Michigan Announces America's First Public In-Road Charging Test for Electric Vehicles (michigan.gov) 96
The governor of Michigan has announced America's first "public wireless in-road charging system," which would allow electric vehicles (EV) to charge — both while in motion and when stationary.
The GreenBiz site takes a look at this "inductive vehicle charging pilot program." There's perhaps no place more fitting for this pilot than Detroit. The city that led the nation's first wave of automobile technology is helping lead its second, as the Michigan Department of Transportation has awarded a $1.9 million contract to Electreon to install one mile of in-road EV charging in Motor City.
"Wireless is the future for this technology," said Stefan Tongur, vice president of business development for Electreon in the U.S. The wireless charging company is already building out the tech across Europe, where it has pilots in Germany, Italy and Sweden. The Michigan project is expected to be operational in 2023.
"We've always, for the past century, stopped to fuel the car, and we're thinking the same with EVs," Tongur said. But that creates many challenges when it comes to large-scale batteries and fleets especially, Tongur noted... So Electreon and others envision a network of strategic corridors with wireless, in-road charging that could gradually power vehicles along a route, rather than all at once at the destination. Fleet operators could either pay a subscription to use the chargers or integrate the costs into highway tolling, depending on the situation, Tongur said.
He described Electreon's business model as "charging as a service."
Alex Gruzen, CEO of wireless charging company WiTricity, tells the site this technology ultimately could accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. "The company's own research indicates that wireless charging can increase a consumer's intent to purchase an EV by 68%, according to Gruzen, which could help move EVs beyond the early adopter stage."
Or, as Gruzen puts it, "What we want to do is show that the EV ownership experience can be better than any experience you've ever had with a car before."
Thanks to Slashdot reader doyouwantahotpocket for submitting the story.
The GreenBiz site takes a look at this "inductive vehicle charging pilot program." There's perhaps no place more fitting for this pilot than Detroit. The city that led the nation's first wave of automobile technology is helping lead its second, as the Michigan Department of Transportation has awarded a $1.9 million contract to Electreon to install one mile of in-road EV charging in Motor City.
"Wireless is the future for this technology," said Stefan Tongur, vice president of business development for Electreon in the U.S. The wireless charging company is already building out the tech across Europe, where it has pilots in Germany, Italy and Sweden. The Michigan project is expected to be operational in 2023.
"We've always, for the past century, stopped to fuel the car, and we're thinking the same with EVs," Tongur said. But that creates many challenges when it comes to large-scale batteries and fleets especially, Tongur noted... So Electreon and others envision a network of strategic corridors with wireless, in-road charging that could gradually power vehicles along a route, rather than all at once at the destination. Fleet operators could either pay a subscription to use the chargers or integrate the costs into highway tolling, depending on the situation, Tongur said.
He described Electreon's business model as "charging as a service."
Alex Gruzen, CEO of wireless charging company WiTricity, tells the site this technology ultimately could accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. "The company's own research indicates that wireless charging can increase a consumer's intent to purchase an EV by 68%, according to Gruzen, which could help move EVs beyond the early adopter stage."
Or, as Gruzen puts it, "What we want to do is show that the EV ownership experience can be better than any experience you've ever had with a car before."
Thanks to Slashdot reader doyouwantahotpocket for submitting the story.
Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:5, Informative)
I would like the idea of driving down the road and having it charge on paper.
Inductive charging though as I understand is very inefficient. Doesn't seem very eco friendly to me.
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The better plan would be to build mountains between each cities, that way everyone could drive everywhere using only* the power of gravity!
* assuming magic to get you up to the top of each mountain before you start driving.
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You joke, but the London Underground uses depth changes for energy regeneration and between stations.
https://www.reddit.com/r/today... [reddit.com]
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Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
It's not $1.9M/mile:
MDOT will provide $1.9 million in funding toward the pilot project, with Electreon contributing the remainder.
