Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, everyone, welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren bold Day. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about solar freaking roadways. Solar freaking roadways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you may have seen the video or perhaps even contributed
Speaker 1: to the Indie Go go uh campaign campaign. That's the
Speaker 1: word I was looking for. We're going to start off
Speaker 1: strong here, people, when I can't think of the word
Speaker 1: for campaign now. The reason why we're doing this is
Speaker 1: we had two different listeners ask us on Facebook, Kevin
Speaker 1: and Sherry, Right. They both wanted to hear about this proposal,
Speaker 1: find out what's the deal behind it, what's the technology
Speaker 1: behind it? Is it in fact a realistic approach? So
Speaker 1: because there's been a lot of hype about it, So
Speaker 1: thank you guys much for writing in. There's been controversy.
Speaker 1: I think it's a safe word to use. There's been,
Speaker 1: at least, if nothing else, a spirited debate eight both
Speaker 1: sides of the debate Internet Yeah, no, both sides have
Speaker 1: said debate. Both the the proponents and the critics of
Speaker 1: said solar roadways have been um at times passionate on
Speaker 1: the internet. Yeah, that's kind of my gentle tiptoeing around
Speaker 1: the edgeway of saying that there's been some fairly reactionary
Speaker 1: responses on both sides. We're going to cut through all
Speaker 1: that and tell you what's going on, hopefully, and I
Speaker 1: you know, both of us are human people who also
Speaker 1: have opinions about things. But we're going to try very
Speaker 1: hard to be as objective as possible, and then at
Speaker 1: the end we will spew our opinions all over the podcast.
Speaker 1: So fair warning, yes, but at any rate, let's start
Speaker 1: off with just some fun facts. Okay, fun facts about highways.
Speaker 1: Fun facts about highways in the United States, to be specific. So,
Speaker 1: the US highway system has four million miles of roads,
Speaker 1: which is about six million, four hundred thousand kilometers. Not
Speaker 1: many people know this, but Lauren capable of doing miles
Speaker 1: to kilometer conversions in her head on the fly. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So that's according to the National Atlas of the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: the interstate highway system accounts for only one percent of
Speaker 1: all highway mileage but carries twenty of total vehicle miles
Speaker 1: of travel, which to me says take the surface streets.
Speaker 1: That's what I usually do. Yeah, at any rate. The highways,
Speaker 1: although they are a great way of moving lots of
Speaker 1: cars through very quickly. Uh that that's not you know,
Speaker 1: more of the roads in our our country are surface streets.
Speaker 1: They're not like these big interstates certainly, but but um,
Speaker 1: but highways are are pretty they cover a wide surface area. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: the average the average width of a highway lane is
Speaker 1: eleven feet, which is three point three five Wow. It
Speaker 1: works on feet de meters too, It's pretty amazing. Okay.
Speaker 1: Uh So that means that if you were to add
Speaker 1: up all the this area that these roads are covering
Speaker 1: in the United States, you would end up somewhere around
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand, nine hundred twenty nine square miles in the
Speaker 1: United States, which is forty thousand, four hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: six square kilometers. Crap. You can do area too if
Speaker 1: you add another paved services, so we're talking about things
Speaker 1: like parking lots, sidewalks, bike lanes, this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It ends up being around twenty five thousand square miles
Speaker 1: of area or seven hundred square kilometers, right. So that's
Speaker 1: a lot of space, and it's not an insignificant amount.
Speaker 1: It's doing an important job, you know, because some people
Speaker 1: will say that's space, that's not doing anything. No, it
Speaker 1: is in fact doing something wasted space. It's certainly providing
Speaker 1: a service. Yes, it provides us a route to get
Speaker 1: from one point to another point, specifically in the vehicles
Speaker 1: that we all depend upon, without very much ruining our
Speaker 1: our vehicles or our shoe is or right. It's it's
Speaker 1: made up of stuff. That is, it's got traction to it.
Speaker 1: It's meant to be uh as efficient a system as
Speaker 1: we can really do with with a lot of passive systems.
Speaker 1: Like it's a very passive system, yes, and but it's
Speaker 1: relatively inexpensive and pretty functional. But what would happen if
Speaker 1: we can make this stuff do double duty? What if
Speaker 1: instead of just being a way, you know, the the
Speaker 1: platform upon which our vehicles travel, it could also help
Speaker 1: generate energy and offset our need for generating power in
Speaker 1: other ways. What if we could perhaps turn the entire
Speaker 1: road system of the United States into a giant solar farm.
Speaker 1: In other words, we replaced the roads with solar panels,
Speaker 1: were still driving on them, but now not only are
Speaker 1: we all that flat space is being put to further use,
Speaker 1: or even hilly space well, relatively flat space. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's where the idea of solar roadways kicked in. UH.
Speaker 1: And then to get specific, you have a husband and
Speaker 1: wife team, Scott and Julie Brussa, who are the the
Speaker 1: people behind solar roadways, right, Scott is by trade an
Speaker 1: electrical engineer and Julie as a counselor. And apparently it
Speaker 1: was Julie's idea to put solar panels on roads. That
Speaker 1: was her. She just said, you know, she and her
Speaker 1: husband were having a discussion about UH, climate change, about
Speaker 1: human human contributions to climate change, about pollution, about the
Speaker 1: fact that a lot of that pollution comes from our
Speaker 1: dependence upon fossil fuels, and she said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I realized that solar panel farms like these are not
Speaker 1: the most efficient ways of getting energy. We've talked about
Speaker 1: that on this show before. That even if you're talking
Speaker 1: like state of the art, top of the line laboratory conditions,
Speaker 1: at most you're hitting under ideal conditions. Reality, it's closer
Speaker 1: to under good conditions and probably less than that for
Speaker 1: your average performance. So you're losing a lot of the
Speaker 1: energy that's hitting those panels, and you're not necessarily generating
Speaker 1: a lot of electricity from the energy you're bringing in.
Speaker 1: But what if we had a lot of them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if we were able to instead of clearing out
Speaker 1: land in order to make a solar farm, what if
Speaker 1: we were able to utilize that space, the spaces that
Speaker 1: we already have, you know, using robust panels that can
Speaker 1: withstand the traffic. Right, and so Scott, in his various videos,
Speaker 1: there are several videos that Scott Brusaw is in where
Speaker 1: he talks about this idea, said that he initially kind
Speaker 1: of laughed at the idea, and then he thought, well,
Speaker 1: how would I, as an engineer, how would I go
Speaker 1: about trying to make a practical way of implementing her solution?
Speaker 1: And that was the way solar roadways were born. This
Speaker 1: was not no this you may have only just heard
Speaker 1: about this, but they've been working on this since the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's, so two six typelieve, I think you're right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they started brainstorming these different ways. They came up
Speaker 1: with this, uh, this solar panel roadway approach, but it
Speaker 1: does mean that they had to think of other stuff
Speaker 1: bed and and they also went beyond just solar panels, right, oh, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're not just there to collect energy.
Speaker 1: They would also have you know, microprocessors in them and
Speaker 1: LEDs which would allow you to, uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: like change the lanes and on a highway based on
Speaker 1: traffic patterns, or move parking spots around in a parking lot.
Speaker 1: Right like so for example, uh, the street that is
Speaker 1: near my neighborhood is a three lane road and it
Speaker 1: has two reversible or has a reversible lane in the center.
