Welcome To The Future
 

Solar freeways and roads... This will be the future. This is so freaking awesome!

That's pretty neat:thumbsup

Nice but this will be probably against some lobby which will try to stop it.

I wonder how much traction it'll actually offer once it's built up in road grime or with sleet.

Sounds great, but lets start by making a simple roof panel that's affordable for everyone.

It's unbelievable, I look forward to have this in our country :D

I seen this on the GS Elevator twitter the other day

#1: Solar power has been the next big thing for forty years.

it still is, we just have no idea how to make it efficient yet.. haha

Why wouldn't they just use street sweepers? They use them here in my little home town, every other Thursday afternoon it comes down my street.

This is something I do not understand - why it's so expensive. You are talking about panels on a roof; They can't be that expensive to build. Add in a few pipes, some batteries, and a system to control it... And it shouldn't cost all that much.

I looked into solar a few weeks ago by attending a seminar at our HOA clubhouse. There are tax breaks and incentives, and my county has an extra incentive too where most of it is paid for....

It's a great idea, but how would they get the funding to lay this stuff on every roadway? It would have to start small.

Fucking Brilliant Idea! Why would we not support this, it only makes perfect cents ;) This one is a no brainer, and needs to be tried out in a much larger scale, much larger..I love the idea :thumbsup Thanks for the link...

sounds like great innovation..those example r so cool...wounder if this can become reality

Wow I love it. Too bad there's no mention of cost in the video but hopefully they aren't too expensive, and hopefully the cost will drop like any other technology. I would definitely buy them for use on my driveway.

we are 30 years ahead to see this working in full

Great stuff. What if someone hack settings for road.

You're missing the point.. The big lobbyist don't hate solar because it's clean energy, they hate it because if you put it on your house they can't charge you a monthly fee.

If every house in the country had a thousand or two watts of solar sitting on their roofs suddenly the energy companies would be up shit creek.

i was amazed at how many homes had solar cells for eastern europe.. was like going into a future advanced land..

#1. Someone needs to be educated on how long to make a YouTube video that people will watch all the way through.

#2. Never happen in any of our lifetimes; too cost prohibitive to do all the crap they said can be done with them.

I was just watching few houses here today and never noticed their solar panels before. Anyway, these guys should go to Tesla motors for funding.

Actually I was very surprised at how much solar there is in New Orleans. There obviously must be some sort of subsidy program going on there, because just driving around some of the neighborhoods it would often be 50% or more of the houses that I'd see solar on the roofs.

Meanwhile here in New Mexico a place you have to be a fool not to have solar, I see almost none. Honestly this amazes me more than anything. If you live in NM, AZ, NV or really anywhere in the south west you could easily run a house on solar and be grid free yet I see very little solar here.

And you think that the oil companys would allow this ?
I mean solar roads that come with solar cars ?

The technology has been out there for years, theres reasons why it has not really gone public ...

great idea i will let ya know when my backyard is set

yeah because the big lobbyists are the ones with the technologies to make things efficient and affordable...

Great idea, whether we ever get to see it in widespread practice is probably down to those who's pockets would be affected by it's implementation.

im in canada, and was floored by how many houses / businesses had them.

they had whole.. 'contraptions'... that had full rotation on seaside shops/restaurants.. but looks like someone built it at home based off mats.. best we have in vancouver is random pedestrian crosswalks with attached solar panels, and the odd enthusiast.

Interesting to hear about NO.. guess utilized due to the disaster?

anyway, it is just my opinion on a 2 week trip.. but it was the one main thing i remember.

something should happen.. one of the first things i did when getting back was start looking into it lol

Great idea! Would love to see it executed, but there are many companies out there that will lobby against this, as well it would take a LONG time to even make a dent in the roadways.

You are right yet again. Best to not even try, right man? Give up! Thats what they should do. The nerve of some people trying to make the world a better place.


Solar Panels on cars would not work very well because the panels need to take up alot of space to charge a car's batteries in a reasonable time. If roads were solar, the energy they capture could charge cars while they drive on it via Induction.

The technology has been around for a long time but its getting cheap enough to do more and more things with.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...re_s-law-1.jpg
(From Scientific American)

Won't glass and oil create quite a slippery surface?

The panels are in the $1/watt threshold now, so they are not very expensive to buy them outright.

As far as panels on cars.. it's just not gonna happen because the car body would have the panels at all different angles.

Now my Telsa idea was to use their battery/drive system and build a AWD van like the old school VW Westy's. You could fit probably 500w on the roof which wouldn't keep it charged as a closed loop system, but 500w is enough to charge the batteries back up a pretty good amount.

With something like that, you could drive the car to work doing a average commute and then leave the car parked in the sun charging. By the end of the day it would probably be fully charged again. Meaning it's not going to be enough solar to keep you driving forever, but it would add quite a bit of supplement charging for the average city dweller.

Something like that could very well work in the southern states of the US where there is a lot of sunny days. It would however have to be some sort of van or SUV to get enough flat roof space for the solar.

wow. gotta admire the vision there :thumbsup

Looks pretty cool :thumbsup

Solar is becoming more and common here in Northern California. Our HOA didn't allow it at first, but eventually they lost that battle. Our county also has a great subsidy program too, and combined with all of the other programs it costs very little up front to buy and install on your house, and you can fiance that if you wish.

If the oil companies were smart... they would be investing in this right now and leading the charge.

When you say "our lifetimes" you really mean your lifetime, right?

They can barely keep up with pot hole repair

Very interesting my first thought wasnt traction Im sure that would be fine...when its dry but wet...different story

My second thought is that something on a scale this massive is also massively expensive even if each of those heaxagons were only a dollar yer talking a massive amount of outlay for even a small parking lot.

and finally the idea that they can generate enough power on their own to melt the snow/ice that sits on top of them is nonsense so do they expect the excess power to be stored in batteries? youd have to because about 8 of every 24 hrs is total darkness.

Im not saying it isnt feasable but theres a lot of questions and the bottom line is the bottom line...is it economically viable.

I applaud the thinking for sure

Too damn expensive for the old coot superiors .what they don't understand they wont go for.

The panels may be cheap but how expensive will it not be to make the high quality roads that the panels must be installed on. A heavy truck needs a very solid ground that dont flex at all or the panels will break.
Not sure how you have in USA but in Sweden they would not last one day, we dont have concrete roads here and we will never be able to afford that either.
Panels on the roofs should clearly be much cheaper than it is here in Sweden anyway.

Damn this is soooo cool!!!

Seems great. Like many great things, they will never implement it at global scale.