In Indiana, bike paths cost up to $500,000/mile or more by ( https://www.in.gov/indot/files... [in.gov] ) paved highway in Florida costs more - lots more - per multi-lane mile (https://www.fdot.gov/programmanagement/estimates/documents/costpermilemodels )
Re:Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:4)
Indeed, that's also what I've read. So not only are we not yet producing 100% of electricity using renewable ressources, we're already planning to waste a huge percentage of it, along with the billions (trillions?) it would cost (in copper alone, never mind the actual roads themselves) to upgrade roads to wireless charging.
Is it really that hard and complicated to connect a charging cable and stop driving for a half hour every... what, four to six hours?
Re:Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, this would waste at least another 10% of the electricity, likely more. And what good will it do? Will consumers switch to 100-mile range EVs and rely on electrified roads for distance traveling? I don't think so. By the time enough roads get electrified, everyone will already be driving 400-mile range EVs and be used to using the high-speed charging stations available at every highway exit. It takes a long time to add infrastructure to roads, and there's no way this can be at all cost competitive with charging stations.
This is a solution looking for a problem.
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Let's do the math: My EV battery holds 80 kwh, and I pay 10 cents per kwh, so that's $8.
On a road trip, it takes me 20 minutes to charge. Using an inductive charger instead that wastes 10% of the power would cost an extra 80 cents for a full charge.
That is $2.40 per hour, about 30% of the federal minimum wage. Definitely worth it for most people, unless they plan to stop for some other reason anyway, such as to eat or pee.
This ignores the infrastructure cost. I have no idea what that is. But most roads
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Even if it's only major highways, even with the monetary issues aside, that's still way too much copper wasted on something that will become obsolete by the time it's completed.
Re:Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:4, Informative)
We're talking about Detroit. Most likely it'll never be completed because anything copper will be stolen as fast as it's installed.
Re:Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:4, Funny)
Is copper really worth that much these days? I'm thinking about ripping out the copper power cables in my house to replace them with cheaper optical fiber. I've been told faster electricity would mean LED bulbs that light up faster, faster toasting times especially for frozen waffles, faster computers booting times, Netflix automatically playing back at 115% speed, etc.
Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
Nah, Michigan still uses lead, I think by now all of the copper thieves have moved on.
Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
Let's do the math: My EV battery holds 80 kwh, and I pay 10 cents per kwh, so that's $8.
On a road trip, it takes me 20 minutes to charge. Using an inductive charger instead that wastes 10% of the power would cost an extra 80 cents for a full charge.
I'm sorry, you charge an 80 KWHr battery pack in 20 minutes?
No, you don't, unless your Delorean has a big spike on the back to attract lightning strikes - you are not getting 240 KW out of your charger. (You need a 240 KWHr charge rate to charge 80 KWHr in 1/3rd of an hour (20 min))
Tesla level 2 chargers do 16 KWHr, it would take 5 hours to fully recharge your 80 KWHr car.
I suspect you meant to 'top off' your car, but you quoted a full 80 KWHr in your math.
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You need a 240 KWHr charge rate to charge 80 KWHr in 1/3rd of an hour (20 min)
Tesla superchargers charge at 250 kilowatts.
https://www.tesla.com/supercharger [tesla.com]
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Do remember that the poor guys who can't afford an electric car are going to be on the hook to pay for the new highways (eventually, if this works, ALL roads will be like this), but won't be able to afford the electric car to take advantage of it.
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In Europe wireless charging has been working well for a few years in taxi bays. The cars charge up while waiting for passengers. The charge rate is decent, in excess of 50kW.
They could get out and plug in, but apparently the losses are less than 10%.
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But you are talking about taxi parks here, which IMHO is a very good idea.
Adding wireless charging to long sections of highways, on the other hand, is completely idiotic.
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They could get out and plug in, but apparently the losses are less than 10%.
If we converted a substantial portion of the population to EVs, and used wireless charging, then the losses would also be substantial even if the percentage is relatively small. The costs mount up quickly. And for what, so people can be lazy? Not worth it.
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It would probably be limited to commercial users, and only the ones where it is worth paying a premium for.
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Letting people pay a premium to be less efficient isn't sustainable any more than cap and trade.
There are ALREADY [pluglesspower.com] home EV contactless charging solutions in existence, so the whole idea that they will be restricted to commercial users is foolish. Everyone is going to want it, so automakers will give it to them sooner or later.
