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This was not at all a failure. They built a 1km experimental road. They gained valuable information about real-world performance and technical challenges. It's

This was not at all a failure. They built a 1km experimental road. They gained valuable information about real-world performance and technical challenges. It's not as though they built a 100km long six-lane highway with unproven technology. They built a tiny one-lane trial to test a promising idea. It was overhyped by politicians, but what isn't? Maybe they even steamrolled over engineering red flags. That doesn't mean it wasn't a valuable experiment.

holmberd 7y ago
Exactly, failure or not is a good thing, moving on.
duck2 7y ago
If you can deduce something from your current knowledge, you don't need to do an experiment for that. Certainly people knew that putting fragile semiconductors under roads isn't the best idea, but they went on and spent time and money. I would call this a waste.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Some people deduced one thing, and others deduced the other thing. There was plenty of excitement about this idea on this very site when it was first proposed. Seeing something once is better than hearing it a hundred times.
  - thereisnospork 7y ago
    > There was plenty of excitement The point is there shouldn't have been. Some people deduced and others hoped or willed themselves to ignorance.
  - LoSboccacc 7y ago
    only because reasonable opinion were downvoted to hell from the easily excitable crowd. I distinctly remember because I was amongst the downvoted, and dirt/rubber was one of the common concern, and it's weird to read in the article "engineers didn't think about the leaves" like, randos on internet could tell you that, what kind of cheap ass engineers were involved in the design and feasibility phase?
    - tom_mellior 7y ago
      The two large-ish HN discussions I found with a quick search both have critical comments at the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11041245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11041245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001779
      - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
        Every Hacker News post has critical comments at the top, if you took notice of those you would never attempt anything.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    What problem does this solve?
reitzensteinm 7y ago
The trouble with this viewpoint is that there are an endless number of things we could be trying, and it's more or less a zero sum game. The idea was terrible on paper, easily falsified by back of the napkin math. The same amount of money could have been spent on, eg, testing the commercial viability of smoothing out grid loads by making ice off peak for cooling.
- craz8 7y ago
  It’s never a zero sum game - we can try many things at once, some will work well, some will work poorly, some won’t work at all Trying things helps us move forward
  - __sy__ 7y ago
    And some aren't even worth trying in the first place. Like this idea. edit: I'm all for trying crazy moonshots. Just not down right idiotic ones that are pushed by pseudo-science and clickbait activism [1]. [1]https://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5717036/should-we-cover-all-our-roads-with-solar-panels https://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5717036/should-we-cover-all-ou...
    - ksec 7y ago
      Excuse my ignorance, isn't this a technical challenge, rather than the idea in itself was stupid? Isn't that saying shooting sky full of satellite for communication is stupid until SpaceX made loading anything to space 10x less expensive? I would say the idea isn't worth trying because it clearly wasn't ready, ( I mean if napkin maths already show it is off by a factor of 10 than it really is stupid trying it ) but I don't think the idea in itself is stupid at all.
      - BubRoss 7y ago
        What is the point of a solar road?
      - arcticbull 7y ago
notatoad 7y ago
It didn't appear to fail in interesting ways though. If it failed in all the obvious, predictable ways that's not a valuable experiment
whenanother 7y ago
it's like that kid who envisioned that we could clean the ocean of all the plastic by laying a long catching device. but they never bothered consulting people who actually build ships and other seagoing vessels. and they didn't bother consulting people who've actually worked on this problem. I believe the biggest issue is that the plastic tend to float under the surface of the water and this thing floated on top of the water. and then in the end this thing just bunched up after a day, so it never really caught any plastic. this is the problem when you have rich people pick and choose which ideas gets implemented. rather than having people who are actually intelligent and have experience driving innovations you have a constant flow of bad ideas. inevitable something will work and these idiots will claim that their process actually works. no, it's more like they have the money to afford a lot of failures.
adrianN 7y ago
As far as I know solar roads where never a promising idea because they have obvious shortcomings that this trial just confirmed. There are a million better places to put solar panels than under car tires. Once we've exhausted those would could start thinking about solar roadways.
atoav 7y ago
On the other hand it could also be a scam and the public money wasted could be used for far more interesting experiments. Experiments that at least make sense on a conceptual level or where we really just don’t know how things would pan out in a real world scenario. Solar roads are not that kind of experiment. Even given an ideal execution solar roads would give you the combination of suboptimal roads with badly used solar panels. Unless glas turns out to be a superior road surface (which I doubt) and unless solar panels perform better flat on the ground under a layer of dirt than raised above shadows and with a well adjusted angle (which helps the rain to clean the thing and increases efficiency) — unless all of that, putting solar panels on the side of the roads or roofa will be way more economical and ecological. This is literally bad design: something that looks good or innovative on first glance, but is totally inpractical and maybe even destructive the longer you ponder about it.
Canada 7y ago
But it wasn't a valuable experiment. Absolutely nothing was learned from it. It's some combination of delusion and fraud. Here's a video from 2014 discussing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds

holmberd 7y ago

Exactly, failure or not is a good thing, moving on.

