Weekly Safety Meeting Confined Spaces Safety Meeting Contents: Fill & Download for Free

Great question! The answer may surprise you and is very important to know of you want to understand why the axis lost. The truth is Hitler had an almost fanatical obsession with NOT repeating the same mistakes as Napoleon. So fanatical that it most likely cost him the war. Other examples about Finland, the ability to take out the Western European powers minus Great Britain in lightning speed have already been discussed so no need to delve further in to that.First up until the battle of Moscow as the Soviets called it Hitler had been a terrific gambler. The only time he took action (gamble) and failed prior to Operation Barbarossa (invasion to take out Russia) he tried to overthrow the government and only served two years in jail for it. During that time he wrote “My Battle” in which he explained exactly why he needed to invade Russia for living space for his 80 million subjects.Getting on with it; from the drawing board of the invasion the whole of Operation Barbarossa was designed to NOT repeat Napoleon’s mistake. Napoleon took his Grand Army and made the surge straight to Moscow beating back the Russians and took Moscow. When they Got there, Moscow was a burnt shell of its former self as the Russians took fire to the city so the Grand Army would not have and resources to live on. The Russians just disappeared in to the vastness of the East, North, and South where there were many cities to house the ruling class and Russian Army. The Germans would launch a three prong invasion to encircle and prevent the escape of most of the Red Army. Moscow was more important now than in Napoleon’s time. The rail system and communist government and economy was centered there.Napoleon stood there in Moscow feeling great about taking the capital for a few hours, days, weeks and it didn't matter. He had not brought the government to subjugation, ousted the ruling class and set up a defacto pro-Napoleon ruler. He had not defeated Russia despite whipping them on nearly every battle to that point. The Russian army and the ruling class still had power everywhere except where the Grand Army was. The Grand Army was in Moscow and although a loss for Russia especially if you were a Moscovite, but if you lived anywhere else in Russia, you knew you still had a patriotic army and your original ruler before Napoleon came. With winter coming and the supply line that Napoleons’ Army needed was too far away to sustain them and with Moscow burnt to the ground and the Russian Army content not fighting until next Spring Napoleon had painted himself in a corner so to prevent the risk of dying from exposure, lack of food, and no one to fight or plunder Napoleon took off in the Fall on horseback and foot in Fall to figure out what exactly it was he did to expand his empire in the safety and confines of the West. When November hit, the heavens declared war against the Grand Army as one soldier put it. The snow and bitter Russian wind kicked in well before they were far enough West to be resupplied and safe. The Russians counting on “General Winter” planned on this and came back from the vastness of Russia to pick off the Grand Army whilst being well supplied themselves and always looking to turn tail when things were not going well. Napoleon’s Army was emaciated, sick, and injured from the exposure on the Russian steppe while being picked off by an Army prepared for winter and only choosing to fight when they knew they could win. Napoleon never recovered. Hitler was going to capture Moscow before the Winter along with Leningrad and the Caucasus. That and encircling the Red Army would comply eliminate a repeat of Napoleon.Once again back to the point; Nation states now could take a punch and incur losses as modern advancements in military equipment allowed citizens to become effective soldiers with minimal training compared to Napoleon’s day when they had a professional army, met on the field, slugged it out and to the victor goes the spoils. Hitler and his Generals using Blitzkreig and three main assault forces would knock the Soviets out for good. Certainly long enough to build a secure border and flick off any future resistance. With Russia out, England would certainly come to terms with Nazi Germany and all will be well.Hitlers principle reasons for believing that he could win other than well deserved huborous were:The Slavs and the Soviet government were subhuman and inferior to the German soldier and didn't possess anything close to the technology and capability of the Aryan race.The Soviets were a paper tiger. They could barely take on the Fins and Hitler believed that all he had to do was kick in the door and the while Soviet government would collapse along with its army like a rickety shack. After WWI and seeing the Germans school the Russians on the battlefield and sending money and radicals (Lenin) to oust the Czar and working why wouldn't Hitler be correct?The German Army only had enough resources for one major offensive and Hitler believed the time was ripe for the offensive to be successful despite some of his best Generals telling him it was too soon and that the Soviets had some pretty good equipment. If any of those three things were wrong it would mean a German loss. Hitler had been warned before it was too soon to invade France and Poland prior so he scoffed at the notion someone knew better than him. He was the great gambler and he had always been right. Heinz Gudarian the brilliant tank commander warned Hitler of the estimated tank numbers the Russians possessed which would be the only thing Hitler would believe could stop Blitzkreig but he didn't believe General Heinz (see number 1).So Barbarossa starts! A three prong invasion completely different than Napoleon so no worries! It's on and Army group encircles Leningrad quickly. Army Group center is pounding hard as Heinzs’ Panzer corps annihalate everything it its path being help up on a few occasions but being so fast the supply lines couldn't keep up. No matter, they were on the way. Unlike Napoleon it was planned and supplies were already enroute. Army group South creams everything in its path and gets to Kiev. The Ukrainian capital was the bread basket of Russia. Stalin threw everything he had at the defense of Kiev. He did not want to loose that resource and who could blame him. Stalin sent the best of what he had and the the amount of divisions were almost %30 more than the Germans anticipated and a few things that were really nasty in the Soviet arsenal started to show up like the T-34 tank arguably the best medium tank of the war, and the heavy KV1 tank. (See #1 Subhumans don't make T-34’s) Even though the Germans killled over 2 million soviets the first three weeks of the war and soviet losses were a staggering 30,000 a day the German soldier was told that they would never be going up against anything remotely as good as their equipment. It was lucky that German doctrine and German leadership were so much more superior at that time that they were able to overcome these obstacles….but they were there (see #2 That was one hell of a kick and the shack was standing)Army Group North was doing fine and ready to take Moscow as planned and meet up with Army group center who was at Smolensk and ready to take Moscow.Here is the answer to your question. Hitler remembering that Napoleon had taken Moscow and it did nothing for him and worried that Army group South was still tied up in Kiev and wanting to stick to the final plan that once past Kiev they would move to the oil fields while Heinz in the center and Army group North level Moscow he ordered Heinz to move his entire panzer corps south to help Army group South finish off Kiev. Despite protests from Heinz and nearly every General who told him, we are here and ready to take Moscow. It was the nerve center of Russia unlike in Napoleon’s time. They knew the capture of Moscow would mean the end of the Soviets. Hitler so fanatically afraid of not repeating Napoleon’s mistake claimed his Generals knew nothing about economics and said the oil in the caucuses and capture of the Ukrainian agriculture was how Germany was going to feed itself.Heinz and Army group North almost certainly could have taken Moscow at that time but Hitler felt if it did Napoleon no good then he’d be a fool to make Moscow the priority. In reality he was a fool for not making it the priority. Heinz did what he was told, went south (A vast distance) and they took Kiev which held the attack on Moscow several weeks too late. When the time came to take Moscow and go back up North AGAIN the weather came. The rains came and it slowed the advance even more. The Soviets were able to reinforce Moscow to an enormously higher degree than if Army groups North and Center had done it without delay. While trying to NOT do what Napoleon did by wasting time concentrating on Moscow and placing the emphasis on southern economic gains the German Army ended up doing EXACTLY what happened to the Grand Army, they got schooled by “General Winter”. Hitler's delay, the Russian winter and Stalins ability to move Far East and Siberian forces to Moscow for the battle which would have not been there in the summer lead to the decisive Soviet victory during the