Speaker 1: Reversible lanes mean that some parts of the day traffic
Speaker 1: is allowed to go in one direction, and in another
Speaker 1: part of the day traffic is allowed to go in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. And they just end up designating that
Speaker 1: with there's a sign that hangs above the road that
Speaker 1: either of you an arrow saying yes you can drive
Speaker 1: in this lane X say red X that says please
Speaker 1: don't do that. By the way, I cannot tell you
Speaker 1: how many times have encountered people who absolutely have no
Speaker 1: idea how reversible lanes work. They treat it like it's
Speaker 1: a turning lane. They're a little bit terrifying. It is
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying. You know, driving in the center lane on
Speaker 1: that road is something of a crap shoot at any rate.
Speaker 1: Using this approach, you could actually have the information on
Speaker 1: the road itself. Those led lights could spell out which
Speaker 1: lanes were permissible to use during what parts of the day,
Speaker 1: so you could change it on the fly. Responds to
Speaker 1: dynamic condition, so if traffic is suddenly very heavy coming
Speaker 1: from one direction versus the other, you could change the
Speaker 1: lanes in a safe way. Or like you said, you
Speaker 1: could do things like in a parking lot, designate different
Speaker 1: types of spaces. Perhaps if you were expecting to have
Speaker 1: a big motorcycle convention, like some parts of the country do,
Speaker 1: then you could end up having a bunch of motor
Speaker 1: cycle parking spots as opposed to full sized car spots.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff. And it's interesting because it means
Speaker 1: you could change things based upon whatever conditions were at
Speaker 1: the time. That's not the only thing these could do though.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. They also proposed to incorporate heating elements so
Speaker 1: that you could melt any kind of any kind of
Speaker 1: ice or snow on the roadway, thus being able to
Speaker 1: prevent terrible, terrible driving conditions. Right sure, And you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to use a plow or actually you can't use
Speaker 1: a plow on one of these roads, because it did,
Speaker 1: you'd end up scraping the glass, the glass covering yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: But but also um providing providing an infrastructure for carrying
Speaker 1: that collected energy collected energy and big technical quotation marks
Speaker 1: um to to get it to places that need it. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, there'd be a kind of a corridor
Speaker 1: that would run alongside the road which would help deal
Speaker 1: with the runoff from that aforementioned snow and ice. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you would have of two parts of that corridor. One
Speaker 1: part would be a storm drain which would even include
Speaker 1: perhaps a filtration system and pumps to move water to
Speaker 1: where it might actually be used. So you could in
Speaker 1: theory treat the water on site on the road. Essentially
Speaker 1: as as it's running off, you can treat it so
Speaker 1: it ends up being useful, and then pump it someplace
Speaker 1: like an aquifer or for agricultural purposes, or to another
Speaker 1: water treatment facility if the water is particularly and then
Speaker 1: that's the technical term. And then you could have the
Speaker 1: cable corridor, which would allow you to put power cables
Speaker 1: so that it could uh transmit the collected energy to
Speaker 1: some other system. All of this, by the way, it
Speaker 1: sounds like we're being vague. It's because right now the
Speaker 1: team is really focusing on the solar panel part and
Speaker 1: and all of this is is kind of interesting. Other
Speaker 1: ideas that they're drawing into it. Um yea also reaching
Speaker 1: further out into the future, incorporating a lot more of
Speaker 1: of smart elements to the road ways of you know,
Speaker 1: doing things like if, um, if a kid is crossing
Speaker 1: the street, having the street interact with your car to
Speaker 1: tell you there's a kid up there, don't hit that kid, right,
Speaker 1: and maybe even the part of the street the kid
Speaker 1: is on lights up so you can see that the
Speaker 1: physically right. So yeah, it would have to have some
Speaker 1: sort of pressure sensors in there that that would somehow
Speaker 1: be able to differentiate when a kid is on there
Speaker 1: versus say someone on a bike or a car or
Speaker 1: you know. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, right, right,
Speaker 1: But you know, all kinds of interesting stuff like that
Speaker 1: is stuff that they talk about in their promotional material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they obviously, in order to get support because it
Speaker 1: was an indigo go campaign, which means it's crowdfunded, you know,
Speaker 1: they were asking people to to contribute money to this
Speaker 1: project so that they could test the feasibility of it.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, this is to test the feasibility, not
Speaker 1: saying that this is going to to launch them into
Speaker 1: implementing this on a i'd scale. We'll get into more
Speaker 1: about that in a second. But um, it also uh
Speaker 1: was a way of saying, hey, look, we can improve
Speaker 1: our infrastructure in multiple ways. If there is a damage
Speaker 1: a damaged panel, someone could pop out there, knock a
Speaker 1: panel out, put a new panel in, and they're done.
Speaker 1: It's none of this put a big sheet of metal
Speaker 1: over a pothole business that happens in Atlanta all the time.
Speaker 1: Or that we'd be able to take all the power
Speaker 1: cables and telephone cables and take them off of suspended
Speaker 1: lines and bury them within this roadway, yeah, in that
Speaker 1: cable corridor, which means that when you have really bad weather,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about those power lines being
Speaker 1: snapped by ice or something and then becoming a hazard
Speaker 1: to anyone who happens to be walking by. Now, in
Speaker 1: order to go from this sort of brainstorming proposal idea
Speaker 1: to reality, they they noticed that there were some pretty
Speaker 1: significant challenges. Sure, um, you know, first of all, you
Speaker 1: photovoltaics are very delicate. I'm so you're going to need
Speaker 1: a really strong surface in order to protect them from
Speaker 1: you know, trucks, Yes, exactly. Yeah, you have to have
Speaker 1: something that was going to keep them from breaking under
Speaker 1: the the consistent pressure they would be under from vehicles
Speaker 1: running over them. But the early if you're talking about
Speaker 1: like a highway where you've got hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: vehicles in any given month, and some of those being
Speaker 1: incredibly heavy, like trucks pulling huge amounts of cargo, you've
Speaker 1: got to have something that's gonna withstand that kind of
Speaker 1: that kind of wear and tear, right in order to
Speaker 1: accomplish this, and also you know, have it be transparent
Speaker 1: so that it can also collect sunlight. As it turns
Speaker 1: out that if you made it really super strong but
Speaker 1: it was opaque, the solar panel part has has problems.
Speaker 1: Right um, tempered glass they figured is the best way
Speaker 1: to do this. The problem one of the problems with
Speaker 1: tempered glass is that you can't really paint on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's why they came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: using the L e eds to demonstrate light. That meant
Speaker 1: that they were going to have to pick some pretty
Speaker 1: bright L e d s. We'll talk about that when
Speaker 1: we get to the criticisms part. Sure, Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: then also they wanted to make sure that the light
Speaker 1: was going to pass cleanly through that glass. The glass
Speaker 1: needs to be clear. It can't be you know, if
Speaker 1: if you have a colored glass, that that's telling you
Speaker 1: immediately that there are certain that you're not going to
Speaker 1: get there. Yeah, they're not going to go through. So
Speaker 1: you want that to be clear glass. And it needs
Speaker 1: to be arranged in a way that the physical arrangement
Speaker 1: of any kind of coding on top of photovoltakes is
Speaker 1: going to have very much to do with the way
Speaker 1: that light refracts and and reflects down through it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's that ends up affecting the the efficiency of
Speaker 1: that particular solar panel. They said that these solar panels
Speaker 1: would be a on fift efficient although as far as
Speaker 1: I know, no independent testing has been done of the
Speaker 1: solar panels, not that I'm aware of, although they do
Speaker 1: currently only have a very small test patch. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of I mean, you know, the road systems, like
Speaker 1: Jonathan talked about at the top of the show, are big.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of them. Yeah, and so one
Speaker 1: of the big challenges that they really haven't addressed yet. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they're looking at it from the positive perspective,
Speaker 1: which I totally understand. They're like, look at this, this
Speaker 1: is going to create millions of jobs. But millions of
Speaker 1: jobs means you have to pay those people. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it also means that you're going to run into a
Speaker 1: lot of equipment costs and manufacturing costs, materials. What are
Speaker 1: you going to do while you are retrofitting a highway?
