Salt water car - Legit or BS

[neorichieb1971]

http://www.stuff.tv/h2omg-240mph-car-po ... water/news

I've read lots of these things before, but none seem as legit as this.

Wonder how it sounds.. Glug glug glug hahaha.

[BulletMagnet]

Wonder how it sounds.. Glug glug glug hahaha.

I prefer to imagine it whistles like a tea kettle.

In any case, it'd be nice if this wasn't yet another false start in the effort to break free of fossil fuels...offhand I wonder if there are any stipulations about precisely what manner of salt water is needed to power it (i.e. does it need to be purified/treated in some way, etc.).

[CMoon]

I'm always very leary of this kind of thing. Here's an article from a reputable page explaining the science:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-effi ... r-fuel.htm

The problem, as usual, more energy to burn the salt water than you get from the burning of the salt water. It is typical of the sort of panacea that everyone is looking for, while dodging the obvious answer--solar panels on your house, an electric car in your garage. The salt water idea seems like we're adding a third step since no matter what we do, we'll need a big battery.

Oh yeah, then there's the hydrogen fuel cell idea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle) which I really like. Instead of gas stations you have solar powered hydrolysis stations. I think this is another really solid idea and could actually work side by side with electric cars. Once again, homeowners could for the most part fuel their cars themselves using solar panels (will people in the future be able to by their own hydrolysis gear?)

One can understand why the big gas/oil companies are doing everything they can to stand in the way of this.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

In any case, it'd be nice if this wasn't yet another false start in the effort to break free of fossil fuels.

It probably is. The marketing is all hype, no substance with regards to how it actually works. All the media about it says it runs on "salt water" which is a far cry from the truth (implying it can use ocean water) when what it sounds like it it's a specially produced, ionized water (that may be incredibly expensive/impractical to mass-produce). Basically, they're putting a flow cell into a car. Okay, but have they made it practical? Reminds me of those bad science hype articles about running a car on thorium that completely ignored how bad an idea it really was.

It'd be more believable if the articles about it went into how it actually works instead of hyped catchphrases like "Man, those oil companies aren’t going to be happy…". I'm not a chemist or physicist, but I'm sure we'll eventually see some actually educated takes on this as to whether or not it's too good to be true. Even their official website is so full of slick marketing and no substance, that it can't help but smell of bullshit.

while dodging the obvious answer--solar panels on your house

It's a shame that instead of using more technology we already have (solar panels, wind turbines), people are obsessed with finding fancy new solutions, even if they're wildly impractical and scientifically nonsense (like making your highways out of glass covered solar panels).

[Mischief Maker]

It'd be more believable if the articles about it went into how it actually works instead of hyped catchphrases like "Man, those oil companies aren’t going to be happy…"

OIL COMPANIES HATE THIS HOUSEWIFE'S ONE WEIRD TRICK TO FUEL HER CAR WITH SALTWATER WHILE MAKING $$$ FROM YOUR HOME!

[CMoon]

OIL COMPANIES HATE THIS HOUSEWIFE'S ONE WEIRD TRICK TO FUEL HER CAR WITH SALTWATER WHILE MAKING $$$ FROM YOUR HOME!

You won't believe what happens next!

[BryanM]

It's always kind of fun to try to think what the universe would be like if a given conspiracy theory were true. In this case, I guess at the very least you'd have to store salt shakers in the fridge so bacteria doesn't nom nom nom on it.

(like making your highways out of glass covered solar panels).

They had me sold at the "the future will be TRON" point. But lost me again when I had to wonder... why not put the panels ABOVE the road instead?

Reminds me of those bad science hype articles about running a car on thorium that completely ignored how bad an idea it really was.

hehehe wat, they really had a "nuclear power plant in your car!" article? God, media's a joke. That's even worse than the ridiculous "TURING TEST PASSED!" lie that went around this year. A nuclear power plant in a privately owned car. There's not a single thing about that, that isn't mockable.

Oh yeah, then there's the hydrogen fuel cell idea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle) which I really like. Instead of gas stations you have solar powered hydrolysis stations. ...

One can understand why the big gas/oil companies are doing everything they can to stand in the way of this.

Hydrogen has always rather been a pipe dream, that the energy companies were rather fond of pushing since it's the only future where they have as much power in. The electrolysis station would still be a gas station, versus the post in the ground at Wal-Mart's parking lot the electric car would use.

What was the point of the concept exactly? Accomplish a few near-miracles to have something that's worse than what we already have?

