Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says hit the road, Jack.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. How are you
Speaker 1: doing today, Jonathan, I'm well, Joe. We should mention that
Speaker 1: our co host Lauren is out today. Oh yeah, she
Speaker 1: is out, but hopefully she will be back with us
Speaker 1: next week. So we've mentioned several times on the show
Speaker 1: before that we're based in Atlanta, Georgia. Yes, the A
Speaker 1: t L. What what. I very much love living in Atlanta. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of love for the city. But
Speaker 1: there is one thing I do not love about this city.
Speaker 1: Does it involve putting metal plates onto onto the road
Speaker 1: so that when you drive over it it is the
Speaker 1: most jarring experience ever. Well, it's the broader concept of
Speaker 1: drive in Atlanta, got you? Yeah, that's the road conditions
Speaker 1: in Atlanta range from passable to I think mad Max
Speaker 1: might have been here. Yeah yeah, yeah, Well I guess
Speaker 1: they do that in other cities. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes like there's been roadwork and yeah, it's like they
Speaker 1: don't know. They were like, Oh, there's some huge holes
Speaker 1: in the road, We'll just put some tissues over the
Speaker 1: top of it. The tissues in the form of like
Speaker 1: a giant steel plate bolted down to the road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've had um. There are a few major roads
Speaker 1: in Atlanta that get a lot of traffic that have
Speaker 1: had this issue. So it got us to thinking, what
Speaker 1: if we talked about the future of roads. Is this
Speaker 1: what we're destined to be, you know, to to to
Speaker 1: live with the rest of our lives. Are we going
Speaker 1: to get to a point where we have jet packs
Speaker 1: and flying cars but the roads are still covered with
Speaker 1: potholes and steel plates? You know? It could be that
Speaker 1: that probably depends on the will of our legislators, so
Speaker 1: test your local politicians. But anyway, no, I do think
Speaker 1: it would be worth talking about roads, which is what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do today, because we've talked about the future
Speaker 1: of transportation lots of times. We've talked about flying cars,
Speaker 1: about electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, hybrid vehicles, we've talked
Speaker 1: about mass transit. I mean, there's a ton of room
Speaker 1: to grow with the future of transportation. But one thing
Speaker 1: we haven't really talked about is the transportation infrastructure itself,
Speaker 1: the roads and the bridges that get us from place
Speaker 1: to place. And you might think, Okay, I mean, how
Speaker 1: can roads really changed that? Basically you just need like
Speaker 1: a flat surface with some lane markers indicated. There you go,
Speaker 1: I mean, what else do you need to change? There's
Speaker 1: actually a lot. Yeah, there's there's a lot of the
Speaker 1: you know, and there's going to be a kind of
Speaker 1: a common theme as we go throughout this podcast, and
Speaker 1: the one of the major marks of that common theme
Speaker 1: is that any attempt to make big changes to the
Speaker 1: road system is going to require an enormous investment of
Speaker 1: time and money in resources because it's an established system.
Speaker 1: And sure, we spend a lot of money in time
Speaker 1: maintaining that system, but the thought of truly upgrading it
Speaker 1: is that's a pretty big deal. And that the question
Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves is at what point do
Speaker 1: we say, hey, no, this is a it is a
Speaker 1: big deal, but it's worth it to go through that process, right,
Speaker 1: And I think we should get the big tuna in
Speaker 1: the basket out of an expression tuna in the basket.
Speaker 1: I should get the big tuna in the basket out
Speaker 1: of the basket first, right, And I know you're sitting
Speaker 1: there at home thinking solar roadways, solar freaking roadways, as
Speaker 1: the video repeatedly announced you did you ever see that video,
Speaker 1: the solar freaking roadways video. I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: mean I read their their fundraising campaign stuff. So when
Speaker 1: there there's a we should, we should say solar roadways
Speaker 1: is the name of a proposed system of road redesign
Speaker 1: and to to end up instead of using asphalt for roadways,
Speaker 1: using solar panels that have been specifically engineered to withstand
Speaker 1: the the abuse that a road would encounter on its
Speaker 1: day to day life. This blew up on the internet
Speaker 1: last year. Yeah, um, it might have even been two
Speaker 1: years ago when it first was being mentioned. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, you had this couple who had come up
Speaker 1: with this this notion, and they had plotted out the
Speaker 1: kind of the electronic uh blueprint that would be necessary
Speaker 1: to make it work. And we're very optimistic about how
Speaker 1: it could be feasible, right, both from a physics standpoint
Speaker 1: and an economical standpoint. Although the economic side was largely
Speaker 1: obvious skated, I would say the there seemed to be
Speaker 1: a belief that the cost of solar panels would drop
Speaker 1: dramatically due to an increase in manufacturing, which is generally true,
Speaker 1: but you have to get there first, right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: magically happen at any rate. The video that went along
Speaker 1: with the fundraising campaign had an extremely enthusiastic narrator who
Speaker 1: extolled the virtues of solar freaking roadways, and it was
Speaker 1: done almost like, uh, like, if you see those all
Speaker 1: those commercials for the Monster Truck Rally Sunday Sunday Sunday,
Speaker 1: solar freaking roadways, that kind of thing. Um, And if
Speaker 1: you think about it, like, if you can make this
Speaker 1: system work, there are some legitimate cool things you could
Speaker 1: really do with it. One, you could change the road
Speaker 1: system from being just this passive network of pathways into
Speaker 1: an active electricity generating system. You could power cities with
Speaker 1: the roads. Sure well. I mean, if you look out
Speaker 1: over a hot highway in the summer, you will notice that, huh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of energy going to waste
Speaker 1: when you see the mirage coming up off the road
Speaker 1: and the distance that's heat, that's all just entropy, that's
Speaker 1: wasted energy. That could that solar energy that's going into
Speaker 1: being absorbed by the road and then radiating back outward
Speaker 1: as heat could potentially be harnessed. It's it's uh, it's enticing.