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I don't know how you extrapolate a technology you don't see as being viable into a terrible future for EVs.
Either it's not viable and fails this test, or it is viable and it passes.
I mean, don't be a moron.
Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
Define viable.
If I drive 60 miles over wireless charge roadway, at the end of those 60 miles, one hour later, how many miles will be added to my battery pack from the roadway? If it's less than 60, it's a no-go, if it's 5 miles, it a colossal waste of money.
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This becomes better in cities where cars could stop at lights and have something push up from the roadway to close proximity.
Then of course you get the fun of reality: snow, crud, gravel, etc. and general roads breaking down every few years.
any *wires* in a roadway are just a dumb idea no matter how 'feasible' the concept is.
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This is a tech demo; it will either be a technical failure, in which case everything ends right there, or it will be a technical success, which means the future is clouded. Every technically successful idea has to get past economic feasibility human behavior, and just plain lucky timing. Most of them fail. That's why there's no commercial flying car; it's physically feasible enough but nobody's found a way to make a marketable one.
I think there's some excessively limited conceptions here. Wireless road ch
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Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
A 30 minute recharge time would be perfectly fine with me, I rarely drive those kinds of distances in a day, and when I do, stopping for 30 minutes every 4 hours would be a welcome break.
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No sensible person would use copper, although they might since this idea is not sensible. But regardless, you'd sensibly use aluminum wiring. Not only is it cheaper, but it's also self-protecting if you get water intrusion. Not from shorts, of course, but from corrosion.
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Inductive charging though as I understand is very inefficient. Doesn't seem very eco friendly to me.
This technology will be preferred only once we invent?/discover? fusion.
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Inductive charging though as I understand is very inefficient.
Inductive charging is up to 98% efficient when coupling is good enough. 92% is not unusual in actual designs. Simple/naive designs can easily reach 86%. These are the same numbers as is transformer-based designs. Which, of course, are also inductive transfer. So this is just a different physical layout of primary and secondary, but it is still generally the same technology as a traditional switch-mode power supply.
The important thing is that the distance between the inductors should generally be less than t
Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
See I thought it was more like a 40% loss. If it's that efficient it's maybe not that bad.
Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
Run the number to charge just a dozen cars simultaneously on a mile of roadway... it become comical pretty quickly for anything beyond trivial 'proof of concept' levels of charging.
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See I thought it was more like a 40% loss. If it's that efficient it's maybe not that bad.
That's the efficiency of a highly close coupled consumer device stationary in the middle of its charging coil. It's not the number of a device where the coils are significantly further apart and in constant motion. Your numbers are far more correct. The GP's "mobile phone" numbers do not apply here.
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Inductive charging is up to 98% efficient when coupling is good enough. 92% is not unusual in actual designs.
Which is great when your coils are coupled within the ~5mm from each other and perfectly aligned like they are "in actual designs". Additionally this peak efficiency is only reached with correct alignment, not while moving over coils from one to another.
This is nothing like those designs.
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Bigger issue is 5 year repaving cycles...Michigan's seasons 'Almost Winter', 'Winter', 'Still Winter' , 'Roadbuilding Season" would like a word
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I would like the idea of driving down the road and having it charge on paper.
Inductive charging though as I understand is very inefficient. Doesn't seem very eco friendly to me.
It's Detroit. Their primary market is gas guzzling SUVs. They would love it if people demanded horribly inefficient EVs, because then they could say, "See, we'd be better off sticking with gasoline," and then they wouldn't have to change anything....
Re: Neat idea, but also horrible. (Score:2)
The measure of success is simple:
Phase 1 - You can drive X miles over a 'charger road' and have restored the power expended to cover those X miles
Phase 2 - You can drive X miles over a 'charger road' and have restored TWICE (2X) the power expended to cover those X miles
Phase 0 (Where I expect we are now) - You drive X miles and you can pick up a tiny percentage of the power required to cover those X miles.
Driving 100 miles in 90 minutes (66.666 MPH) and you've recovered 2 or three miles worth of charge is p
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Don't look at it as a primary. If there's a way to track usage and charge a premium for this then it could be a good "emergency use" system.
