A hospital says its street-level motorized couriers were taking over half an hour to travel under 2 miles to a lab at another hospital. It has decided to try drones instead.

At the moment, transferring samples between Guy’s Hospital and the lab at St Thomas’ Hospital – a journey by road of nearly two miles – can take more than half an hour using van or motorbike couriers, but the samples can be transported in less than two minutes by drone.

A non-motorized bicycle takes under 10 minutes to go less than 2 miles in London. So the first question probably could be why supposedly health conscious hospitals aren’t also testing cyclists (and promoting clear roads for bicycles)? Add an electric bike to this test and time probably shrinks to 5 minutes.

Given the complications and cost of drones, a bigger question here is why anyone in a city ever thought in the first place that a van was the right call to take a small package less than two miles.

Maybe someone likes big complicated things with lots of moving parts, prone to high touch operations, instead of using easy and obvious solutions.

For some reason in 2014 Elon Musk decided to promise the world that Tesla would deliver robotic charging cables, which were called a “snake“.

They never happened, despite a shameless Tesla PR stunt posting a video in 2015 claiming they were real.

In 2016 some people tried very hard not to forget a “snake” was ever promised to them.

So then… nothing. No “snake” but in 2020 Elon Musk promised them again, more emphatically lying by saying their “snake” concept was real and even would enable cars with no humans to drive across America.

Yes.

Of course there’s no “snake” at all and Tesla was incredibly stupid to not use a socket design for charging stations.

Here we are a decade later.

Snake? No.

The significance of this robot can’t be understated. It is the kind of robot that is manifestly simpler than an entire car being driverless. Tesla couldn’t figure out the “snake” so it really sets the context for all these other CEO promises of something far more complicated during the same exact period.

• 2015 December 22: “I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.“
• 2016 January 11: “In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere, connected by land & not blocked by borders.“
• 2016 June 02: “I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem. I think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy.“
• 2016 October 20: “By the end of next year, said Musk, Tesla would demonstrate a fully autonomous drive from, say, a home in L.A., to Times Square… without the need for a single touch, including the charging.“
• 2017 April 30: “I think that [time to deliver technology to allow Tesla drivers to fall asleep] is about two years.“
• 2018 November 15: “Probably technically be able to [have Tesla cars drive themselves to new customers for delivery] in about a year.“
• 2019 February 20: “We will be feature complete full self driving this year. The car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year. I’m certain of that.“
• 2020 July 09: “I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year. There are no fundamental challenges remaining.“
• 2020 December 05: “I’m extremely confident that Tesla will have level five next year, extremely confident, 100%.“

None of that was true. None of it. Complete autonomy? Level five? Tesla can’t even get their “snake” to work.

Do you see why failing to deliver a basic robot to automate charging, while claiming to be on the road to do so much more in automation, really stands out as testament to why Tesla can’t deliver?

During the Q1 Earnings Call in 2020, Musk described his idea for the Robotaxi’s imminent rollout in 2021.

Without fraud there would be no Tesla.

I’ve said it for years and I’ll say it again, electric vehicle charging should primarily be done with sockets. Make the owner of a car bring a cable. It’s basic electricity infrastructure design, and sockets are 100 years old, as old as electric cars.

Reports like this AP hyperventilation one completely miss the point, that we don’t need giant cables dangling around in public spaces to be damaged or stolen.

Two men, one with a light strapped to his head, got out. A security camera recorded them pulling out bolt cutters. One man snipped several charging cables; the other loaded them into the truck. In under 2½ minutes, they were gone.

Replace the cable with a socket. People bring their own cable.

Problem solved.

How many years of cables being stolen, oooh scary, do Americans have to read about before charging station journalism just gets a basic clue?

For reference, cable theft is an extremely well known problem, which begs the obvious question who in America was allowed to design charging stations with vulnerable cables dangling all over the place?

The estimated loss due to cable theft in the United States is between $1.5 billion and $2 billion per year. This includes the cost of replacing stolen cables, the cost of lost productivity, and the cost of damage to property.

Tesla bothered to invent their own plug, to push the country to adapt to their charging station design, but ignored the actual problems that would destroy it all? The sheer stupidity of Tesla engineering management never ceases to amaze me.

To make an even finer point. Tesla literally took the Mennekes products, switched them to permanent cables that could be stolen or damaged, and slapped a Tesla logo on top when deploying centralized stations ripe for crime. The American electric vehicle market would be far better off without any Tesla.

Recently I pointed out that US charging station cable theft has been a growing problem for years.

And core to that story is the simple analysis that cables are unnecessary for charging stations. EV owners should bring their own cables to plug into a socket.

A new Gravity announcement proves the problem, with a design that illustrates tone-deafness on multiple levels.

Tree? A lynching tree maybe. Looks like a haunting gallows design to me.

They are asking cities to pour even more money down the mounted cable mindset, and not even addressing a rising decade of threats, let alone the historical significance of promoting a “hanging tree” design from the 1830s.

Notably the rather cruel Gravity illustration shows their new pole is to be injected into sidewalks to further reduce pedestrian space.

Bad idea for cities.

While some might be impressed the huge long cable is dangling up high, making it harder to cut, that’s also why it brings a much higher (no pun intended) cost to replace amd repair. And because it’s a much longer cable, it’s even more likely to be targeted.

The company could have just mounted sockets in existing utility poles.

Sockets in existing poles just make so much more sense, instead of adding more poles and creating extra sidewalk hazards, which reduce pedestrian space and probably just end up with cut power cables anyway.