Battle of Moscow.Either way you look at it, Hitler's gamble based off three principles that proved incorrect and his almost fanatical desire not to repeat Napoleons mistake led to the defeat of the German Army.We know the rest of the story. I hope that answers your question. It's important to note that the German Army of 1941 was the best Army of the war. They were mostly wiped out the winter of ’41 ’42. They would never have the talent and the mid-level commanders that are so important to an effective Army. It's important to note that despite the major blow to Russia, after the Battle of Britain in the beginning of ’41 the German Army never one a decisive battle again. It took four more years to take down the Nazi’s but it was that first decision to not repeat Napoleon’s emphasis on Moscow and redirect Army Group Center to Kiev that was the biggest blunder for the German cause.The next year Operation Blue was the push and despite huge gains the end result was Stalingrad which Germany lost. After Stalingrad in ’43 Hitler finally gave control to the generals realizing he wasn't such a great gambler or military genius but a lucky gambler with strong minds around and under him. It was too late. Despite still having a large army and good equipment they didn't have the German Army of ’41 anymore so despite the generals getting power back it still led to the German defeat at Kursk in the summer of ‘43.

Ok, here are some tips and tricks for someone contemplating the jump to electric power. Just stuff I have managed to pick up over the 4 years we have had no use for gasoline. Yea, it’s long, I expect to make a faq out of it someday. (Edit to add even more details)Some basics.You should choose a car with a range at least 50% longer than your round trip daily commute. Makes sure you can run some errands, or it’s real cold or hot, and you have the heat or AC on full blast, etc. This isn’t hard to find these days, since the average US driver does 13,000 miles a year, or less than 40 a day, and even the cheap, small battery models have 130 or more mile range.You should have a place for daily charging. For almost all of us, that’s at home in our driveway or garage. For apartment dwellers, or on street parkers, this could be at the office. If you don’t have either option it is possible to get by with public charging, but it is annoying. This should be solved eventually, around here apartment buildings are adding chargers, even including them in the amenities listed on the “now leasing” banner.Some cities, and an entire Canadian province have required all new residential construction to be charger ready, (an open space in the breaker panel, and a wire good for 50 amps pulled to a parking space). For cities, there are some schemes under test that add charging points to streetlights, another that adds it to parking meters.You don’t need a garage to charge in. You can safely plug in the charging cable even in driving rain. You could drop the cord into the puddle you are standing in, and not get shocked. (I wouldn’t, but the system is designed to cope). Basically when you grab the plug, off the hanger, there is only low voltage in the cable. Only after the box determines that the plug is fully seated in an actual car, and that you let go of the latching button, will you hear the clunk that is line voltage getting applied to the cable.I admit that charging when it’s snowing is annoying. When you are finished charging, you may need to dig snow out from around the socket in order to close the flap, and if you drop the plug, the end is deeply recessed, and can pack full of snow.Ok, some details on charging.First, there are chargers built into the car. There is a box hanging on the wall, or built into a kiosk. That actually isn’t a charger, it’s actually the safety system alluded to above. It’s official name is an EVSE They have two jobs, tell the car how big a fuse they are connected to, and to turn on the power when it’s safe to do so. It’s the chargers job to only draw the amount of power the box says to.The chargers built into the car vary in size, and are rated in kw. Typical sizes are 3kw on a few base models, and on plug in hybrids, 6 and 7.2 kw on the mid priced. The standard Tesla has a 10kw charger, there is an option for the model S to have a second one installed. To calculate an approximate from empty charge time, divide the battery capacity by the charger size. So your 30 kWh Leaf with its 6 kw charger, takes 5 hours. My 24 kWh eGolf with its 7.2 kw charger takes 3.4 hours. That P85D Tesla will need 8.5 hours.EVSE come in 3 strengths.Level 1 is an ordinary wall outlet. The cord comes with the car. It can add 5 miles of range for each hour you are plugged in. If you are in Europe, your outlets charge 2.5 times faster than ours. I used to carry an extension cord, I don’t bother any more.Level 2 is a dryer or electric stove amount of power. It will have you charging at speeds between 25 and 40 miles an hour. Most public charging kiosks are at this level. All cars sold will be able to use them. If you have a Tesla, it will come with an adapter. These will refill an empty battery (unless huge) in under 8 hours. If you need or want one for home, they start at $300, the cost of getting power to them will vary depending on what needs to be done, but figure $250 at the low end, with 5–600 more typical. You can even buy an open source board and controller for $100 that will let you make your own. Some places will insist the box be hard wired (especially if you mount it outside), others allow outlets. A few of the cords that come with the car will also work with a stove circuit, or other versions of 220 volt outlets, with adapters. The Tesla cord can do this, and comes with the adapter for stove circuits.The standard plug on level 1 and 2 chargers is the J-1772. All cars can be charged with one. Tesla uses its own plug, but includes an adapter. There are a few Tesla specific level 2 chargers in the wild, Tesla had a program that would supply them to hotels. There isn’t an adapter to use Tesla specific chargers on other cars (that I know of). The J-1772 includes a latch. Some cars can use this to lock the plug in place, requiring you to have the key fob to disconnect. We live down the street from a middle school. I am sure a 5th grader passing by would consider unplugging the car to be a funny and most original prank. (Our driveway is very short, Our chargers cable is bright orange, it’s not subtle). Our car came with a lock.Level 3 is what you will be using to top up on a long trip. They are very. fast, with speeds ranging from a low of 100 mph, to a high over 600 mph. They are a lot more expensive than a level 2, and even the mere 100 mph version is $10,000, and it takes as much power as your whole house. 100 amps, 240 volts. The rest want the sort of voltage and current that you might find at a smaller manufacturing plant. They can be hard on your batteries, as keeping them in balance at those speeds is difficult.Of course there are annoying complications. There are three different plugs for high speed connections, Japanese, the rest of the world, and Tesla. A public charger will usually support both of the public standards, and Tesla chargers are their own world. If you find one at a car dealer, it will only support a single standard, whatever that brand supports. You find them next to interstates, and most have food or at least coffee available. Tesla has a 5 year head start on building their network, and has the fastest chargers for now.On some cars the ability to use a level 3 charger is standard, others make it optional, or dependent on which trim level you purchase. A few models don’t have it, even as an option. If you are even just thinking you might want to take a longer trip someday, and it’s optional, get it. We have only used fast charging a few times, but it made the difference between a routine dinner stop, and a delay.To tell them apart, or tell if your car is equipped to use one, if it is a Tesla, it uses the same plug as their slower chargers. In the case of a Leaf, the Chademo standard uses a completely separate and noticeably larger plug, the socket is next to the normal plug under the door. In the rest of the cars, SAE/CCS is two additional pins just outside of , and at the bottom of the standard J-1772 socket. Most have a cover over the pins when not in use.The best way to find chargers is Plugshare (phone app or web page). It’s crowdsourced, so it shows all chargers no matter who is providing them. It also assigns a rating to them, showing how often you could actually charge, or that you always find them ICEed, (conventional car parked) or a victim of their own popularity and with someone already plugged in. It can filter out chargers that don’t apply to your car, and it has a system for people to offer up their home charger to a passing traveler in need. One thing really in its favor, they include detailed directions on where the thing is located.If your average daily mileage is under 40, you can do pretty well with just overnight wall outlet charging. It will use less than $1 in electricity to do this. We ordered a level 2 charger when we bought our car, but it was more than a year before I installed it. Remember, since you can easily plug in every day, your