IE, 99% of your driving needs are covered by charging at your residence and driving around, but the odd time that you need to take an 800 mile road trip you're not stuck sitting there for a few hours several times during the trip.
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How much do they charge the car owner for this? Electricity ain't free.... (Thomas Edison vs Nokola Tesla)
There's an electric vehicle that's powered... (Score:5, Interesting)
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But it's still 10 years ahead of Canada, eh?
Bah, who am I kidding. We're both 50 years behind, Canada just happens to be 50 metric years behind.
Re:There's an electric vehicle that's powered... (Score:5, Insightful)
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There have been some tests of overhead cables and pantographs over motorways, for trucks to use. I guess the main issue is probably safety in the event of an accident.
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I don't disagree with your root point (can and should do both) but...
In this case, electrifying long-haul freight trains means either adding thousands of miles of new overhead wires or putting massive batteries in the locomotives.
You do add thousands of miles of catenary wiring, AND you put batteries in the locomotives. The batteries are there to carry you through the sections which either don't have catenary wires yet, or where it would be prohibitively expensive to put them. You might ALSO even run on diesel. Some of the new locomotives are hybrids. You could add in battery cars for routes where they are needed, and then drop them off again, a sort of ultimate ba
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China's built a high-speed intercity rail network spanning the country over the last 15 years, and China is bigger than the USA. You need a better excuse.
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Size is the issue when you're building a nationwide intercity network, which is what China has done. Why can't you do the same in the US?
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China's high speed rail is like France's crash nuclear program, which occurred when electricity was a nationalized utility. It was done for policy reasons; there was no way to do it if you had to promise making a profit.
France's nuclear policy ended up working pretty well for them, but China's high speed rail is mix of successes (Beijing to Shanghai line) and boondoggles (Urumqi-Lanzhou). Investment in long, low ridership passenger service has diverted investment from freight service, forcing cargo into
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Well, sure, we shouldn't be too doctrinaire about making profit the sole measure of whether something is worthwhile. But nations don't have unlimited resources, so you still want to be smart about where you spend. You don't want to build infrastructure that will barely be used or which you can't afford to operate, which is what China did.
France built its nuclear infrastructure for national security reasons; that's actually a smart decision. National security is a real benefit that can't be measured in pro
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China's built a high-speed intercity rail network spanning the country over the last 15 years, and China is bigger than the USA. You need a better excuse.
To be pedantic, China (3.705 million square miles) is bigger than the *continental* United States (3.12 million square miles). It is slightly smaller than the U.S. when you include Alaska and Hawaii (3.797 million square miles).
Then again, there's no way the U.S. builds a huge high-speed rail network in Alaska any time soon, so I guess that doesn't count. After all, large parts of the state aren't even reachable by road yet (including the state capital).
On the flip side, China has almost 5x the population
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Trolley Busses are better than trains (Score:2)
Trolley buses have been around a long time. Still used in San Francisco. Add a small battery and they become even better.
For urbane transport, the buses handle the last mile much better than trains, go to where people live.
(They use overhead wires, google it.)
Re: There's an electric vehicle that's powered... (Score:2)
Trains, for the most part run diesel generators that power electric motors, almost no trains (outside local/light rail 'trains') run directly on electricity.
Yes BART trains, NYC subways, and Pittsburgh trolleys and done San Francisco MUNI busses do, but little else does...
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You're confused about engineering reality, the existing electrification tech is useless for the vast distances in the USA so diesel-electric have been the only viable option. Only battery tech advances of the past few years are making prototypes possible.
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Rubbish. The entire Trans-Siberian railway is electrified using even older technology (3000VDC) than what's currently the state of the art and is common in the US (25kVAC/60Hz). This line is twice as long as the US coast-to-coast and goes through areas that have a much less developed power grid. China also runs electrified trains over longer distances.
But hey. The Yankskanks have to do things differently.
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Yeah a 2 track line that took them 70 years to electrify, 3KV DC in half of it, 25 KV AC in other sections.
Pick another example, that one sucked.