Speaker 1: It makes you think, oh man, what can we do
Speaker 1: with all that energy? Of course, you could say the
Speaker 1: same thing about the energy that falls all over the
Speaker 1: entire surface of the Earth, over the oceans and the
Speaker 1: alerts and yeah, everywhere. I mean, this is the that's
Speaker 1: the whole premise of solar energy in the first place,
Speaker 1: is to take a surface that is going to be
Speaker 1: exposed to solar radiation and cover that surface with solar
Speaker 1: cells which are able to absorb solar radiation, and then
Speaker 1: convert that into electricity. I mean, that's the whole premise,
Speaker 1: and the really the question comes down to does it
Speaker 1: make sense in this area? In other words, is the
Speaker 1: the expense of purchasing and installing solar panels in that
Speaker 1: area going to economically makes sense? Are you going to
Speaker 1: receive enough sunlight in that particular area to generate the
Speaker 1: electricity you actually require, or is all this effort going
Speaker 1: to be for not? Like if I if I cover
Speaker 1: an area in solar panels, but that area rarely gets sunlight,
Speaker 1: then I haven't done myself any favors. Right, So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of these questions, but the the general
Speaker 1: thought was, well, the roads cross all over the United States.
Speaker 1: That that was the sort of the the area that
Speaker 1: the fundraising campaign was focusing on was the United States
Speaker 1: of America. So roads go all over the US and
Speaker 1: a lot of those roads are receiving tons of sunlight,
Speaker 1: even when you factor in the fact that that sometimes
Speaker 1: there are cars on the road that blocks sunlight from
Speaker 1: happening from hitting the road. But the idea was, oh,
Speaker 1: you got this distributed way of generating electricity, a distributed
Speaker 1: power generation system, which is incredible. It's it would be
Speaker 1: amazing to be able to do this as opposed to
Speaker 1: having uh you know, regionalized power generation, right yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: I mean it's easy to get enthusiastic for this idea.
Speaker 1: It's like solar roadways applied directly to the roadways, right.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, I didn't get that joke for the
Speaker 1: longest time until I can't remember what channel finally had
Speaker 1: those was it? Is it? Head on? Is that what
Speaker 1: it is? I can't apply directly to forehead anyway, um
Speaker 1: at any rates. So the idea being that this would
Speaker 1: generate electricity. That that would be a huge benefit right
Speaker 1: there where you're you're turning something that normally would not
Speaker 1: be doing anything other than providing a pathway into power generation.
Speaker 1: But also you could have other cool features embedded in it.
Speaker 1: Sure well, this would make the roadways inherently electronic, which
Speaker 1: would give you the potential to make them not just
Speaker 1: passive and static, but to make them active and reactive.
Speaker 1: So one of the best features I've actually heard about
Speaker 1: the proposition of solar roadways is the idea of dynamic
Speaker 1: lane shifting. Right. Yes, so I live off the street
Speaker 1: in Atlanta to that has a reversible lane, and this
Speaker 1: is the cab avenue. And now you've given my address. No,
Speaker 1: no you haven't. You've just given a road I live off.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly fine. Road is a long road, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it has. It has in some stretches a center lane. Yes,
Speaker 1: that either has an arrow over it or an X.
Speaker 1: Full of evil magic. Yeah, it is full of evil magic,
Speaker 1: because not everyone knows that a reversible lane. When it's
Speaker 1: an X, it means you don't get in that lane.
Speaker 1: It means that the traffic that's coming towards you. Oncoming
Speaker 1: traffic has that lane and they change it throughout the day.
Speaker 1: So in the morning, when there's a lot of traffic
Speaker 1: heading into the city, the two lanes that head into
Speaker 1: the city or the you know, the middle lane is
Speaker 1: the go is now allowing traffic to head towards the city.
Speaker 1: And in the afternoon, when a lot of traffic is
Speaker 1: moving away, the middle lane allows traffic to move away
Speaker 1: from the city. And they they show this with that
Speaker 1: X or arrow. The problem is a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know how that works and they or they don't
Speaker 1: recognize it, or they think the middle lane is actually
Speaker 1: a turning lanes. So with any intersection you might see
Speaker 1: someone in the wrong lane of traffic. It's it's as
Speaker 1: if they're going the wrong way down a one way street,
Speaker 1: you know. To designate this, you're looking at signs hanging
Speaker 1: above the road because obviously we can't change the lines
Speaker 1: that are painted on the road. They're all series of
Speaker 1: of dashed lines. But what if instead of painted lines,
Speaker 1: you had embedded L E D s inside these solar
Speaker 1: panels and they just took a little bit of electricity
Speaker 1: that was being generated by the solar panels and they
Speaker 1: projected light so that you would see the division of
Speaker 1: the street right there on the street. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: you could actually dynamically change those traffic patterns by changing
Speaker 1: the lanes as you're driving. It might say, all right,
Speaker 1: you need to move over to the right, so you
Speaker 1: you move over into the right lane, and then eventually
Speaker 1: the lanes change so that the traffic is being directed
Speaker 1: in whichever direction it needs to be, and you could
Speaker 1: do it as me times throughout the day as was
Speaker 1: warranted based upon traffic patterns. You could also set up
Speaker 1: warnings for things like, let's say that there has been
Speaker 1: an accident. You could actually have warnings displayed on the
Speaker 1: street itself to let drivers know about it so that
Speaker 1: they can slow down and make sure that they don't
Speaker 1: make the situation worse. Um. There were even suggestions that
Speaker 1: there could be some sort of pressure sensitivity. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you would do this without it the road
Speaker 1: constantly going crazy, but that there could be some pressure
Speaker 1: sensitivity where if an animal were to start crossing the street,
Speaker 1: uh an alert would pop up, or the panels around
Speaker 1: where the animals stepping would light up, thus giving drivers
Speaker 1: and a visual indication that there is something obstructing the
Speaker 1: road and preventing a potential accident. Okay, now, we have
Speaker 1: already stated that the cost of installing millions of solar
Speaker 1: panels to replace highways could be prohibitive and will get
Speaker 1: more into the details in the second But once you're
Speaker 1: adding all of this functionality, it sounds like you're increasing
Speaker 1: the cost again and again and again. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: and that's not the only cost too. I mean there's
Speaker 1: another feature that would also add some some cost to this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh there. I don't know, Joe, you and I
Speaker 1: we don't deal with us very much. But there's some
Speaker 1: places where sometimes water gets cold and then it gets
Speaker 1: hard and slippery and turns into this ice stuff, which
Speaker 1: we normally find in t A. But it can get
Speaker 1: on the ground too, not just in t and that's
Speaker 1: when things get tricky. Oh no, this happened in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that situation a little bit later. I
Speaker 1: am obviously being facetious. It does happen in Atlanta. We
Speaker 1: get ice storms here in the city occasionally. In fact,
Speaker 1: we get ice more frequently than we get snow and um.
