Reading List 02/08/2025
Ship-mounted lasers, Santorini earthquakes, carbon sequestration via nuclear explosion, the fall of concentrating solar, and more, and more.
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to construction, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at ship-mounted lasers, Santorini earthquakes, carbon sequestration by way of nuclear explosions, the fall of concentrating solar, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
One minor housekeeping item this week: I’ve added tabs on the Construction Physics homepage for “Essays” and Reading Lists” to make it easier to browse just one or the other. (“Essays” doesn’t yet have every essay, since I have to add them manually, but it has the last two years’ worth.)
S&P 500 winners and losers
Joe Weisenthal notes on Twitter how surprising the biggest winners and losers in the S&P 500 are over the last 12 months:
The big winners here aren’t tech companies but energy companies. Vistra and Constellation are power companies, Texas Pacific earns money from oil and gas royalties, GE Vernova sells gas and wind turbines, and Targa processes and transports natural gas. Other than these there’s some travel companies (United Airlines and Royal Caribbean), a manufacturer of aerospace parts (Howmet) and a fashion company (Tapestry).
The losers, on the other hand, are dollar stores (Dollar General and Dollar Tree), pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers (Biogen, Moderna, Celanese), computer manufacturers (Intel, Super Micro), along with a grab bag of others: Estee Lauder, Walgreens, and Brown-Forman (the maker of Jack Daniels).
Ford loses money on EVs
Cheap manufacturing relies in large part on economies of scale: investing large amounts of money in factories and other fixed-cost expenditures, and then spreading that investment out over a large amount of output. But economies of scale are a double edged sword. If that large amount of output doesn’t materialize, and costs are spread over a smaller production volume, you might be in trouble.
In that vein, Ford reports that it continues to lose money on EVs. The company has spent billions of dollars developing EVs and building the infrastructure to manufacture them, and those costs are currently spread over a relatively small number of sales. Via Reuters:
Ford Motor on Wednesday projected up to $5.5 billion in losses on its electric vehicle and software operations this year, a loss similar to last year and a sign of the severe difficulties in cutting costs on battery-powered models.
The automaker forecast overall profitability for 2025, but even that was lower than in 2024. For the fourth quarter, it reported a net profit of $1.8 billion, up from a loss of $500 million in the year-ago quarter as pension-related costs weighed on results.
The company's shares were down nearly 5% in after-hours trading.
Ford's chief executive, Jim Farley, has been seeking to follow up a choppy 2024 with more consistent results, in a year that is already shaping up to be marred by swings in U.S. policy.
And this piece from CNN last year has more information. High development costs are being spread across a relatively small number of vehicles, and the result is that losses are tens or hundreds of thousands per vehicle:
The EV unit, which Ford calls Model e, sold 10,000 vehicles in the quarter, down 20% from the number it sold a year earlier. And its revenue plunged 84% to about $100 million, which Ford attributed mostly to price cuts for EVs across the industry. That resulted in the $1.3 billion loss before interest and taxes (EBIT), and the massive per-vehicle loss in the Model e unit.
The losses go far beyond the cost of building and selling those 10,000 cars, according to Ford. Instead the losses include hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off.
Sliding compatibility
Michigan Metrology, a company that provides roughness measurements of surfaces, has this interesting table showing sliding compatibility between various metals (the table itself comes from “Friction and Wear of Materials” by Ernest Rabinowicz). Sliding interfaces between two metal parts work best if the parts are “metallurgically incompatible” — if the metals aren’t soluble (dissolvable) in each other. Metallurgically compatible metals apparently have a tendency to bond and attach to each other, increasing friction and wear.
Ship-based lasers
Drones create a challenge for conventional militaries. They’re so small and inexpensive that they can potentially overwhelm the defenses and exhaust the munitions of expensive targets like ships. And even if they can’t, current responses to them are often highly asymmetrical cost-wise: it's not exactly a great deal to use a $2 million missile to shoot down a $2,000 drone.
Since drones are only going to get more capable and widely used, militaries are looking for ways to handle them. One possible option is directed energy weapons. From The War Zone:
The Navy has disclosed that the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Preble successfully test-fired its High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system to take out an aerial target drone in Fiscal Year 2024. It was the latest major demonstration of the surface fleet’s shipboard laser ambitions, even as other U.S. military laser efforts have faced a reality check in recent years.
...it’s a capability that Navy brass has been increasingly clamoring for, especially in the past year, as Navy warships shoot down an at-times daily barrage of drones and missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels over the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Those battles and other global flashpoints have raised continued concerns about the Navy draining its finite missile stocks, as the pacing threat of China looms on the horizon. TWZ has reported on several aspects of the Navy’s battle against the Houthis, including a tally of ordnance expended during more than 400 engagements against the Houthi arsenal of aerial drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, and anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Santorini earthquakes
The Greek island of Santorini has apparently been almost completely evacuated following a steady stream of small earthquakes. From the BBC:
Santorini residents have begun night patrols amid fears of looting on the island, which has largely been left deserted as most residents have left.
More than 11,000 people have departed as authorities report earthquakes are being recorded on a minute-by-minute interval.
Experts have warned it is unclear when this period of "seismic crisis" on the popular tourist island might end.
How long could the Santorini 'seismic crisis' last?
Thursday's quakes have so far not been as severe as the 5.2 magnitude shock which occurred on Wednesday in waters between the two Greek islands.
So far no injuries have been reported, and there has also been no major damage on the island.
But authorities are preparing in case a larger quake hits…
"It is really unprecedented, we have never seen something like this before in [modern times] in Greece," said Dr Athanassios Ganas, research director of the National Observatory of Athens.
Santorini is apparently part of the caldera of a large, submerged volcano, which is considered a so-called “decade volcano”, volcanos which are “worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to densely populated areas.” Volcano Discovery has a good graph showing the frequency and magnitude of the earthquakes in the Santorini area:
