Austin Vernon
Engineer writing about the physical economy — oil and gas, manufacturing, batteries, drones and what it costs to build things.
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Where they publish
Blog austinvernon.site His blog on engineering, energy and manufacturing economics. Has a feed.
Recent
- Defending Against Massed Drone Attacks 15 Sept 2026 A new air defense strategy is needed to counter long range attack drones. ...
- How Ukraine Built a War Fighting State 10 Jul 2026 The engine is revving after years of war. ...
- Solving the Strait of Hormuz Blockage 28 Mar 2026 Markets ensure the disruption can't last more than 1-2 years. ...
Show 17 more
- 2026 Geothermal Update 22 Feb 2026 Progress grinds forward as the great filter looms. ...
- Speed Can Reindustrialize America 12 Feb 2026 Reviving manufacturing doesn't require a planned economy, just a better business model. ...
- A Nuclear Fission Regulatory Blank Slate 26 Oct 2025 What if nuclear regulations were reset? ...
- How Rockefeller and His Partners Built Standard Oil 5 Oct 2025 Many tech industry followers will recognize the playbook. ...
- Building Ultra Cheap Energy Storage for Solar PV 18 Aug 2025 Solar still needs storage cheap enough to move energy between seasons. I have been working on a startup to do this for the last two years. ...
- Expanding the Universal Marginal Energy Source 18 Aug 2025 Solar PV is poised to change the global energy landscape. ...
- Are Volcanoes a Risk to Solar Dominated Grids? 16 Jul 2025 It seems grids will fare fine because of non linear affects. ...
- The Outsize Impact of AI Logistics 5 Jul 2025 Automated logistics will heavy impact one third of GDP. ...
- A Review of Massively Scalable Enhanced Rock Weathering 23 Apr 2025 How cheap can it pull CO2 from the air? ...
- Startup Strategy for Commodity Products 6 Mar 2025 Making ultra cheap products requires different rules and strategy. ...
- Imagining the Drone Air Force 20 Jan 2025 Can cheap, expendable drones complete every mission? ...
- Integrating AI Agents into Companies 23 Dec 2024 AI needs a different environment than humans to take advantage of its speed. ...
- Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x 14 Oct 2024 Why ground transportation still has a lot of legs. ...
- 2024 Geothermal Update 12 Sept 2024 Drilling and completions technology progresses, but is it enough? ...
- How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable 18 Apr 2024 Powering data centers with solar and batteries can be compelling with optimized designs. ...
- Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding 3 Jan 2024 The US Navy's ship program is sick, but the fixes aren't rocket science. ...
- Making Hydrogen Affordable 14 Dec 2023 Green hydrogen could be critical for chemical production, but making it cost effective is a tall task. ...
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 42 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
The United States is good at high-volume manufacturing and bad at low-volume manufacturing, and that is what its industrial weakness actually consists of.
The US excels at high-volume manufacturing, but not low-volume manufacturing.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Reviving American manufacturing needs a better business model rather than a planned economy.
Reviving manufacturing doesn't require a planned economy, just a better business model.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
What makes low-volume American manufacturing uncompetitive is white-collar overhead and lead time, not the wage of the person running the machine.
Long lead times and soft costs, fueled by the world-leading US wages for "white collar" work, are the root cause of poor performance in low-volume production because there are few units to spread the soft costs over.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Show 39 more
Buyers of custom parts care more about how fast they arrive than about what they cost.
Ultra-short lead times are one of the most important features for buyers.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
An industrial robot does not replace labour, it shifts labour from hourly workers to scarce skilled ones.
The key is that robot arms are not labor-replacing, but labor-shifting.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
China installs more robots than America because it has a surplus of underemployed engineers, not because robots are self-evidently the right answer.
It has a surplus of STEM graduates that are often underemployed, while "Hukou" residency restrictions complicate hiring hourly labor in coastal factories.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
America cannot simply copy China's manufacturing methods, because which technology is correct depends on the local price of labour.
Second, technologies and market structure are contextual, where the US can't simply emulate China's manufacturing.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
The right tariff rate for a country trying to rebuild its manufacturing is zero.
Zero tariffs are the best way to help them.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
The scarce input in American manufacturing is high-end technical talent, and industrial policy consumes it rather than creating it.
