Detroit's newest road can charge electric cars as they drive on it
Detroit is now home to the country's first chunk of road that can wirelessly charge an electric vehicle (EV), whether it's parked or moving.
Why it matters: Wireless charging on an electrified roadway could remove one of the biggest hassles of owning an EV: the need to stop and plug in regularly.
Americans will literally do anything to not build trains
I would love to have both. Especially trains! The trains here are so bad though. They cost more than flying and are such a hassle to deal with. The train stations are sometimes far away from the city in some cases too. So you need a ride from the station.
I would support building that out if it was offered.
The roads are there. They ain't moving skyscrapers in major cities! For better or worse, American travel is very road-based, and we'll never have as many diverse options as some other countries...
There's public transport in large and dense cities. It doesn't work to move around the country very well. These people that think something that works in a country that's smaller than an individual state in the US should work fine are "special".
Trains are amazing for small countries, or between cities. The problem comes when you take into consideration how spread out the US is. You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable.
EVs are not a perfect solution, by a long shot. And ideally we would move away from cars being ubiquitous in America, but that is many, many years off. It’s better to work towards that slowly than it is to say “well it’s not perfect so let’s just not.”
You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable. That’s because it’s designed for cars. We have huge parking lots designed for cars but nothing for public transport. Whenever I travel to NYC or Chicago, I can go anywhere in trains and buses. In my city, I can’t even get milk without driving to a store.
Oh pish posh. China is exactly as big as the US and you can get pretty much everywhere for a few bucks in high speed trains.
Trains are fantastic and the US should definitely be investing in them, it's a huge disadvantage and a national embarrassment that we don't have affordable and effective mass transportation.
Trains are amazing for small countries, or between cities.
Trains have their bigger advantages on long distances. You get tired in a car, you can't go pp or take a nap. Your costs rises proportionally with the distance etc.
Just north of the us is a mainly freight railway system that spans the width of the continent...
Then there is this image in an article about that on Wikipedia
The spread out reasoning just seems silly to me on the basis of that literally being what trains were even for in the first place, going distances not suitable for horses. If it connects cities, that is also a start that shouldn't be passed on for being imperfect.The only reason a car would be needed at all in north America is because of all the poorly designed car centric infrastructure that ends up not even being good for cars as demonstrated by the absolutely heinous traffic that only seems to get worse with every road "upgrade" I have ever seen the before and after of.
There are tons of areas of the US that have the population density to support it, but still have horrible train service. We made deliberate decisions to favor highways over trains, and we can undo those decisions.
Why would highways be less susceptible to the "spread out" effect than trains?
EEVBlog, Dave, where you at? We need a debunking video. This smells like solar freakin' roadways.
I thought the same thing!
It's not as bad as solar roadways, but it's still a meh idea. It works, but it's not very efficient. You need coils of wire built into the road, which means replacing the concrete. Still need to upgrade the power grid to handle the load. If it's not 100% tax subsidized, then it has to track where you're car is in order to charge you properly.
It solves few problems and adds some of its own.
Why occasionally plug in when you can lose roughly 50% efficiency and not. Such a boondoggle.
The point would not be to never plug in, but instead extend the drive time of an EV by using certain roads.
If on a full charge you get 250miles, but if you take a slightly alternative route and get 500 miles, you’re going to have much less resistance to EVs in any community that would be likely to use these roads.
You’re human, I’m human, and almost anyone buying an EV is presumably human (I hope) So I can confidently say this from experience:
In 250 miles of driving, it’s very likely you’re going to need to take a dump, a pee break, or grab a sandwich. If you have a second passenger, even doing so twice or three times.
15 mins for stops isn’t bad at all, and more people need to understand their “quick stops” that feel like 1-3 minutes are actually a lot longer.
More often than not, I’ve found my car is ready to go before I am if I am ordering a coffee or grabbing a fast food item and taking a quick pee break.
Source: owning an EV and doing 6 600mi trips and 2 250mi trips.
Not only that but AFAIK no current EV can do wireless charging so who do they expect to use this? I should probably read the article.
Goddamn we can't even maintain the basic roads we have, much less a much more expensive and complicated one. It'll be obliterated by salt and snow the first winter and never work again.
I can just imagine all the tweakers tearing up the road to get at any copper wiring it might be using.
Financially or electrically?
Yes
There's a lot of details missing here. It sort of makes sense if you are parked on the street, but it says you can also get a charge while driving. How much battery capacity can you realistically expect to get driving down this stretch of road? Like within the limitations of physics. Maybe if the highway system had this installed but it would be outrageously expensive to replace it all. I also have major doubts that a universal standard would be agreed upon by all manufacturers and municipalities.
Money would be better spent installing more frequent charging stations, which I understand is already the plan.
Now when will the capitalism kick in and if you don't pay your monthly sub you don't get road charging
That sounds like it would be very inefficient and produce massive amounts of RFI.
Not a problem unless you have hearing aids or a pacemaker. We’re not going to talk about higher cancer risk either, are we?
Non ionizing radiation doesn't cause cancer.
You're worried about that 5G vaccine, aren't you.
I'm worried about RFI that will interfere with my radio reception.
There won't be any health issues from this. They wouldn't be allowed to use it if it exceeded FCC RF exposure limits, which are quite a few orders of magnitude lower than anything that could cause harm.
Kinda like F-Zero?
Charging keeps getting presented as a major hassle but it really really isn't. Trickle charge overnight is more than plenty for a day of driving.
You know what other form of transportation wirelessly recieves power? Trains.
Wirelessly?
Not wireless. Overhead contact lines are wires they just skim along them.
Comparison for this would be a metal brush dragging the ground over electrical contacts to maintain connection. Which would be a third rail on roads, very dangerous.
Anyone else getting FZero vibes?
Coming soon: Tesla charging roads, Rivian charging roads
Somewhere in the world, Norman Reedus started breathing heavily in anticipation
awesome so Robocop can charge while driving to a crime!
Wireless charging 🤦
Can it charge my phone?
Yeah, but you know, then you're in...Detroit. 😕
Had the same idea when I was a kid:
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Haha I assumed this was to bill the EVs so that it would cost more to drive them than ICEs.
I'm perhaps too cynical these days.
Great. Great! We need innovation like this.