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I have never understood why trains are not more common here in the US. Heck, one of the biggest achievements in US history was hammering in the golden spike to join the costs on a rail line. All the issues with NAFTA traffic would be alleviated by just having a rail line parallel IH-35 and other north/south highways. The ideal would be high speed passenger rail as well as freight. Imagine how many cars could be taken off the roads and stress on passenger travel alleviated by having a high speed rail lin
$1.9 million (Score:2)
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It's not built yet - let's wait until we see the final tally. That "M" may magically turn into a "B" before the project is finished.
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$1.9 M is just what they are setting aside for campaign contributions, to Gretch the Wretch. The real contracts will be cost plus and they'll have enough rain days and logistics issues that they'll need overtime at 3X to make deadline. Maybe they'll put it in on I94 by the Ambassador Bridge turn-off where they get grid-locked every afternoon rush-hour so the EVs will get a full charge while battling stop and go traffic.
How much do you want to bet that this doesn't support Teslas
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Re: $1.9 million (Score:2)
This ignores the premature replacement of roadways that are electrified - they are tearing up perfectly serviceable roadway to lay wireless charger technology under the surface.
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One would assume that "ripping up a perfectly good roadway" is only being done as a proof of concept. This means this is not part of the real cost of the product.
In the future, roadways would be replaced as necessary, and this technology would be incorporated into the new surface (such as rumble strips).
I think the bigger question for this is how would you pass the cost of the electricity used to the owner of the vehicle?
I could see this technology used more in the parking lots of office buildings and/or as
Stationary 95% of the time (Score:2)
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Because it sounds cool and futuristic.
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The point is to charge EVs on long-distance trips, not for local driving and commuting.
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That already happens all of the time. You stop for lunch, charge your EV, and then continue on your long-distance trip.
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That already happens all of the time. You stop for lunch, charge your EV, and then continue on your long-distance trip.
You stop for your lunch, then discover there's 5 guys in front of you queued up who also "just need 30 mins charging", and end up waiting 3 hours.
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That only happens in the minds of idiots. It doesn't really happen in the real world often enough to worry about.
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It's happened to me. As has 'there's three DC chargers in town, and they're all non-functional today.'
It's teething and growing pains, but it's going to happen.
Re: Stationary 95% of the time (Score:2)
What's the charge rate compared to wired charging?
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I can think of some very specific use cases, like security vehicles in large complexes (think industrial plants, warehouses, and similar facilities).
It would still be fairly expensive, but I imagine if a company was running EV delivery vans (such as Amazon), this might be an enticing technology.
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Solar Roads (Score:2)
This is just like the proposals for solar roads. It sounds great until you spend five minutes doing the math. There is just no way this makes economic sense compared to charging stations. Charging with this infrastructure, with the costs properly amortized in, would likely be 10x more expensive than a charging station. Doing this on enough highways to make it an alternative to long-range EVs would take decades. It's vastly more economical to invest in batteries for EVs than this technology.
I wouldn't s
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This is just like the proposals for solar roads. It sounds great until you spend five minutes doing the math.
"Solar Roadways" only sounded good to people who didn't immediately realize there is no shortage of places to install photovoltaics where they won't be run over. It's entirely a scam to solve a problem that does not exist.
The problem inductive charging roads attempts to solve (range anxiety) is at least real. Everything else about the idea though, is horribly impractical and inefficient. As everyone else has said, just install more charging stations.
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I wouldn't spend a dime on this until they make a very clear use case for why anyone would want this.
Some Slashdotters are horrified at the thought of taking a 20-minute break to charge in the middle of an 8-hour trip.
Save some money (Score:2)
I'm a big fan of BEVs but every time I see this proposed I think of the Simpsons "Marge vs. the Monorail". Even if is possible to actually do 1.6km for $1.9M, which seriously doubt, has not one told these people how many km of road there are in use around the world? Basically no country could afford to this on a useful scale.
Worst still it trying to solve a problem that largely doesn
Let's do some math... (Score:1)
Just a waste of $ (Score:3, Insightful)
Put this money (Score:1)
into replacing lead pipes and you won't have as many stupid ideas?
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into replacing lead pipes and you won't have as many stupid ideas?
Quoting to bring visibility to what is a rare fantatic AC post.