charging time will reflect how far you drove, not how long it takes from empty.Tip: if you are renting the place, and park in a spot next to the house, look around for an outlet on the outside (the one they plug hedge clippers into) and buy a heavy duty extension cord. When my brother bought his Volt, until he got around to installing an outdoor outlet, they ran an extension cord out a window. In my case, it took me close to a year to get around to wiring and mounting the charger, and the outlet on the front of the house served.Check with your power company. In some places they offer a plan with off peak pricing, so your evening fill up will be half or more off. The car and possibly the charger will have timers that will make it easy to delay charging for when rates are cheap.If you are staying at a campground, the RV hookup will be an electric stove outlet, that will run a level 2. At a farm? Do they have a welder in the barn? The voltages are correct, but the outlet is an older 3 pin sort, rather than the modern stove plug that level 2 chargers use. Adapters aren’t hard to make, and you might be able to buy one at a place that has RV supplies. (For the roll your own sorts, welders use 6–50 plugs and sockets, stoves use 14–50)Wintertime. Batteries don’t work as well when very cold. Some cars will warm the batteries to an optimal temperature if you are plugged into the grid. The other problem is heat. A gas powered car throws away 75% or more of the energy in the fuel, as heat out the tailpipe and radiator. It doesn’t change your gas mileage to divert some of it from the radiator in front, to one inside the cabin.In an EV, 90% of the energy goes toward motion, which doesn’t leave enough to warm the cabin with. So to get a warm cabin you have to spend some of the energy in the battery. There are two ways this happens, using the air conditioning “backwards” as a heat pump, or by using the same sort of resistive heater that you aren’t supposed to have under your desk at the office. The heat pump is the more efficient system. Both do have the advantage that warm air happens quickly, no waiting for an engine to warm up.There is another way, that is great in cool but not frigid weather. You want the heated seats. They will keep you comfortably warm when it’s 40F out, without affecting range.One thing about heating and air conditioning in an EV that will make conventional car owners jealous, the car has timers that can start the heat, air conditioning or the defroster, and if plugged in, they will use grid power for this. You go out in the morning, and the car will be already warm, and the windshield clear. You get back to the car that has spent all day in the August sun, and when you open the door, you aren’t hit with the waves of heat that feel like you are standing in front of a blast furnace. You can sit down, wearing shorts, and the back of your thighs won’t get branded with the upholstery’s stitching pattern. A number of them have the ability to also turn on the heat, etc. from a phone app. When the meeting finally is winding up, you poke the phone, and the car starts whirring all by itself.One other weather related thing: the batteries can freeze. If it gets below -20F -27C, and stays there for days, the batteries can freeze. Supposedly they aren’t harmed by this, as long as you don’t try to charge them. Just move the car into a warmer space, and let them thaw. The manufacturers build a heater into the pack, to prevent this. If connected to outside power, it will keep them safe, till mud season. If it isn’t plugged in, it will use the batteries themselves. Even a small pack will keep them safe for more than a week. So if you live in someplace like frostbite falls, or Barrow, be sure to plug it in when you leave it for a few days. Wall outlets are more than sufficient.Range anxiety and charging times, the usual elephants in the room. You get over it. Most of us charge at home, while we are sleeping. As far as we are concerned the car takes 30 seconds or less a day to charge, 10 seconds to plug in, 20 to unplug and hang the cord up. It’s like charging your phone, you don’t know how long it takes, you just plug it in before bed, and it’s full when you wake up.The real change in outlook happens after a month or so. Imagine there were pixies that came around every night, and topped up your tank. Every day you get in, and the “tank” is always full, you just stop worrying about range or charging. Gone is the arriving late to something, because you forgot to stop the night before, and had to make an unplanned pit stop on the way. (Or your teenaged kid borrowed it last night, and left it a needles width above empty.) And no more making a side trip, and spending 10 minutes in the rain, heat or cold, pumping fuel. If it’s alwas full in the morning, often would you think about your gas gauge? Would you really choose filling up yourself.Now I get range anxiety when I wind up driving a conventional car. Refueling requires a conscious effort, I have to notice that I need some, and figure out where I can get it. (if I am driving a gas car, it means that it is a rental, I got off a plane, and I am in an unfamiliar city). After a while driving electric, you will stop noticing gas stations, and won’t know what a gallon of the stuff costs anymore. The last habit to go, seeing a station, and glancing at the “gas” gauge.We have never sat around waiting for a charge. Even when we made trips further than a full charge would take us. Yes it took a bit of planning, it was long enough ago that high speed chargers were still limited in availability. We just picked a high speed charger at a shopping mall next to the interstate , and had dinner while it charged. It finished charging before we finished eating.Right now the only time you will make use of a high speed charger, is on a trip that today would have you buying gas more than once in one day. You may even not need it for trips where you fill up two days in a row. (You pick a hotel that has level 2 charging available, and the car is full by the time you finish breakfast)One reading of the name of the Japanese high speed standard (Chademo) is vaguely “a cup of tea”. The implication is that you would stop, brew a cup of tea, and drink. The car would be mostly recharged, and you could continue.If you are the sort of driver that packs sandwiches to eat on the way, and tells the kids “if you aren’t back from the bathroom by the time I am done filling the tank, we’re leaving you here”, using an EV will make your trip take longer.For a more typical trip to the in-laws, you pull into the rest area, find an open charger, wave your phone or RFID card at the box bolted to the concrete pad, and plug in. In the time it takes to herd the kids thru the toilet, wait in line for to-go at deathburger, get back to the car, and get them strapped back in, a good charger will have added enough range to drive for 3 hours, or about mean time to meltdown for siblings under 10. If you are being all adult, and actually sit down for a meal that is brought to you and you don’t have to unwrap before eating, you will get the charge complete text before you get the check.Time to finish charging isn’t linear. As the pack gets full, they slow the charging down so the batteries don’t overheat. If it takes X time to charge to 50%, going from 50 to 75% might take that long again. And the last 25% might take 3X to spoon in.What this means is on long trips, is that you start thinking like a transport pilot, you take on only enough fuel to get you to your next stop plus a reserve. In EV terms, it means you try to stay on the fast end of the curve, and you don’t stick around for the battery to fully charge. Pick the charger 3/4ths of the way, instead of half way, so you are down to 10%. Then if by leaving with only 60% you will get there with 30 miles range in reserve, you leave then rather than wait as long again for 80%. If you have a Tesla, the navigation system will actually do the calculations for you, saying you need to stop at charger Q for at least 12 minutes to reach your destination.One last comment on range. High speeds on the highway make a more noticeable difference with EV than with a conventional car. Since other losses are low, aerodynamic drags contribution is more prominent. A long way of saying you will get a lot further at 65 than you will at 85.Other random things….Check your tire pressure. If it’s low, rolling restance takes a disproportionate jump, and I have found that the warning system wants you to be 20% low before it lights up. I have a compressor at home, so I just check them on the first Saturday of the month. (Unless it’s raining or snowing). A tire delays the airs escape, it can’t keep it confined forever. Plus when the temperatures drop, so does the pressure in your tire.Regenerative braking. This is where the car starts to recharge the battery as a way of slowing down. It will happen when you hit the brakes, it’s why the brake pads last so long. On an EV you can also get it to happen by just lifting your foot off the accelerator. On some cars it is the default, on others you have to tell the car you want it. it’s wonderful, it reminds me of engine braking with a manual transmission. I really notice its absence when I get back into an IC car. You can