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It's really interesting, but I wonder if as a society we're willing to complicate our roads to the level of adding any sort of functionality to them. Asphalt is

It's really interesting, but I wonder if as a society we're willing to complicate our roads to the level of adding any sort of functionality to them. Asphalt is wonderfully easy to work with, just pour, grind up, remelt, you can keep reusing it. Even then maintaining our roads is a challenge. Adding electrical infrastructure to the roads themselves to further complicate how you would re-pave, resurface, etcetera? Even if technically feasible, I don't know if we have the economic/political feasibility that's also required to make that work

asdff 6y ago
Even building a bus or a bike lane is highly controversial in the U.S.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MR4D 6y ago
  But an HOV lane is not, and those are good places to start, as you can regulate the traffic on them.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  And would have a bigger impact on global warming than improving EV distances.
hhs 6y ago
> Even if technically feasible, I don't know if we have the economic/political feasibility that's also required to make that work It’s a good point, though outside the US there are also entrepreneurs. Politics/regulations might work differently. There could also be incentives to do things like this.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Unclear what the benefit is, given the cost. EVs already provide enough range for commuting. The vast majority of the population commutes tens of miles, and EVs can regularly do hundreds of miles. So there’s really no need to modify roads for the sake of commuters. For longer distance travel we really should be talking less roads and more high speed rail. They’re faster, safer, and more efficient than cars. It’s also a less uncertain technology; there are several countries with highly successful high speed rail systems that we could copy. For freight we should use regular rail for similar reasons, plus the fact that using semi trucks, diesel or EV, creates a large financial burden on the public to undo the damage that heavy trucks do to our roads.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  The benefit is that it eliminates (perceived) range anxiety. People are used to filling up their cars at gas stations, and used to battery-powered devices 'dying' - an unfortunate label. Even if real-world use was a tiny fraction of miles traveled, I think people would be much more apt to buy electric if they knew that the cars could charge as they drive. You could implement it such that the car communicated with the road and was delivered a charge only if it was beyond a certain number of miles that day to reduce load on the network and incentivize overnight charging. Regarding high-speed rail, the whole point of driving your car to the destination is to have a car at the destination; high-speed rail where you arrive and have to walk is a non-starter for a lot of destinations right now. I agree that we should reduce the effective subsidy that heavy freight trucking currently benefits from so businesses are economically motivated to switch to more rail freight.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I get that range anxiety is an irrational fear, but I genuinely doubt that it’s why people don’t buy EVs. I suspect that resistance to change is a more common cause, with range anxiety being a convenient excuse. Besides, any solution to range anxiety has to be tuned to the social benefit it would generate. I’d be more a fan of simply making gasoline more expensive, since what we really need is not people using EVs, but people not using fossil fuels.
    - turtlebits 6y ago
      Range anxiety is not an irrational fear. Even after 2 years of owning an EV (w/ 200+ range), range anxiety is present. Actually it's more like charge while not at home anxiety, as charging is still a crapshoot. - L1 charging is 3-4 miles / hour. - Charging infrastructure is horrendously unreliable. (non-Tesla). I don't do much outside charging, but in 40% of my experiences, chargers are often out of service, throw errors, or not maintained well. (I was at an popular Electrify america spot and 3 of 6 chargers were out of commission, 2 of them were like that for weeks)). - Charging is expensive. More expensive than gas, sometimes ripping you off. Session fees of $3 just for plugging in, plus 4x residential kwh rates.
mokus 6y ago
And that’s not even going into the inevitable push-back over transporting that kind of power wirelessly in public spaces. Consider how much more virulent the 5G panic would be if 5G involved these kinds of power levels. I feel like politically this is at least 50 years from being viable even if the technology were perfect today.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Also this is the kind of thing that won't be tested for health impact for the necessary 20 years before being released. And once the investment is high enough, if we ever discover that being a in wireless charging electric car is in fact, not very healty if you do it for a decade, the steaks will be so great that it will take half a century before society balance things out.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Based on the article, it sounds like you wouldn't need to tear up large chunks of road, but instead would have short stretches with chargers every few miles on the highway. It would be particularly interesting if there were solar arrays with batteries you could place in more remote areas.
ramenmeal 6y ago
A test was done in San Diego with the concept of putting magnets in the road for self driving cars. I never thought it was practical due to cost. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-...
sirmoveon 6y ago
Right, how can keeping human error under the wheel be viable, considering you are already rigging the entire road infrastructure?. Just make more efficient public transportation under such circumstances. Maybe, the whole idea is just a marketing stunt to catch the eye and interest of the average person to prop the technology in the media. Because wireless charging definitely has many applications.
jdietrich 6y ago
More to the point, how many pacemaker and ICD users are we willing to kill? If you've got an electrical device connected directly to your heart, you really, really don't want to unexpectedly drive into an incredibly strong EM field.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

asdff 6y ago

Even building a bus or a bike lane is highly controversial in the U.S.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MR4D 6y ago
But an HOV lane is not, and those are good places to start, as you can regulate the traffic on them.
ashtonkem 6y ago
And would have a bigger impact on global warming than improving EV distances.