Why no mention of e-fuels? (Score:2)
We know how to close the carbon loop on our hydrocarbon fuels, and there is news about this almost daily. Why aren't e-fuels getting more attention? Electric vehicles will be forever limited to short range and long recharge times. E-fuels on the other hand can use this same "green" electricity to produce carbon neutral fuels that can be drop in replacements for the petroleum fuels we use today.
Here's a few news articles I found about e-fuels...
https://www.designnews.com/aut... [designnews.com]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ [telegraph.co.uk]
what the hell (Score:2)
Just plug your car in at night if you want to charge it. Charging roads is a total boondoggle in a state that has refused for decades to lay down the much cheaper commuter rail. If Ford and GM want to make money, they can build train carriages for all the cities in Michigan.
Old tech, but finally (Score:1)
The big battery in current EVs sucks up energy to push around and so needs to be bigger and heavier and suck down even more energy to go the required distance. The big battery is not 100% efficient at storing and releasing energy. Instead at best maybe 85% of the energy that
Uh, this is Michigan (Score:2)
They can't fix and maintain simple potholes, they aren't going to make this actually functional.
Here's the reason why this is dumb (Score:3)
I get that we enjoy driving and imagine that it provides us freedom, and in some small ways it does. The freedom is however largely illusory. Almost all vehicles are dependent on roads, and most of the ones that aren't can't handle any major obstacles. You can be deprived of your vehicle by the state on any number of pretexts, without warning, and without rapid resolution (or usually, any recompense when done wrongfully.)
Our entire attempt to improve the car into something that makes sense by throwing ever more metal at it to make it safer in a crash, inventing run-flat pneumatic tires that don't immediately fail when they lose pressure, and even load it up with computational functionality so that it can drive itself is frankly massively wasteful for little benefit. The whole system seems designed to incur recurring costs. We had a superior technology for steering wheeled vehicles in the 1800s. It is called rail. It's also a superior way to roll vehicles, in that hard wheels on a hard rail are both more efficient and more durable than soft wheels on an ablative road. They waste less energy (both because they last longer and because they don't turn as much of the motive force into heat) and they produce less pollution because of the lack of tire dust.
This is just another band-aid on the stupidity of the car, and is itself inefficient, just like the entire car is. Since the invention of the packet switching network, we have had all the technologies necessary to make self-driving cars not only possible but feasible, so long as we put them on rails. There is no need to do all this fancy computer vision BS. There is no need for wireless charging, when the power could be transferred to the vehicle by direct contact with one or more rails. Because the vehicles are so much lighter than full-size trains, the rail can be made correspondingly lighter.
Rails generally cost more to build than roads, but pay for themselves in reasonably short periods; making the rails lighter and cheaper can make them pay off even quicker. The maintenance costs per unit of capacity are much lower, however, and the peak throughput of rail is much higher than roads. Using modern routing technologies, the throughput can be maximized. There's no safe way to have road trains on pneumatic tires, with vehicles running close to one another; even run-flats can fail catastrophically, and just one failure might wipe out literally an entire column of vehicles, plus anyone running alongside.
What we should be doing to cars is obsoleting them, not applying band-aid after band-aid. Start by implementing elevated PRT in city centers, and reducing the number of vehicles allowed there until you get it down to just public transport, emergency, and construction vehicles. Push the network outwards from there as it becomes feasible. It's not like we could implement any solution overnight, so start where it makes sense, and as proliferation increases, it will make more sense in more places.
Building more highway lanes only ever increases traffic, it never alleviates congestion for long. Wireless charging will probably never be efficient. The car is already inefficient because of roads and tires. You already pay an efficiency penalty when charging a battery. Now they want you to pay another penalty for charging by making it wireless. This whole scheme is just a way to make inefficient vehicles even less efficient for the purposes of generating profit. If we value efficiency, we should be getting rid of cars that have to be able to handle high speed collisions, and we should not even be thinking about wireless charging.
Road conditions and repairs (Score:2)
why stop at charging? (Score:2)
Inductive propulsion. Linear motor. Used for maglev, why not cars? Do away with giant batteries.