Speaker 1: But the one of the ideas that the solar roadways
Speaker 1: people were one of the features they were claiming the
Speaker 1: roads would have it. They'd be able to have some
Speaker 1: sort of heating element in them, and again you would
Speaker 1: dedicate some electricity to the heating element to raise the
Speaker 1: temperature of the roads so that ice would not form
Speaker 1: on the roads themselves. Uh. Which again that would be
Speaker 1: a great feature. Right, So you would have dynamic streets
Speaker 1: that could alert you to changing conditions, that could route
Speaker 1: traffic in a way to make it as efficient as possible.
Speaker 1: That we're generating electricity and we're melting ice. It's pretty amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If I could snap my fingers and make that a reality,
Speaker 1: I probably would. Yeah, And here's where we start running
Speaker 1: into some some problems. So there have been a lot
Speaker 1: of folks who have raised some criticism of the solar
Speaker 1: roadways plan, uh for for various reasons. Uh. One is
Speaker 1: most common criticism I saw was cost. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be the big one. Uh. Solar panels are not cheap
Speaker 1: so um, even if you were to mass manufacture them,
Speaker 1: at least in the beginning, they would be pretty expensive
Speaker 1: per panel. They're talking about using these hexagonal panels, right,
Speaker 1: and you would place them together kind of like a
Speaker 1: giant settlers of Catan. Uh. For the entire nation to
Speaker 1: drive on. So there's that my street will trade you
Speaker 1: sheep for your bricks something along those lines. Yes, and
Speaker 1: obviously asphalt is something that can kind of it can
Speaker 1: its form, can can curve along with the landscape. So
Speaker 1: you know that's another issue is that you've got these
Speaker 1: solid panels that don't do that. They don't have flex
Speaker 1: to them, so that that causes an issue. So that
Speaker 1: means that even if you have the panels, let's say
Speaker 1: that you've you've paid for the panels, that's that's awesome,
Speaker 1: You've got them, you're ready to put them down. Well,
Speaker 1: now you also have to pay for the labor, which
Speaker 1: would probably be the it would dwarf the cost of
Speaker 1: the solar panels because you have to rip up the
Speaker 1: infrastructure you have, the roads you have and install new infrastructure,
Speaker 1: which would be the solar panels and the channels necessary
Speaker 1: for the cable ing to go along the roads. Because
Speaker 1: these panels are are not just magically beaming electricity. They
Speaker 1: have to channel you know, they use cables to UH
Speaker 1: to run electricity through to the power grid, which also
Speaker 1: means you would have to have some sort of power
Speaker 1: processings UH system like you know, maybe boxes that would
Speaker 1: be along every few hundred feet along the side of
Speaker 1: the roads to which the power grid could attach and
Speaker 1: the electricity generated by these roads could then flow into
Speaker 1: the power grid. Otherwise, where's the where's the electricity going?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you just put batteries everywhere? I mean
Speaker 1: what it doesn't make sense, right, So then you've got
Speaker 1: that expense, they the labor expense. That labor is going
Speaker 1: to be additionally more expensive because they're going to have
Speaker 1: to start leveling more sections of the road. If you
Speaker 1: want these hexagons to line up properly, obviously, you would
Speaker 1: not want there to be like sharp peaks from where
Speaker 1: to two different panels are meeting over a little you know,
Speaker 1: lump in the road or a hill or whatever. So
Speaker 1: that's gonna be really expensive. It would take a huge
Speaker 1: amount of time too. So it's one thing to repave
Speaker 1: a certain stretch of road and you have to route
Speaker 1: traffic around it. Anyone who's had to, you know, work
Speaker 1: in any kind of of large urban area where there's
Speaker 1: roadwork knows how frustrating that can be. Well, imagine if
Speaker 1: you're can, you're you are determined to completely replace that
Speaker 1: road that the entire highway with solar panels. You you
Speaker 1: would have to figure that out. This would take huge
Speaker 1: amounts of civil planning to figure out how to route
Speaker 1: traffic around an area that is now going to be
Speaker 1: off limits while the existing road is dug up and
Speaker 1: the new foundation is put down and the new panels
Speaker 1: are installed. It's just it's just such a huge undertaking
Speaker 1: that it's hard to imagine how you could do it
Speaker 1: in a way that would be economically viable. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: I encounter this idea, the main question I have is, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I understand the proposed benefits of being able to
Speaker 1: have like adaptive lane shifting and and and warnings and
Speaker 1: messages on the road and stuff like that, but if
Speaker 1: you're just talking about generating power, in what way is
Speaker 1: solar roadways better than just having a bunch of solar
Speaker 1: farms out in the desert. Yeah, that's an excellent question, because,
Speaker 1: on top of the expense that we've already covered, solar
Speaker 1: panels have a lifetime, right they get gradually they start
Speaker 1: to degrade and you need to replace them, So that's
Speaker 1: an ongoing expense. It's not just the initial installation. You
Speaker 1: would have to continuously spend money to replace solar panels,
Speaker 1: and solar panels are not perfectly efficient. They don't capture
Speaker 1: all the energy from the sun. They are not able
Speaker 1: to convert all of that energy to electricity. The electricity
Speaker 1: they do generate is, you know, per solar cell, it
Speaker 1: tends to be the the you know, like the Milla
Speaker 1: amps level that we're talking tiny amounts of electricity. So yeah, collectively,
Speaker 1: you'd be generating a lot, but individually they generate very little.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I mean, I'm not against getting lots of
Speaker 1: our energy from solar I think as much as we
Speaker 1: could that would be great, But like, why is this
Speaker 1: any better than just having a bunch of solar form?