drive in city traffic, just using the accelerator. You only hit the brake pedal when you need to hold on a hill.Parking lots. Pedestrians walk 3 abreast down the middle of the lane, unless they hear an engine behind them. Engine noise, and they go single file at the edge of the lane. We learned this 20 years ago driving hybrids. Just a heads up, so it doesn’t surprise you.Since the horn is overkill in this situation, some cars come with a “growler” fake engine noise that comes on automatically below 10 mph or so, to warn people. At one point it was going to be required, don’t know if it happened. Our car is so equipped, even tho it wasn’t required that year.I find it annoying, I like the silent glide. At least it shuts up when you are stopped. I suppose I wouldn’t mind it so much if I got a choice of sounds. (A poll was taken on the VW EV forum, some of the nominees included Italian V12, Mack truck, big V8, air cooled VW, Harley, turbo 4 cylinder with blowoff noise, and a chainsaw, but the winner was the noise that the Jetsons cartoon flying car made). One solution for cars sans growler, that some proposed was to briefly turn on the air conditioning, as the compressor makes a similar noise to an engine. A wag on the Chevy Volt forum said “my car has a pedestrian warning system, 4 of them, they were made by Goodyear”. Apparently the factory low rolling resistance tires weren’t the quietest.Adressing some of the other “facts” that are routinely brought up by people that haven’t been in the same zip code as an EV.“Your electricity comes from coal, it pollutes more than a gas engine….” A couple of “facts”. with this one.. First, because EV are so energy efficient, the equivalent of over 100 mpg in a gas car, even if you had 100% coal fired electricity, (true in some parts of West Virginia, near the coal fields) it would still result in less pollution than a normal car.The second point, coal is only 30% of US generation, and dropping as fast as the utilities can get their hands on the hardware to convert to combined cycle natural gas, which halves the fuel costs, and carbon footprint. Predictions say that coal firing will essentially end by 2030. Some places like the New England states, it’s already gone. Carbon neutral generation is at 31% nationwide, last I checked, And any new generation built these days will be a renewable source. A lot more solar, especially household arrays, and for utility scale the current cheapest per kWh to construct and operate are wind turbines. (And that includes the generators that burn stuff) So your car is green already, and it gets greener without you doing anything. A gas burner doesn’t get better with time. (And you can make your car very green quickly if you have the ability to buy your power from carbon neutral sources only).“They are all slow”. This one is best dispelled by stuffing them in the passenger seat and demontrating. If a P100D is available, it should take under 3 seconds to convince them, but even more modest examples should suffice. Besides the torque curve everyone mentions, they don’t have a flywheel. It was an old rule of thumb with the drag racing crowd, that taking a pound off the flywheel was like taking a hundred pounds off the car.“The batteries only last 3–5 years, and cost more than the car is worth to replace”. We don’t know yet how long a set of batteries will last, we haven’t been using them long enough to wear many of them out. A car owner doesn’t have that much to worry about, the EPA requires that the batteries be warranted for 8 years/80,000 miles, if you live in a state that adopted CARB rules, the warranty jumps to 10 years/150,000 miles. As they are emissions equipment, they are transferable.Ok, some actual data instead of speculation. Some brands collect data from their cars when they are in for regularly scheduled inspections (there is essentially no regular maintenance on an EV) To get down to 70% of original capacity looks like it will take nearly 20 years. Faster in hot climates, slower in more temperate ones. There are already some cars running around with more than 250,000 miles on their original batteries. Should a pack loose enough capacity to be not useful for transportation, they can be rebuilt, which thanks to volume lowering battery prices, will be fairly cheap to do. Yes the first few years of the Leaf did have a battery life issue, they had air cooled packs, and didn’t use a particularly heat tolerant battery chemistry, the LA crowd did have issues with reduced capacity. After the outcry, Nissan switched to what got nicknamed “lizard” batteries. The companies that water cooled their packs didn’t have a problem.“But toxic batteries in the landfill”. First, most (but not all) aren’t toxic waste. The stuff inside is harmless should it wind up in the trash, and is legal to toss into a landfill. But landing in the trash is just Not going to happen, for a number of reasons. First, they are on a car. We do an excellent job with cars, something like 98% of them get recycled when they are dead. What that means is that if a battery is part of a car, it will not get dumped.The batteries are excellent candidates for recycling, they come in a handy easily isolated container, they are marked as to what chemistry they use, the metals inside are valuable, some as much as $10/lb, and there could be a half a ton of them.But most of them won’t get recycled, instead they will get reused. Space and weight are limited on a car, so you want the batteries at their best. But transportation isn’t the only thing that wants mass quantities of batteries, and some are a bit less fussy. Stationary power banks to pick the most likely. People and utilities use them to even out load on a power system. You have a fine solar array, but your peak demand is at 6 PM, nearly sunset. So you take a bunch of these batteries. You get them cheap because they are reclaimed. So you have to use 25% more of them, they are less than half the price of new, space under the array isn’t being used for anything else, it’s a little big, so what.Yes this is already happening. The junkyard owners learned long ago that there is real money at the end of those fat orange wires. When a car with a traction battery gets dragged into the yard, it is immediately stuck up on a stand, and they drop the battery out first thing. They are by their standards gentle, (wrenches not torches, and they won’t let it fall more than a couple of inches. They might even include a pallet to cushion the landing, and not just the unadorned forklift blades), and they move it to a shelf indoors.The owner knows there is a ready market, and its not just owners of that make. If you damage it, he will be pissed. (If the secret junkyard cabal finds out that a yard owner sold scrap for less than they could have gotten, they will swoop in, switch the office coffee for decaf, the donuts for bran muffins, and replace their pit bull with an equal weight of toy poodles, yorkies, and other tiny yapping breeds)The people buying the packs are doing or updating an EV conversion, rebuilding traction batteries, some live off grid, and are building a storage facility for their solar array, etc. GM has contracted with a third party to buy the batteries that are replaced under the emissions system warranty. The off grid folks are particularly keen customers. Lithium is a whole lot lighter than lead. So a pack of lithium cells while a bit more complicated to build, is a whole lot easier on your back than half the capacity of deep cycle lead acid. Even better you don’t have to make weekly rounds with the distilled water, checking that they aren’t low.The motorhead community has been wrong about battery life before. When we bought a hybrid the same short life was predicted. Well for those we actually can speak from experience. We bought a Prius in 2000. 14.5 years later, it was facing repairs to the internal combustion side of things that had a parts cost greater than the current value. As part of the decision that led to us trading it in, I checked the health of the original, unmolested, traction battery. It was just over 90% of its original capacity, and the cell to cell balance was good. The hybrid, where I know the owner, with the highest mileage was a first US generation Prius with 350,000 miles on it when a teen ran a stop sign and T boned it. There are reports of ones in taxi service with double that on the original pack.I think the reputation for short EV battery life is from the early homebrew lead acid conversions. Use of any sort of cell level battery balancing was unheard of. Charging could best be described as having a bit of a brute force approach. They didn’t limit discharge depth, which unchecked actually leads to some cells getting a reverse charge, when they hit 0 before their neighbors. All combine to leave them with a very weakened battery.If you have a lithium pack, you must have an active battery management system, especially since you the manufacturer are on the hook for 8 years.“But but they catch fire…. We read about that one in the news”. Yea, you don’t here much about regular cars catching fire. That’s because it happens so often, that it isn’t news. Try 171,500 times a year or about every 3 minutes in the US alone. Once a day, the event is fatal. 