Speaker 1: You know, what what exactly is going to take place
Speaker 1: with this? Because we don't even know what their proposal
Speaker 1: is for the replacement part. We don't know doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that they're going to place solar panels on top of
Speaker 1: pre existing infrastructure, are going to have to dig up
Speaker 1: all of the roads, right What where are people going
Speaker 1: to drive while that's going on? You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of questions here that are going to be
Speaker 1: uh A big challenges. And then of course, you know
Speaker 1: there's cost, like we kind of just said, attached to
Speaker 1: all of this, not only logistical costs, but very real
Speaker 1: money dollar costs, or as very real as money and
Speaker 1: dollars ever are right, that's an entirely different conversation that
Speaker 1: we've also had but uh yeah, I mean these are
Speaker 1: things that they had to take into account, all right.
Speaker 1: So the first prototype they built was a rectangular prototype.
Speaker 1: It was our square really because it was it was
Speaker 1: twelve feet by twelve feet that's about three point seven meters.
Speaker 1: Like cow, you're on the ball today, all right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was this. It was really to test the idea
Speaker 1: to to try the LEDs to create the microprocessors that
Speaker 1: communicate with each other. They do so wirelessly by the way,
Speaker 1: they do this kind of messaging stem between them. Um,
Speaker 1: the videos are pretty cool, like he showed, Uh, I
Speaker 1: guess it's I assume it's his daughter who stands on
Speaker 1: a panel that's separate from the the huge solar panel,
Speaker 1: the twelve foot one, and when she steps on it,
Speaker 1: it creates that flashing pattern on the panel she steps on,
Speaker 1: and then it spells out slowed down on the test panel, yeah,
Speaker 1: the giant one. Then he also did things like created
Speaker 1: a maze, a little like Pacman style maze that kids
Speaker 1: could run through on this solar panel, which is really
Speaker 1: showing that the LEDs could in fact show yeah, they
Speaker 1: could be all sorts of different patterns. Um. So that
Speaker 1: was the first prototype. But that of course is not
Speaker 1: what the the current panel looks like. The current panels
Speaker 1: are hexagonal in shape. I'll talk about that in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: they decided to use glass, like we said, to be
Speaker 1: the protective layer because it let's light pass through and
Speaker 1: the compression strength is good. Now they keep on saying
Speaker 1: it's somewhere between steel and stainless steel for compression. I
Speaker 1: keep in mind, there are lots of different types of strength, right,
Speaker 1: There's tensile strength, there's compressive strength, there's the you know
Speaker 1: how how impact sort of strength. There's all these kind
Speaker 1: of different approaches that you have to look at. And
Speaker 1: in fact, they needed to find a glass that was
Speaker 1: going to be shatter proof, which not that unusual. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've seen bulletproof glass, so it's not like this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff doesn't exist. Sure, And and tempering glass is
Speaker 1: they talked about it on the site and it's one
Speaker 1: of the things that they get very right. I think,
Speaker 1: and as far as I know about material science, that
Speaker 1: that the tempering process does more or less, uh, that
Speaker 1: that thing of of making things very strong and can
Speaker 1: also involve you know, shatter resistant coatings or you know
Speaker 1: the kind of glass that's used for example, in car
Speaker 1: wind shields to uh that that will crumble rather than
Speaker 1: charting right right, you won't end up with these these
Speaker 1: incredibly sharp yards of glass. You would have this sort
Speaker 1: of glass rubble that would be a pain to clean up,
Speaker 1: but not so dangerous, yes, less less dangerous. Um. And
Speaker 1: they also needed to pick one that they could add
Speaker 1: a texture to the top of so that vehicles could
Speaker 1: have traction from them. That's kind of important because if
Speaker 1: you would imagine just driving a vehicle over, you know,
Speaker 1: like a glass mirror, that would suck. Not to be fair,
Speaker 1: rubber against glass is that you get some traction. But
Speaker 1: add water to that because I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: been outside, but sometimes it rains, and sometimes it rains
Speaker 1: when you need to drive somewhere occasionally. So they were
Speaker 1: looking at raising like they have actually another hexagonal pattern
Speaker 1: on top of this giant hexagon that is repeated that
Speaker 1: creates the texture so that it helps tires gripped the road. Um.
Speaker 1: They claimed that the gripping tests were outperformed asphalt. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how all those tests were conducted,
Speaker 1: but that's that's the claim. Yeah. I also believe that.
Speaker 1: They claim that the the pattern of the glass acts
Speaker 1: like a like a prism to help direct the light
Speaker 1: down into the photovoltaics beneath it. And as for the
Speaker 1: l d s, those are light emitting diodes. We talked
Speaker 1: about that in the past. Diodes are very basic electronic components,
Speaker 1: one of the basic components in electronics. So anyone who
Speaker 1: happens to have worked with electronics, like if you build
Speaker 1: a circuit, you've probably at some time or another wired
Speaker 1: an LED to some sort of circuit. They don't require
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. They can put off a fairly
Speaker 1: bright light depending upon the LED that you're using. Um.
Speaker 1: Scott Bruso also claims that the prism like nature of
Speaker 1: those hexagons that Lauren was just talking about also allow
Speaker 1: the l d s to project light out six different ways.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what that means. I think he's
Speaker 1: talking about, Um, you know, for for that pattern, Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, I see capacity right right, Um, it's certainly interesting. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: then we got the heating element, right, which are you know,
Speaker 1: similar to the wires that might run through your your
Speaker 1: rear windshield that that help you defrost your car in
Speaker 1: the winter and uh, he says. Bruce Saw says that
Speaker 1: the tests showed that heating the heating element works well
Speaker 1: and can prevent snow and ice from forming on the
Speaker 1: road itself. They show off a a single solar panel
Speaker 1: hexabon test photos, yes, surrounded by others covered in snow
Speaker 1: that have not had the heating element turned on. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you would have some form of other sensors in
Speaker 1: the in the panel, because you would have to have
Speaker 1: them in order to detect pressure for the other element.
Speaker 1: We were talking about where an animal or child or
Speaker 1: something else is in the road, and thus the road
Speaker 1: is detecting that and alerting the drivers to it so
Speaker 1: that they can prepare themselves. Like I can see this
Speaker 1: being really useful in lots of different ways. Like in California,
Speaker 1: my wife and I went on a road trip where
Speaker 1: we went down a road that frequently would get covered
Speaker 1: up by by mud slides during the rain, and it
Speaker 1: was pouring down rain, and sure enough we had to
Speaker 1: skirt around a couple of mud slides. And when you've
Speaker 1: got a precipitous drop to the Pacific Ocean on the
Speaker 1: other side of it, that's a somewhat of a nerve
Speaker 1: wracking experience. Now, I mentioned that the microprocessors had little
Speaker 1: WiFi elements in them that allow them to talk to
Speaker 1: each other communication. Yeah, the important part of that would be.
