Yaztromo

And nothing of value was lost.

Let’s be very clear here: HOUSING IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PROVINCES.

As well, PROPERTY TAX (TAX ON LAND) IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PROVINCES.

So if by “this government” you mean the Carney Liberals you’re right in the sense they won’t do anything about this — but the reason for that is they can’t. That’s not their Constitutional role, and the levers they can pull in this regard are minimal (and mostly revolve around either mortgage insurance, regulating the financial sector, and dolling money out to Provinces).

If you’re upset about housing, you should be upset at your Provincial Government, not the Feds.

The difference I would note is that in North America those 240V plugs aren’t likely going to be on a 10A circuit — usually they’re going to be more in the range of 30A to 50A, as they’re typically designated in homes for use by a dryer or a range (and if you’re lucky, in the garage for an EV).

That’s not to say you couldn’t run a lower amperage 240V circuit — there just aren’t a lot of practical uses for doing so (I believe some air conditioners only need 15A 240V circuits, but in my (limited) experience these are usually hard-wired, and aren’t plug-in devices).

From a physics perspective any air that exists anywhere on this planet at any time has still got huge amounts of heat stored in it (it's literally hundreds of degrees above absolute zero, the most blisteringly cold arctic air still represents a huge reservoir of physical heat energy even when it's cold enough to kill us)

Great explanation — the fact I always like to use along these lines is that there is enough heat energy in an iceberg to boil a pot of water.

They could be living wonderful lives in a tropical paradise, and they just dont want to share, you don't know."

Like Whitman, Price, and Hadad. You remember them‽

There is a Tesla New Buyers delivery checklist you can find online that was written by a group of Tesla enthusiasts. Just a few years ago one of the items on the checklist was “Make sure you can put the car in Park (and that it stays parked)”. (Ref: https://driveteslacanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tesla-Model-3-Delivery-Checklist.pdf).

I’m not away of any other car where this was something people had to check before delivery — apparently it was a bit of a common problem for a time. That seems absolutely crazy to me, and a major failure of QA as it poses a significant safety hazard.

(1812 wasn't Canadians, it was the British)

This isn’t accurate in the slightest. Fencible and Militia units were formed in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Canadas (upper and lower) from local civilians, who fought in a variety of battles throughout 1812. These civilians were in fact called “Canadians” at the time as well.

And that’s to say nothing of all of the Native peoples of Upper and Lower Canada who aided in the fight.

Ultimately the British held command, but many, many Canadians participated and were involved as well.

The big problem here is that we’re eventually going to hit global peak oil use. Building out new infrastructure like this takes nearly a decade to complete, and paying it off usually takes multiple decades. If it’s going to take you 20 years at 100% capacity to pay off, and 10 years to build, and we reach peak oil earlier than 30 years from now (the IEA predicts 2030, however other international agencies push that out as far as 2050), then building extra capacity just doesn’t make sense.

If the IEA models are correct, then we wouldn’t even be finished expanding or building any new pipelines before global oil demand starts to drop. That risks a big drop in prices, which makes it more difficult to pay off any new pipelines once they come online as transit fees bottom out. And then taxpayers are stuck holding the bag.

Thanks for adding that — yes, you can do this with any electric motor; EV motors have simply been optimized for this purpose, and can generate power in the kW range. They have the necessary wiring for handling high voltage, along with built-in cooling tubing/conduits.

They’re as close to a drop-in-and-spin electrical generator as you can get. And unlike gas engines they don’t really ever wear out — so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see these become highly available and pretty inexpensive as EV uptake continues to increase, and as we finally start seeing huge numbers of current EVs being taken off the roads due to age in 15 years or so.

Used EV cells are already starting to find use in industry. In Japan, Nissan resells pairs of used Leaf batteries that pass their testing inside an inverter pack that can provide emergency power or as a generator replacement. On top of that, they have repurposed 16 Leaf EV batteries to provide backup for and smooth out fluctuations from a solar power array in Japan. And Canada’s own Moment Energy specializes in building grid-scale storage from used EV batteries.

(Here’s an example of a Canadian company that resells used EV batteries and motors for use in DIY projects).

Work in this area is admittedly low right now — but mostly because in the 15 years since the first readily available commercial EVs started shipping, the vast bulk of them are still on the road today. So EV battery supply is pretty low right now (I’d imagine mostly being from EVs that have been in accidents which haven’t affected the battery itself). But with EV adoption increasing that supply will also increase, albeit with a 15 - 20 year lag.

And the motors don’t really ever wear out. I have no doubt some company out there will start using them for small-ish wind turbines once a reliable second hand supply is available. I agree for now that’s most likely to be in the domain of hobbies to, but if it becomes easy to source hundreds of EV motors cheaply that I don’t see why they wouldn’t be used to create small, and relatively inexpensive power stations for remote communities.

The possibilities are pretty huge here. On top of that, once these second-life uses for EV batteries and motors have finally exhausted their usefulness, they’re 95+% recyclable into new battery packs and motors, allowing the cycle to begin anew. It’s pretty exciting stuff — which is why I’m hopeful long term that the Canadian governments investments into both mineral mining and battery production pay off — EVs are just the tip of that iceberg.

Exactly — which is why I think any money that could be put towards an e-bike rebate would be better spent working on infrastructure. Offering a rebate without suitable infrastructure for riding is putting the cart before the horse.

And I’ll tell you — as a former e-bike rider^0, I’d much rather share the road with EVs than gas and diesel vehicles. EV rebates benefit cyclists and pedestrians too. California has seen a measurable drop in fine particulate matter and ozone pollution thanks to EVs. Noise pollution is also reduced. EVs running alongside good cycling infrastructure is a win for everyone.

[0] — e-biked 10km each way too and from work for about 3 years; stopped about 14 years ago because I’ve been 100% work-from-home since that time.

E-bikes are already cheaper than even the cheapest new car. If people want an e-bike instead of a car it’s already affordable. Having a Federal Rebate isn’t going to move any more e-bikes, and isn’t going to convince more than a handful of people to stop driving and cycle instead.

The end result will simply be that we would still have too many gas-guzzlers on the road spewing CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere (right next to bike lanes, where cyclists have to breathe that crap in). The CO2 reductions for the cost would be significantly less than incentivizing EV sales. The current incentives are supposed to help reduce the cost of EVs so they are comparable in price to the gas guzzlers; e-bikes don’t need an incentive as they’re already pretty cheap.

Governments would do better by investing in better cycling infrastructure than providing a rebate for something most people won’t use anyway.