Industrial policy almost inevitably consumes more skilled labor and reduces what we can produce.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
The real cost of the CHIPS Act is the technical talent it ties up, not its fifty-billion-dollar price tag.
The CHIPS Act might still be a positive, but the cost is almost certainly many times the $50 billion price tag.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
For small strategic materials markets like rare earths the right policy is a stockpile, not domestic production.
Stockpiles provide insurance while conserving our valuable labor.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Most regulatory delay is dead calendar time that could be cut without changing a single safety test.
There is a massive scope to reduce calendar time without even altering testing protocols.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Mass production is no longer what limits a rich country's military power; trained people and a technological edge are.
The modern world is so bountiful that mass production is no longer the limiting factor.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Industrial robots are not the fix for American manufacturing, and betting on automation misreads why production sits elsewhere.
The robot arm base case saves some hourly labor at the expense of adding more skilled labor, and can easily be negative if it needs reprogramming more than a few times per year.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Tariffs on imported components and machinery hurt the American manufacturers they are supposed to help.
These end manufacturers (new and old) are vulnerable to tariffs on their inputs and they are the buyers that the "speed strategy" is relevant for.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Making a commodity cheaply is a harder startup problem than making something valuable, because the product cannot carry a premium.
Making ultra cheap products requires different rules and strategy.
Startup Strategy for Commodity Products Said 6 Mar 2025
Most of what a car costs is the weight and structure needed to survive human driving error, not the transport it delivers.
Humans being awful drivers leads to a massive increase in vehicle costs and weight, makes cars more dangerous to people outside of them, and imposes significant costs on infrastructure like roads.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x by 10 Nov 2024
Once a vehicle no longer has to survive a crash with a human driver, it can be made ten times lighter without losing speed or interior space.
It should be possible to decrease the weight of a car by 10x without sacrificing speed or internal volume.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x by 10 Nov 2024
What stands between us and cheap lightweight vehicles is that they are illegal, not that they are hard to build.
Cheap, lightweight people movers are currently illegal in many situations, so regulation is a barrier.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x by 10 Nov 2024
Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.
AI servers bring new challenges because many require liquid cooling.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
A data centre powered by solar and batteries alone needs an array so oversized that the design is not worth building.
The solar array sizes under these assumptions are prohibitively large.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
Letting generators cover one per cent of the year is what makes an off-grid solar data centre affordable, because the last few gloomy days set the whole array size.
The optimal scenario is typically when the generators supply 1% of yearly electricity (shown below).
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
Buying spare compute is cheaper than buying backup generators, because the servers cost fifty times what the generator does.
Installed generators cost ~$800/kW, and the data center capital cost, including servers, is ~$40,000/kW, so adding 1% more makeup compute capacity is money ahead of purchasing generators.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
An off-grid data centre can delete its uninterruptible power supplies entirely, because the battery bank outside already is one.
Deleting the UPSs could knock off ~$750/kW after considering equipment, installation, and square footage reduction.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
Cooling adds nothing to what a data centre produces, which is why it is the first thing a good design deletes rather than optimises.
The cooling systems in most data centers are energy hogs and contribute no direct value.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
A data centre should be split into independent power blocks fed directly at 1500 volts DC, rather than run through one central distribution system.
The 100-megawatt facility might have ten 10-megawatt blocks served directly by a 1500V DC feeder line without connections to other blocks that would require extra switches and routing.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
Nuclear-powered data centres are this decade's hydrogen car: a zero-emissions story incumbents prefer because it changes the least.
Some efforts, like nuclear-powered data centers, are reminiscent of Toyota's hydrogen push.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
Off-grid data centres will win the way electric cars did, by redesigning the machine around the new power source instead of swapping the power source in.
Efforts to improve efficiency and remove vestigial features pay off handsomely.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
American shipyards are unproductive rather than expensive: their workers are paid about what Korean and Japanese shipyard workers are paid.
Labor costs are not an excuse!
Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding Said 3 Jan 2024
A modern shipyard can match a whole wartime industrial mobilisation with a fraction of the workers.
South Korea's yearly production often matches the total tonnage the US produced in WWII - with one-fifth of the workers!
Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding Said 3 Jan 2024
Shipbuilding productivity depends on clustering yards and suppliers in one place, and it decays when the cluster thins out.
Specialized suppliers need multiple shipyards in one location to steady their business.
Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding Said 3 Jan 2024
Precision earlier in the process is what buys manufacturing productivity, because parts that do not fit are paid for in rework.
Nothing kills labor productivity like sections that don't fit together.
Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding Said 3 Jan 2024
Cargo ships can be electrified with a cheap, heavy, low-performance battery, because carrying heavy things cheaply is the one thing ships are good at.
Ships are great at carrying bulky and heavy stuff with minimal cost and energy usage. We need a battery chemistry that leans into that and sacrifices performance to reduce cost.
Why Battery Powered Cargo Ships are Compelling by 11 May 2023
Cutting drag is worth far more in an electric vehicle than in a combustion one, because carrying the energy is so much more expensive.
Drag and tire friction dominate energy expenditure. Engineering effort to improve drag is worth so much more with electric vehicles.
Electric Trucks are Ready for the Road by 19 Sept 2022
Oil demand will fall mainly because petrol cars get driven less, not because they are replaced by electric ones.
Falling consumer oil demand looks much more like driving the Camry 6000 miles per year instead of 12,000 miles rather than a shiny new electric car in every garage or robot taxis swarming everywhere.
The Electric Car's Shrinking Role in Reducing Oil Demand by 22 Mar 2022
Electrifying high-mileage vehicles — trucks and vans — cuts oil demand more than electrifying private cars does.
Trucks, vans, and other high mileage vehicles promise to impact oil demand more than EVs.
The Electric Car's Shrinking Role in Reducing Oil Demand by 22 Mar 2022
A hybrid is a poor machine because it carries two complete powertrains, and most e-bikes repeat the same mistake.
Hybrid-electric cars are an engineering abomination. They have both gas and electric powertrains, ensuring they are more expensive and complicated than their competitors.
The Future of E-Bikes by 9 Nov 2021
The e-bike market has no cheap standard model, which is what it would take to make the e-bike a mass product.
E-bikes range in price from $1000 to $10,000. The market is still lacking a Toyota Corolla equivalent.
The Future of E-Bikes by 9 Nov 2021
A small, highly aerodynamic aircraft can beat an airliner on fuel per passenger mile, because drag reduction gets harder as the fuselage grows.
Surprisingly, fuel consumption per passenger mile would be lower in a Celera 500 than in a 737. The larger the fuselage, the harder it is to achieve the same drag reduction.
Air Travel Doesn't Have to be Terrible by 25 Oct 2021
The constraint on point-to-point air travel is runway and tarmac capacity, not room in the sky.
There is much more space in the air than on the airport tarmac. Our current hub and spoke system means some hub airports operate near runway capacity already.
Air Travel Doesn't Have to be Terrible by 25 Oct 2021
What air travellers actually value is door-to-door time, and public policy tends not to measure it.
Reduction in door-to-door travel time is king. Public policy may not keep this in mind.
Air Travel Doesn't Have to be Terrible by 25 Oct 2021
Boeing's decline began when its management moved away from the factory and the engineers stopped running it.
The changes separated its management and board from the day-to-day processes at the heart of its business.
America's Aerospace Industry is Regenerating Said 31 Aug 2021
Beliefs others hold too
Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade. 3 hold this
AI servers bring new challenges because many require liquid cooling.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable Said 18 Apr 2024
Industrial robots are not the fix for American manufacturing, and betting on automation misreads why production sits elsewhere. 2 hold this
The robot arm base case saves some hourly labor at the expense of adding more skilled labor, and can easily be negative if it needs reprogramming more than a few times per year.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
Tariffs on imported components and machinery hurt the American manufacturers they are supposed to help. 2 hold this
These end manufacturers (new and old) are vulnerable to tariffs on their inputs and they are the buyers that the "speed strategy" is relevant for.
Speed Can Reindustrialize America Said 12 Feb 2026
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
15 September
10 July
28 March
22 February
12 February
From one piece Speed Can Reindustrialize America 15 beliefs · austinvernon.site
-
korrents.com
Tariffs on imported components and machinery hurt the American manufacturers they are supposed to help.Their words
These end manufacturers (new and old) are vulnerable to tariffs on their inputs and they are the buyers that the "speed strategy" is relevant for.
-
Their words
The robot arm base case saves some hourly labor at the expense of adding more skilled labor, and can easily be negative if it needs reprogramming more than a few times per year.
-
Their words
The modern world is so bountiful that mass production is no longer the limiting factor.