Speaker 1: One of the important parts of that, besides sending the
Speaker 1: messages so that the right messages are displayed to drivers
Speaker 1: so that they're alerted to changing conditions, is that if
Speaker 1: a panel were to malfunction, let's say it was hit
Speaker 1: by lightning or some other thing damaged it. Maybe a
Speaker 1: person who knows there some issues with that as well.
Speaker 1: But let's say something damages a a one of these hexagons.
Speaker 1: What's going on in the microprocessors is that they're constantly
Speaker 1: sending out little signal to each other. Hey are you there?
Speaker 1: Oh you're there. Hey are you there? Oh you're there.
Speaker 1: So if one of them stops responding, then the rest
Speaker 1: can send a message down the line to get a
Speaker 1: technician out there to replace that guy. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: technician gets a message saying, hey, this one panel that's
Speaker 1: at mile marker seventy three, it's the third one over
Speaker 1: from the edge of the road needs to be replaced.
Speaker 1: They can go out there, uh, you know, the lane
Speaker 1: itself can actually help direct traffic around the work area.
Speaker 1: The worker could then pop the the dead panel out,
Speaker 1: put a new panel in, and program it with a
Speaker 1: little handheld computer device and supposedly be in and out
Speaker 1: in like ten minutes, and then take the broken solar
Speaker 1: panel back for repairs. Um. At least that's the way
Speaker 1: it's being presented now. What they have actually created so
Speaker 1: far is this little test strip that I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: a sort of parking lot outside of their workshop. It's
Speaker 1: twelve ft wide by thirty six ft long, which is uh,
Speaker 1: I got three point seven by eleven. It's not a contest. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been looking ahead at those notes all podcasts long
Speaker 1: and doing calculations in my head. Uh. This little this
Speaker 1: little test strip is is meant to be a tester,
Speaker 1: but it's a little environment for them to work at
Speaker 1: every everything from you know, from the stress tests to
Speaker 1: the electronic components functionality, making sure the heating elements are working,
Speaker 1: make sure the l e d s work. They've driven
Speaker 1: a smallish tractor across it to kind of demonstrate that
Speaker 1: it can withstand the pressure of a vehicle, but that's
Speaker 1: it is a smallish tractor and it is not moving
Speaker 1: very quickly. That's not to say that they haven't done
Speaker 1: other tests, Oh, certainly. Yeah, I mean they've been working
Speaker 1: on this project. They in fact received a few grants
Speaker 1: from the Department of Transportation and specifically the Federal Highway
Speaker 1: Administrations to I think along the lines of like seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fIF the thousand and then their Indigo their
Speaker 1: indiego Go project funded right right fund. Yeah, and let's
Speaker 1: talk about that Indiego Go campaign. Okay, So, so, like,
Speaker 1: like we said, this project has been going on since
Speaker 1: about two thousand six, but it really went viral in
Speaker 1: when they opened up this indie Go Go campaign on
Speaker 1: April one, which is the day before Earth Day, which
Speaker 1: is very clever marketing. And uh. They talked all about
Speaker 1: what this potential project could do in an ideal implementation.
Speaker 1: Their tagline um, which which I think is telling about
Speaker 1: many things about the project is i'll quote quote it
Speaker 1: for you guys, solar panels that you can drive, park
Speaker 1: and walk on. They melt snow and cut greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: by question mark exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point triple
Speaker 1: and taro bang. Yes. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: they extended the campaign right as of this recording. We
Speaker 1: are recording this show on June. They have more than
Speaker 1: doubled their campaign goal of a million bucks and still
Speaker 1: have nine days left, so they've successfully funded, more than
Speaker 1: successful And um so what was that? What's that million
Speaker 1: dollars for? Exactly? Well, although the campaign page does suggest
Speaker 1: all of these huge possibilities for the future that we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier on in the show, that million dollars
Speaker 1: is really just for hiring an initial team of engineers
Speaker 1: and I quote to help us make a few needed
Speaker 1: tweaks in our product and streamline our process so that
Speaker 1: we could go from prototype to production and they were
Speaker 1: hoping to go into production by the end of That's
Speaker 1: that's ambitious. Yeah, now that that's one way of putting it.
Speaker 1: That is incredibly ambitious because uh, you know, even if
Speaker 1: they produced, they then have to have a place to
Speaker 1: put them. Um, but we'll we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: in a second. Yes, Um, so that this this campaign
Speaker 1: really went viral with the help of a particular video.
Speaker 1: At the very beginning of this podcast, I talked about
Speaker 1: solar freaking roadways. Roadway Roadways. Yeah. It was produced by
Speaker 1: the team and repeatedly uses the phrase solar freaking roadways.
Speaker 1: You probably have seen it if you. I know, it
Speaker 1: went viral on Facebook. I saw it posted by a
Speaker 1: lot of my friends. I sawt on on Tumblr and
Speaker 1: Twitter as well. Um, and it has in fact set
Speaker 1: an Indigogo record for the number of individual backers attached
Speaker 1: to a single project. Currently it is sitting at forty
Speaker 1: six thousand, three hundred and eighties seven, which in metric
Speaker 1: is a lot. It's the same it's the same number,
Speaker 1: same number. But you know, but but they they are
Speaker 1: all based on a specific person who's kept in a
Speaker 1: vault in Switzerland. Uh. Moving on to the critics, or,
Speaker 1: as some have termed them, the hater. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You put any idea up online, people are going to
Speaker 1: respond to it in multiple ways some people. Some people
Speaker 1: will likely be supportive, and some people will be critical,
Speaker 1: not not necessarily in an effort to be mean or nasty,
Speaker 1: although that often happens too. That's frequently a side effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's just to say, um, hang on. So
Speaker 1: there have been multiple responses to this video. In the
Speaker 1: are critical in nature, and again some of them are
Speaker 1: are more kind of measured and saying I do not
Speaker 1: understand how they are going to achieve X. Some of
Speaker 1: them are a little more direct, saying there's no way
Speaker 1: they could possibly achieve X, and some of them are like,
Speaker 1: you are stupid if you think you can achieve X,
Speaker 1: you're stupid, and your face is stupid, and your cat
Speaker 1: is stupid. Mom is stupid. Yeah. Yeah, So, at any rate,
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about some of the criticisms or
Speaker 1: more of those former reasonable ones, less the cat thing.
Speaker 1: Some some of them got a little snarky, and we
Speaker 1: might as well. But at any rate, there's a website
Speaker 1: called gelot Nick that sent a request to another electrical engineer.
Speaker 1: Because you may remember we said Scott Brussa's an electrical engineer.
Speaker 1: This electrical engineer is named David David Forbes, so this
Speaker 1: is we're talking about a person named Forbes, not the magazine,
Speaker 1: and they asked them to evaluate this solar ROADWAYTE proposal,
Speaker 1: and Forbes listed some some concerns and said that the
Speaker 1: campaign was quote so flawed that I don't know where
Speaker 1: to start end quote. Specifically, he pointed out the problem
Speaker 1: with costs, uh that installation time would be incredible and
Speaker 1: thus the expense for paying people to install all of
Speaker 1: these panels into roads would also be incredible. Said that
Speaker 1: laying an asphalt road pretty much involves using an enormous
Speaker 1: machine that does all the work for you. You just
Speaker 1: walk along to make sure the machine is still working properly.