[Lord Satori]

Love the Delorean doors for added hype.

[Ed Oscuro]

Wait a second, guys. I don't think this stuff has anything to do with hydrogen extraction.

From what I see about the nanoFLOWCELL, this is just an alternative rechargeable battery structure - nanoscale structures holding a saltwater electrolyte (and salt is a very common electrolyte after all). This section from the Wikipedia article on flow batteries sums up this tech versus others.

So really this is about finding a smart way to use common NaCl instead of increasingly supply-constrained Li. Thankfully many of the world's deposits are in South American countries and China, where it should continue to trickle out into markets apace, but it is still rare compared to salt. However I don't know how they have made up the nanostructure cells.

While everybody is oohing and aahing over the "wow! salt is used in electronics and stuff" factor, what we really need to know is what else is in it. Before then we can't compare it directly to lithium-ion and other types of rechargeable batteries.

Love the Delorean doors for added hype.

That comparison would prove quite apt if power system problems leave people locked into their cars...well, it's been over 30 years since that car, so surely they've got some failsafes by now. It would be great if they could have that kind of door with more modern engineering.

Edit: Holy goodness, the car weighs over 5700 pounds! Yet it still gets to 60 in 2.8 seconds (or so) and can exceed 230 mph. They claim some "internal efficiency" of 80%, not sure if this is a direct comparison to the 30%-ish of gas engines, but surely the efficiency numbers count for less when you consider that your sporty car has to accelerate (and more importantly decelerate) that much mass. But heck, I don't know what typical numbers for weight are on other supercars - I do know that daily drivers don't need carbon fiber to stay under 3000 pounds, though.

[Ed Oscuro]

It's a shame that instead of using more technology we already have (solar panels, wind turbines), people are obsessed with finding fancy new solutions, even if they're wildly impractical and scientifically nonsense (like making your highways out of glass covered solar panels).

That's a funny way of putting things which emphasizes only the bad, and none of the possible good.

Glass, for starters. What I've read has never talked about putting glass on the roads. I haven't seen the video yet, though reading Dave's description I am already inclined to believe he finds that the amount of coverage and the economics aren't close to being there. This is probably right, for now. However I want us all to be clear that such ideas are blue sky research right now - saying that research into different areas shouldn't be funded is totally different than making a simple calculation based on what's now economically feasible.

The economics definitely need to be there, and that includes any unwanted impacts on vehicles traveling. The value of the electricity generated definitely should not only exceed the extra costs of building the material in, but it should also be provided as an equivalent rebate to travelers if it incurs any extra costs in tire / undercarriage damage. Added into that, people might be able to enjoy lower (or eliminated) toll costs (if a utility is also running the road) in addition to lower home energy costs.

Realistically speaking, though, what I read didn't suggest that this material would be harmful to cars in any way. Additionally, we already willingly drive our cars over beaten-up hot strips all the time, so there's not much they can do to actively make things worse other than decide to increase the generating areal density further with a rumble strip or spike design! Road maintenance has always been one of the big factors in human and economic costs of traveling (bent axles, deaths) and having another way for roads to help pay for themselves is desirable.

Roadways cover something like 1% of the US landmass, last I heard. These folks disagree, but then they are obviously counting the extremely low-density states in the mid-northwest of the country - basically, road density (and therefore areal density) is higher in areas with increased energy demands. It doesn't make sense to try to oversimplify this so that we only consider average density - everything in the country (including energy prices) varies by geography.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Glass, for starters. What I've read has never talked about putting glass on the roads.

Then obviously you've never been to their main website which touts these panels as being made out of "textured glass". The absurdity that they'd get 2 million dollars to fund something so depressingly stupid is a testament to society's general scientific illiteracy and willingness to piss money away.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, I think you're giving us another example of scientific illiteracy by putting forward one specific example of a solar roads proposal as if it's the end-all of the concept. Add economic illiteracy to that because we're just assuming that the waste energy generation space of highways will never dovetail with energy costs so that this becomes an economical choice - it might not, but then again it might.

It doesn't really matter if Crowdfunded Company #1 uses glass or whatnot - photovoltaics can be made in many different ways and there probably are ways to make them that also double just fine for a walking or even road surface. And even then, it doesn't matter - do you have something other than "omg, the panels might become dislodged?" Don't tell me you're just worried because the word "glass" is in there.

