Hacker News Reader

Comment by slackwaredragon | Hacker News Reader

I ran into an old diplomat BMW 7-series in the junkyard in the 90s and that thing was so cool. It had a gun holster in the rear arm rest, like 2" thick windows, probably weighed like 7,000lb from all the armor and everything.

Which has me thinking, all this is cool, but the EV portion and all that weight just feels like you'll be a heavily armored sitting duck if you can't get away quick enough and the battery runs out. Probably doesn't matter though, even if it has 200-mile range this vehicle will probably be used at most within 20-50 miles of its home base.

View on HN

And if you're the kind of person that travels in one of these, you likely also have a few additional vehicles in front of and behind your vehicle filled with highly-paid professionals ready and willing to carry you the last mile if your vehicle stops reason for any reason, to include mechanical failure.

The whole armored vehicle market is a relatively small one; it's interesting to learn that BMW is direct participant; I previously had no idea. I foresee a lot of wasted time scouring eBay looking for a project my family will resent me for later in my immediate future!

On the other hand, I'd expect the EV to deal much better with sudden acceleration and deceleration as well as aggressive cornering. Also everything required for the car to work is low to the ground, either between the wheels or on the undercarriage, with much lower part count. Fewer things to fail, and much harder for an attacker to disable (no stereotypical "sniper shot through the engine block").

As long as you only drive short trips (e.g. airport to destination) an EV sounds like a big upgrade.

Many cars like this have their own private jet to deliver it where it is to be used. You'll see many such cases around any major environmental conference.

I would assume they would instead rent them locally, transporting them sounds excessive unless they're super customized.

If you are a head of state / billionaire who thinks they need this level of protection, you're gonna trust the security & reliability of some random rental outfit in each city you visit? Zero chance.

Excess is relative. When you have $$billions, $150K extra to have your custom protection vehicle at the venue is no big deal. And, are they even rentable in all locales, and do you trust those suppliers?

I am with you - while this might seem excessive there are enough people that have the cash and the threat model to go with it.

From what I could find the 2009 Protection version (then called high security) was more around 400k-450k€. A standard model 7 runs from ~115k up to ~145k€.

Yes, I must say that I love BMW's approach. Everyone else just takes a frame and hangs off of it all the protection — just a massive increase in redundant weight and decrease in performance.

Far better to take BMW's approach, upgrade the materials so that the protection is structural; each component serves both purposes.

I’m sure they offset it with some bullshit carbon credits, don’t worry.

Interestingly, I had my first real world encounter with the other end of the carbon credits just two days ago. A friend of mine told me she had tried to get her neighbours (she lives in the woods) to apply for carbon credit grants in unison. They promise not to chop down their trees and/or to protect endangered plants on their properties, and get paid a certain amount by the Mexican government (obviously nowhere near what they'd get from chopping down and selling their trees...)

It's a scam because they likely were not planning on chopping down their trees anyways.

How is that a scam?

You propose that if I don't do something, you will pay me because it benefits you in some way.

I agree to not do that thing and happily walk away with the cash. Everybody gets what they want. Why does it matter whether or not I was planning to do the thing?

Because they are selling them as carbon credits in carbon markets for full price per ton of CO2 using fraudulent measures of how much carbon is additionally being averted (additionality). To be clear, the bad actors are those selling the credits claiming that these properties would have been chopped down otherwise (not the property owners).

Then actors like Apple, airlines, etc. get to claim they have fully offset their supply chain despite nothing of the sort occurring because of counterfeit carbon credits.

e: And fwiw, I have done analysis of this offline as part of a personal project - based on what I saw looking at global forestry data, the evidence is strong that the vast majority of REDD (deforestation) carbon credits are fraudulent IMO - areas being sold at the cost of carbon if the whole plot was cut down despite there being effectively no risk of that.

Flawed analogy time:

Ad: "Help thirsty kids in Africa!"

Reality: the kids get 100 liters of water a month from a river (yeah not enough).

You: pay a contribution hoping to get them more water.

The "offset" sellers: "See those 100 liters? 5 of them are now being paid by HeyLaughingBoy. He's helping!".

The carbon was being pulled from the air anyway, but paying gives you a certificate to say your money did that. Meanwhile the net CO2 output hasn't changed up nor down. Or rather up because you're consuming something that output CO2 to make. (Philosophical argument, the product would have already been made before your purchase, unless it's something bespoke...)

Right.

This is what those opposed to carbon credits believe will happen: abuse and fraud

Very little will be achieved towards the goal of lowering or sequestering carbon.

Carbon pipelines are an excellent example of this: taking advantage of overly generous federal tax credits to achieve very little.

To kill a senior states-person will certainly lead to war which is itself highly un-environmentally friendly. The carbon credits in this case are the expected value of any averted war. A single F-35 burns something like 1,500 gallons/hour.

Taking the car is a small price, economically and environmentally, to avoid the potential of war.

I think you'd be shocked just how many highly influential senior statesmen and business people can be killed before anyone gets even close to a war.

But sometimes it only takes one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Au...

War usually leads to recession which usually leads to reduced carbon.

I would bet money that this is exceedingly rare. You'd probably have to have a 767 or larger for this to make sense, and only a tiny fraction of private jets are this large. And then it would still have to be extensively modified to be able to fit a car. Not saying it never happens, I'm sure there's some oil prince or oligarch with a 787 that has a garage, but "many cars like this" is likely a huge stretch. Happy to be proven wrong.

Now, do some people who buy cars like this have them shipped via cargo plane to wherever they're needed? That's slightly more believable, but I bet it's still very uncommon.

Is that too unbelievable? I mean for private users maybe but state users, should be a drop in the bucket when you blend it into military expenses.

If you own an EV version of a vehicle like this, by the time you're close to running out of range in an emergency your helicopter-borne QRF should be there setting up a perimeter waiting for your backup convey to arrive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com