Speaker 1: But this would take really intensive human labor. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: because laying down these hexagonal panels would be more of
Speaker 1: a human job less than a machine job. So if
Speaker 1: you're just talking about replacing one road, I mean just
Speaker 1: think of a typical road in your area, and imagine
Speaker 1: having to replace all of that panel by panel with
Speaker 1: these hexagonal panels. There are a couple of feet across,
Speaker 1: less than a meter across, and you you have to
Speaker 1: replace the whole thing. That's significant, And we're talking about potentially,
Speaker 1: like if you're if you're taking the video at face value,
Speaker 1: eventually replacing all roads that's and that's enormous. And that
Speaker 1: also includes the time it takes to either prep the
Speaker 1: existing road surface or to tear it, tear it right up.
Speaker 1: I would imagine you would have to tear it up.
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine just putting the panels on top of it,
Speaker 1: because where where are the power? Where's the power coming
Speaker 1: out of? Like if if these solar panels are collecting energy,
Speaker 1: how do you get that energy from the solar panel
Speaker 1: to anything else that would actually be useful? And they
Speaker 1: were also talking so much about about the trenching that
Speaker 1: the cable trenches and all in the runoff trenches and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Now, if somehow the hexagonal
Speaker 1: panels interlock so that they can become kind of a
Speaker 1: channel for power, I suppose you could end up having
Speaker 1: just one side of it, be the the section that
Speaker 1: connects to a larger cable, and then the panels in
Speaker 1: that row would all feed. But I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's the case, because certainly the signals that's sending back
Speaker 1: and forth are through this wireless micro processor. It's not
Speaker 1: a circuit that's connected by edge to edge contact, So
Speaker 1: I don't think that's actually how it's happening, Which means
Speaker 1: you have to wire each individual panel to your conduit
Speaker 1: that is taking the energy from the panel and sending
Speaker 1: it to wherever it needs to go. All right, that's
Speaker 1: before you even get to the point of where does
Speaker 1: the power go? Because you can't just magically make it
Speaker 1: go to where it needs to be. You actually have
Speaker 1: to build the infrastructure in their little transmission stations to
Speaker 1: collect that power and send it on and change the
Speaker 1: the voltage of it. I mean, that's why we have transformers,
Speaker 1: because we need to be able to you know, there's
Speaker 1: lots of problems, and then there's the current issue voltage
Speaker 1: versus current lots of problems there. Um. That not to
Speaker 1: say that it's insurmount amountable or that they don't have
Speaker 1: answers to those those questions, but I haven't seen them.
Speaker 1: I have not either, So that would mean that you
Speaker 1: have to rip up all that road. So first you
Speaker 1: gotta rip up the road before you even do anything else.
Speaker 1: Then you have to prepare the ground that you've just
Speaker 1: ripped up for laying the solar panels down. And then
Speaker 1: you have to lay the solar panels down. So this
Speaker 1: is a monumental job. Um. Also that that expense issue,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, solar panels just from a material's cost,
Speaker 1: just the silicone in them, silicon, silicon, just the silicon
Speaker 1: in them is really expensive. Also, l ed s also glass,
Speaker 1: all of these things. I mean, you're you're talking about
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand square miles of material. Ultimately you're talking
Speaker 1: about so just twenty square miles of glass would be expensive.
Speaker 1: And yes, it gets less expensive per unit when you're
Speaker 1: buying in volume in bulk. But but but even so,
Speaker 1: that expense can only go down so far before you
Speaker 1: finally have hit at cost, and it's never going to
Speaker 1: be less than that certainly, So there's that issue UM.
Speaker 1: And then Forbes brought up an interesting warning about UM
Speaker 1: about the possibility if you have these complex electronics, Yes,
Speaker 1: what happens if someone whimsically decides to mess mess with that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say that you have these microprocessors all communicating wirelessly
Speaker 1: to each other. What happens if a hacker is able
Speaker 1: to manipulate that system and is able to insert some
Speaker 1: malicious commands so that a command that normally would say
Speaker 1: slow down doesn't show up, or they end up changing
Speaker 1: all the lanes, or they change the lanes looking like
Speaker 1: like that reversible lane. Example is telling you what if
Speaker 1: from both sides of travel, they make it look like
Speaker 1: that center lane is the appropriate lane. That's bad times.
Speaker 1: That's bad times, that's that's crash times, not good times.
Speaker 1: So I mean whether or not that particular system would
Speaker 1: be easy to hack or not easy to hack, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you, someone would try to do it, and eventually,
Speaker 1: if someone is determined enough, they would be able to
Speaker 1: do something if nothing else may be disrupted. So you
Speaker 1: just have a big, blank slate that you're driving on.
Speaker 1: That alone would be difficult because you don't have any
Speaker 1: lanes at all. Then you just have an enormous wide
Speaker 1: road to be like, be like our highway system turned
Speaker 1: into all those country lanes I went on in Ireland
Speaker 1: where you're like, I don't even know if this is
Speaker 1: for two way traffic or this is the thing that
Speaker 1: Forbes did not bring up that that that I remember seeing.
Speaker 1: But but what if you just got a blue screen? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if essentially, what if you're the processors crash and but
Speaker 1: now presumably if you had maybe just one crash, you
Speaker 1: would get that, you know, the person or the entity
Speaker 1: that overseesian and the whole thing. But if you're talking
Speaker 1: about something that ends up perhaps affecting a wide stretch
Speaker 1: of road, then you've got some serious problems. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: sending someone out to reset a single panel, that's and
Speaker 1: then making sure that person is safe while they are
Speaker 1: doing it, I mean, it's this is not necessarily easy.
Speaker 1: Other critics brought up lots of other concerns, like traction,
Speaker 1: what happens when the glass gets wet um Some people
Speaker 1: talked about the glasses resilience to scratches, So you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just rubber that's having those roads. It's dirt
Speaker 1: and sand and weird gritty particles in the you know,
Speaker 1: claws of animals whatever, So that ends up getting up,
Speaker 1: ends up getting rubbed in as the as the tires
Speaker 1: go over the road. Sand especially could cause scratches and
Speaker 1: the glass because sand is made of glass yep, and
Speaker 1: ends up possibly making it more opaque, which means that
Speaker 1: less light can actually get through or at the very
Speaker 1: least bouncing around light in ways that are not ideal
Speaker 1: to getting it down to the photovoltaic layers. So then
Speaker 1: your your energy collection becomes less efficient. Keep in mind
Speaker 1: that one of the big claims we didn't really mention this,
Speaker 1: but that one of the big claims of this is
Speaker 1: that if this were deployed throughout the entire United States
Speaker 1: and did replace all those paved areas we had talked about,
Speaker 1: according to the claim, we would be producing three times
Speaker 1: the amount of energy we currently consume. So that's not
Speaker 1: to say that we would suddenly be in an energy
Speaker 1: surplus and we'd have more energy than we need, because
Speaker 1: as we've all seen, we'll we'll use that surplus. We
Speaker 1: find ways we don't. We don't suddenly have a bounty.
Speaker 1: We just have a larger pool that we work in
Speaker 1: at any rate. Other other criticisms were that LED visibility
Speaker 1: visibility in bright light might be an issue. There's there's
Speaker 1: debate on this because depends on how how it's implemented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this is I mean, it's certainly a concern,
Speaker 1: you know, because you know, but we've we've got signs
Speaker 1: and traffic signals that use L E D s, but
Speaker 1: that's usually in a perpendicular plane to where sunlight's coming down.