I have no fear, and neither should anybody else, that this will be pressed into service before it's economically viable. The grants and awards this company have gotten are so far quite meager, and in the company's own estimates, given to The Economist, they're guessing that the building cost would be 50%-300% more expensive than current asphalt building techniques. Whether or not those estimates are actually accurate is not the point, so long as it's true that they are more expensive than asphalt.

So again, blue sky research. But my idea of the production process was always something like the current batch of steamrollers and other construction technology modified so that a photovoltaic generating surface is built in at the same time. Efficiency obviously wouldn't be as good as the purpose-built panels, but it still stands to reason that the cost/benefit ratio works out for a less aggressive technology even if it fails here. At this stage, the backers should feel - regardless of what the firm is saying - that they are not only putting money into a specific implementation of the technology, but also spending money on lobbying and promoting the concept, which is bigger than the single case you're trying to focus on.

So you can ask me to get concerned when there's a big proposal in government to waste money on a major deployment of these panels with an argument based on faulty economics. But so far nobody of consequence has been asking for that - all I see is the usual story of people trying to shut down a project related to one of the big obvious sources of energy producing space in the country, even though the project has obvious applications outside the stated proposal.

So yeah, I agree, scientific (and engineering, and economic) illiteracy is rampant.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Well, I think you're giving us another example of scientific illiteracy by putting forward one specific example of a solar roads proposal as if it's the end-all of the concept.

Don't tell me you're just worried because the word "glass" is in there.

How nice of you to put words in my mouth. Kudos for adding the condescending attitude. YES HURR DURR, GLASS IZ BAD, PROJECT IS BAD DURR, can't have anything to do with anything with the reasons in the videos I linked, DURR. (Glass is a shit material for highways, but there's a million other stupid elements to their project, which the materials I linked already thoroughly address.)

all I see is the usual story of people trying to shut down a project related to one of the big obvious sources of energy producing space in the country, even though the project has obvious applications outside the stated proposal.

Except that they've already received millions of undeserved dollars for a project that fails miserably to be better than what we currently have (you could put solar panels ABOVE the roads if you wanted to and you'd have more electricity generated as well as having the roads better protected from the elements!). This is nothing more than a fanciful project trying to find an elaborate solution to a problem for which we already can address better with current technology, and yet you've decided to play the 'victim' card for them when their nonsense has been called out (how many shitposts do I have to read about WELL THINK OF THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, HOW DARE YOU DESTROY INNOVATION), despite you not knowing anything about the project and not bothering to do even basic research before commenting ("Glass, for starters. What I've read has never talked about putting glass on the roads." - you could have avoided this comment if you'd actually looked up the project before commenting).

[brokenhalo]

so can we change the title of the thread to "salt water car - bullshit"?

[Ed Oscuro]

How nice of you to put words in my mouth. Kudos for adding the condescending attitude.

You have a bad habit of starting shit and then trying to pretend somebody else is to blame. You brought this on yourself with that odd passive-aggressive seeming line - directed at nobody in particular, I'm sure - about the state of scientific knowledge. Ironically you now seem to admit that the reasons you've tried to give for opposing the project aren't strong ones, even if we got suckered into the notion that the only possible forms of highway solar generation are the ones you wanted to draw attention to. I'd be happy to talk about Dave's video on this, if you want. But you haven't decided to do this; instead you've decided to pass your own obviously unresearched opinions off as fact.

I (almost) can't imagine you're serious when you sincerely bemoan the poor state of scientific education, and then throw up non-arguments like "glass is a shit material." Glass is increasingly being used as a load-bearing material, can be made rough or smooth, and they're quoting strength estimates far beyond current requirements, so you'll have to do better than that. Again, I've no idea if it's quite reasonable, but the low end estimate of 50% additional costs actually sounds good. Glass here actually has some potential as a lower-maintenance material that doesn't break apart or pothole as easily as asphalt. I am concerned about bedding and securing independent tiles, but as I write this I can also hear trucks regularly hitting a rough patch on the interstate miles away...and replacing a cracked polygonal tile could be much easier and cost-effective than shutting down entire lanes for months at a time.

Here's a little secret, by the way: Glass is already approved for use on highway surfaces in the form of bonded glass spheres for reflection. The material is already out there and durable enough that highway systems trust it not to chip off too readily or shard, or whatever you seem to think it is that glass does in highways.

The other question your post raises is "how does science get done?" I'm certainly not saying that this needs to get an unending flow of public funding. But if you pretend that it has, you're trying to distort the record.

