Music Lover, Cord cutter, EV Driver, All #EV #Newtech #Greentech Sarcasm specialist & guitars & vocals over at @postwarstories views are always my own
IOM • MIA
Joined June 2009
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Despite 10-15 years of warnings. VW finally see the writing on the wall… and the writing says ‘we told you this would happen you greedy arseholes
Volkswagen Financial Services expects over a billion euros in special write-downs on leased cars this year. Highest since at least two decades. Especially used gas and diesel are losing value. Demand exists, but only at a reduced price.
A cheap new Chinese EV now competes on lease rate with a two- or three-year-old Golf. That’s the math threatening VW’s captive finance arm.
– Handelsblatt
Volkswagen Financial Services, one of the group’s key profit engines, is bracing for its worst year in at least two decades. Over one billion euros in special write-downs on leased vehicles, driven by falling residual values across both electric cars and combustion engines. High fuel prices pushed buyers toward EVs, while discounted new-car offers and Chinese competition squeezed used-car prices. In the first nine months, operating profit in Group Mobility fell nearly seven percent to 2.7 billion euros; 709 million euros in write-downs already hit in the first half.
CEO Anthony Bandmann is preparing a restructuring program called Captive of the Future with Roland Berger, targeting cost cuts above 20 percent over five years through consolidation, automation, and possible outsourcing. Job cuts are expected. He is also shifting strategy away from app-based mobility services toward core leasing and financing, extracting more revenue per vehicle through re-leasing, insurance, and service contracts.
Pabatron retweeted
CATL is building a GW-scale industrial park - off the power grid, using only wind and solar power. It will consume 500 million kWh a year and produce 40 GWh of battery cells annually. Energy capacity: 345 MW (75 MW wind and 270 MW solar), energy storage: 300 MW/1,200 MWh.
Pabatron retweeted
‼️ This FT chart tells the energy story.
Britain has transformed its electricity mix. Coal has virtually disappeared. Wind and solar have surged.
Yet gas still plays an outsized role and because gas often sets the marginal electricity price, a geopolitical shock in the gas market can still push up bills across the whole system.
🔥 This is the trap.
We have partly decarbonised generation without fully decarbonising price formation.
@JohnHealey_MP now appears to understand that.
Removing standing charges may help at the margin, but the bigger prize is breaking Britain’s exposure to volatile global gas prices, investing in grids, storage, renewables and secure domestic generation, and ending the absurd situation where cheap renewable power can still be priced off expensive gas 👉 and reconnecting to the EU’s Internal Energy Market.
Energy reform is cost-of-living policy, industrial policy and national security policy - and climate policy.
Pabatron retweeted
A remarkable upgrade! 26 turbines replaced by 14, delivering 5× capacity & 46% fewer machines. 99.9% of the old turbine materials recovered for recycling or reuse. More energy, fewer resources, less waste. Progress never stands still & yesterday’s truths become tomorrow’s myths.
Pabatron retweeted
The shine on candy corn is bug resin. Brach's calls it confectioner's glaze.
The bag reads sugar, corn syrup, then 2% or less of salt, dextrose, confectioner's glaze (shellac), gelatin, honey, artificial flavors, sesame oil, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and Red 40.
Shellac is what a lac insect leaves on tree branches in India and Thailand. It gets scraped off the bark, cleaned, dissolved in alcohol and tumbled over the candy, and it dries into the same hard coat that goes on a hardwood floor. That's the shine, and it's why the pieces don't glue themselves together in the bag. The gelatin is pork or beef collagen, there for the chew. The honey Brach's puts on the front of the bag is under 2%, behind the salt.
Bags on shelves this fall list Red 40. Last year's listed Red 3, which FDA pulled from food in January 2025 with a 2027 deadline. Brach's says it makes about 7 billion kernels a year.
Pabatron retweeted
WE ARE LOOKING FOR AN EMBEDDED ENGINEER. But not just any engineer.
EV Clinic has reached a point where we are outgrowing our own capabilities.
Even with four specialists working daily on hardware reverse engineering, CAN bus communication analysis, firmware decompilation, mapping unknown data patterns into actual physical values, and breaking proprietary manufacturer protocols, we simply cannot keep up with all our projects anymore. We are currently running behind on 30 projects.
That is why we are looking for an Embedded HW/SW Engineer or an exceptionally skilled component-level reverse engineering specialist.
If you feel at home doing things like:
Analyzing firmware using IDA Pro, Ghidra, or similar tools.
Looking at MOV EAX, EBX in a disassembler and feeling right at home.
Reverse engineering CAN, LIN, UART, SPI, and I²C communication.
Decoding UDS protocols, reconstructing Seed-Key algorithms, and analyzing Security Access mechanisms.
Using EMFI, voltage glitching, and power glitching techniques to bypass security protections on owned or authorized hardware.