Speaker 1: If it's if the sun's directly overhead and it's a
Speaker 1: really bright day, there is some question about whether or
Speaker 1: not the LED lanes would be visible and night would
Speaker 1: be great. Oh, it would be perfect at night bright
Speaker 1: sunlight situation. During the day unless those prisms that that
Speaker 1: Scott was talking about are really very well aligned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can see how to direct the lights so that
Speaker 1: you can actually see it even in the brightest of sunlight.
Speaker 1: Ryall it's possible I just haven't seen any demonstration of it.
Speaker 1: By the way, we should also mention, uh, their workshop
Speaker 1: is in Idaho, about an hour from the border from Canada,
Speaker 1: so their sunlight conditions are slightly different than say here
Speaker 1: in Georgia. Sure, but they also get a lot more snow. Uh,
Speaker 1: So there's that as well. Then there's the question, speaking
Speaker 1: of snow and ice, about is that really the most
Speaker 1: efficient way to melt it, to to use a heating
Speaker 1: element too, Is that or doesn't mean that you're actually
Speaker 1: using more energy to get rid of that snow and
Speaker 1: ice than you would if you were to say, use
Speaker 1: salt trucks and plows and uh, you know, it all
Speaker 1: depends on how much snow there is, how cold it is. Um.
Speaker 1: It also keep in mind that when it's snowing, there's
Speaker 1: a problem when you're using a solar panel based technology
Speaker 1: because in the middle of a snowstorm, you're not getting
Speaker 1: as much sun would during other times, right, Yeah, any
Speaker 1: sun probably, Yeah, the sunlight factors is kind of a
Speaker 1: non factor in that case. Not to mention, like, if
Speaker 1: it's snows at night, you know, then you get the
Speaker 1: double problem. So you need to power this heating system
Speaker 1: in some way, and that means you would be pumping
Speaker 1: power from back in. So then you have the problem
Speaker 1: of now, grant, if the United States had one giant
Speaker 1: smart grid where power could route from any part of
Speaker 1: the United States to any other part of the United States,
Speaker 1: will that would be a non issue. That is not
Speaker 1: how it works at all. We have regional power grids
Speaker 1: and most of them are working at capacity. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there are definitely some remote areas that would have a
Speaker 1: huge problem with this kind of thing under our current infrastructure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is a real issue there. Also, there's just
Speaker 1: the question of if it's made up of tiles, that
Speaker 1: means you do have edges. Yeah, these these places where
Speaker 1: tiles meet up against each other. So there's the possibility
Speaker 1: of stuff getting between those edges and disrupting the the
Speaker 1: road system that way. For instance, just water that's freezing.
Speaker 1: And sure, maybe the water on the surface of the
Speaker 1: tiles doesn't freeze because it's heated, but maybe water getting
Speaker 1: between tiles could freeze and then expand and push these
Speaker 1: tiles apart. Or you know, the ground moves. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: ground can change. I mean ground can change for lots
Speaker 1: of reasons, not just earthquakes. Oh yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if if trees or other plants are growing nearby, roots
Speaker 1: systems can disrupt the shape of a flat otherwise flat
Speaker 1: ground surface. Anyone who has walked along any sidewalk that's
Speaker 1: made up of these panels has probably seen cracks in
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, which comes from the movements in the ground
Speaker 1: and thus the movements of the the material itself. The
Speaker 1: material can expand and contract as the heat changes, right, Oh, certainly.
Speaker 1: I mean you know, Furthermore, any time it rains, the
Speaker 1: ground is changing dynamically with that rainfall. No matter how
Speaker 1: well you seeal a roadway off, it's never going to
Speaker 1: be completely perfect. So yeah, you've got the hardness of
Speaker 1: glass versus the softness of asphalt. Asphalt bends with your
Speaker 1: car as you're driving over it, and this is intrinsic
Speaker 1: to the way that people design cars. By the way,
Speaker 1: car Stuff is about to record an episode about solar roadways.
Speaker 1: It should be publishing this week, right around the same
Speaker 1: time that this episode publishes, so well, well, we'll try
Speaker 1: to remember to drop a link out to it on
Speaker 1: social I I hope that this is one of the
Speaker 1: things that they're going to talk about, because I find
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit clueless about how that entire thing works,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested to hear more about it. Well, on
Speaker 1: top of that, I mean, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: the the solar panels all that weight. Sure, you've got
Speaker 1: the glass that's protecting the solar panel technology, but it's
Speaker 1: not like the glass just absorbs all the force. That
Speaker 1: force still is going to be going through the solar
Speaker 1: panel and then into the base of the solar panel. Uh,
Speaker 1: depending upon what the ground is beneath it. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know how it's able to do this without
Speaker 1: damaging the solar panel material. Uh if that could also
Speaker 1: create wiggle room. I mean you're talking about tiles, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're driving over the edge of a tile,
Speaker 1: like you imagine that the pressure it's not constantly pressing
Speaker 1: straight down on the tile, it's moving across the tile
Speaker 1: like like a rolling pin across the dough. If you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to roll out cookie dough, you know that
Speaker 1: it's actually a little bit of work to get that
Speaker 1: surface flat. Even because you're working with a curved surface
Speaker 1: that's going to affect things slightly differently, So you could
Speaker 1: end up creating uh like tiles could be wiggling at
Speaker 1: the edges and then they could become uneven. If they
Speaker 1: become uneven, then you have other edges that are sticking
Speaker 1: up higher than the one next to it. So then
Speaker 1: it becomes a bumpy surface to drive on, perhaps even
Speaker 1: a dangerous one. Sure, these are all criticisms that people
Speaker 1: have made. Uh that you know, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the implementation won't somehow address them. But it's stuff that
Speaker 1: hasn't hasn't really been covered so far by by the team. UM.
Speaker 1: And a couple more before we transition away, UM, the
Speaker 1: question there's a question of whether tires could leave tread
Speaker 1: marks on the glass, adding to the opacity and reducing
Speaker 1: the efficiency. UM. And also the loudness of a car
Speaker 1: traveling at speed over glass. UM. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes roads noisy is the material
Speaker 1: that road is made of, UM, and any kind of
Speaker 1: gaps or cracks and the material tend to produce a
Speaker 1: lot of noise. And so if you're working with a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of tiles, uh, that's a lot of gaps
Speaker 1: and cracks. And also just I mean, the surface of
Speaker 1: the glass is different from asphalt and so it could
Speaker 1: it could hypothetically be very noisy. If you ever have
Speaker 1: driven over a road that's made of brick, for example,
Speaker 1: then you've probably heard the difference, not munching felt the difference,
Speaker 1: but but definitely heard the difference. And now these these
Speaker 1: panels are larger than that, so you would actually that
Speaker 1: would mean that the noise could be even more irritating.
Speaker 1: Actually yeah, but uh yes, So all of these materials problems.
Speaker 1: And then there is the price. Of course, it is
Speaker 1: completely impossible to say exactly how much the project would
Speaker 1: actually cost if undertaken so massively, you know, with all
Speaker 1: of the lowest bitter manufacturing and installation costs that any
Speaker 1: government project has is But what we do know is
Speaker 1: the cost of asphalt UM, which is variable at some
Speaker 1: three to fifteen bucks per square foot once installed, depending
Speaker 1: on a whole number of factors UM. And we know
Speaker 1: the rough cost of solar panels, the very rough cost.
