Throwing in the towel...electric cars are going to be the future.

As much as I am not a fan of EVs, I have been looking around at the pieces that are in place and feel that it will be inevitable that batteries replace gasoline in 50 years or so.

One of the big realizations is that the pipeline already exist right to your garage. All you would have to do is park over a given spot and the car can charge overnight.Gasoline on the other hand, is getting harder and more expensive to refine and get to your distribution point.

Maybe half the people I know could get by with the existing range on the current crop of EVs. The only reason they don't buy is that they are still stupid expensive. That is changing.

The third and most compelling is that I just watched the Nissan self driving car video that someone posted. The only way that a fully moronified society will be able to transport itself in a private vehicle if if we build smart cars for smart roads. This also would solve the range issue for EVs.

When a smart car enters the ramp to a smart highway, it becomes a "Bit". The Bit will interface with the smart highway that knows to a millimeter where all the other Bits are and how fast they are travelling. The smart road and the smart car will interact to perform the humanly impossible feat of merging into traffic. The speed on the smart highway can be uniform and all car will travel with a relative speed of zero miles per hour but at very high ground-speed. You will be deposited at your exit the same as you entered.

The elegance is that the road will also be the charging system for those long range taxing journeys, so rather than arrive with an empty tank, you arrive with a full charge.

The interstates were instrumental in pulling the country out of one of its worst recessions, I suspect the same can apply to the electric highway. Besides, its hard to find anyone who does not want to put the Middle East oil barons out of work.

Farfetched? Maybe, but go ahead and laugh like when I told y'all back in 2005 that GM was going to go bankrupt.

It's headed that way, but it isn't there yet and I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

I'd drive a electric if they would do what I needed them to do and cost as much as a dinosaur burner. It'll be a long time before that happens.

So... buy your dino burners now... while we can still enjoy them...

But in general, I agree. I can honestly say that if a reasonably good electric car with a ~200 miles range comes out in the sub-$30K price range, I'd be very tempted to replace the TDI. I don't mind the idea of keeping the gas burners for long trips and fun cars.

The idea of the "smart highway" isn't all that new. I remember reading an article almost 30 years ago in Bicycling magazine that was basically the same concept, only using pedal-power in super-aero, sit-in bikes linked by computers instead of batteries.

I definitely like your vision, but I don't think it will happen quite that way.

Not because it can't. We will have the technology to do it exactly the way you described.

But we won't be able to afford it. I work for a company that does road construction- it's REALLY expensive. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that each mile of Interstate cost $20.6 million. Smart roads could easily cost twice that, especially with the demolition costs added.

There are 46,876 miles of Interstate highway in the US.

If it cost $41.2 million per mile, a new smart road system would cost $1,931,291,200,000.

That's a lot of zeros.

The big killer is not the cars, it's the infrastructure to support the cars. Who is going to pay to put all of the infrastructure in place? That is a big question that needs to be answered for the EV to really take off.

Electric cars are should be common somewhat soon.

Self driving cars should be common somewhat after that.

Electronic highways should appear a while after that but will talk a long while to be reasonably ubiquitous.

Bonus for the people here is that old light cars will be great EV transplants though likely impracticality for smart car conversion.

Why do you need to put anything I the road? Trolleys worked with a simple overhead wire.

The road doesn't need to track your car. Today's cars are way more computerized to be able to broadcast info to a center all computer or better yet, the cars around them.

Batteries are only getting better, why would you have to charge it on the way? If you are going for a longer drive, pull a trailer with a generator (fuel cell).

Somebodies going to have to find a lithium tree in his back yard soon, for all the batteries we are going to need. Electrics are the way of the future, as long as the Russians can find enough materials buried in Siberia.

Nobody will convince me of this until a good explanation of where all the electricity will come from is offered. With the current administration's hatred of coal and the near-impossibility of building any more nuclear generating plants, the 'free' electricity from your wall outlet is a pipe dream.

My Father bought a Tesla about a year ago and has put over 30000 miles on it so far (Probably the highest mileage Tesla in the country). He commutes about 150 miles round trip in it every day and figures he get the Wattage equivalent of 99 MPG.

with his commute he will "break even" on his upfront vs. potential fuel costs in 9 years. Sooner if he were to include maintenance and the cost of a new gas vehicle. Not to mention it is a pretty amazing vehicle.

I have no idea how future will work with "smart" highways, but having owned a Nissan Leaf, if EVs are the future, I'm pumped. The Leaf was the first mass produced pure EV on the market (well...that's ignoring cars from the early 20th century). For a first-stab-at-it car, I was very impressed with my Leaf. Give them and others a few years to refine and evolve the cars, just like gasoline engines did, and the results are going to be awesome. The one and only reason I don't own an EV right now is because the Leaf is about 10% short of making it the length of my daily commute. Once that changes, I'm going back.

We all love performance cars here...EVs have great potential. The Leaf was slow at higher speeds, which is something that I'm sure can be worked on. But the instant, right-berkleying-now, torque from 0-30mph is addicting. Put the battery pack nice and low to give a stupid low center of gravity and you can improve handling...not to mention putting the battery pack in strategic places to corner weight the car properly.

ddavidv wrote: Nobody will convince me of this until a good explanation of where all the electricity will come from is offered. With the current administration's hatred of coal and the near-impossibility of building any more nuclear generating plants, the 'free' electricity from your wall outlet is a pipe dream.

Too cheap to meter, or too expensive to matter?

Streetwiseguy wrote: Somebodies going to have to find a lithium tree in his back yard soon, for all the batteries we are going to need. Electrics are the way of the future, as long as the Russians can find enough materials buried in Siberia.