4 times a day someone is injured enough to need treatment. The fires only get reported if the car belonged to someone prominent, or it happened someplace that it was particularly disruptive, like a tunnel. Conventional cars have many ways that collision or parts failure can set things alight.There are two things that can get a lithium pack to self ignite, mechanical damage, and incompetent battery management. Those hoverboards that got recalled were because they did the battery management wrong. Every cell did have a protection chip, but they used the ones designed for a single cell, and not the ones with the extra circuits to deal with multiple cells in series.Mechanical damage fires start more slowly, than a fuel fire, the batteries smolder and vent smoke for a while before flames happen. You have more time to get away. And the battery fire doesn’t spread anywhere near as fast as you will see with a gas tank leaking it’s contents downhill.Remember, in most gas powered cars, the bottom of the fuel tank is at or at times below the floor pan. Random obstacles on the road can tear them open. Some are even made of rotary molded plastic. While some metal gas tanks are sturdy, a lot of them will collect a substantial dent if an adult were to jump up, and land on them with both feet.I helped a friend that bought a wrecked Leaf for its battery pack, to salvage the cells for some electric motorcycles he had built. The battery comes in a very sturdy can, that is mounted under the floor. Yes if you jumped and hit the center, it would deflect. At an edge or the corner, not so much. They are pretty well protected. Tesla goes one better, armoring the bottom and front edge with a substantial titanium plate. They also fill the space between the cells with a fire extinguishing gel.But cars can set themselves alight in other ways, ones that don’t even require a collision as a trigger. Conventional cars have fuel running 10 feet or more from the tank to the engine, in a steel tube at the bottom of the car. In fuel injected cars, this line is pressurized to 4 bar (50–60 psi) by a pump in the tank. At various places, there are sections of rubber hose connecting things.There is a guy on YouTube that rebuilds salvage vehicles, and records the process. He just finished recovering a Lamborghini that had a cracked fitting lead to a fire when refueling. He just started on a Ferrari where a rubber line rubbed against the worm drive hose clamp securing its neighbor, wore through, and sprayed the engine compartment with 50 psi fuel, and the exhaust manifold made certain that the failure of that cheap bit of hose did terminal amounts of damage. (The channel is Tavarish if you want to check it out)Last one, I promise.“Look at the damage mining the materials for the batteries makes” this is always accompanied by a distant view of a large open pit mine, or a detail view of excavation machines working on the ramp sides typical of open pit mining. This is a clear attempt at disinformation. Neither photo is a lithium mine. The distant view has been identified as a Russian copper mine. No identification on the close view that I have seen, but what they are mining appears to be coal or oil shale.A lithium mine and refinery looks like a bunch of man made shallow ponds, in the middle of an alkaline salt flat. It makes things a lot easier when what you want to extract is water soluble. If you have flown over the southern edge of the bay south of San Francisco, you would have seen some rectangular ponds that are somewhat unusual colors. This is a “mine” for sea salt. They just use sun and wind to evaporate the water, and the salt eventually crystallizes out.If you flew over a lithium mine, the ponds would look similar, but surrounded by the white sand of the desert, instead of the ocean. The primary source for lithium is the Atacama desert high in the Andes mountains. It is one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Nothing lives there. It hasn’t rained there in recorded history. They used it to test the signs of life instruments used in Martian exploration.Anyhow you “mine” lithium, by rinsing the alkaline sand, leaving cleaner sand and some brine. You pump the brine into the ponds. After a while the lithium will crystallize on the surface, and you skim it off. Further refining is done electrically.

The contribution of Left movement in Indian independence can be divided into following five parts - Role of Left Revolutionaries, Role of Communists, Role of Socialists, Role of Forward Bloc (ie, Left Nationalists), Role of All India Trade Union Congress and Kisan Sabha (Both of these organizations was dominated by Communists and Socialists). However I will take ‘Left’ term more conservatively and limit the discussion within contribution of Left Revolutionaries and Communists.Role of Left RevolutionariesIt is not unknown that many revolutionaries in our country looked for inspiration abroad. They looked and learnt from works of fellow revolutionaries in simmilar environment. They took as role model Narodnaya Voloya in Russia and Sinn Féin in Ireland. Disenchated by what Ashwini Kumar Datta called “three days tamasha” of Indian National Congress, they decided without blood there can be no freedom. Now note, at this stage, early 20th Century, Indian Revolutionaries do not have any specific ideology, they are all for freedom, but what kind of freedom they want, what type of state the new India would be if they managed to break her bondage, was not clear to them. Some, like Aurobindo Ghosh or Savarkar was driven by Hindu Revivalism, while others like Bhupendranath Dutta (Incidently brother of Swami Vivekananda) and Hemchandra Kanungo was inspired by Socialist Revolutionaries then operating all around the world. These opposing views sometime clashed. Bhupendranath Dutta wrote in his book 'Bharater Ditiya Swadhinata Sangram' (India's Second Freedom Struggle) when joining Anushilan Samiti, then largest Revolutionary group in Bengal, he refused to perform initiation rite as it involves swearing on Gita and he was an Atheist, he was then given option to swear on all holy books, which he took. However, unlike today's Indians, Indian Revolutionaries got their priorities right. Freedom came first to them, disagreement could wait. To 1920's things continued this way. But then, multiple incidents failure of Mahatma to deliver swaraj within year as he promised to the Revolutionaries, slump following first world war that exposed the inherent nature of Colonial economy more sharply, mass movements of newly political concious peasants and workers and last but not the least, Russian Revolution of 1917, made Revolutionary movement to take distinct turn to the Left.Revolution of 1917 was not event of one country. Just like French Revolution before it, it has global reach and consequences. Just like French Revolution drew admiration from Tipu Sultan to Rammohan Roy and just like Russo-Japanese War and victory of Japan was celebrated by many Indians (Including a very young Jawaharlal Nehru) and awakened a Nationalist sense of pupose, Russian Revolution of 1917 fired the imaginations of Left Revolutionaries. Many of them set off to Russia for help, many joined newly formed Communist Party of India but I will discuss that later. We will now look at the group of revolutionaries who, though inspired by Russian Revolution and idea of Communism, was sceptical and even distrustful of any foreign help which had strings attached (Like that of Comintern). They declared they are all for Socialism and an eventual Communist society if possible, but they won't be in any way affiliate with Comintern. The most reknowned of this group is known as HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republican Assosciation). When HSRA, formed as HRA was founded in 1923, it was not a Socialist organization, infact Sachindra Nath Sanyal, one of the founder was a religious Hindu (Though not a Hindutva adherent or revivalist, he was friend with Maulana Shaukat Ali, leader of Khilafat Movement) but it gradually became one. In this the role of the second founder of HRA Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee, who was a commited Socialist , was substantial, after all it was his influence that shines in first HRA manifesto statement - ' The revolutionary party is not national but international in the sense that its ultimate object is to bring harmony in the world by respecting and guaranteeing the diverse interests of the different nations. It aims not at cooperation between the different nations and states and in this respect it follows the footsteps of great Indian Rishis of the glorious past and of Bolshevik Russia in the modern age. Good for humanity is no vain and empty word with the Indian revolutionaries. But the weak, the coward and the powerless can do no good either to themselves or to humanity... In the domain of economic and social welfare the party will foster the spirit of cooperation on as large a scale as possible. Instead of private and unorganised business enterprises, the party prefers cooperative union.' (This manifesto was signed by Vijay Kumar, which was fake name of reknowned revolutionary Ram Prasad Bismil) . The new members of HRA were all Leftists, some Socialists, some of Communist persuation, most prominent of them being