Speaker 1: It's not. And that's the problem. Is that because in
Speaker 1: order for you to make the let's say that you've
Speaker 1: got the best solar cells on the planet, right or
Speaker 1: technically orbiting the planet, because those tend to be the
Speaker 1: ones that are the highest quality of the ones that
Speaker 1: we put into space. Let's say that you get the
Speaker 1: highest ones, Well, you're you're going to have to protect
Speaker 1: those right from being driven over constantly like some thick
Speaker 1: glass that would be supportive of the weight of a truck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so thick tempered glass, which is going to limit the
Speaker 1: amount of solar energy that can get to your solar cells.
Speaker 1: So you're already taking a hit there. Plus you've got
Speaker 1: all these other things to worry about, like dust, dirt, oil, grime,
Speaker 1: you know, scratches, all this rubber, all this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that could end up further making the solar cell
Speaker 1: less efficient in capturing solar energy, let alone converting it
Speaker 1: to electricity. With all that in mind, there are very
Speaker 1: few advantages of using this stuff to pave a road
Speaker 1: rather than using a giant solar farm where you don't
Speaker 1: have those features. Typically don't see giants semitrucks driving over
Speaker 1: solar farms. It doesn't happen. But that's exactly what they
Speaker 1: do on highways. So a lot of people have said,
Speaker 1: why would we ever invest in this? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the features are cool, but they're not cool enough to
Speaker 1: justify the expense and the labor necessary to make it happen.
Speaker 1: If you, you know, it only makes sense if you've
Speaker 1: already exhausted all the other surfaces upon which we could
Speaker 1: put solar panels um and we haven't done that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have really put solar panels on that much here
Speaker 1: in the United States, you know, comparatively speaking. And if
Speaker 1: we had reached that point, then you might say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's turn the roads into into that too, because yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't even have solar panels on all our roofs yet,
Speaker 1: right put them on the roads exactly. So, I mean
Speaker 1: there's also other questions like would these would these roads
Speaker 1: remain uh active and and uh and effective for any
Speaker 1: length of time. Obviously roads are are subjected to huge
Speaker 1: forces repeatedly, and so uh, you know, it may be
Speaker 1: that some cells would get knocked out of alignment, which
Speaker 1: means they could be disconnected and perhaps no longer generating
Speaker 1: electricity or able to display the um the lights. You know,
Speaker 1: they might not be communicating anymore effectively, got a dead
Speaker 1: pixel in your road? Yeah, And while the design was
Speaker 1: was meant to make it easy to replace solar cells,
Speaker 1: if that happens frequently, then you've got a huge headache
Speaker 1: right as you're constantly having to send cruise out to
Speaker 1: either reconnect or replace dead solar cells. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: know it's stuff like ice heaving, which is when ice
Speaker 1: you know, when when water freezes it expands it's one
Speaker 1: of the few things that actually does that. I don't
Speaker 1: believe you try it. Here's here's an experiment to try
Speaker 1: at home. Fill up a cup of water, uh and
Speaker 1: then put it in the freezer, and then observe the
Speaker 1: level after it is frozen, and you will see it
Speaker 1: is higher than what you've filled it up to. Um
Speaker 1: And since ice expands, it can push stuff apart. So
Speaker 1: if the water gets in between the solar cells and
Speaker 1: then freezes even despite the you know, the heating element,
Speaker 1: sometimes the weather can overpower a system like it does
Speaker 1: happen if it's if it's intense enough, then you could
Speaker 1: up with broken connections that way too. So the ultimately
Speaker 1: what it comes down to is all of these problems
Speaker 1: are revolving around the expense and the efficiency, neither of
Speaker 1: which are at a level that makes a lot of
Speaker 1: critics feel comfortable with this approach. Yeah, I think all
Speaker 1: these criticisms are valid, though at the same time we
Speaker 1: don't want to sound too down on the idea, like
Speaker 1: discouraging people from trying. I just think that judging from
Speaker 1: the sort of expert criticisms that we've read, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like this is a very fruitful way to go
Speaker 1: forward with with harvesting solar energy for our grid needs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. I would look to using more of the
Speaker 1: the flat surfaces that are not constantly driven upon as
Speaker 1: the potential, uh you know, solar gatherings and places in
Speaker 1: a in an urban environment, rather than on the roads themselves.