There are a lot of political issues that may or may not hinder the development of electric cars that self drive and power off of the roads.

But this is a practical reason why enough cars will be hard to build.

It's one thing to find $2T to replace the roads we have, it's another to find enough material to make enough cars in the US to make that investment worth while. Even ignoring the battery materials, finding enough copper to realistically make that many engines will be really tough.

Don't forget that iron ore and bauxite are not exacly hard to find or extract from the earth.

People dont quite understand how insanity defying an electrical grid would be to support everyone driving cars.

The current ev's only work because of how few there are. Everything in the 1st world is built around century old consumption models. Until we run out of oil, you won't be seeing mass ev. Period, end of discussion.

And you have not even taken into consideration colder climates, where the fuel does more then run the car ;)

While it will happen, I doubt it does before I have theoretical grand kids.

SVreX wrote: I definitely like your vision, but I don't think it will happen quite that way. Not because it can't. We will have the technology to do it exactly the way you described. But we won't be able to afford it. I work for a company that does road construction- it's REALLY expensive. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that each mile of Interstate cost $20.6 million. Smart roads could easily cost twice that, especially with the demolition costs added. There are 46,876 miles of Interstate highway in the US. If it cost $41.2 million per mile, a new smart road system would cost $1,931,291,200,000. That's a lot of zeros.

So for a fraction of what was spent for Uncle Sam to vacation in the Middle East and Afghanistan over the last ten years, we could have led the planet into the 22nd century of transportation?

Just tell the taxpayers that it is required to fight the war on terror, put Homeland Security in charge of the project so that Naysayers conveniently disappear to a Cuban retreat, and this could be done by next week.

And by the way, you would have to be pretty naive to belive that it "Cost" 20 million to do a mile of interstate. I don't dispute that that is what is being passed to the taxpayer, but we all know that the "Cost" gets spread to a lot of unspoken pockets in any road building project. Since we are going to hand this over to HS as a anti terror project, lets give the job to the Army core at the same time.

We bought my wife a Volt two months ago and not only lowered our car payment, but cut our fuel bill drastically. Electric is definitely the future for mass commuter cars.

I'm waiting for some crazy 'battery' technology to come along. It might just be incrementally better, but I'm hoping during my lifetime, we have a huge increase in storable power.

Just think if we come up with a fusion/fission device that is the size of a brick that's safe and can supply almost endless power. That's when Star Wars/Trek technology could be realized. I'm not saying I'll see light sabers in my life, but that's the direction I'd like to see.

I don't think electrified roads are the answer.

NOHOME wrote:

SVreX wrote: I definitely like your vision, but I don't think it will happen quite that way. Not because it can't. We will have the technology to do it exactly the way you described. But we won't be able to afford it. I work for a company that does road construction- it's REALLY expensive. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that each mile of Interstate cost $20.6 million. Smart roads could easily cost twice that, especially with the demolition costs added. There are 46,876 miles of Interstate highway in the US. If it cost $41.2 million per mile, a new smart road system would cost $1,931,291,200,000. That's a lot of zeros.

So for a fraction of what was spent for Uncle Sam to vacation in the Middle East and Afghanistan over the last ten years, we could have led the planet into the 22nd century of transportation? Just tell the taxpayers that it is required to fight the war on terror, put Homeland Security in charge of the project so that Naysayers conveniently disappear to a Cuban retreat, and this could be done by next week. And by the way, you would have to be pretty naive to belive that it "Cost" 20 million to do a mile of interstate. I don't dispute that that is what is being passed to the taxpayer, but we all know that the "Cost" gets spread to a lot of unspoken pockets in any road building project. Since we are going to hand this over to HS as a anti terror project, lets give the job to the Army core at the same time.

Umm... Ok.

But you'd also have to be pretty naive to believe its gonna change.

That sounds terrible!

I am all for ev's becoming the dd of the masses and think that time is coming. Smart roads and powered highways not so much. While I have witnessed self driving cars in operation and witnessed them for years, a smart road like the op posted requires every car on that road to be linked in and working correctly. Every sensor must be getting an accurate signal and every servo needs to be in working order.

When you drive around today look around you and consider whether the cars in you immediate vicinity are A) less than 5 years old, B) in good enough shape that you think EVERYTHING on the is in working order, and C) that the person driving the car would be able to immediately invest the time and money to fix it if something did fail.

I can't even say that about my own cars....

50 years!?!? I think most new cars will be EVs by 2025.

As long as there are flammable substances, I'll find a way to power my dinoburners.

GameboyRMH wrote: 50 years!?!? I think most new cars will be EVs by 2025.

I personally don't think that a majority of new cars in 50 years will be electric. For sure, not in 11 years. Right now EV's are less than 1% of the market. (Through Sept, there are just under 90k total electric sales in the US, project that to close to 120k- but the market is about 15M for the CY, world wide, EV's are double that, but the market is at least 3-4x larger than the US). How one can see a 1% market expand to 50% in less than 10 years is kinda a stretch.

More likely that transportation options will be forced to change.

bravenrace wrote: As long as there are flammable substances, I'll find a way to power my dinoburners.

While I don't have the numbers, I would guess that bio-waste ethanol and methanol will be a more economical solution than electric for quite some time.

IMO it's a little more feasible for bikes in the near term due to the lighter mass you have to move and it's pretty freakin' cool too. I'd rock one of these and suck up the tax initiative bonus in a year or two when they get a little more real world use on them to bake out the issues. Anyone who works in a fair weather climate and lives less than 50 miles from work could easily commute on one both ways w/o a charge. It's like a Tesla I can afford :)

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