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It would be cheaper and more easily scalable to fit more charging points in parking spaces at shopping centres, motorway service stations and so on. Why do we

It would be cheaper and more easily scalable to fit more charging points in parking spaces at shopping centres, motorway service stations and so on. Why do we keep on inventing new complicated ways of doing things instead of standardising and exploiting the things that we already know work?

rb808 9y ago
Electrified rails on trains have been around much longer than parking stations. Plus batteries are the biggest problem (and most expensive) part of ecars, so this is a good idea to try out.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  But those rails are on otherwise off-limit tracks and 'third rail' solutions are notoriously dangerous. This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too. It's basically a scaled up version of a slot car track.
  - rsynnott 9y ago
    > This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too. Did you read the article? This is addressed.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Yes, I did read the article, otherwise I would not have been able to write what I did, note that the title says nothing about how the electrodes from the car connect to the road. So you could have known that I had read the article. Yes, the article addresses it, no, the article does not address it in a way that gives me a good feeling about the safety of this system in the presence of moisture. It really doesn't take a lot of power to kill a person and even though you can ground-fault-protect the crap out of a setup like this the fact is that such measures can fail and if you start deploying it en-masse in a hostile environment they will fail in large enough numbers that it will not longer be safe. Note how industrial power is hardly ever ground fault protected because the leakage currents in the standard setup are too high already to reliably detect a ground fault. In other words: if the system delivers enough power to electrical cars to meaningfully affect their state of charge there is inherent danger.
      - TheForumTroll 9y ago
        > the article does not address it in a way that gives me a good feeling about the safety of this system in the presence of moisture It clearly states that salt water in the rail only gives off 1 volt at road level and that you can walk on it barefoot.
  - vilhelm_s 9y ago
    Highways are already off-limit and notoriously dangerous.
    - apotheothesomai 9y ago
      Unfortunately, we need to accommodate the future Darwin Award winners. Besides, there's dangerous, and then there's 'the government caused the death of someone who stepped on the highway'. Getting zapped, even mildly, would distract someone and decrease a person's chances of getting out of the way quickly.
IanDrake 9y ago
Batteries are expensive and heavy. Plus range anxiety. If this allows for cars to have a 50 mile battery range while still being able to travel unlimited miles on highways, it would be a huge win.
- gitgreen 9y ago
  Exactly. The article doesn't expand on this point but this is capable of charging multiple vehicles in motion. More charging points at stations, shopping centers, etc would still require people to stop and wait.
rsynnott 9y ago
If electric vehicles only had to have a range of a few tens of km (similar to many existing plugin hybrids) they could be built dramatically cheaper. This would also be ideal for buses, lorries and similar.
- hndamien 9y ago
  Something like this? https://www.micro-mobility.com/en/experience-micro/microlino https://www.micro-mobility.com/en/experience-micro/microlino
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Good for them for actually trying something. You actually have to try and make something. Sometimes you get it wrong. That's ok, sometimes you'll get it right. As long as the general trend line is going up, you're doing good.
f4rker 9y ago
Because people do not learn from history Source : history
bluGill 9y ago
Because I want to stop for at most 10 minutes every 2 hours. (better yet I want a self driving car where 8 hours latter I wake up where I'm going, and the farther I get in that 8 hours the better) With gas cars we can do this, with batteries that requires a lot of expensive, heavy batteries (the heavy is important because energy is expended just hauling them around). I don't know if this is a good/useful solution to the problem, but it is an obvious idea to consider.

rb808 9y ago

Electrified rails on trains have been around much longer than parking stations. Plus batteries are the biggest problem (and most expensive) part of ecars, so this is a good idea to try out.

jacquesm 9y ago
But those rails are on otherwise off-limit tracks and 'third rail' solutions are notoriously dangerous. This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too. It's basically a scaled up version of a slot car track.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  > This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too. Did you read the article? This is addressed.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Yes, I did read the article, otherwise I would not have been able to write what I did, note that the title says nothing about how the electrodes from the car connect to the road. So you could have known that I had read the article. Yes, the article addresses it, no, the article does not address it in a way that gives me a good feeling about the safety of this system in the presence of moisture. It really doesn't take a lot of power to kill a person and even though you can ground-fault-protect the crap out of a setup like this the fact is that such measures can fail and if you start deploying it en-masse in a hostile environment they will fail in large enough numbers that it will not longer be safe. Note how industrial power is hardly ever ground fault protected because the leakage currents in the standard setup are too high already to reliably detect a ground fault. In other words: if the system delivers enough power to electrical cars to meaningfully affect their state of charge there is inherent danger.
    - TheForumTroll 9y ago
      > the article does not address it in a way that gives me a good feeling about the safety of this system in the presence of moisture It clearly states that salt water in the rail only gives off 1 volt at road level and that you can walk on it barefoot.
- vilhelm_s 9y ago
  Highways are already off-limit and notoriously dangerous.
  - apotheothesomai 9y ago
    Unfortunately, we need to accommodate the future Darwin Award winners. Besides, there's dangerous, and then there's 'the government caused the death of someone who stepped on the highway'. Getting zapped, even mildly, would distract someone and decrease a person's chances of getting out of the way quickly.

IanDrake 9y ago

Batteries are expensive and heavy. Plus range anxiety. If this allows for cars to have a 50 mile battery range while still being able to travel unlimited miles on highways, it would be a huge win.

gitgreen 9y ago
Exactly. The article doesn't expand on this point but this is capable of charging multiple vehicles in motion. More charging points at stations, shopping centers, etc would still require people to stop and wait.

rsynnott 9y ago

If electric vehicles only had to have a range of a few tens of km (similar to many existing plugin hybrids) they could be built dramatically cheaper. This would also be ideal for buses, lorries and similar.

hndamien 9y ago
Something like this? https://www.micro-mobility.com/en/experience-micro/microlino https://www.micro-mobility.com/en/experience-micro/microlino

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

Good for them for actually trying something. You actually have to try and make something. Sometimes you get it wrong. That's ok, sometimes you'll get it right. As long as the general trend line is going up, you're doing good.

f4rker 9y ago

Because people do not learn from history Source : history

bluGill 9y ago

Because I want to stop for at most 10 minutes every 2 hours. (better yet I want a self driving car where 8 hours latter I wake up where I'm going, and the farther I get in that 8 hours the better) With gas cars we can do this, with batteries that requires a lot of expensive, heavy batteries (the heavy is important because energy is expended just hauling them around). I don't know if this is a good/useful solution to the problem, but it is an obvious idea to consider.