Very cool. Wish my country was as advanced...

I thought this idea was an old one? I remember it being tested and it came down to not being worth the trouble/too expensive.

The problem was since cars were driving daily on it the roads got incredibly dirty incredibly fast (on top of natural weather and dut) and even in the best of conditions the cars didn't charge nearly as fast enough.

Maybe tech got better, but we're still a long way from this.

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Anybody that's been on this sub for a few years knows this idea is already half a decade old. I believe it was already implemented in Germany or somewhere

They are SO CLOSE to figuring out trains

F-Zero recharge zones

Energy products are getting more affordable to produce each year as the manufacturing ramps up and technology advances.

Today, electric airplanes idea is not feasible. Consensus around that. But also acknowledge that in the near future it could be depending on how the tech develops.

Not a word about high speed trains. Here in Switzerland even EVs are thought to be the worst for transportation in terms of damage to the environment. Trains are the best.

Auuuggghhh. We can’t maintain regular roads. This is not a good investment. Yes 100% go green. But that’s going to have to involve fewer cars over time. Fancy public roads when we don’t maintain our current roads is a distraction.

I need to wonder if this is even worthwhile. Perhaps the future is hydrogen fuel cell. Having to re-engineer the entire road system in the USA just to fit the vehicle type seems like an awful waste of money.

What about the increase of energy required to push the vehicle through the opposing field? Will that negate any charge the inducting obtained?

Hmm, to get rid of the inductive losses we could use a direct wire connection. There's a lot of power involved so having it next to the road might be dangerous... So, we'll put it above the vehicle. We'll need a return path for the electricity, so let's have a metal bar under the vehicle for that. Self-driving is difficult, so seeing as we have something in the road already, let's ensured that it's accurately placed for the vehicles to follow it. Maybe even make it a mechanical connection. Aaannd... We've reinvented electric trams/trains.

Hasn't this been busted a thousand times by scientists already?

It's just another Theranos.

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Listen I’m a suburbanite idiot who would never ever give up private cars. But you wan the actual solution here MORE FUCKING TRAINS! If I could reasonably travel via train to and from work or shopping I would… if I had access to high speed rail I would travel to LA for work no problem, have access to a higher income and normalize housing prices across a larger region brining down demand in LA and bringing up demand along the train rout, stop trying to invest in stupid projects and just give us mother fucking trains!

Doesn't this suffer from all the same design failures of the "solar" roadway?

Until people can own their own trains to drive how they want when they want half of Americans will call it communism

I don't get the hate. You can talk about trains all you like but the US is already committed to a suburban layout and this didn't just happen with cars. It was already the case in the era of horses that people would live outside of town and only come into the city to shop periodically. This trend towards suburbs is not recent and impossible to unwind. People who grew up in the suburbs and moved to the city love to whine about it but the burbs aren't going away any time soon. If you live downtown, take the subway by all means but it won't work for suburbs where large portions of the population live.

Electrifying roads is the most sensible thing in the world. There are all these comments saying that it is an "old idea" as if this somehow demonstrates that it is flawed. Battery powered vehicles is also an old idea. Solar panels were invented in the 1950s --so what? Being an idea that has been in circulation for some time doesn't imply anything about its practicality.

Charging in motion with inductive chargers is a great idea that is a perfect match with electric vehicles and it is pretty much inevitable that we'll end up with both widespread electric vehicles and wireless charging roadways because both those idea make perfect sense.