Speaker 1: Really it's it's currently some seventy seventy five cents per
Speaker 1: what of capacity for consumer installation UM, with a square
Speaker 1: foot of solar panel comprising some eight to ten watts,
Speaker 1: which means that you're talking about like five bucks to
Speaker 1: seven and a half bucks per square foot for the
Speaker 1: foot of voltaics alone right at on top of that,
Speaker 1: the cost of micro microprocessors, the other sensors that are
Speaker 1: involved the glass. One YouTuber that you looked at had
Speaker 1: done some numbers on the glass. Thunderfoot is the name
Speaker 1: of the YouTuber who has a twenty eight minute long
Speaker 1: video that's a critique of this project. Uh and and
Speaker 1: Thunderfoot is he's little less de pblematic than other people,
Speaker 1: but he on YouTube on YouTube, but he makes some
Speaker 1: very interesting points that you know, these are concerns that
Speaker 1: have to be answered, and one of those was just
Speaker 1: he was just looking at the sheer amount no pun
Speaker 1: intended of glass needed for this project, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about twenty five square miles of roads, and he through
Speaker 1: his calculations, he said, well, just based upon the amount
Speaker 1: that this glass cost and the amount of area, um,
Speaker 1: I come up with twenty trillion dollars just for the class.
Speaker 1: That's more money than what I think anyone is prepared
Speaker 1: to pay for. Yes, I have seen estimates around the
Speaker 1: internet arranging close to fifty to sixty trillion dollars for
Speaker 1: the total cost of the project. To put this in perspective,
Speaker 1: a little bit. The annual budget that the Department of
Speaker 1: Transportation asked for for the National Highway Association uh IN
Speaker 1: was forty one billion dollars, so less than a tenth
Speaker 1: of what this would potentially cost, according to some people,
Speaker 1: could potentially cost. Maybe now, Solar Roadways has responded to
Speaker 1: a lot of these criticisms, not necessarily effectively in my
Speaker 1: in my opinion, but one of the things, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: for the cost, their response to the cost I don't
Speaker 1: think was a real response. Again in my opinion, they said, essentially,
Speaker 1: we don't know how much a panel is going to
Speaker 1: cost yet because we haven't cost out the prototype, because
Speaker 1: this is all stuff that we're buying off the shelf
Speaker 1: to make a working concept, right and don't have a
Speaker 1: production model yet. Right this the dollars that we are
Speaker 1: getting from our Indigo Go campaign are going to people
Speaker 1: who are very intelligent and are going to help us
Speaker 1: make this cost efficiency. So they don't so their response
Speaker 1: to it doesn't cost fifty or sixty trillion dollars because
Speaker 1: we don't know how much it costs yet. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a fair response in the sense that they don't
Speaker 1: have a figure, but it also and and it is
Speaker 1: it is fair when they say that, Um, any journalist
Speaker 1: who reports on the exact number that's going to cost
Speaker 1: and doesn't know what they're talking about, because technically none
Speaker 1: of us know what we're talking about. Now, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it won't cost fifty or sixty trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: It might It might cost more than that, depending upon
Speaker 1: what the final cost of any individual solar panel is. Uh,
Speaker 1: it may cost more than that to outfit the entire
Speaker 1: United States. The point they were making is that we
Speaker 1: don't know yet, so don't report those numbers. Because I
Speaker 1: don't know why they're so concerned. Their indigog project has
Speaker 1: already funded, so they can at least, uh, continue on
Speaker 1: and see how feasible this is. But it's one of
Speaker 1: the responses. And it was actually a flexible, flexible funding one,
Speaker 1: which means that even if they hadn't reached their full
Speaker 1: funding amount, the money that people had given to the
Speaker 1: project would have still most of it would have gone
Speaker 1: to them. Well, indigog takes a bigger chunk on that case.
Speaker 1: But yes, uh, Then some of the other refutations they
Speaker 1: had didn't seem to address what the concern was for example,
Speaker 1: that criticism about heating roadways being inefficient and expensive compared to, say,
Speaker 1: using a snowplow. Their response first was that um, driving
Speaker 1: in the winter, in the winter during ice or snowstorms
Speaker 1: is dangerous, which no one, no one was arguing, and
Speaker 1: no one had questioned every that's that's evident that driving
Speaker 1: in those conditions is dangerous, and therefore reducing those conditions
Speaker 1: is a good thing. No one disagrees with that. Then
Speaker 1: they also said that it's expensive to run snowplows and
Speaker 1: salt trucks, that kind of thing. No one said it
Speaker 1: wasn't expensive, not a question. No, they were saying, is
Speaker 1: it you know, it proved to us that your approach
Speaker 1: of using heat is more efficient and more cost effective
Speaker 1: than this other one. Because again, if you are in
Speaker 1: an area that needs this service, you are also in
Speaker 1: an area where you're not generating that electricity dynamically, and
Speaker 1: unless you have some magical way of getting the electricity
Speaker 1: from sunny place is to the places that are under
Speaker 1: lots of snow. That means you're pouring power into the system,
Speaker 1: and that trying to melt snow or ice it caught,
Speaker 1: it requires a lot of energy, and so if you're
Speaker 1: having to use a lot of energy, then that means
Speaker 1: that it might be costing you more money in the
Speaker 1: long run to use that method than to use a snowplow.
Speaker 1: And you can't use a snowplow on this type of road.
Speaker 1: So once it's there, you're stuck with you. You're stuck
Speaker 1: with it until you can melt it. Uh So, one
Speaker 1: thing that I haven't seen addressed that I did want
Speaker 1: to mention is that, Okay, solar energy is wonderful in theory.
Speaker 1: I've talked about this on the show before. I think
Speaker 1: um and costs and manufacturing practices are improving all the time,
Speaker 1: but as it stands, it is not completely green. This
Speaker 1: is not necessarily a super earth friendly technology. It is
Speaker 1: frequently better in the long run than some other things,
Speaker 1: but okay, the thing is is that solar panels are
Speaker 1: made with rare earth elements so called not because the
Speaker 1: are all that rare, they're actually fairly common, but rather
Speaker 1: because they're found in very small concentrations, and surrounding or
Speaker 1: refining them is really difficult and can involve some truly
Speaker 1: scary chemical processes. Right now, most of this is done
Speaker 1: in China because their cheapest from China, mostly because the
Speaker 1: minds are state run, their employees are terrifically underpaid, and
Speaker 1: their practices are blatantly irresponsible. We're talking about these sites
Speaker 1: which are situated smack in the middle of residential areas,
Speaker 1: dumping you know, like toxic sulfuric acid vapor into the
Speaker 1: local air and radioactive thorium into the local water systems.
Speaker 1: It is a really huge concern. So while the generating
Speaker 1: of electricity itself is green, the generating of the solar
Speaker 1: panels is not. It's not and and of course you
Speaker 1: know the these these minds in China, are these irresponsible
Speaker 1: minds in China are not the only ones producing the
Speaker 1: materials for our solar panels. I don't want to represent
Speaker 1: that because that would be untrue. And I do believe
Speaker 1: that there are many places that are working towards much
Speaker 1: better systems, but still a current concern. And anyone who's
Speaker 1: listened to UH there's an old Tech Stuff episode on
Speaker 1: Rare Earth minerals as well, where we really go into
Speaker 1: the detail of what they are and why there's this
Speaker 1: this problem with them, and also, you know, everything from
Speaker 1: the issues you were just talking about Lauren too to
Speaker 1: artificial scarcity, where you have a country like China restricting
Speaker 1: how much they will deport, how much they will export,
Speaker 1: not deport how much they'll export to other countries, almost
Speaker 1: as a way of like some people would call it extortion.
