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World's First Electrified Road For Charging Vehicles Opens In Sweden (theguardian.com)
A 1.2-mile stretch of road with electric rails has been installed in Stockholm, Sweden, allowing electric vehicles to charge up their batteries as they drive across it. "The technology behind the electrification of the road linking Stockholm Arlanda airport to a logistics site outside the capital city aims to solve the thorny problems of keeping electric vehicles charged, and the manufacture of their batteries affordable," reports The Guardian. From the report: Energy is transferred from two tracks of rail in the road via a movable arm attached to the bottom of a vehicle. The design is not dissimilar to that of a Scalextric track, although should the vehicle overtake, the arm is automatically disconnected. The electrified road is divided into 50m sections, with an individual section powered only when a vehicle is above it. When a vehicle stops, the current is disconnected. The system is able to calculate the vehicle's energy consumption, which enables electricity costs to be debited per vehicle and user. The "dynamic charging" -- as opposed to the use of roadside charging posts -- means the vehicle's batteries can be smaller, along with their manufacturing costs. A former diesel-fuelled truck owned by the logistics firm, PostNord, is the first to use the road.
I bet pedestrians are in for a "shock" ...
Driving 1.2 miles might take 5 minutes, maximum. How much power can they possibly transfer to the vehicle battery in that time?
Energy is transferred from two tracks of rail in the road via a movable arm attached to the bottom of a vehicle.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Very exclusive and isolationist...
Battery savings $2000
Extra cost for road $200 Million
Also lasts until they have to repair the road, then I am guess the road will be broken and no more charging.
I also guess that all the cheap skates trying to maximize their "free" charge time will go so slow that the road will be impassable almost.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
These days, about the only jaw-dropping tech coming out of the America
This is not "jaw-dropping tech" except in its stupidity.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Does this mean that jay walkers will be electrocuted?
A money grab of European proportions to build a parking lot.
Why would you put track that the vehicle has to connect to? It will wear out and you have to line it up and connect. Ever hear of wireless charging??? Duh. They could have done this in a much much better way. Make it wireless charging!
Could take an hour or more...
This is actually really REALLY old technology. Streetcars used this at the dawn of American cities, and I'm somewhat curious if having a dual-use (Streetcar and electric automobile) network could propel a faster switch from IC engines and towards better public transit in one fell swoop. While the idea of trolleys and streetcars using overhead wiring is more common, plenty of US cities used in-road electric rails (most notably Washington DC see links) http://www.rypn.org/forums/vie... https://www.dcpreservation.org...
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Go fuck yourself with a broken bottle, you AC POS.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You obviously don't know what "jaw-dropping" means. I'll explain: It means off-the-wall. Mind boggling. Crazy. Something jaw-dropping might be world changing, or it might be headed at Mach 3 for the scrap pile of failed ideas.
The point, which you missed, is that there was a time when anything like that probably originated in the United States. If it failed, the next potentially world changing idea would be coming along in prototype form a week later. The US used to be a hotbed of innovation and new takes on old ideas. Americans dared. Failure on one front just meant it was time to push harder on another.
Now most of what I see coming out of the US is metathesiophobic drivel from a bunch of hidebound, frightened old men who don't give a crap about anything but the bottom line of corporations that are screwing them without mercy.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The first one was built a bit further north and uses a dual overhead catenary and has a counterpart in a warmer climate in USA.
Both built to test how the technologies will work in practical conditions.
https://www.trafikverket.se/en...
Thatâ(TM)s just the sort of response I would expect from a person whose post history shows clear signs of mental illness. Itâ(TM)s lucky for you that slashdot exists because in the real world nobody would bother listening to you.
People need to stop voting for those candidates who are supported by people with a strong financial interest in existing technology, such as the Koch Brothers.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Sweden doesn't have any car companies anyway, just a few shell companies owned by Chinese investors trying to shrug off shoddy Chinese wares as Old-World luxury.
First of all, Sweden does still have car companies remaining under Swedish ownership, such as Koenigsegg Automotive AB. It's true that Saab and Volvo cars are now Chinese (although Volvo Cars still does R&D in Sweden). But the story is more about lorries, and AB Volvo manufactures lorries, construction equipment and the like (Saab Scania is owned by the Germans).
Haha, I thought the point of Russian trolling was to make people think they weren't Russian trolls. Maybe it's counterpropaganda?
The point, which you missed, is that there was a time when anything like that probably originated in the United States. If it failed, the next potentially world changing idea would be coming along in prototype form a week later. The US used to be a hotbed of innovation and new takes on old ideas. Americans dared.
You mean immigrants to America. America was a hotbed of innovation not because of anything other than America was a relatively safe place for smart people to migrate to in turbulent times. Those days are mostly over but ironically the common man believes that the path back to greatness is by persecuting immigrants.
There have certainly been times when the US produced more innovation than it does today, but there was never a time when any sane person would have assumed any new invention to come out of that country.