hhs 6y ago

> Even if technically feasible, I don't know if we have the economic/political feasibility that's also required to make that work It’s a good point, though outside the US there are also entrepreneurs. Politics/regulations might work differently. There could also be incentives to do things like this.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Unclear what the benefit is, given the cost. EVs already provide enough range for commuting. The vast majority of the population commutes tens of miles, and EVs can regularly do hundreds of miles. So there’s really no need to modify roads for the sake of commuters. For longer distance travel we really should be talking less roads and more high speed rail. They’re faster, safer, and more efficient than cars. It’s also a less uncertain technology; there are several countries with highly successful high speed rail systems that we could copy. For freight we should use regular rail for similar reasons, plus the fact that using semi trucks, diesel or EV, creates a large financial burden on the public to undo the damage that heavy trucks do to our roads.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago
The benefit is that it eliminates (perceived) range anxiety. People are used to filling up their cars at gas stations, and used to battery-powered devices 'dying' - an unfortunate label. Even if real-world use was a tiny fraction of miles traveled, I think people would be much more apt to buy electric if they knew that the cars could charge as they drive. You could implement it such that the car communicated with the road and was delivered a charge only if it was beyond a certain number of miles that day to reduce load on the network and incentivize overnight charging. Regarding high-speed rail, the whole point of driving your car to the destination is to have a car at the destination; high-speed rail where you arrive and have to walk is a non-starter for a lot of destinations right now. I agree that we should reduce the effective subsidy that heavy freight trucking currently benefits from so businesses are economically motivated to switch to more rail freight.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I get that range anxiety is an irrational fear, but I genuinely doubt that it’s why people don’t buy EVs. I suspect that resistance to change is a more common cause, with range anxiety being a convenient excuse. Besides, any solution to range anxiety has to be tuned to the social benefit it would generate. I’d be more a fan of simply making gasoline more expensive, since what we really need is not people using EVs, but people not using fossil fuels.
  - turtlebits 6y ago
    Range anxiety is not an irrational fear. Even after 2 years of owning an EV (w/ 200+ range), range anxiety is present. Actually it's more like charge while not at home anxiety, as charging is still a crapshoot. - L1 charging is 3-4 miles / hour. - Charging infrastructure is horrendously unreliable. (non-Tesla). I don't do much outside charging, but in 40% of my experiences, chargers are often out of service, throw errors, or not maintained well. (I was at an popular Electrify america spot and 3 of 6 chargers were out of commission, 2 of them were like that for weeks)). - Charging is expensive. More expensive than gas, sometimes ripping you off. Session fees of $3 just for plugging in, plus 4x residential kwh rates.

mokus 6y ago

And that’s not even going into the inevitable push-back over transporting that kind of power wirelessly in public spaces. Consider how much more virulent the 5G panic would be if 5G involved these kinds of power levels. I feel like politically this is at least 50 years from being viable even if the technology were perfect today.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Also this is the kind of thing that won't be tested for health impact for the necessary 20 years before being released. And once the investment is high enough, if we ever discover that being a in wireless charging electric car is in fact, not very healty if you do it for a decade, the steaks will be so great that it will take half a century before society balance things out.

ogre_codes 6y ago

Based on the article, it sounds like you wouldn't need to tear up large chunks of road, but instead would have short stretches with chargers every few miles on the highway. It would be particularly interesting if there were solar arrays with batteries you could place in more remote areas.

ramenmeal 6y ago

A test was done in San Diego with the concept of putting magnets in the road for self driving cars. I never thought it was practical due to cost. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-...

sirmoveon 6y ago

Right, how can keeping human error under the wheel be viable, considering you are already rigging the entire road infrastructure?. Just make more efficient public transportation under such circumstances. Maybe, the whole idea is just a marketing stunt to catch the eye and interest of the average person to prop the technology in the media. Because wireless charging definitely has many applications.

jdietrich 6y ago

More to the point, how many pacemaker and ICD users are we willing to kill? If you've got an electrical device connected directly to your heart, you really, really don't want to unexpectedly drive into an incredibly strong EM field.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]