Speaker 1: I think maybe a parking lot. But even then you
Speaker 1: have to, like I would experiment with the parking lot first.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I would say is why not above
Speaker 1: the parking lot instead of on the ground. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are already a bunch of parking lots like this
Speaker 1: where you have parking spaces lined out, you know, out
Speaker 1: in the sun exposed, but above them are sort of
Speaker 1: like shades or rooftop type structures that are sort of
Speaker 1: leaving the parking lot partially covered. And those have solar
Speaker 1: panels on top. Yeah. The and that provides the nice
Speaker 1: extra benefit of keeping your car cool in summer so
Speaker 1: that you don't have to crank the A C up
Speaker 1: to eleven when you get back in the car melt.
Speaker 1: The The example I've always seen about using it in
Speaker 1: the parking lot was again for those dynamic conditions, which
Speaker 1: which is neat you know, it's it is interesting. I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's the killer feature that justifies the
Speaker 1: incredible expense and the possible ongoing maintenance expense of of
Speaker 1: switching to this sort of thing. So I agree. I
Speaker 1: think it would make more sense to have a covered
Speaker 1: parking area that has solar cell on top of it
Speaker 1: to capture solar energy rather than incorporating it into the
Speaker 1: parking lot itself, especially considering that if the place is
Speaker 1: busy and it's open during the day, then cars are
Speaker 1: blocking the sun from reaching the solar cells in the
Speaker 1: first place, right, So you know, it would be one
Speaker 1: thing if we were all nocturnal, And if we were nocturnal,
Speaker 1: then obviously, you know, coding public places with solar cells
Speaker 1: would make sense because a lot of people would all
Speaker 1: be in bed, right you it would be the ideal
Speaker 1: time to have uh to generate electricity. But since we're all,
Speaker 1: you know, awake during the day, or most of us,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of us, and we're active, then it's
Speaker 1: probably not a great idea. So that seems to me
Speaker 1: to be a bust as far as the roads of
Speaker 1: the future. But there are other things that could be
Speaker 1: really important, right sure, Well, you just mentioned a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff about the maintenance of roads, and this is
Speaker 1: another area where cost is a big factor. So row
Speaker 1: and bridge maintenance is serious business, especially here in America.
Speaker 1: Roads see a lot of wear and tear. Fixing them
Speaker 1: costs society a ton of money, and not fixing them
Speaker 1: probably costs even more so. According to aten survey by
Speaker 1: Trusted Choice and the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America.
Speaker 1: And just to note, this is like an insurance industry survey,
Speaker 1: so it's possible the results aren't a hundred percent objective.
Speaker 1: That might be some biases, right, but just just as
Speaker 1: a starting point for numbers. But between two thousand nine
Speaker 1: and fourteen they say that half of all car owners
Speaker 1: experienced vehicle damage as a result of potholes. Anyone telling
Speaker 1: Ponstantly and Avenue is probably going to say, yes, I
Speaker 1: agree with the study. And so just potholes, I mean
Speaker 1: they can damage the sidewall, your tire, or even if
Speaker 1: they're bad, they can actually damage the wheel itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: And according to the same survey quote, poor road conditions
Speaker 1: ended up calling the consumers in the insurance industry more
Speaker 1: than twenty seven billion dollars during the five year period
Speaker 1: of the studies that was two thousand nine. So that's
Speaker 1: a lot of money as a result of just damage
Speaker 1: caused by problems with the road. Problems that could be fixed.
Speaker 1: But there's so much road out there, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just hard to get to these problems, and and
Speaker 1: so you let's say that you know, you're a driver
Speaker 1: and you have to get from point A to point B,
Speaker 1: and between point A point B is a crappy road
Speaker 1: with potholes in it, and as a result of having
Speaker 1: to take that route, your car gets a bit banged up.
Speaker 1: Who ends up paying for that? Oh yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: another thing. So either way, this is costing society money.
Speaker 1: So they said in this survey of the car owners
Speaker 1: who had damage from potholes got a claim filed with
Speaker 1: their insurance company. So that means the insurance company is
Speaker 1: possibly paying out and it's not like that's just coming
Speaker 1: out of their pockets. They're increasing the rates that you
Speaker 1: pay to them in order to make up that money.
Speaker 1: And then another of the people said that they just
Speaker 1: paid out a pocket. Yeah, I mean often makes sense.
Speaker 1: If you have minor problems with your car, you don't
Speaker 1: want to involve the insurance company and have them punish
Speaker 1: you for it. So what a crazy thing insurance is,
Speaker 1: right exactly. We could do a whole episode on that later, right,
Speaker 1: And then they said this was funny. Three percent said
Speaker 1: local authorities paid so essentially the city state and said, ah,
Speaker 1: there was a pothole, give me money, right like that.
Speaker 1: You know, I literally cannot get to where I need
Speaker 1: to go without taking your road. Your road is broken. Therefore,
Speaker 1: since you are the entity in charge of your road,
Speaker 1: you owe me for that that expense. Hey, if it works,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, you could argue that this is
Speaker 1: also one of those cases where uh, similar to the
Speaker 1: insurance company and maybe the a a political uh entity,
Speaker 1: whether it's city or state or whatever, says well, it's true,
Speaker 1: we do need to do maintenance on this road. So
Speaker 1: in order to do that, let's raise taxcess. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: in the US government spends a lot of money maintaining
Speaker 1: and repairing roads, Like how much is a lot of mine?
Speaker 1: A lot? In two thousand and eleven, the US Federal
Speaker 1: Highway Administration, they said they committed thirty one point eight
Speaker 1: billion dollars to improve US highways and bridges, and of
Speaker 1: the thirty one point eight billion, about forty two per
Speaker 1: cent or about thirteen point four billion, was quote committed
Speaker 1: for improvements designed to maintain or preserve existing roads and bridges,
Speaker 1: such as road reconstruction and resurfacing, bridge replacements, and bridge repairs.