The NHTSA grant was $750,000 dollars. That's hardly a boondoggle. Nobody twisted the arm of the kickstarter backers into their own support - that's just private speculation, same as in any other developing technology, and you actually don't get to tell people what to do with their money if they want to look into a new avenue of research. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you to learn that the main researcher behind the topic title car started back in 1991. Back then, it's safe to say, nobody seriously thought that a clumsy battery with its low energy density would unseat gasoline for supercars. Well, it still hasn't, but all the car really needs it so find a market.

Back to Solar Roadways - I wouldn't be surprised if they folded! I also agree that we are likely to see other obvious sites for solar generation will need to be developed and probably exhausted (which might not even happen - I know that Dave from EEVblog has offset a substantial portion of his own household energy use with his own solar panels) before this would likely be useful in anything but the most energy-demanding concentrated areas (which is where I see the solar road concept being most useful) where generating capacity and networks are strained. I expect to find it doesn't make sense to site huge networks of solar networks in remote areas, even given that long-range transmission isn't that lossy (there would still likely be a lot of overhead for each section of solar generating capacity, and I'm not keen on running high voltage lines directly along highways). But it's in society's interest to see that this gets an honest hearing before people start spraying a black cloud of anti-hype over it without the benefit of actual engineering research. There are far too many examples of this "common sense" that ends up destroying the integrity of policy debate. Boondoggles are the obvious example of this - but so are premature dismissals. Instead of having a price tag, the costs of missed opportunities are essentially invisible, but they're still harmful.

Your other idea was putting solar panels above roads instead. It's an idea, I'll give you that, but I simply disagree that it's obviously better than the solar roadways idea. It's obviously worse aside from the unknown issue of cost: Solar roads' draw is that it is a road with benefits. You shouldn't have to ponder solar panels above highways long to figure out the reasons why they would be unpopular at best: The structural materials needed to build and secure a solar panel are dangerous (in various ways: you'd see a lot more motorcyclists cut in half by colliding with poles, a lot more small car deaths from IIHS-style small front overlap-collisions, and also distracting/epileptic hazards from the sun flickering through poles). They would be an eyesore and a detriment to property values, and additionally probably not any less expensive because the metal frameworks and poles needed to secure large solar panels aren't exactly cheap, especially if you're factoring in the costs of making the poles to highway safe values. And you still have probably all the same supporting costs in terms of maintenance and collection / distribution of the power.

[Ed Oscuro]

so can we change the title of the thread to "salt water car - bullshit"?

Only if we can write "salt electrolytes - bullshit!" This is just a heavy supercar with a different battery type. It's likely the same people who will buy this also will be interested in lovingly restoring their old flywheel power storage bus or their Stanley Steamer - but the point of the battery is trying to figure out the energy storage mechanism. Basically the problem is figuring out how to generate the power, and then how to store it. Batteries give the promise of generating in the most effective way possible, but gas still has a sizable energy density advantage. For going farther with a certain size tank, gas is still the best - however for a supercar, that energy density of gas doesn't seem to me the only important factor because an electric battery may well be able to transfer power as quickly or faster than gas, which is perfect for this supercar application because they want to deliver a lot of torque to the wheels.

[BryanM]

The idea of having holographic glow in the dark overlays for roads, the tron stuff, is a fun idea. The idea of fusing a power plant with a road, a heater, and a computer system on a chip, is ridiculous. Like that sea calcium scam ridiculous. Not like the bacon genie - the bacon genie at least allows you to microwave a shitload of bacon in one go. They've got the infomercial template down pat though:

The real question may be:
What will be the cost if we don't implement the Solar Roadways?

At least a freaking spork combines inventions in the same problem domain (two eating utensils) and solves actual problems (having to set down and pick up another utensil, reduces utensil stock and washing overhead).

[CMoon]

Yeah, I don't think we can expect the whole infrastructure to change. Making it possible for consumers to do their part (electric cars, solar panels on homes) is IMO the easiest way to let this change happen. The oil tycoons aren't going to voluntarily change, and waiting for the freeways to be replaced with solar panels is a pipe dream. Use what we have now to make something better!

[Ed Oscuro]

The idea of fusing a power plant with a road, a heater, and a computer system on a chip, is ridiculous. Like that sea calcium scam ridiculous.

Well, it's obviously not a scam. The facts are on the table for anybody with the skill and inclination to look at them.