Identifying and analyzing locked UART, SWD, and JTAG debug interfaces.
Working with MCU architectures, bootloaders, EEPROM, Flash memory, and binary dumps.
Understanding electronics at the component level, from oscilloscopes and logic analyzers to designing your own PCBs.
Reconstructing a function, algorithm, or physical value from completely unknown binary data.
Then you are exactly who we are looking for.
We are not looking for someone who knows how to replace an electronic component by following a service manual. We are looking for someone who can figure out how a system works when no service manual exists, the manufacturer provides no documentation, and access has been deliberately locked down.
Our R&D team works every day on problems that the traditional automotive industry typically solves by replacing entire assemblies. We go several levels deeper.
We develop our own diagnostic tools, electronic modules, algorithms, communication protocols, and repair methods for electric powertrain systems.
We don’t expect you to know everything. We expect you to be capable of discovering what nobody has documented yet.
If you recognize yourself in this description, get in touch with us.
EV CLINIC R&D | Zagreb, Croatia
careers@evclinic.eu
Pabatron retweeted
God forbid the Nerd Reich ever have to pay some taxes like normal human beings.
Meta has struck a deal with Mark Zuckerberg to keep him living in California after the CEO warned he was considering leaving the state that houses the company's headquarters if voters pass a wealth tax proposal next month reut.rs/3TPz4YX
Pabatron retweeted
The new gas field isn’t going to bring down your bills.
Gas is bought & sold globally, so the reality is, fossil fuels controlled by dictators have Britain in a chokehold til we fully embrace gas-free driving & heating and cut the link between electricity and gas.
BUT, fwiw, getting gas locally is still the right move while we’re transitioning off it. It’s a bit cleaner and brings jobs and tax revenue to Britain.
Pabatron retweeted
Finland the happiest country on the planet, bans for profit schools, taxes billionaires, houses the homeless.
Take note.
Pabatron retweeted
🚨 BLADES ON THE MOVE 🚨
At one of our Octopus Energy Generation sites in rural France, we’re “repowering” old turbines by replacing them with more efficient, modern and bigger turbines. And huge blades = HUGE LOGISTICS to get these bad boys up and running.
Normally, blades are delivered on two supports, but where space is limited *cough, rural France, cough*, we use a snazzy machine called a blade lifter (which you’re seeing here!) Blade lifters are much slower than traditional delivery methods, but in this case it’s the only option to transport these 57m long blades through the narrow village streets.
At this site, four out the six wind turbines’ blades have now been delivered carefully via blade lifter. Not long now until they’re all in action creating clean green energy. 💪🌍
As for the old turbines - a majority have been resold to go up at other sites. We’re also converting one of the old blades into furniture for the local community to use in a nearby forest. Talk about a win-win. 🌳
Pabatron retweeted
For over a century, energy meant buying fuel—over and over. Litres. Tonnes. Cubic metres. The model ran on endless consumption.
Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, batteries, and EVs change that. Build the infrastructure once, then harvest what flows for free—sunlight, wind, water, earth's heat.
Every new renewable asset reduces future fuel demand instead of feeding it.
That's the disruption. Not better tech. A business model that erodes its own customer base. Fossil fuels aren't just fighting cleaner energy—they're fighting irrelevance.
Amazing almost 90% drop in MAGA bullshit and Alberta separatism lies this week on here. Very strange but very welcome. Nice to see feed based more on real news.
Pabatron retweeted
🚨 AUSTRALIA'S RENEWABLE ENERGY DISASTER: WHOLESALE POWER PRICES COLLAPSED 47%! ⚡😂
Someone better check on Matt Canavan and Sky News. The numbers aren't following the script!
Australia's average wholesale electricity price has plunged from $140/MWh to just $74/MWh, the lowest June-quarter average since 2020.
And here's where it gets deliciously inconvenient for the anti-renewables brigade:
☀️ Renewables supplied a record 42.1% of electricity.
💨 Wind generation jumped 20%.
🔋 Batteries increasingly shifted cheap daytime electricity into the expensive evening peak.
🔥 Gas generation fell around 30%.
📉 Extreme wholesale price events collapsed from 66 to just 3.
More renewables. More batteries. Less gas. Cheaper wholesale electricity.
Now, lower gas prices also helped, and wholesale prices aren't the same as household bills. But the tired argument that renewables inevitably send electricity prices through the roof is looking increasingly ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Australia's proposed nuclear reactors are still waiting for their first shovel, let alone their first kilowatt-hour.
Solar, wind and batteries aren't waiting for permission to disrupt the energy market. They're already doing it.
The energy transition isn't a theoretical debate anymore. It's showing up in the data.
And the fossil-fuel cheer squad is running out of excuses and their crocodile tears. ⚡🇦🇺
#SWB #Renewables #BatteryStorage #EnergyTransition #Australia #Bettrification
