In my experience noncompetes aren't enforced, unless you are very high up in the company and even then C-level folks usually get nice incentives to stay away from their competitors.
If you have good credit, you'd be surprised how low PMI can get when you put less than 20% down. I wish I had learned it sooner. Saved 6 figures for a down payment only to find out that my PMI was only $103/mo on a $600k mortgage. Ended up doing 5% down instead and threw the rest of the cash into immediate home improvements and the market.
Disclaimer: I did get in when rates were in the low 3s. No clue what PMI is like nowadays or if it changes with the current rate environment.
Cost of battery maintenance seems to be a huge thing I never see mentioned here. I imagine EVs will depreciate much faster in that arena. My 15 year old Ford Focus still gets 30 mpg and still goes just as far on a full tank.
Teslas are now old enough that there's large-scale long-term battery degradation data available. They lose roughly 1%-2% of capacity per year (that's a linear approximation, actual degradation is steeper in the early years, tapers off later). So after 15 years you'd expect 70%-85% of the range left.
Modern EVs have battery management systems that keep their temperature and other factors within the range that's gentle for the battery. EVs also have some spare "inaccessible" battery capacity that prevents them being (dis)charged to extremes that would shorten their life. 15-year-old EVs will be fine. EV batteries aren't your cellphone batteries.
Even my LEAF (which has one of the worst battery management systems in terms of having passive cooling only) is 7.5 years old and has around 85% of its original capacity.
I guess I don’t understand why that’s acceptable. 15% degradation takes you from what 350 miles from full to just shy of 300. How much worse is it in the winter? None of those things happen in ICE vehicles that are much cheaper than even the cheapest BEV.
ICE vehicles also lose range in the winter. Older EVs have resistive heaters but newer ones have heat pumps which use 1/3 the energy to produce the same heat.
It's way worse than that. Mine is a 2015, so has only a 24kWh battery. I'm down from around 90 miles to around 75 miles. Winter is less, but not catastrophically less.
When I was in an office, it was 8 miles away. Our grocery is 1 mile away. The farthest kids' friends house is 2.7 miles away.
As proof that there's utility there: the LEAF does more miles per year than our ICE car, so it gets plenty of use, even with the severely limited range compared to higher-end EVs.
As for why it's acceptable: the car was $22K new after incentives. In 7.5 years, I've just now changed the wiper blades and cabin air filter for the second time. I turn all the wrenches on our family cars and I have literally only put a wrench or socket to the LEAF once in that time: to remove and charge the battery after we parked it for almost 8 weeks when COVID first hit and my little OBD2 Bluetooth dongle ran it down. (Wipers and cabin air are changeable without tools, as is filling the washer fluid tank.)
If your regular commute is below 200-300 miles (I hope so!) it doesn't even affect your daily use at all.
I'm not saying it's great, but just want to highlight that EV batteries don't fail as quickly and catastrophically as you may expect from batteries in consumer electronics.
EVs aren't cheap yet, but overall cost of ownership can make sense. Other components of EV drive train are usually more reliable (fewer moving parts, not exposed to outside elements as much), and cost of fuel can be much cheaper. And switch to EVs is also motivated by factors that have indirect costs, like air quality and energy independence.
Rich Westerners doing rich people stuff. I hope this coming economic crisis will put at least a temporary hold to all this craziness of more and more people trying to ascend those mountains and, in so doing, leaving lots of trash behind them, but I have my doubts.
It will be interesting to see how the process for applying to climb the China peaks will go. Nims had to rally so, so many people to get the chance, I hope she sees a favorable outcome as well.
I am rooting for her of course but the political and logistical hurdle of getting those final permits may screw her over. I hope this article is outdated and she already has them
Sun is MUCH more intense actually so protection is paramount - at these elevations you are getting absolutely blasted in much higher amounts of UV - and on top of that snow also reflects tons of UV and light which makes it even worse. They do these climbs of course in summer when the weather windows open so this is a seriously intense problem. Quality glacier glasses / lenses really opened up this whole world immensely - up until this point people had to fashion weird things like putting little slits in clothing and covering the face and still tons of people go snowblind. Based on my (limited) experience with mountaineering I would guess that while sunscreen is most likely a factor they are covering up their faces with high UPF clothing.
Someone else will be able to give a scientific explanation, but the sun is just different at heights. I used to have famiy both in La Paz and Quito and just 15 days in one of those places -- dressed for cold --made me as brown as two months going to the beach in coastal Brazil.
Sun at altitude is much, much more potent because of decreased atmospheric protection you get from UV rays. UV exposure goes up by about 4% every 1000ft increase, so living in Denver I get about 20% more UV exposure than someone at sea level!
Yeah this strikes me as odd too. My bank will instantly deposit transfers while the (free) ACH process takes time to clear. I can transfer up to something like $99,999 a day which is fine for my needs. At worst case a $15 fee to wire funds which I could probably get waived if I asked customer support nicely. There is also plenty of recourse in the unlikely event something goes wrong.
Sure, but I'd say for just about every person the risks far outweigh the rewards. And IMO adding intermediaries to account for that risk seems an unnecessary abstraction given the current system.