Speaker 1: So that's just making fixes to existing road surfaces and
Speaker 1: bridges to prevent them from causing damage falling apart and
Speaker 1: in then that was just the federal Highway Administration. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, the same year, the state transportation departments
Speaker 1: within the United States spent a total of a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen billion on highway improvements, including some federal funds,
Speaker 1: and of that money, thirty five point five percent, or
Speaker 1: about forty point to billion, was Again it was spent
Speaker 1: on preservation, construction, roadway resurfacing, bridge repairs, the same kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, just fixing the deterioration of road conditions. Oh
Speaker 1: and on top of that, the states also spent around
Speaker 1: thirty billion on stuff including quote routine maintenance of homes
Speaker 1: and bridges. So that was in addition also to highway
Speaker 1: safety and law enforcement. Right, so we are talking and
Speaker 1: this you know, this is obviously United States, but there
Speaker 1: are you know, other countries obviously also have to pay
Speaker 1: huge amounts in order to maintain the road systems. So
Speaker 1: this is a significant amount of might just to keep
Speaker 1: things in drivable condition, right in sometimes in barely drive
Speaker 1: a b Yeah, your mileage really may vary. And so
Speaker 1: I actually couldn't find any good statistics on this, but
Speaker 1: you'd have to assume that poor road conditions like potholes, cracks,
Speaker 1: crumbling asphalt, general wear and tear also sometimes contributes to
Speaker 1: accidents and collisions. I mean, I couldn't imagine that that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean that to
Speaker 1: me makes sense. Like clearly, if there is something that
Speaker 1: can potentially, you know, damage your vehicle, it could also
Speaker 1: potentially lead to an accident. Right, So what if we
Speaker 1: could pave our roads with surface materials that don't need
Speaker 1: so much maintenance? And what if we could build our
Speaker 1: bridges with materials that don't need so many repairs and reconstructions.
Speaker 1: So are you talking at Amantium like we just we
Speaker 1: just take wolverines claws and turn that into bridges and roads.
Speaker 1: Why just as clause, I'm saying you should take wolverine,
Speaker 1: liquefy him and then put him under a steam roller.
Speaker 1: On the highway. Magneto has tried on multiple occasions, and
Speaker 1: that guy has proved to be widely You know, wolverine
Speaker 1: applies in multiple ways actually to what I'm about to say,
Speaker 1: because adamantium is very strong. But no, that's not what
Speaker 1: we should do. Instead, we should take wolverines other special feature,
Speaker 1: which is that he is self healing. He has a
Speaker 1: healing factor, yeah, mutant healing factor. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: materials that, while they're they're not so resilient that they
Speaker 1: resist all damage. Rather they are designed to heal damage. Sure,
Speaker 1: and scientists and engineers have been working on so called
Speaker 1: self healing materials for years. It's actually it's a big
Speaker 1: field of materials research these days. It's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really cool actually us So one example is a
Speaker 1: guy named Hank Yonkers of Delft University of Technology in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, and he's been designing a version of self
Speaker 1: healing concrete and the way it works is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So distributed throughout the concrete mixture there are tiny capsules
Speaker 1: of bacteria and some calcium lactate. And these bacteria like
Speaker 1: one kind of be basillous pseudo firm us. Interesting pseudofermus.
Speaker 1: Yea fake firm, I don't know, kind of like my mattress.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite of true firm. Uh So, Anyway, they
Speaker 1: are these little micro organisms that produce biogenic calcite or
Speaker 1: or sort of like limestone when they eat calcium lactate
Speaker 1: with the stuff that I said was distributed in the concrete.
Speaker 1: So when cracks are gaps form in the concrete, the
Speaker 1: air and the water get into the concrete and activate
Speaker 1: the bacteria, and then the bacteria in turn start munching
Speaker 1: on the calcium lactate and they convert it into calcite,
Speaker 1: which is the common part of sedimentary rocks like limestone
Speaker 1: that can sort of seal back up the crack that
Speaker 1: has formed. So so it's almost like imagine that you
Speaker 1: have a haulking gun and you have to squirt calk
Speaker 1: into something, except this is material that's doing it by
Speaker 1: itself because of the bacteria and the and the fuel
Speaker 1: the food essentially, yeah, that it consumes to generate this stuff.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. It's really cool. And they said, you
Speaker 1: know that that versions of this could have bacteria that
Speaker 1: lie dormant and stay alive for like two hundred years.
