CNBC piece about car manufacturing (aluminum casting developments)

https://youtu.be/HpAdssntCiM?si=WhxPysM0lvc4FmN9

A bunch of this is about Tesla, but there’s also a fair amount of Volvo and other participation. Manufacturing cars involves a lot of parts and a lot of people, and any time you can reduce the part count, you can make something lighter / faster to build / more reliable. So Tesla’s been trying to cast bigger and bigger pieces out of aluminum (in hopes of weight reduction) vs. using stamped steel. They are also trying to build separate chunks of the car separately so that people can work around a smaller object instead of having to squeeze themselves and parts into a larger object awkwardly.

It’s a very thoughtful, carefully presented piece (altho wow, it really reminds you how white and male this industry is), and incorporates academic input into how this effort is going and whether it will work or not and how well. There is also some fanboy comments dismissing setbacks as something other than what they probably are.

Worth the time.

Sunday: sinks and showers, walk, email, dinner at Woods Hill Table

Over today and yesterday, my sister and I have been finalizing a bunch of decisions involving sinks, showers, etc. Mostly this is in bathrooms, but some in kitchens. Yay us! I walked with M. I drafted (several times) and eventually sent an email about the results of all the sinks and showers discussions. And then, I had dinner with R. and the B.’s at Woods Hill Table. It was delightful. I brought some of the chicken home. The coconut sorbet was fantastic. I want to get a bottle of Kings County Peated Whisky; we had some on a flight and it was fantastic. There was a whistlepig on the flight (always good) and something with vertigo in the name (fine), but the peated really stood out.

I was telling the story of the wall tile spec’ed for 3K worth of flooring, that various participants resisted changing. I mean, it just doesn’t get old, and M. totally understood me spinning on the jumpscare film in my head of the tile guy, holding a box of tile, with many more in the background, bags of quickset at his feet and a bucket of water, trowel tucked into a utility belt, saying, “You do realize this is wall tile.” But as I was typing this entry, I realized, you know, I wonder if the engineers have to sign off on the changes to the sinks and showers and so forth. I know they have to sign off on the lighting.

And then I thought, you know, the structural engineer never pointed out the problem with that section of the basement we eliminated — it was identified in a pricing round by the concrete guys. And the engineers didn’t catch the tile problem, either. So Many Questions. How does anything stay standing, really. I used to have nightmares during rainstorms in my current house that I would wake up and the walls were melting because the roof leaked and the wallboard was so soft.

I probably worry a little too much. Not a lot too much. Just a little.