle"

The current system runs flat out to support the 10-13 kilowatt lifestyle. Trying to reallocate resources to achieve the 20 kilowatt lifestyle is probably impossible barring some major new, portable energy source.

I think the "pockets of competents" future is the next big thing.