Bhagat Singh. In keeping with changing tone of the organization, it's very name was changed from Hindustan Republican Association to Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. It's manifesto, prepared by Revolutionary B.C Vohra and signed by Kartar Singh was distinctly Socialist, even Communist in tone and language as this excerpt will demonstrate - 'Indian is writhing under the yoke of imperialism. Her teeming millions are today a helpless prey to poverty and ignorance. Foreign domination and economic exploitation have unmanned the vast majority of the people who constitute the workers and peasants of India. The position of the Indian proletariat is, today, extremely critical. It has a double danger to face. It has to bear to onslaught of foreign capital on the other. The latter is showing a progressive tendency to joint forces with the former. The leaning of certain politicians in favour of dominion status shows clearly which way the wind blows. Indian capital is preparing to betray the masses into the hands of foreign capitalism and receive as a price of this betrayal, a little share in the government of the country. The hope of the proletariat is, therefore, now centred on socialism which alone can lead to the establishment of complete independence and the removal of all social distinction and privileges.'The most notable acts of HRA/HSRA was Kakori Train Robbery, assassination of John Saunders, the famous bombing of assembly and attempted assassination of Viceroy Lord Irwin. Among the HSRA leaders Ram Prasad Bismil(This quote of his is very relevant - "Now my only request to countrymen is that if they have even an iota of sorrow at our death, then, with whatever means, they must establish Hindu-Muslim unity; that was our last wish and this only can be our memorial.”) , Bhagat Singh, Batukeshwar Datta, Asfaqulla Khan (One of his famous quotes is relevent here - “I consider the alien rule an evil and at the same time, I hate any democratic Indian rule where the weak are denied their rights, or if it is the creation of the rich and landlords, or there is no equal participation of the farmers and workers, or if the laws of the Government are made on the basis of inequality and disparity. If India becomes free and our brother countrymen take the reins of Government from the white masters and if the inequality persists between the rich and the poor and the landlord and the tenant, I pray to God not to give me such freedom till equality is established in His Creation. Let me be dubbed a Communist for these ideas, I damn care.”), Shiv Verma (Later Leader of CPI(M)), Chandra Shekhar Azad, Batukeshwar Dutta, B.C Vohra were all Leftists in various degrees from Classical Marxist-Leninist like Bhagat Singh to a blend of Nationalism and Socialism in case of Azad and Bismil, who was also a Arya Samajist (This I gatherd reading his last statement - 'If a devout Muslim like Ashfaq could be right hand man of an Arya Samajist like Ram Prasad in revolutionary movement, then why can’t other Hindus and Muslims unite forgetting their petty interests?') . Only two prominent non-Left HSRA member I can think of are Sachindra Nath Sanyal and martyr Rajguru. In my view, HSRA was the sole revolutionary organization that has clear idea what kind of India they want after independence. When asked what do they mean by 'Inquilab' Bhagat Singh answered with clarity - "Revolution" does not necessarily involve sanguinary strife nor is there any place in it for individual vendentta. It is not the cult of the bomb and the pistol. By "Revolution" we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice, must change. Producers or labourers in spite of being the most necessary element of society, are robbed by their exploiters of the fruits of their labour and deprived of their elementary rights. The peasant who grows corn for all, starves with his family, the weaver who supplies the world market with textile fabrics, has not enough to cover his own and his children's bodies, masons, smiths and carpenters who raise magnificent palaces, live like pariahs in the slums. The capitalists and exploiters, the parasites of society, squander millions on their whims. These terrible inequalities and forced disparity of chances are bound to lead to chaos. This state of affairs cannot last long, and it is obvious, that the present order of society in merry-making is on the brink of a volcano.The whole edifice of this civilization, if not saved in time, shall crumble. A radical change, therefore, is necessary and it is the duty of those who realize it to reorganize society on the socialistic basis. Unless this thing is done and the exploitation of man by man and of nations by nations is brought to an end, sufferings and carnage with which humanity is threatened today cannot be prevented. All talk of ending war and ushering in an era of universal peace is undisguised hypocrisy.By "Revolution", we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized and a world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and misery of imperial wars.This is our ideal, and with this ideology as our inspiration, we have given a fair and loud enough warning.If, however, it goes unheeded and the present system of Government continues to be an impediment in the way of the natural forces that are swelling up, a grim struggle will ensure involving the overthrow of all obstacles, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the dictatorship of the proletariat to pave the way for the consummation of the ideal of revolution. Revolution is an inalienable right of mankind. Freedom is an imperishable birth right of all. Labour is the real sustainer of society. The sovereignty of the ultimate destiny of the workers.For these ideals, and for this faith, we shall welcome any suffering to which we may be condemned. At the altar of this revolution we have brought our youth as an incense, for no sacrifice is too great for so magnificent a cause. We are content, we await the advent of Revolution "Long Live Revolution." (For more detailed view of Bhagat Singh on various issues his writing 'To Young Political Workers' is a must read)Moving on from HSRA, we have the Ghadar Party, it was far older than HSRA, but it lacked the ideological clarity and organizational strength in Indian soil. Most of the founding Ghadar Party leaders were committed Socialists and Communists. Founded during heydays of First World War, Ghadaraite wanted to ignite fire of revolution in the heart of India with German help, but unlike HSRA, they were undecided what type of Revolution they want. In the organization, at one hand we have Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna, the founding president and later CPI leader on the other hand, we have Maulana Barkatullah and Bhai Parmanand, respectively Pan-Islamist and Hindu-Nationalist. However, tone of early Ghadar was distinctly anti-religion. It forbade its members from using any religious issue and declared religion is a personal matter, not political. A prominent Ghadarite revolutionary, Harnam Singh echoed sentiment of many Ghadarites when he said - 'No Pandits or Mullah do we need.' More importantly, both the Newspaper of Ghadar Party 'Ghadar' and poems and songs of Ghadar di Gunj were distinctly Leftist. A March 19,1917 issue of Ghadar proclaimed in bold letters “RUSSIA HAS BECOME FREE, SOON INDIA WILL BE FREE”, following the fall of the Czarist regime in Russia and the beginning of the revolution there. Two Ghadhar songs can also be mentioned - 'Brave youth, raise the red flag/ Workers and peasants Spread this call far and wide/ Ghadar Party, Lal Salam!' (The original song is "Uthake jhanda veer javanon") and ' I am the worker of Hindustan, the new world is in my hands! / Workers of the world are my loyal comrades!' (From the song “Kranti ki rah dil mein”). However, during the first attempt of Ghadar Party, it would be academically untrue to lebel it Socialist as it had other currents too. Only thing that binded the movement was love for the Country and commitment to it's freedom, and not much else. After the first attempt, the party was split into Communist and Anti-Communist sections, turning old friends into ideological opponents. Sohan Singh Bhakna, Santokh Singh (the Editor of pro-Communist monthly Kirti), Darshan Singh Khatkar and Baba Bhuja Singh were prominent among the leaders of Global Ghadar or the Communist Faction of Ghadar Party. Two things were prominent of this Ghadar Party, first it was a rival to CPI as representative of Indian Communists and second it considered CPI to be ill equipped in theory and organization for any revolution in India and too blindly following Moscow line. Baba Bhagat SIngh Bilga summed up Ghadar impression of CPI brilliantly - 'We do not know English, and they do not know politics.' taking a jab at CPI's intellectualism. Ghadar Party was destined to be split multiple time after independence with the present successor being Communist Ghadar Party of India. However, it continued to paly pivotal role in organizing Indians living abroad and in organizing peasant movement in Punjab. It also played a role in creation of INA. Though Ghadar remained Communist in ideology, Soviet was not their model and they remained critical of Soviet Union but saw them