duck2 7y ago

If you can deduce something from your current knowledge, you don't need to do an experiment for that. Certainly people knew that putting fragile semiconductors under roads isn't the best idea, but they went on and spent time and money. I would call this a waste.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
Some people deduced one thing, and others deduced the other thing. There was plenty of excitement about this idea on this very site when it was first proposed. Seeing something once is better than hearing it a hundred times.
- thereisnospork 7y ago
  > There was plenty of excitement The point is there shouldn't have been. Some people deduced and others hoped or willed themselves to ignorance.
- LoSboccacc 7y ago
  only because reasonable opinion were downvoted to hell from the easily excitable crowd. I distinctly remember because I was amongst the downvoted, and dirt/rubber was one of the common concern, and it's weird to read in the article "engineers didn't think about the leaves" like, randos on internet could tell you that, what kind of cheap ass engineers were involved in the design and feasibility phase?
  - tom_mellior 7y ago
    The two large-ish HN discussions I found with a quick search both have critical comments at the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11041245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11041245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001779
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      Every Hacker News post has critical comments at the top, if you took notice of those you would never attempt anything.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  What problem does this solve?

reitzensteinm 7y ago

The trouble with this viewpoint is that there are an endless number of things we could be trying, and it's more or less a zero sum game. The idea was terrible on paper, easily falsified by back of the napkin math. The same amount of money could have been spent on, eg, testing the commercial viability of smoothing out grid loads by making ice off peak for cooling.

craz8 7y ago
It’s never a zero sum game - we can try many things at once, some will work well, some will work poorly, some won’t work at all Trying things helps us move forward
- __sy__ 7y ago
  And some aren't even worth trying in the first place. Like this idea. edit: I'm all for trying crazy moonshots. Just not down right idiotic ones that are pushed by pseudo-science and clickbait activism [1]. [1]https://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5717036/should-we-cover-all-our-roads-with-solar-panels https://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5717036/should-we-cover-all-ou...
  - ksec 7y ago
    Excuse my ignorance, isn't this a technical challenge, rather than the idea in itself was stupid? Isn't that saying shooting sky full of satellite for communication is stupid until SpaceX made loading anything to space 10x less expensive? I would say the idea isn't worth trying because it clearly wasn't ready, ( I mean if napkin maths already show it is off by a factor of 10 than it really is stupid trying it ) but I don't think the idea in itself is stupid at all.
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      What is the point of a solar road?
    - arcticbull 7y ago

notatoad 7y ago

It didn't appear to fail in interesting ways though. If it failed in all the obvious, predictable ways that's not a valuable experiment

whenanother 7y ago

it's like that kid who envisioned that we could clean the ocean of all the plastic by laying a long catching device. but they never bothered consulting people who actually build ships and other seagoing vessels. and they didn't bother consulting people who've actually worked on this problem. I believe the biggest issue is that the plastic tend to float under the surface of the water and this thing floated on top of the water. and then in the end this thing just bunched up after a day, so it never really caught any plastic. this is the problem when you have rich people pick and choose which ideas gets implemented. rather than having people who are actually intelligent and have experience driving innovations you have a constant flow of bad ideas. inevitable something will work and these idiots will claim that their process actually works. no, it's more like they have the money to afford a lot of failures.

adrianN 7y ago

As far as I know solar roads where never a promising idea because they have obvious shortcomings that this trial just confirmed. There are a million better places to put solar panels than under car tires. Once we've exhausted those would could start thinking about solar roadways.

atoav 7y ago

On the other hand it could also be a scam and the public money wasted could be used for far more interesting experiments. Experiments that at least make sense on a conceptual level or where we really just don’t know how things would pan out in a real world scenario. Solar roads are not that kind of experiment. Even given an ideal execution solar roads would give you the combination of suboptimal roads with badly used solar panels. Unless glas turns out to be a superior road surface (which I doubt) and unless solar panels perform better flat on the ground under a layer of dirt than raised above shadows and with a well adjusted angle (which helps the rain to clean the thing and increases efficiency) — unless all of that, putting solar panels on the side of the roads or roofa will be way more economical and ecological. This is literally bad design: something that looks good or innovative on first glance, but is totally inpractical and maybe even destructive the longer you ponder about it.

Canada 7y ago

But it wasn't a valuable experiment. Absolutely nothing was learned from it. It's some combination of delusion and fraud. Here's a video from 2014 discussing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds