KitB

Yes, I'm well aware of this. There are plenty of locations where that's not really a problem, though. And generally when they're hotter and therefore less efficient it means there's also relatively abundant sunlight, somewhat counteracting the effect of the heat. Cars also aren't necessarily that hot, particularly if they aren't powered by burning stuff. And putting all of that under the shade of a canopy would reduce the heat reaching the ground. If you used a brighter paving material like concrete, you could even benefit from bifacial panels using the reflected energy.

There are problems and there are solutions, maybe the problems outweigh the solutions but it's still a worthwhile avenue of research to find that out.

All fair. And, to be clear, I'm suggesting it be mandated or incentivised by governments, I'm not suggesting businesses would do it on its own merits. Though I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being a good idea for them in, say, twenty years time, even with all of the complications.

The USA has a stupid relationship with car parks, yes, but I'm not American and I'm not encouraging car parks at all, I just think we should put the space where they already exist and are actually useful to better use.

Ideally, yes, we'd have much better public transit infrastructure but it'd need to be every ten minutes on every route and not stop overnight or for Sundays or public holidays for it to be a viable replacement for a car for me. Which is very feasible in a big city but not so much out in the countryside.

Ultimately, some people will either always need personal cars (or perhaps some other solution, but no public transit I've ever seen will do it) for a huge variety of reasons, including disabilities and house locations (and I don't mean suburbia, that's generally solvable with public transit and also generally a bad idea).

Yeah, I'm largely spitballing. Perhaps the numbers don't work out, perhaps they do.

That said, solar over parking is a source of income. It may well pay for itself whilst providing parking that is both shaded and rain sheltering and improving energy security and helping fight climate change and probably powering a bunch of charge points underneath it, which you could either charge for or just leave free to encourage people to come to whatever the parking is attached to (or just the parking itself if it's a paid car park). My local Sainsbury's has a free charging point and it's a big part of why I shop there.

Also design the canopies to be their own scaffolding so the elevated maintenance is moot.

You can resurface under a canopy. Hell, petrol stations are almost always under a canopy and they definitely get resurfaced sometimes.

There's a risk of someone crashing into any building, too, but we still build things that are useful beside roads.

I'm just saying that, yes, it's not cut and dry, but I'm pretty sure the problems with the idea are generally solvable.

It's probably a good idea to put solar panels on car parks where we're going to have car parks anyway, though. In addition to agrivoltaics and using, as you say, substandard land for large scale solar. Also put it on roofs. Basically anywhere it doesn't do any harm, I say.

A shower that takes cold water from the mains and heats it with electricity. Common as muck in the UK.

If it's an electric shower, you can do what a salamander pump does and add some detection wires on the shower box's on-switch. I appreciate you don't want wires around the shower but it's a fully direct "is the shower on" detector and the wires are technically in the shower rather than around it.

Today's episode of "let's correlate two things that obviously just correlate with lacking money"

I wish journalists would include stuff like this (because it is sadly often left out of research, particularly when people have an agenda).

Does this study account for the obvious: poor people eat more UPFs and are more depressed?

IIRC, third cousin is pretty close, n times removed is just generation gap. I mean it makes little difference, genetically, but being that close to a royal within written history is probably a good indication of generational wealth.

People who believe (because they've been lead to believe) that driverless cars are safe still have a right to live without injury. Being credulous or fooled doesn't remove your rights.