Hacker News Reader

Comment by vikramkr | Hacker News Reader

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

View on HN

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.

> 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.

The 50mins I takes me to charge my Kona every ~210 miles is roughly when I should be taking a break of roughly an hour anyway. "Technology Connections" on YouTube has a really fantastic (and old) video on this subject: assuming level 1 (110V) at home and at work, you'd basically never need anything more than level 1 charging for commuting. EVs require a surprisingly small amount of energy.

> high speed rail

I have understood the efficiencies in rail since I was maybe 12. It blows my mind that it is such a niche mode of transport (especially for goods, transporting humans isn't where the real savings are) in so many places around the world. From a purely economic standpoint (forgetting environmental issues entirely), it makes complete sense to aim to have zero semis on roads between cities. Trains should be long-haul, semis should be last-mile.

> I have understood the efficiencies in rail since I was maybe 12. It blows my mind that it is such a niche mode of transport (especially for goods, transporting humans isn't where the real savings are) in so many places around the world.

Interestingly, the US is actually pretty good at rail freight. They de-regulate most rail freight a few decades ago and are doing fine. The Economist had a special report about it a few years ago (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai...) proudly proclaiming: "America’s system of rail freight is the world’s best."

> Amtrak's passenger services are sparse compared with Europe's. But America's freight railways are one of the unsung transport successes of the past 30 years. They are universally recognised in the industry as the best in the world.

> Their good run started with deregulation at the end of Jimmy Carter's administration. Two years after the liberalisation of aviation gave rise to budget carriers and cheap fares, the freeing of rail freight, under the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, started a wave of consolidation and improvement. Staggers gave railways freedom to charge market rates, enter confidential contracts with shippers and run trains as they liked. They could close passenger and branch lines, as long as they preserved access for Amtrak services. They were allowed to sell lossmaking lines to new short-haul railroads. Regulation of freight rates by the Interstate Commerce Commission was removed for most cargoes, provided they could go by road.

> Before deregulation America's railways were going bust. The return on capital fell from a meagre 4.1% in the 1940s to less than 3% in the 1960s. In 1970 the collapse of the giant Penn Central caused a huge shock, including a financial crisis. By 1980 a fifth of rail mileage was owned by bankrupt firms. Rail's share of intercity freight had slumped to 35% from 75% in the 1920s. Tracks were neglected and fell into disrepair, leading to a downward spiral of speed restrictions and deteriorating service. The term “standing derailment” was coined to describe the toppling-over of stationary freight wagons when the track gave way beneath their wheels.

(You can use outline.com to get past the Economist's paywall.)

> Trains should be long-haul, semis should be last-mile

There is a reason semi's are long-haul. A fleet of semi's is tremendously flexible, with single loading and single unloading.

The fleet can be driven in a myriad of ways and constantly re-routed for suit the present requirement.

Trains are good for a specific types of cargo, ex. to and from ports.

Also, the trains would charge monopoly prices if no long-haul trucks. You can read about that in any US history book.

And if I'm shipping something in the form-factor of a parade float, I'd want to load it once on a truck, not on a truck and then a train.

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.

> ”People are used to filling up their cars at gas stations”

Yes, and EV drivers are used to charging up their cars at charging stations.

Wireless on-route charging is not needed for the same reasons that we don’t need to refuel our cars while driving down the highway.

The real cause of range anxiety in modern EVs is that in many parts of the world there aren’t enough charging stations. But it’s much cheaper to build more charging stations than to dig up roads and retrofit them with wireless charging infrastructure!

EV drivers are used to charging up their cars at home, without making any additional stops. /smug

This. Almost all charging of EVs is done at home. Wish more people realized this.

Presumably people whose use case would require frequent charging in places other than their home (or work) don't buy electric cars, so there's probably some selection bias here.

Here in the UK, Tesla owners drive more miles annually on average than owners of any other car brand[1], which suggests they don't have any qualms about driving long distances and charging away from home.

