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Building the first highway segment in the U.S. that can charge electric vehicles
- 310260 3y agoIt never ceases to amaze me the lengths we will go to overcomplicate transportation just so everyone has to continue to buy and maintain their own vehicle.
- Moto7451 3y agoI think this is a literal example of a solution searching for a problem. I charge my car at home. Not everyone gets to do that, but solving that issue is a better use of resources. On a road trip the 20 minutes of fast charging is welcomed. I would stop even if I was charging while driving. Having 16A of charging hanging off light poles and meters on a street in front of an apartment is a better use of resources than wiring the road. Having adequate DC charging is a better use of resources than moving the goal post to “which length of road can I charge on?”
- mardef 3y agoTFA mentions that charging during travel would allow trucks to carry fewer batteries, would would reduce weight and increase range, efficiency, and cargo capacity. You cannot achieve that by charging your semi at home.
- ajmurmann 3y agoIs it so that everyone has to buy their own vehicle or so that everyone has control over the space they travel in, who else is in that space and the travel schedule?
- pech0rin 3y agoObviously you didn’t read the article because its talking about freight and trucks, which is how the majority of US shipping economy is run. So many low effort comments on this site recently.
- 310260 3y agoThe full title says: "Building the first highway segment in the U.S. that can charge electric vehicles big and small as they drive" It's obviously about more than just freight trucks even if that's their initial intention for the project.
- xyst 3y agoWhat a waste of money. Fuck highways. I want housing. This country is stuck in the 1950s
- bongodongobob 3y agoI'm dying to hear your ideas on how logistics would work in the US without highways.
- krasin 3y agoThis is a ~400 meters segment; the method is quite lossy due to wireless power transmission and also encumbered with a pending patent. I also suspect that road maintenance will be much more expensive, once there are smarts inside. A time-proven alternative is to install trolleys on such trucks and put overhead wires, similar to trolleybuses ([1]) or electric trains. It's known to scale to thousand kilometers, easy to service and cheap to install. And the road would remain just dumb asphalt / concrete. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus
- mlinhares 3y agoThat doesn't get VC money and crazy people screaming about it. Boston/Cambridge is full of those and it's a pleasure to be on them but there's no crazy CEO trying to sell it so no one bothers to pay attention to them.
- codesnik 3y agoMoscow was a trolleybus capital of the world just recently. I'm still salty that they destroyed it in just a couple of years, replacing with regular buses and a handful of electric ones (which still require a small ICE engine in winter to stay warm, ridiculously enough)
- xattt 3y agoWas there ever a reason given?
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoI guess same like in Prague when they purged their Trolley buses in 1950s - Gas was cheaper back then. MUCH cheaper.
- codesnik 3y ago"electric buses are the future", and "wires are ugly and expensive to maintain". Also trolleybus depots are taking some valuable commercial space at the end of the lines, it's easier to have a bus depot on city outskirts. For most of those trolleybuses with a small battery (semi-autonomous) could be a much, much cheaper and reasonable answer, but I guess someone made a good buck on depot real estate or electric buses or whatever.
- ipnon 3y agoI like to think this vindicates Heinlein’s conveyor belt solar panel roads, just in the opposite direction of energy transfer.
- olesya1979 3y ago[dead]
- DemocracyFTW2 3y agosolar freaking whatever, again...
- MenhirMike 3y agoLooking forward to EEVblog showcasing why this is once again a cash grab that has zero chance to actually work.
- wkat4242 3y agoHe already did, though that was not a highway segment but a local road. Same lossy tech though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGwHRImfE4E&t=0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGwHRImfE4E&t=0
- Jakesben10 3y ago[flagged]
- wkat4242 3y agoDebunked by EEVBlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGwHRImfE4E&t=0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGwHRImfE4E&t=0
- 1letterunixname 3y agoHahaha, I remember our favorite, plucky EE presenter opining about this. Solar freak'n roadways and friends must be zombies because these dumb ideas just won't die.
- m463 3y agoThis might be a good match to hills, which are short areas of need. Trucks lose an extreme amount of energy hauling heavy trailers up steep inclines.
- Jakesben10 3y ago[flagged]
- acaird 3y agohttps://apnews.com/article/wireless-roadway-electric-vehicle-charging-detroit-22fcdeabd026d81712a0c1a12b190d9a https://apnews.com/article/wireless-roadway-electric-vehicle... 90% of the complexity in this is yet to be addressed... but as proofs-of-concept, sure. Or we could, you know, invent trains.
- Squeeeez 3y ago[dead]
- pshc 3y ago> Heavy-duty trucks are one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions for the U.S. transportation sector because they make up a large portion of interstate traffic. The solution to this is to build trains. Heavy trucks destroy asphalt, which is expensive and carbon-intensive to replace. EV trucks emit pollution in the form of tire dust—microplastics that pollute the air and water.
- noah91734 3y agoWhat's old is new again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line
- instaheat 3y agoThere is no other possible name for this road other than "Electric Avenue"
- Agree2468 3y agoI don't understand why this is being pursued when there's already duty limits for how long drivers can be on the road anyway. Surely the money would be better spent on chargers at truck stops, no?
- rootusrootus 3y agoDoesn't take complicated math to conclude that there's no way a method this inefficient is going to flow anywhere near enough electrons to charge a moving car. It won't get anywhere near enough to keep the thing moving, even.
- 1970-01-01 3y agoWhy was this flagged?