as better than what they identified as Imperialist-Capitalist nexus.At last we come to Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar Group. These Bengali revolutionary organizations had rich and colorful history. Both had, in the start, Hindu Revivalist overtone. During 1930's while most of it's members were in Jail, they firs got acceess to Communist and Socialist literature. Some of the momebers joined Communist Consolidation in Jail, and later Communist Party, but the majority while agreeing with many Marxist interpretation, just like HSRA, did not trust Soviet line. They were also critical of Stalin and his rule. The term we will use to distinguish this ideology is Anushilan Marxism. Anushilan Marxists along with HSRA later formed Revolutionary Socialist Party or RSP. We don't have space for detailed discussion of their participation in Freedom Movement, but along with B.V (Bengal Volunteers) they commited numerous acts of Revolutionary activism, robbery and of course, their signature assassinations. The only notable uprising of Anushilan Marxists were in Chittagong. Ananta Singh, gave detailed description in his memoirs of what drove them for the uprising. Irish Republicanism and Bolshevism, words and deeds of Mazzini and Lenin inspired the revolutionaries to take action. The rest as they say history, Chittagong Armory Raid (Singh opposed use of this term but for better recognition, I am using this), and the Battle of Jalalbad Hill, along with the success of Revolutionatios of Indian Republican Army to create a government in Chittagong, no matter for how short a time immortalised them. Although Mastar da, the radiant hero and leader, was inspired by Irish Republicanism, not Communism, rest were. Along with their memoirs, there later political alliegence also points towards this - Ganesh Ghosh - CPI(M), Ananta Singh - Revolutionary Communist Council of India, Kalpana Datta - CPI, Subodh Roy - CPI(M), Ambika Chakraborty - CPI. In both Bengal, West and Bangladesh, legacy of Chittagong is still celebrated by Communist Student Organization.Role of CommunistsThis is truly enormous subject, and frankly speaking, I neither posses the skill or patience to write it all down in Quora. So, instead of tracing movement like I did in the last one, I will trace the people and their contributionsIt all starts with one. That is not exception in Communist movement in India. In this case, the one was a Revolutionary named Narendranath Bhattacharya. He was a prominent player in Indo-German Conspiracy during first world war and successfully managed to transfer arms to India for a mass uprising. Unfortunately, this conspiracy failed. Narendra moved from Indonesia to USA to contact with Gadar group for farther attempt. Here, he started reading on Communist theory with the intention of countering it. Instead, Communists gained a very valuable convert, one with relentless drive and knowledge. He took the name of M.N Roy to conceal himself from British intelligence still hounding after him and went on to play a crucial part to form Communist Party of Mexico. Roy’s moment to shine came after 1917 Russian Revolution. He was invited in Second World Congress of Communist International. A leader considered equal to Lenin, he was one of the few that debated Lenin on the question of Communists of India operating with and within Indian National Congress. Roy considered INC unreliable, that was his Revolutionary bias speaking and on the other hand Lenin, a friend of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, had much better impression of Congress as a radical party. Later this Roy-Lenin debate will earn a legendary status among Communists as an example of skilled debate. Despite their differences, Lenin liked M.N Roy and entrusted him of organizing a party in India. Roy did so in October, 1920 with fellow Communists who travelled from India to attend Comintern meeting. Among them was famous Hazarat Mohani one who coined the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad !’, and brother of Swami Vivekananda, Bhupendranath Dutta who became Lenin’s friend and exchanged letters with him after going back to India. However, going back to India instantly was risky for Roy. He stayed in Tashkent and relayed information and instructions to Indian Communists. In 1930’s, after felling foul of Stalin, Roy returned to India and contacted with Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose. Both were much impressed by him. Nehru latter recalled despite their political differences - "I was attracted to him by his remarkable intellectual capacity." Roy’s freedom in India was short lived. As he feared, Raj has not forgotten an adversary so serious, 21 July 1931 he was arrested in Bombay on an arrest warrant issued in 1924. Roy was taken to Kanpur to face charges which was - "conspiring to deprive the King Emperor of his sovereignty in India." No trial was held in open court; rather, the proceedings were conducted inside the jail in which Roy was held. He was allowed neither trial by jury nor defense witnesses, nor was he allowed to make a defense statement. He was sentenced to 12 years of rigorous imprisonment. Despite his imprisonment, Roy still managed to contribute to the Indian independence movement. A steady stream of letters and articles were smuggled out of jail. He also wrote a 3000-page draft manuscript provisionally titled The Philosophical Consequence of Modern Science. Released in November 1936 in broken health, Roy went to Allahabad for recovery, invited by Nehru. He defied the Comintern order to boycott the Indian National Congress, which was not without irony and urged Indian Communists to join this Party to radicalize it. Nehru, in his presidential address at Faizpur session in December 1936, greeted the presence of Roy, as...one who, though young, is an old and well-tried soldier in India's fight for freedom. Comrade M.N. Roy has just come to us after a long and most distressing period in prison, but though shaken up in body, he comes with a fresh mind and heart, eager to take part in that old struggle that knows no end till it ends in success.From the podium Roy in his speech recommended the capture of power by Constituent Assembly. Unable to collaborate with Gandhi, however, Roy was to stick to his own conviction. In April 1937, his weekly Independent India appeared and was welcomed by progressive leaders like Bose and Nehru, unlike Gandhi, and the staunch Communists who accused Roy of deviation. With his relationship with Communists gradually straining the founding father of Indian Communism, devised his own ideology Radical Humanism, which he considered true essence of Communism when applied to Indian context. It got flac from both Left and Right. Communists accused Roy of more revisionism and Right wrote many narratives against it, greatest of which was ‘Integral Humanism’ by then unknown Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay.Born on 23 March, 1916, in Jalandhar, Surjeet started his political career in the national liberation movement in his early teens as a follower of Bhagat Singh and by joining his Naujawan Bharat Sabha. On the anniversary of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom, he was shot twice by the British police for hoisting the Indian tricolour atop a court in Hoshiarpur. Later, he underwent a jail term. In court, he stated his name as London Tod Singh (one who breaks London). He joined the Communist Party in 1934 and became a member of the Congress Socialist Party in 1935. He was elected as the secretary of the Punjab State Kisan Sabha in 1938. The same year, he was externed from Punjab and went to Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh where he started a monthly paper, `Chingari’. He went underground after the outbreak of the second world war and was arrested in 1940. He was imprisoned in the notorious Lahore Red Fort where he was kept for three months in solitary confinement in terrible conditions. Later he was shifted to Deoli detention camp where he remained till 1944. During the partition, he tirelessly worked for communal harmony in violence-torn Punjab.Muzaffar Ahmad was one of the founders of the Communist Party of India. In 1922, the Bharat Samyatantra Samiti was formed in Calcutta with Kakababu as its secretary. In 1924, he was sentenced to four years in prison because of his role in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case along with S.A. Dange, Nalini Gupta and Shaukat Usmani. He was released due to illness in 1925. In November, 1925 he, along with Qazi Nazrul Islam, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, and others, organized the Labour Swaraj Party in Bengal. On 20 March 1929, the British colonial government arrested 31 labour activists and sent them to Meerut for trial. Kakababu as he was fondly called, was the chief accused, along with S.A. Dange, Shaukat Usmani, P.C. Joshi and others, was convicted in Meerut Conspiracy Case. He was released in 1936. He had served the longest term in jail as the Chief Accused in the Meerut Trial. Ahmed believed that freedom of press and speech is essential for expansion of mind and that the exchange of ideas is essential to encourage thought. He always adviced his fellow Comrades to read the books which doesn’t