Speaker 1: So this could have a very good longevity to it. Actually,
Speaker 1: and this is talking about concrete mostly in the context
Speaker 1: of self healing buildings. The media coverage I've seen of
Speaker 1: this has been talking mostly about buildings. But there are
Speaker 1: roads that are concrete roads. I mean, we tend to
Speaker 1: think of roads as being asphalt paved, but asphalt is
Speaker 1: like a you know, it's asphalt concrete, it's like bitumen
Speaker 1: enhanced with the attraction enhance er aggregate in there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there are straight up concrete roads. Now, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if this type of self healing concrete would be appropriate
Speaker 1: for road surfaces, but the general principle of self healing
Speaker 1: material research could be applied to all kinds of road
Speaker 1: surfacing materials and the right and this obviously would be
Speaker 1: really good for stuff like bridges as well. Certainly. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a type of self healing material that tends
Speaker 1: to be categorized as embedded healing agents. So the embedded
Speaker 1: healing agents in this case being the bacteria and the
Speaker 1: food that it eats in order to create this this
Speaker 1: limestone like material. Um. The there are downsides too embedded
Speaker 1: healing agents, the big one being that once it's used up,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't heal it anymore. And typically when
Speaker 1: something receives some sort of damage, even after you have
Speaker 1: patched it, it's still weaker than what it was before
Speaker 1: the damage. So it may be that this kind of
Speaker 1: thing will preserve the lifespan or it will elongate the
Speaker 1: lifespan of a road, but it would not make it
Speaker 1: indefinitely able to heal itself. There are other types of
Speaker 1: of research into self healing materials that are are trying
Speaker 1: to mimic the way organisms that have a circulatory system
Speaker 1: heal and that when I break a bone, which gosh
Speaker 1: should happened so frequently. Now, I don't have little capsules
Speaker 1: in my bones that are once there's damage to the bones,
Speaker 1: they spring into action and stitch it all together. You
Speaker 1: have osteoblasts. Yeah, So the way that the healing system
Speaker 1: works and organisms that circulatory systems is that essentially your
Speaker 1: body sends the stuff that needs to get to a
Speaker 1: specific location when it needs to get there. Uh. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's it's kind of a response system, like,
Speaker 1: you know, let's send the various uh, you know, ingredients
Speaker 1: needed to heal this damage right now because damage has happened,
Speaker 1: so what if you could design material that does the
Speaker 1: same thing, and it's essentially you know, simulating a vascular
Speaker 1: system um. In fact, the materials tend to be called
Speaker 1: microvascular material els where you build in a delivery system
Speaker 1: it's like veins essentially. Yeah, you would have to have
Speaker 1: like tiny little tubes that would allow the healing material
Speaker 1: to go to the specific location where it needs to
Speaker 1: patch whatever the damage is there. There's research into building
Speaker 1: materials like this, typically for things again like bridges and buildings,
Speaker 1: but also you could potentially do it with roads. The
Speaker 1: issue though they're a couple obviously it's a more complex system.
Speaker 1: It also is slower than the embedded healing agent system.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're the the actual healing agent is located
Speaker 1: at the point of damage because the it's distributed throughout
Speaker 1: the material, right, Whereas in this case you might have
Speaker 1: the healing agent that you have to send to the
Speaker 1: location through this circulatory system these series of tubes. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: just like the internet. But it takes time for it
Speaker 1: to get there, so it's not something that immediately starts
Speaker 1: to heal the damage. And if it whatever it was
Speaker 1: that caused the damage is an ongoing issue, it may
Speaker 1: be that the damage is getting worse and worse, and
Speaker 1: is doing so at a rate faster than what the
Speaker 1: system is able to compensate for. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: you could send healing stuff through this microvascular system, but
Speaker 1: it may not get to where it needs to be
Speaker 1: in in amounts large enough for it to reverse or
Speaker 1: or or slow that damage to any appreciable amount. So
Speaker 1: it has its own drawbacks. In other words, but whatever
Speaker 1: method you use, I do think that self healing materials
Speaker 1: are going to be a very strong place to look
Speaker 1: in the future of roads because of this. This maintenance
Speaker 1: cost and the cost of not maintaining roads like it
Speaker 1: just benefits society so much to have roads that don't
Speaker 1: have maintenance problems, right yeah, I mean if you if
Speaker 1: even if you say this material is going to be
Speaker 1: much more expensive than your average asphalt is. If you
Speaker 1: look at you say, all right, well, what is the
Speaker 1: lifespan for this material? How long is it going to
Speaker 1: be useful? Uh? Not just in how long will it
Speaker 1: be effective with the bacteria living two hundred years for example,
Speaker 1: but how long do we estimate it would take before
Speaker 1: we have to replace this stuff? If it's long enough,
Speaker 1: it may be that economically it balances out because we
Speaker 1: already know how much we're spending just on regular roads,
Speaker 1: on the damage caused vehicles through road problems, and then
Speaker 1: the amount we spend fixing the road. So it may
Speaker 1: be that we sit there and say, Okay, this totally
Speaker 1: makes sense for us to make this investment because in
Speaker 1: the long run, it's going to save us money. Um.
Speaker 1: Another interesting thing one of the ones that we wanted
Speaker 1: to come back and revisit. You know, we talked about
Speaker 1: in the Solar Freaking Roadways about the the anti icing
Speaker 1: uh measures, the idea of a heating element that could
Speaker 1: keep ice from forming on roads. But that's not the
Speaker 1: only anti icing and uh there are places that could
Speaker 1: really use it, like our hometown. Sure well, I mean,
Speaker 1: what happened in Atlanta was suddenly this city became like
Speaker 1: the laughing stock of the entire country because two inches
Speaker 1: of snow completely shut down the city. But to be fair,
Speaker 1: that snow was icing over. Atlanta is a city with
Speaker 1: lots of hills on it. We're not used to these conditions,
Speaker 1: and we don't have the equipment necessary to to clear
Speaker 1: roads on any kind of you know, reasonable time frame.
Speaker 1: So if we lived in a place where we got
Speaker 1: snow and ice more frequently. We would have we would
Speaker 1: have invested in the infrastructure to salt trucks going by
Speaker 1: all the time. And there were also issues of that
Speaker 1: that you know, the city was was blamed for not
Speaker 1: taking precautionary measures early enough to prevent this from happening.