+ 12 more
-
korrents.com
Most regulatory delay is dead calendar time that could be cut without changing a single safety test.Their words
There is a massive scope to reduce calendar time without even altering testing protocols.
-
korrents.com
For small strategic materials markets like rare earths the right policy is a stockpile, not domestic production.Their words
Stockpiles provide insurance while conserving our valuable labor.
-
korrents.com
The real cost of the CHIPS Act is the technical talent it ties up, not its fifty-billion-dollar price tag.Their words
The CHIPS Act might still be a positive, but the cost is almost certainly many times the $50 billion price tag.
-
Their words
Industrial policy almost inevitably consumes more skilled labor and reduces what we can produce.
-
Their words
Zero tariffs are the best way to help them.
-
Their words
Second, technologies and market structure are contextual, where the US can't simply emulate China's manufacturing.
-
Their words
It has a surplus of STEM graduates that are often underemployed, while "Hukou" residency restrictions complicate hiring hourly labor in coastal factories.
-
korrents.com
An industrial robot does not replace labour, it shifts labour from hourly workers to scarce skilled ones.Their words
The key is that robot arms are not labor-replacing, but labor-shifting.
-
Their words
Ultra-short lead times are one of the most important features for buyers.
-
Their words
Long lead times and soft costs, fueled by the world-leading US wages for "white collar" work, are the root cause of poor performance in low-volume production because there are few units to spread the soft costs over.
-
korrents.com
Reviving American manufacturing needs a better business model rather than a planned economy.Their words
Reviving manufacturing doesn't require a planned economy, just a better business model.
-
Their words
The US excels at high-volume manufacturing, but not low-volume manufacturing.
26 October 2025
5 October 2025
18 August 2025
16 July 2025
5 July 2025
23 April 2025
6 March 2025
-
Their words
Making ultra cheap products requires different rules and strategy.
20 January 2025
23 December 2024
10 November 2024
From one piece Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x 3 beliefs · austinvernon.site
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korrents.com
What stands between us and cheap lightweight vehicles is that they are illegal, not that they are hard to build.Their words
Cheap, lightweight people movers are currently illegal in many situations, so regulation is a barrier.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10xaustinvernon.site
-
Their words
It should be possible to decrease the weight of a car by 10x without sacrificing speed or internal volume.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10xaustinvernon.site
-
Their words
Humans being awful drivers leads to a massive increase in vehicle costs and weight, makes cars more dangerous to people outside of them, and imposes significant costs on infrastructure like roads.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10xaustinvernon.site
12 September 2024
18 April 2024
From one piece How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable 9 beliefs · austinvernon.site
-
Their words
Efforts to improve efficiency and remove vestigial features pay off handsomely.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
-
Their words
Some efforts, like nuclear-powered data centers, are reminiscent of Toyota's hydrogen push.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
-
Their words
The 100-megawatt facility might have ten 10-megawatt blocks served directly by a 1500V DC feeder line without connections to other blocks that would require extra switches and routing.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
+ 6 more
-
Their words
The cooling systems in most data centers are energy hogs and contribute no direct value.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
-
Their words
Deleting the UPSs could knock off ~$750/kW after considering equipment, installation, and square footage reduction.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
-
Their words
Installed generators cost ~$800/kW, and the data center capital cost, including servers, is ~$40,000/kW, so adding 1% more makeup compute capacity is money ahead of purchasing generators.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
-
Their words
The optimal scenario is typically when the generators supply 1% of yearly electricity (shown below).
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
-
korrents.com
A data centre powered by solar and batteries alone needs an array so oversized that the design is not worth building.Their words
The solar array sizes under these assumptions are prohibitively large.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
-
korrents.com
Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.Their words
AI servers bring new challenges because many require liquid cooling.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
3 January 2024
From one piece Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding 4 beliefs · austinvernon.site
-
Their words
Nothing kills labor productivity like sections that don't fit together.
-
Their words
Specialized suppliers need multiple shipyards in one location to steady their business.
-
korrents.com
A modern shipyard can match a whole wartime industrial mobilisation with a fraction of the workers.Their words
South Korea's yearly production often matches the total tonnage the US produced in WWII - with one-fifth of the workers!
+ 1 more
-
Their words
Labor costs are not an excuse!
14 December 2023
Nothing matches.
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