conform with Communist viewpoints and encouraged them to form coherent counter. Though in his Auto-biography he admits of being influenced by ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’ in early age, joining CPI he embraced Atheism was known for a vicious critique of Islamic and Hindu fundamentalism.Like the other founders of the Left movement, Krishna Pillai began his career in the Indian National Congress - first as a Gandhian and then as a Congress Socialist. In the early 1930s, when he began his political activity, Krishna Pillai was exposed to the radical politics challenging the British in various parts of north India. Later, he was among the first to be recruited to the "illegal" CPI, along with EMS, by P. Sundarayya, the legendary communist leader and Telengana armed struggle veteran, and became a life-long adherent to the cause of communism. His first revolutionary act of defiance shot him into the limelight when a group of Congress leaders defied the salt law on the beaches of feudal Malabar. Krishna Pillai, then in his early 20s, braved the punishing blows of the British police to hold afloat the tricolour in true Gandhian style. In September 1931, no sooner had he been released from jail, than he became the first non-Brahmin to ring the sacred bell at the Guruvayoor temple ignoring the Zamorin's Nair guards. He was then a volunteer in the Congress agitation demanding entry for four-fifths of the Hindu community into the temple who were being denied admission. Eyewitness accounts state that as blows rained on him, Krishna Pillai continued to ring the bell and shout: "Let the bold Nair ring the bell and let the timid Nair living on crumbs beat on his back." Such incidents were the early sparks of a radical movement that was soon to engulf the whole of Kerala, unleashing the democratic impulses of the people, altering the complex, exploitative system of agrarian relations, opposing the most obnoxious forms of caste oppression, and eventually uniting people from all parts and walks of life in the struggle for Independence. Soon, Krishna Pillai enrolled himself as a volunteer in the `Salt Satyagraha March' taken out from Kozhikode to Payyannur (in today's Kannur district) as a part of the first Civil Disobedience Movement. He also played significant role in Punnapra-Vayalar armed struggle which signalled the end of princely rule in Travancore and the coming of Independence. On August 19, 1948, while Krishna Pillai was staying incognito in a coir worker's hut at Kannarkat (Muhamma) in Alappuzha district, he was bitten by a snake. Despite the best efforts of those who gave him shelter and the party workers who were responsible for his safety, Krishna Pillai died within half an hour of the incident. His last words were - "My eyes are getting dark. I feel weak and tired. I know what will happen. Comrades, Forward! Salutations."Jaipal Singh began his career as an officer in the British army, and eventually became one of the leaders of the CPI(M). He played a significant role in the army, organizing armed personnel in support of the Quit India movement, and subsequently exposing the British conspiracies against national leaders to suppress the Independence movement in 1946. He deserted the army to become an active revolutionary. Due to the role he played in the service of the freedom struggle, if he had been caught by the alien British rulers before Independence, he would have faced summary court martial and would have been executed then and there. He was posted at the end of 1946 to the Mohanbari Air Field in Assam with his air supply unit he was exposed and his arrest became imminent. The immediate cause was the information he had received that there was a plan to attack Jawaharlal Nehru who was due to visit the North East Frontier Agency. A young Canadian informed Jaipal that it would be wise for Nehru to cancel his visit. A perturbed Jaipal sent a man by the next train with a letter to be posted to Nehru from Calcutta. It was an anonymous letter in which he requested Nehru to cancel his visit to NEFA. That very evening, Jaipal got a message from his organisation in Calcutta Air Headquarters: “BETRAYAL, YOU WOULD BE ARRESTED”. He could have risen to the highest office in the army if he had continued his career in it. But he chose to be a soldier of the revolutionary army of the working class and dedicated his life to the cause of social revolution. After Independence, he surrendered to the army authorities in Delhi. Instead of exonerating him, the rulers of independent India chose to imprison him in Fort William, Calcutta from where he escaped after one year. His underground life is a saga of revolutionary activities. Some time he was found with the peasants of Kakdwip in their struggle against feudal oppression, another time he was training cadres in Assam who were carrying on an anti-feudal struggle, then he was with the ranks of Telangana partisans fighting an armed struggle, sharing their hard life, he could be found with the people of Pondicherry who were fighting against French colonial domination. His experience as an officer of the British army helped a lot in imparting military training to hundreds of cadres. ‘Comrade Major’ as he was fondly known, Jaipal didn’t receive any credit or recognition due to his political allegiance.Putchalapalli Sundarayya or P. Sundarayya is one of the major figures of the Indian Communist movement who was drawn into the social reform movement and the freedom struggle at a young age. Attracted to the Communist Party through Amir Hyder Khan, Sundarayya played a key role in building the Communist movement in south India during the 1930s. Sundarayya established the first union of agricultural workers. He was the Secretary of the Andhra Communist Party Committee which was formed in 1934. Fired by Communist ideals and egalitarian values he changed his name from Sundararami Reddy, to P. Sundarayya to drop his caste suffix. He was so dedicated to the upliftment of the poor that he and his spouse chose not to have children, for the purpose of social service. He played an important role in leading the Telangana armed struggle and called for an armed uprising in Telengana against Nizam when integration of Hyderabad with Indian Union was refused. That struggle paved the way for the liberation of people from the feudal yoke of the Nizam rule. P. Sundarayya became a member of the first Central Committee of the Communist Party. From then onward, he played a pioneering role in building the Communist Party. Sundarayya made a big contribution to the approach of the Communist Party on the agrarian revolution. He made a detailed study of the agrarian sector and helped to formulate tactics to build the peasant movement.Few know that Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, revolutionary of the Indian independence movement, an officer of the INA, and the Minister of Women's Affairs in the Azad Hind Government was also a Communist. Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore on 2 July 1943. In the next few days, at all his public meetings, Bose spoke of his determination to raise a women's regiment which would "fight for Indian Independence and make it complete". Captain Lakshmi had heard that Bose was keen to draft women into the organisation and requested a meeting with him. The result was Rani Jhansi Brigade. Women responded enthusiastically to join this all-women brigade and Dr. Lakshmi Swaminathan became Captain Lakshmi, a name and identity that would stay with her for life. An atheist and Communist by conviction Lakshmi joined CPI(M) in 1971, she was instrumental in stopping Kanpur Sikh Riot in 1984 and was also Presidential Candidate of Left against APJ Abdul Kalam. In my view if it was anyone but APJ, Captain would have won. Her famous words- “Freedom comes in three forms, The first is political emancipation from the conqueror, the second is economic [emancipation] and the third is social… India has only achieved the first.” resonates still today.This was my extremely feeble attempt to write a history of contribution of Left in Indian freedom struggle. But in absence of any better and some even claiming Left did almost nothing I had to write it. Socialists and Left Nationalists were left out as I am not enough knowledgeable about them (And I am also lazy. :)). But without a doubt, their contribution can’t be overstated. Without Jayprakash Narayan, Subhash Chandra Bose and Ashok Mehta to story of Indian Freedom Struggle would not be complete.Other Notable Mentions of Left Freedom Fighters - Kalpana Dutta, Ganesh Ghosh, Mallu Swarjyam, AK Gopalan, Hasrat Mohani, Aruna Asaf Ali, K.N. Joglekar (Worker’s Peasant Party Leader who moved moved a resolution that the INC should demand full independence for India) and many many more.Movements in which Communists were involved - Meerut Conspiracy Case , Royal Indian Navy mutiny (Incidentally also the only Party that supported it, INC and Muslim League openly opposed the RIN mutiny), Tebhaga movement, Telangana Rebellion , Punnapra-Vayalar_uprising and more.For further reading - The Phoenix Moment: Challenges Confronting the Indian Left , No Free Left , Leftism in India, 1917-1947 all of them excellently paint a picture of Indian Communist movement in Freedom Struggle.