Electric cars and Trams (or cars operating like them), Nickel-Iron Batteries, wooden high-rises, hyperloop (New York City still has remnants of the pneumatic tube network), natural plastics. Blacksmithing is even seeing a resurgence... What's next? Wood gasifiers, Lye soap, Roman concrete, shipping by sail, cars with sails, horse and buggy, derigibles, the rest of Nikola Tesla's patent portfolio? What about medicine, modern medicine allowed us to forget treatments that may have worked OK - for example the discovery of antibiotics virtually stopped all research into other treatments that may be valid now that we have created so many antibiotic resistant strains. What else should we bring back?
Solar freaking roadways to make this system into a truley worthless money pit.
America pioneered this about a century ago and abandoned it several decades ago ... Technically the automobile and oil industries bought them out (the electric tram companies) and killed them and replaced them with stinky, polluting buses - it was a real threat to their bottom line that could potentially grow to other cities and make public transportation appealing to the masses.
To pick some nits:
Volvo Cars does more than R&D in Sweden. They have a large fraction of the production here.
There is no Saab Scania. The two companies Saab AB and Scania AB split in 1995.
Stupid question, but how is it that gasoline makes busses not appealing to the masses?
Does electric power somehow keep the junkies from shooting up in the back?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Why are they using an old Peugeot 406 ?
Now when that truck has miscalculated and is almost out of juice, it will go at 2 kmh on that stretch of road to get some meaningful charge...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
The US is full of innovation, but only ones that can be proven to be successful.
No private company is going to ask the US gov't to tear up the roads to install bullshit electrified rails that no car on the planet can use. I'm sure there are dozens of these bullshit ideas, in diorama form, in every low end Community Collage in the US.
Its is stupid idea and will go nowhere. The maintenance costs to the roads alone in any state that has rain/snow would be horrendous, or even just cleaning this miles long crack in a road surface.
Its a good idea if you are an idiot that has never seen the real world.
This is a great first step, but let's make this at least mostly autonomous. Already autonomous cars are coming, but with the carnage they seem to be leaving on the roadways, what if we could come up with a way to make them more or less idiot-proof?
This electrifying track is a great first step in making electric cars feasible, but what if we added a couple more of them that could interface with the wheels of the car to keep it moving in exactly the right direction? If there is no ambiguity or variance in the direction of travel, the problem becomes one dimensional and then automating becomes much easier since you only have to worry about the distance to cars in front or behind you.
Even more, we could really pile on the efficiency if we created some kind of way to couple cars together on the road, so first they don't even have to worry about distance because they're linked together, and second they get the benefit of drafting to increase fuel economy.
We could even build these "track roads" between major urban centers and even have "commuter" versions of them for more local travel.
Man, this is getting almost too big to wrap my head around - it seems almost too good to be true because not only is it feasible but I think it really would be much safer and more efficient!
I need to sit down...
... everyone would drive little individual trolleys? :)
In a few places in the USA we still have buses that run with electrified overhead lines. The buses can run on diesel when off the electrified overhead lines.
I think the Sweden setup is impractical for everyday drivers, but for trucks, buses and other large vehicles that are making the same runs over and over it does make sense.
Keep in mind that making sense does not mean cheaper than fuel. Some cultures actually have a desire to lower air and noise pollution, or to reduce foreign dependence.
Living in an urban area I can tell you, internal combustion engine buses stink and are noisy.
We have electric buses near me that run on overhead tracks. They swap the diesel if they lose their overhead connection, which is fortunately rare these days.
So when we talk about appealing to masses, it is not necessarily the users of the buses that you want to appeal to, it is the neighborhoods full of people that may never use the bus but will fight allowing them nearby due to concerns over noise and air pollution.
Road salt + water + high voltage... But I guess that is none of my business.
You must be trolling, or confusing government innovation with innovation in general. There is obviously innovation in the American private sector, even if we restrict our view to transportation. Tesla, SpaceX, Hyperloop, Uber/Lyft, self-driving cars in general.
This is a cool idea. I disagree with those saying this is pointless... the point is they are sharing the energy supply burden rather than making each car keep its own energy supply via batteries. This means an all-electric car doesn't need a 200+ mile range, maybe it needs 50 miles, which would reduce costs quite a bit.
But you're still crazy if you think there's no innovation in America.
He means that this is a "jaw-droppingly stupid" idea. This isn't a "dare", it is a stupid idea that shouldn't have made it past the napkin stage.
Why why come here? when you can get the news 5 hours earlier?
I'm old enough to recall electric street trolleys. All the trolleys I saw used overhead wires. Sometimes the wires were (are?) used with the buses that replaced the trolleys. Subways, of course, did, and do, use electrified "third rails"
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Wrong but it sounds nice
Some cultures actually have a desire to lower air and noise pollution, or to reduce foreign dependence.
By constantly running power throughout the road at all times? Guess I may as well leave the lights on in my house when no one is home.
That is all.
From the Fine Summary:
"The electrified road is divided into 50m sections, with an individual section powered only when a vehicle is above it. When a vehicle stops, the current is disconnected."
Yeah, it really is adult sized slot cars. Which would be an interesting take on current adult drag racing...