Speaker 1: It's controlling the market. Certainly, they are forcing foreign companies
Speaker 1: to build plants in their borders in order to do
Speaker 1: their thing right, and once money gets into China, it
Speaker 1: rarely um so, so there's that. Uh. Also, I did
Speaker 1: want to point out that a lot of the teams
Speaker 1: that the solar Roadways teams ideas really aren't related to
Speaker 1: the solar part of the roadway at all, but are rather,
Speaker 1: you know, to the l ed s and the potential
Speaker 1: smart capacity of the system, which is another twillions of
Speaker 1: dollars more in research and development and implementation. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is again we're talking about an enormous endeavor. I
Speaker 1: guess you could argue that these early days are still
Speaker 1: to prove the concept is viable, and if in fact
Speaker 1: it is viable, maybe we see the rollout as an
Speaker 1: extremely gradual role. It would have to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's no magical manufacturing process that's going to turn
Speaker 1: these things out in the volume necessary to cover all
Speaker 1: the roads anyway. Oh, certainly not. But you know, maybe
Speaker 1: for private practices it could be a you know, if
Speaker 1: a company wanted to pave their parking lot. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see this as being something that's used on
Speaker 1: a more modest scale. A lot of the critics also say,
Speaker 1: why pour money into this particular project when we could
Speaker 1: use a similar approach to places that are not constantly
Speaker 1: covered by cars, like putting solar panels along the sides
Speaker 1: of roads or on top of buildings. So, in that sense,
Speaker 1: using this technology to uh in ways where you don't
Speaker 1: have the considerations of how do you do this without
Speaker 1: disrupting all traffic everywhere or putting things in danger or
Speaker 1: having a an infrastructure that has to be replaced frequently
Speaker 1: because of just the wear and tear. I'm curious about
Speaker 1: why a system of kinetic kinetic road plates hasn't received
Speaker 1: this kind of attention. And yeah, I mean kinetic road
Speaker 1: plates would have their own issue because you're talking about
Speaker 1: transferring kinetic motion from the car to the roadway, and
Speaker 1: unless you do it in a very very smart way,
Speaker 1: you're just adding more work for the car to do.
Speaker 1: So it's just an you're not. You're not generating more
Speaker 1: energy that way, You're actually spending the same amount of
Speaker 1: energy you would be capturing just in your car. You'd
Speaker 1: be collecting it an aggregate, but your car would have
Speaker 1: to work harder, so on each Yeah, it's a This
Speaker 1: is why energy problems are hard, because they're big. You know,
Speaker 1: you can look at one individual piece of an energy
Speaker 1: problem and you say, oh, if we just fix this,
Speaker 1: everything's fine. But then you have to step outside of
Speaker 1: that and look at a bigger picture, and that's when
Speaker 1: it gets really complicated. So personally, I think the idea
Speaker 1: as presented is worth exploring at least to see how
Speaker 1: feasible it is and in what context. So I would
Speaker 1: be amazed if this actually becomes a viable means of
Speaker 1: replacing roads. I really would. I think it's a neat idea.
Speaker 1: I just don't see it working. I would eat my
Speaker 1: proverbial hat. Yeah it is proverbial. She is not wearing
Speaker 1: a hat because the headphones don't fit over hats. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm extremely dubious, you guys. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it could potentially be something interesting for you know, parking
Speaker 1: lots or paved public spaces sidewalks that could maybe be.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think in the sidewalks I walked
Speaker 1: down and how the things like a tree growing ends
Speaker 1: up completely destroying the sidewalk in the matter of a
Speaker 1: couple of years. And that's that's a you know, regular
Speaker 1: old clay ceramic sile that doesn't have any you know,
Speaker 1: in it poisonous electronics. So I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: worth looking into because if nothing else, it means that
Speaker 1: we might get ideas for alternate approaches that could buil
Speaker 1: down the road. I just don't think this one's gonna
Speaker 1: pay Yeah, And and I certainly don't want to quash
Speaker 1: you know, scientific inquiry and and curiosity nor to nor
Speaker 1: do I want to green areas and roadways. That's terrific. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if any of you have contributed to this project,
Speaker 1: we're not even saying that that was a mistake, not
Speaker 1: at all. What we're saying is that, uh, don't buy
Speaker 1: into the hype wholeheartedly. Go in with some skepticism, some
Speaker 1: critical thinking, and realize that even if this doesn't end
Speaker 1: up paying off in the implementation they're talking about, we
Speaker 1: could end up coming up with some really cool ideas
Speaker 1: that are similar to it, and that we could benefit
Speaker 1: from other ways and and who knows. The worst case
Speaker 1: scenario with our personal opinions is that we're wrong and
Speaker 1: it works, and if it works, it's awesome. Actually, that's
Speaker 1: kind of a best case scenario really from the project,
Speaker 1: Like I would take that I would love to be
Speaker 1: proven wrong, that that's true. I would love that my
Speaker 1: skepticism turns out to be unwarranted and that the problems
Speaker 1: I foresee, Like I'm still trying to think of using
Speaker 1: a hexagonal system of tiles in areas that have lots
Speaker 1: of hills and valleys and turns in them that would
Speaker 1: require some pretty you know, how do you get it?
Speaker 1: They also have trapezoidal half touch that. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: but it doesn't make me nonetheless. Yeah, but but I
Speaker 1: would love to be proven wrong and to see that
Speaker 1: this works perfectly, because you know, I want to drive
Speaker 1: around in tron world, or at least have my driverless
Speaker 1: car take me around in Tron world. Oh yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: And if this ultimately did work out and we were
Speaker 1: also able to have electric vehicles everywhere and really cut
Speaker 1: back on that pollution, that'd be fantastic. Um. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: of their Further ideas are to you know, provide induction
Speaker 1: surfaces to let these this the solar powered roadway also
Speaker 1: directly charge your electric vehicle as you drive it around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty awesome. That'd be pretty amazing. Yeah, essentially you
Speaker 1: have a car that you never have to refuel. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a future that can charge in parking lot
Speaker 1: while you're you know, while you're at Taco Bell or whatever.
Speaker 1: Sorry I said the taco Bell word. My stomach has
Speaker 1: been growling this whole podcast. Um. Yeah, I could eat
Speaker 1: like a king. I got like three bucks in my pocket. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is something that we would love to
Speaker 1: see happen. We just really think that it's a long shot.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean it's not a long shot worth taking.
Speaker 1: Just be aware that the chances of success are are there.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of challenges in the way. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is a very diplomatic way of putting it. Um,
Speaker 1: but hey, if you guys have any opinions about this,
Speaker 1: if you think that we are dead wrong or dead right,
Speaker 1: or or if you're if you're thinking like you guys
Speaker 1: didn't even address these eighteen other concerns that I have
Speaker 1: that I think are the barrier, or maybe you think, hey,
Speaker 1: you said that this was a concern, but here's how
Speaker 1: they're going to need it. You want to know all
Speaker 1: of that because this this is again one of those
Speaker 1: visions of the future that we would love to see happen.
Speaker 1: We just don't know if it's possible. Let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. Come join the conversation on Facebook. That's
Speaker 1: a great place to to start. Uh. You can let
Speaker 1: us know what you think on Twitter. You can let
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