If the question was a simple binary choice, say "we have to put solar panels over the roads or in front of everybody's condo OR we can put them in roads," the aesthetic argument alone could be decisive. I agree that this isn't obviously the question right now, because it's not clear yet how much capacity for home installations and so on remains untapped, and how much needs to be expanded in order to get us where we want to be for low-emissions generation. But it might someday be. And lumping in far-flung highways off in Wyoming together with more congested areas on the seaboards where power delivery and use is a problem - that's ridiculous too.

So, like I said, it's probably best considered as blue sky research. This company is going to have their trial by fire in the marketplace, but could we please please PLEASE not add on "common sense" noise to the signal? So far there's been very little information about this out there and I know how much you all are aware of the reliability of the popular news websites, especially after you all thought this "saltwater car" is a hydrogen burner, when it's actually a battery - so yeah, I'd like to hear from some actual experts first.

@ CMoon:
I personally like the idea, as it's a bit of a throwback to the old Kropotkinesque ideal of each nation being self-sustaining, taken to an even further height - each household being self-sufficient for energy. I am concerned also that combining a utility with a highway transportation fund is a bad idea in terms of wealth accumulation - but certainly this isn't any technical reason to oppose such a project. Maybe it's an economic one, at most.

btw, just to help elevate the level of discussion, I wanted to add that we now have some concrete proof of the costs in crime of not being proactive on energy policy:

British Gas Rampage

[Mischief Maker]

At least a freaking spork is combines inventions in the same problem domain (two eating utensils) and solves actual problems (having to set down and pick up another utensil, reduces utensil stock and washing overhead).

I thought the point of a spork is so prisoners in the lunchroom can't use them to stab each other.

[Ed Oscuro]

These young prisoners must be terrible engineers. Just bung two of the damn things together, or more! Back in the day prisoners made daggers out of newspaper! And bombs from playing cards! Witness the sad state of scientific literacy today.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Glass is increasingly being used as a load-bearing material, can be made rough or smooth, and they're quoting strength estimates far beyond current requirements, so you'll have to do better than that.

And do you have any sources for this claim? Do you have any examples of this where it's subjected to the constant wear and strain of highway traffic?

You see, this is probably why you get a lot of shit for writing enormous posts; they're usually just your personal opinion and they're rarely referenced so they're a gigantic waste of time to go through. For instance, this next bit is easy to brush off as bullshit, because I already knew about glass spheres in luminescent paint:

Here's a little secret, by the way: Glass is already approved for use on highway surfaces in the form of bonded glass spheres for reflection.

That's in the paint of highway markings. That's not the same as making the ENTIRE highway out of glass. For someone who has the audacity to claim I've "decided to pass [my] own obviously unresearched opinions off as fact", you obviously have done no research whatsoever and are just pulling lines out of your ass. In fact, the paint issue is even pointed out in that video (Thunderf00t's made two or three on the issue of solar panel roadways) that using luminescent paint is way more cost effective and far more visible than LEDs in the road are, particularly in broad daylight. This is addressed 3 minutes in on the second video link I posted earlier, but again, you obviously haven't bothered to watch it.

I've actually posted videos by people who do professional work in a science field in day-to-day life that actually back their shit up by demonstrating why the project is terrible for a variety of reasons. And your lengthy response basically consists of little more than opinion without any actual sourced material other than how you're worried solar panels above the road would be "an eyesore and a detriment to property values" with a citation to some article about people in New Jersey bitching about solar panels, which is largely a matter of public opinion which can easily shift over time when acceptance of things like solar panels and turbines as being part of our environment becomes more commonplace.

But it's in society's interest to see that this gets an honest hearing before people start spraying a black cloud of anti-hype over it without the benefit of actual engineering research.

What a load of nonsense. The idea is so demonstrably malformed and lacking in basic engineering, economics and physics knowledge that it's simply a non-starter from so many angles that shouldn't have had any time wasted in it. So far the only attention it's gotten is from mainstream pop culture magazines and people who don't know any better, but it's gotten an incredible amount of hype even with it being a horrific idea, simply because they've happened to get lucky with marketing (just look at the sheer number of comments on videos going through this nonsense about how any critique is bad, how dare you stifile creativity, you must be an oil/nuclear industry shill, etc). It's bad to waste time on bad science because it diverts time, attention and money away from legitimately beneficial projects for society.

...and replacing a cracked polygonal tile could be much easier and cost-effective than shutting down entire lanes for months at a time.

