Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure and industrial technology. This week we look at a Senate permitting reform bill, the potential of Tesla’s Cybercab, the Navy’s $200 billion worth of shipyard renovations, a possible plan to return a SR-71 to service, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
Housing and Cities
The senate has released the text for a permitting reform bill, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. My IFP colleague Aidan Mackenzie has a brief overview of what’s in it, as does Thomas Hochman at FAI. [X] [Green Tape]
A tweet confirming my biases that people mostly don’t care about building aesthetics, and that improving aesthetics/design is not a particularly good avenue for addressing NIMBYism. [X]
A New York judge rules that NYC’s new tax on second homes wasn’t implemented correctly, and needs to be redone. “The judge, Wayne M. Ozzi of State Supreme Court on Staten Island, sided with a group of homeowners who had sued the city. The homeowners had argued that the Mamdani administration’s Department of Finance did not try hard enough to determine who should owe the tax before moving toward collecting it.” [NYT]
Manufacturing
Friend of the newsletter Austin Vernon on the potential of Tesla’s Cybercab, and the ways its driving down manufacturing costs. “Painting cars has become an enormous pain. The paint shops are expensive, trigger all sorts of environmental thresholds, and they complicate production. Usually doors have to be put on the car, painted, taken off for assembly, then put back on at the end. Painting really has to go. Tesla tried a stainless steel exoskeleton with Cybertruck, but that ended up being challenging. The Cybercab has injection-molded plastic body panels instead of typical painted sheet metal. Cars have had plastic body panels before, but the panels didn’t come out with a good finish or color, requiring painting. Tesla’s “Reactive Injection Molding” parts do come with a smooth finish and with color incorporated so the paint shop can finally disappear, greatly simplifying production.” [Austin Vernon]
Mesabi Metallics is planning a $15 billion steel mill in Iowa, the “largest single investment ever made in a US steel facility.” It looks like instead of a blast furnace, the mill will use direct reduction of iron ore, which will then be fed into electric arc furnaces. [ENR]
Raytheon gets a contract to produce AMRAAM missiles worth up to $20.7 billion. [Breaking Defense] And in addition to building the F-47, Boeing has also won the competition to build the next generation fighter for the US Navy. [Breaking Defense]
A Federal Reserve paper estimates that semiconductor shortgages in 2021-2022 reduced US car production by more than 2 million vehicles. [Federal Reserve]
The Washington Post editorial board argues that we shouldn’t ban Chinese-made cars in the US. I didn’t realize that a substantial number of cars already had large numbers of Chinese parts, and that some actually had final assembly in China. “Two cars for the American market from U.S. brands, the Lincoln Nautilus and Buick Envision, have final assembly in China using nearly all-Chinese parts. Thirty-nine other automobiles from model year 2026 that are on the roads have Chinese parts, including several that are assembled in the U.S., according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” [Washington Post]
SpaceX’s Terafab is scheduled to be constructed and begin operations very quickly. [X]
Claims that China is preventing firms from setting up lithium-iron-phosphate battery plants in India. “LFP is not available anywhere in the world outside of China, and right now they are guarding it like a weapon.” [X]