(As another data point, I see Teslas regularly parked in my London neighbourhood outside homes that do not have any off-street parking/charging. So at least some EV owners get by without any home charging at all)

[1] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8263039/UK-...

Auto Express seems to be the source of those figures, which show that diesel cars as a class have (slightly) higher average mileage than Teslas, and roughly 33% higher average mileage than full electrics as a class.

Again, it seems like selection bias, in that those high-mileage drivers who can use electric do, and those that can't buy diesel. Presumably there is a cohort of diesel drivers who would switch to electric if they offered sufficient range or faster charging, especially as diesels outnumber electrics ~2.5:1 in the UK [2].

[1] https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tesla/352144/tesla-drivers-cov... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299031/fuel-types-of-new...

Or maybe it's "those drivers who can afford to buy a (long range) electric do, and those that can't buy diesel"?

There's still a significant price gap between comparable diesels and electrics.

Norway's experience (60%+ market share for electric vehicles) suggests that if the price is comparable, and charging is convenient enough, the majority of buyers will choose electric.

As the previous poster mentioned, most EV drivers charge at home 99% of the time. Charging stations are for trips which exceed your vehicle's range.

I'd also say that the limited range is a nice way to force people to take breaks on long journeys. My guess would be that this decreases the accident rate of electric vehicles a bit.

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.

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.

> I suspect that resistance to change is a more common cause, with range anxiety being a convenient excuse.

In cities, in where lots of people don't have a personal parking space, there's the charging problem, just like now there's the parking problem.

Some days I had to search for more than 30 minutes for a spot to park in. Add the charging requirement and I would feel anxious in less than a week.

Imagine a world of self driving, electric cars. If the roads themselves powered the cars, the batteries in the cars could be much smaller, enough to get off these powered roads to the final ~10 miles and then back again. In terms of longer distance travel, instead of railways, we could have caravans of cars all going in the same direction that attach to each other powered by a single engine at the front with a larger more powerful engine with bigger batteries. These could all be arranged real time since everyone would know each other’s destinations, so individual cars could hop and off when they need to. I think it’s a great idea and could really change transportation.

Self driving cars are decades away, and replacing a substantial part of our road networks with anything more expensive is decades more away. I give this future a very low chance of happening.

You could probably get some decent benefit by only doing it in some special spots. I.e. intersections in cities where people stop for periods of time, or maybe parking spaces? I like the idea of removing cables from the situation and rather than ensuring i get an "unlimited" duration drive, i get 25% additional by just being on the road.

Solar power (photovoltaics) produce during the day, when most vehicles are in use.

Being able to directly store energy into their batteries (or maybe even have the vehicle directly use it, without having to store it in its battery, just as many portable PC can do) as it is produced and without any intermediate storage (maybe even without the usual AC<->DC transformation(?)) may justify such a system.

The easy benefit is that you can reduce battery weight. This can also make them safer.

That’s a decent point if you focus on battery cost, but if reducing vehicle weight was ever a policy goal we could achieve that at a negative cost by banning SUVs. Until we do that, I’m dubious about any public expenditures to reduce vehicle weight until we fix the low hanging fruit.

Reducing battery weight has a few advantages. Your car is lighter. This means less weight on the road, and thus less road maintenance. Or less batteries in the system, meaning it is cheaper. And safer because mass times velocity = momentum. Right now electric vehicles are substantially heavier than their ICE counterparts. (A Model 3 has a curb weight comparable to a F150)

And, since batteries have volume, more space. People buy SUVs despite the size because you get extra space. A battery Ads weight and reduces space.

> People buy SUVs despite the size because you get extra space.

No, in the Bay Area, people buy SUVs to "feel taller" when driving in traffic.

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

But an HOV lane is not, and those are good places to start, as you can regulate the traffic on them.

And would have a bigger impact on global warming than improving EV distances.

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.

> 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.

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.

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-...

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com