Using a tiled surface on a highway is an amazingly bad idea from a physics standpoints in terms of how the weight of traffic is distributed (see 4:20 for an example). There is a reason our highways are made our of asphalt and not a tiled material, and I wish you would actually look at the rebuttal materials I'm posting instead of simply assuming my argument is based on "[passing my] own obviously unresearched opinions pass your own obviously unresearched opinions off as fact", which frankly reads as psychological projection to me, since you've barely done any fact checking on this whatsoever and haven't used any real reference material.

As a further display of how idiotic the makers of this are, here's a link to their FAQ (again, I posted this before) where they claim that Glass is harder than asphalt by citing a Mohs hardness scale that refers to asphalt in the sense of being only the black bitumen binding (the black stuff in tarmac is soft, but tarmac is made up of the binding plus aggregate rock). It takes a second scratching a rock or a chunk of road surface on a window (also referred to as asphalt or asphalt concrete) to see how easily glass gets scratched due to its relative softness, which means it'd get scratched to hell and thus rendered useless for collecting solar energy by vastly reducing how much light passes through to the panel (not to mention damage to the highway itself, etc).

And then there's their "Military Applications" page which makes me suspect this project is either a scam or conceived by complete imbeciles (a glass-encased solar panel does not a military drone make). In fact, just a few minutes on their website ought to show anyone they're making ludicrously wild claims about their project's capabilities, without having shown any evidence of real, hard numbers as far as how many watts their panels can produce, numbers on cost effectiveness, etc.

[Ed Oscuro]

Glass is increasingly being used as a load-bearing material, can be made rough or smooth, and they're quoting strength estimates far beyond current requirements, so you'll have to do better than that.

And do you have any sources for this claim? Do you have any examples of this where it's subjected to the constant wear and strain of highway traffic?

Didn't I already link it?

It is strong enough, he claims, to support a truck weighing more than 100 metric tons—about three to four times as heavy as most of the 18-wheelers that ply American highways. The material is also more chip-resistant than conventional pavements, he says, and can be finished in a texture that has more grip on tyres than either concrete or asphalt.

In fact, I didn't even notice the bit about tire grip earlier - I mean, this should just be obvious. The rest of my assertion about glass has more to do with just some knowledge I've picked up here and there - it is harder to interpret these things and get a reliable source on them without having access to technical information, but it is still safe to say that glass has an increased importance in many forms of construction as a load-bearing surface. In other words, I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to fact-check every last thing you've tried to make stick. I'm not saying you've raised no good points, but I am very keen not to believe things that don't stand up to scrutiny, or try to separate the noise out of the signal of many overly histrionic online comments which don't give me confidence of knowledge of the company's actual plans. Maybe what we should really do is take this somewhere like the Straight Dope forums or whatever and try to figure out how that works in more detail.

Now, I agree with you about the concern you picked out of this video at 4:20 - once I saw the hexagonal tiles I immediately was concerned that water could get between tiles and freeze. It's likely that this is solved by engineering drainage; indeed simple field stones have been used in quite sophisticated road designs from the ancient world which have even survived millennia, including a few decades of automotive traffic (even though they were not designed for it). It's also likely that there are many places where rain is a rare enough concern that road construction doesn't face the same freezing or washout concerns. It is important to note here that the guy uses a photo of a road that is washing out even with the current road construction technology: Even what we already use isn't perfect. The same is true for the question of whether the roads become bumpy due to settling or shifting of the tiles next to each other; again, even major highways can be quite bumpy moving from section to section based on where the concrete has cracked or been worked back over.

My question on that topic is whether they have actually seen a solution to the substrate construction method. Additionally, I'd also like to know whether they can provide for easy per-tile replacement, which would be a potentially major advantage of this road construction over the current method (i.e., fill potholes, or resurface the entire lane). So far, "the asphalt / macadam / concrete construction technology we use isn't designed for this" is a bit of a cop-out here, like saying that non-load-bearing skyscraper facades can't be built because we only know how to use timber and flying buttresses. But even worse, we have the advantage of having the skills to construct things in different ways, as was the case during the era of cathedrals and Tudor houses. How perverse would it be if we just decided that the highway building lobby didn't like building solar roads, so we decided we couldn't do it? (I'm not making any comment about the credibility of that YouTube commenter, I hope.) So we need to find out what of the current road construction engineering and equipment carries over - hopefully most of it - and price this out. And we also need to price it out in a reasonable fashion. Lo and behold, there is actually a portion of the Federal Government that studies things like this.

I'm not going to be two-faced about this - I'd agree that if these important questions haven't been answered, the technology isn't ready for prime time, and if they can't be fixed, it's not going to be usable. Getting answers to some of these questions quite possibly had something to do with the not-very-large-or-unreasonable $750K NHTSA grant Solar Roadways received.

But again, to reiterate - just saying that this is an idea whose time hasn't arrived for a nationwide rollout doesn't mean that it would have no use in some regions or areas, or given certain economic conditions. We already gave up on "sensible" as having anything to do with energy production when it turned out that fracking was profitable until it started to attract controversy. When sited and operated carefully, does a solar roadway have the same potential for controversy as a wind farm, a mandatory solar panel for every bungalow installed on a utility pole, leaky gas pipelines, or even a solar panel which just happens to reflect a bunch of light right into a neighbor's living room during evening TV time? Like any other energy technology, there's certainly a right and a wrong way to operate it, but so far I see a reasonable amount of promise and also a lot of seemingly premature burials of the concept.

It's funny though - how little Dyson knew with his spheres. It turns out that the needs of living beings for predictability and stability often at least match our abstract needs for future civilization expanded energy production. The future is very well likely going to be about living things on Earth having to settle for a late 20th century level of energy production for a long while to come, if not less.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It is strong enough, he claims, to support a truck weighing more than 100 metric tons

I am incredibly skeptical of any claims made by someone who doesn't even display a good use of the Mohs scale of hardness (the makers have a video of one tractor driving slowly over tiles, but that's a far cry from a day's worth of cars and trucks). Now, even if I were to grant that we could make glass that can withstand the incredible strain and wear of highway traffic, it would also be ridiculously expensive. We do have the technology to make extremely hard, scratchproof glass, but sapphire glass is also about 100 times the cost and is by no means impervious to all damage, meaning repair costs also skyrocket to the point of bankruptcy.

The issue is that we already have better technology for the problems they're trying to address. You could easily make your roads out of concrete, which has a higher initial cost than asphalt roadways, but has a longer life/durability (we have some around here, they're quite nice to drive on in terms of noise), and install solar panels strategically in better locations designed to catch the sun, perhaps even above the roads. Solar Roadways basically combines the worst elements of road technology with the worst elements of photovoltaic cells into a steaming pile of a disaster in engineering. Which is a shame, since it's being marketed as a panacea, a cure-all for all problems with road maintenance as well as power generation.

[Ed Oscuro]

Which is a shame, since it's being marketed as a panacea, a cure-all for all problems with road maintenance as well as power generation.

Did they specifically say that was the intention? They've made two claims here and I think you might be confusing one with the other. It sounds like (I obviously haven't seen it) the tractor test is just showboating to demonstrate load-bearing strength. However, the Economist quote also states that it is "more chip-resistant." I hope you can enlighten me here, but I am suspicious that we're back to trading in vague unknowns again. Likewise I don't quite understand the amount of fury being poured against the concept. If they poop their bed, no number of Takei tweet followers or angel investment ecofriends will make a bean counter or skeptical bureaucrat greenlight the adoption of the company's technology. It is safe to say that if there was a proposal to roll out these panels for a road project nearby, I would be at the public hearing to share my concerns. Still I'd like to see other attempts to have a go at the technology. I still agree that this is all probably superfluous for now - as I've been making pains to state in literally every post (unless I missed a beat) I've made in the topic - but at the same time it was also quite laughable to suggest that solar panels above roads would be a real alternative (even if your idea was to show that even something bad would be "better") even ignoring the many current unknowns on this project. I still haven't seen the fatal flaw in this specific company's plan, let alone the general concept.

Also quite confused as to why all the anti-hype is swirling around given that this is not something that's going to work economically for a long time. Bang, it's dead tech. It might come back later - when does that ever happen? Well, aside from all the time, that is.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Which is a shame, since it's being marketed as a panacea, a cure-all for all problems with road maintenance as well as power generation.

Did they specifically say that was the intention?

Yes.

Central power stations such as coal and nuclear plants will become obsolete. Power will be produced and distributed via the Solar Roadways™, providing cleaner skies and a picturesque landscape.

See the Economy section of their site:

Imagine a highway infrastructure that relieves the financial obligations of the federal and state governments (taxpayers) and instead pays for itself. The Solar Roadways will generate electricity - up to three times more than the entire U.S. currently uses (see Numbers) [note that these "numbers" aren't linked in the article itself ~ bkr]

Edit: I found a "Numbers" section of their site that, surprise surprise, has almost no real numbers or calculations and is mostly them gushing about how awesome their project is without any real data to back it up. More worryingly, the few calculations they do post raise some unbelievable alarms upon even a cursory inspection. They talk about flat solar panels being a whopping 31% worse than ones angled at the sun in peak daylight hours (considering photovoltaic cells do not produce that much energy to begin with, 31% is a massive and unnecessary drop in efficiency) but then mention that their flat panels supposedly performed a bit better in overcast conditions, without giving any numbers of how much better (?!). And then there's this line:

"For fairness, let's subtract 31 percent from our totals since we can't angle roads and parking lots:
21,827 Billion Kilowatt-hours x 0.69 = 15,060 Billion Kilowatt-hours

Another thing we learned - through experimentation - was that our 1/2-inch textured glass surface reduced the amount of energy produced by solar cells by 11.12-percent. Subtracting that from the total, we still have 13,385 Billion Kilowatt-hours."

You already have a 31% drop in efficiency from laying them flat, and you want to add a 11.12 percent efficiency drop on top of that? But how are they getting this number anyways? Well it's with this surface area estimate: "If we covered the entire 31,250.86 square miles of impervious surfaces with solar collection panels"

Wait, what counts as "impervious"? What about hills facing away from the Sun? You're estimating the entire surface area is going to be producing this power, which means you're not accounting for area covered by cars or shade? What about parking lots when most of the lot is covered by cars? What about that wasted surface area? Are there any cost calculations or mentions of how you'll deal with road repair? Solar panels do not have an infinite lifespan (10 years normally I think?, probably a whole lot fucking less if they're in glass tiles on a highway), and if you spend more money in maintenance than you gain by generating electricity, it's a waste of time. And how will you deal with just keeping roads clean? Never mind scratches or chips, or the fact that traffic is going to grind the glass down, just having dirt, dust or oil on the road will seriously impact the efficiency of those tiles! Do you have an estimate on costs for dealing with road cleaning? Or the costs of laying down all this extra infrastructure to power this network to carry all this electricity from roads? And what about areas that generate power when/where it isn't needed? If you're generating power without anyone to sell it to (roads in the middle of nowhere), you're not actually making money off of it!

The answer all those is no, of course. They don't address any of the obvious questions. Their energy production calculation is based an estimate that they'll average "4 hours of peak daylight hours (1460 hours per year)" (their estimate is literally multiply 4 by 365, brilliant), but on rainy or snowy days you may not even get enough light to generate power, let alone enough to offset the costs of having LEDs and heating in your solar panels, yet no accounting or mention is made of weather estimates during months where less light is available during the day. So this lovely bullshit line later in the article about how "Solar Roadways could produce over three times the electricity that we currently use in the United States" is based on numbers they've pulled out of their ass with no mention of a) how this would compare to using actual solar panels angled towards the sun, b) how much this would cost to build/maintain (I've seen estimates in the trillions of dollars, essentially building this and upkeeping it would make a country go bankrupt) or c) how this is a better idea than using more practical technology we already have (build tracking solar panels & make roads out of concrete).

And:

The Solar Roadways will eliminate the need for pouring CO2 into our atmosphere in order to create electricity. It will make all-electric vehicles practical, so we can stop burning gasoline and diesel.

They even tout its benefits for National Security:

To summarize, the Solar Roadways™ provides us (and other nations) national security that we have never been able to achieve. It can help curb terrorism. It can help prevent future wars. It can keep our children safer. It will cut down on health and respiratory problems. The Solar Roadway™ will help us to sleep better at night!

Vast claims like this abound on their page, specifically on the links under their "Donate" button on the right-hand side of the page where they've got a bunch of links to their wackier product claims (this is where the Military Applications one is found).

[Lord Satori]

What? How does security come into the equation of a railway that can also power things?

[Mischief Maker]

These young prisoners must be terrible engineers. Just bung two of the damn things together, or more! Back in the day prisoners made daggers out of newspaper! And bombs from playing cards! Witness the sad state of scientific literacy today.

There's a difference between premeditated murder and poor impulse control.

Spend any time working in the criminal justice system and you realize that TV completely overestimates the intelligence of the average prison inmate.

[BPzeBanshee]

What? How does security come into the equation of a railway that can also power things?

Playing on the whole "America went to war over oil" mentality shared by some. Why bother fighting to get oil to power your plants when all you need is solar panels and real estate?