Speaker 1: So one if we could design roads they had precautionary
Speaker 1: measures built into them so that it wasn't an issue
Speaker 1: of oh, we didn't send the salt trucks out on time. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: there are such things as anti icing technologies and they
Speaker 1: actually already exist today. There there are technologies that you
Speaker 1: can apply to the road surfaces in your area that
Speaker 1: will respond to freezing conditions so that you don't have
Speaker 1: to go out and apply the de icing agent. It's
Speaker 1: already built into the road. But they're not awesome today
Speaker 1: and that that's one area that I think we could
Speaker 1: see expansion in the future, is anti icing technologies getting
Speaker 1: better than they are. So what are the technologies today, Well,
Speaker 1: essentially we're talking about chemicals that it's a combination. It's
Speaker 1: chemicals and aggregate. So the aggregate is meant to be
Speaker 1: like this rough surface to get good traction to provide
Speaker 1: better traction exactly, and then the chemicals are meant to
Speaker 1: decrease the freezing temperature of water, which is actually what
Speaker 1: salt does. Yeah, it's exact. Actually what salt does. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's what pretty any anti icing chemical, that's really
Speaker 1: what ultimately is going on. It's it's it's making the
Speaker 1: freezing temperature of water go lower and lower, so that
Speaker 1: the temperature itself has to be colder than freezing for
Speaker 1: the water to turn into ice. So you know, typically
Speaker 1: water turns a dice at zero degrees celsius. But if
Speaker 1: you're able to lower that, then you can help prevent
Speaker 1: ice from forming on roads in all but the most
Speaker 1: extreme conditions. If if we do get to a point
Speaker 1: where the temperature is significantly low, and we saw that
Speaker 1: happen in twenty fourteen, there were some cities that reached
Speaker 1: incredibly low temperatures in uh, then it might not matter.
Speaker 1: Right in those cases, it may be that it's so
Speaker 1: cold that even with the chemicals in place, you cannot
Speaker 1: prevent the ice from forming. But under typical conditions like
Speaker 1: the kind that hit Atlanta in you might be able
Speaker 1: to prevent that ice from forming and it's it's like
Speaker 1: you've salted the roads. Now, imbuing your your road system
Speaker 1: with these chemicals, you know, building that into the asphalt
Speaker 1: itself is a great way of having a preventive uh
Speaker 1: anti icing you know strategy. However, like the self healing
Speaker 1: embedded agents, it's one of those that could potentially be
Speaker 1: depleted over time, So then you might be able to
Speaker 1: have your your road be ice free for a few seasons,
Speaker 1: but it may be something that you have to look into,
Speaker 1: like how can we you know, refresh this system so
Speaker 1: that it still does it the next year. Another thing
Speaker 1: that I think is going to be really important is
Speaker 1: looking at the environmental impact anti icing road surfaces, because
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are ways of doing it that are
Speaker 1: less environmentally detrimental than others. I mean, if you have
Speaker 1: you don't want a road that just sort of exudes
Speaker 1: free on. Yeah, you don't want anti freeze just bleeding
Speaker 1: out of your streets and then running off into the
Speaker 1: forests on either side of the road. So what you're
Speaker 1: working on is trying to design anti icing agents that
Speaker 1: aren't going to harm wildlife and uh and and cause
Speaker 1: toxic conditions, right, yeah, it is. It is one of
Speaker 1: those things that's delicate balance, right, So uh, making sure
Speaker 1: that you have that that right balance, that the chemical
Speaker 1: is going to be effective but not harmful, Also that
Speaker 1: the aggregate itself, Like you know, creating that traction is great,
Speaker 1: but as traffic continues to go across this road is
Speaker 1: going to wear that down. I mean, that's just going
Speaker 1: to happen from the countless cars that are going to
Speaker 1: cross over it, which means it's going to be less
Speaker 1: and less effective each year. So that's also something that
Speaker 1: eventually you will have to replace. So these these solutions
Speaker 1: we're looking at aren't like a permanent fix, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're largely things that will extend the lifetime or
Speaker 1: will extend the utility of a road, particularly in what
Speaker 1: would otherwise be hazardous conditions. But they aren't you know.
Speaker 1: It's not you do it once and you're done. It's
Speaker 1: this is stuff that would have to be reapplied or maintained,
Speaker 1: just as our road systems are now, but maybe not
Speaker 1: as frequently as they are now. That would be great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then there is one other big technology that I
Speaker 1: think actually could be one of the most interesting of
Speaker 1: all the ones we've talked about. Yeah, so we know
Speaker 1: the benefits of electric vehicles obviously, I mean, gas cars
Speaker 1: put out a lot of carbon emissions. They consume gasoline, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, which is in fact a limited resource. And
Speaker 1: there are obvious advantages to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: But it's just not taken off like we hoped it would.
Speaker 1: I mean it might sometime in the near future. Um,
Speaker 1: but the the widespread adoption of electric vehicles has been slow.
Speaker 1: There's a and there are a few factors, right, is
Speaker 1: that they tend to be more expensive, of course, so
Speaker 1: that's that's one barrier to entry. We hope the costs
Speaker 1: will come down over time more people buy them. They
Speaker 1: have been coming down. It's just you know, it's again
Speaker 1: we're very early on in the new electric vehicle adoption phase.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind electric vehicles actually pre date the internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine style. But at any rate, so the cost
Speaker 1: is one barrier. Another one is that, uh, the charging
Speaker 1: infrastructure is still being built out right, So if you
Speaker 1: if you want to charge your vehicle, there are more
Speaker 1: places to do that than there used to be. But
Speaker 1: still it's not like there's a gas there's not like
Speaker 1: a charging station in every corner, like there's a gas
Speaker 1: station everywhere, right, and so you have this fear. It's
Speaker 1: sort of tied to range anxiety, but it's different. It's
Speaker 1: the sphere of, well, what if I'm driving around all
Speaker 1: day and I can't find a place to plug in
Speaker 1: my electric vehicle to recharge it. Well, I mean, we
Speaker 1: live in a world now where are used to the
Speaker 1: feeling of looking at your phone and seeing that under
Speaker 1: ten percent battery power light come on, and feel that
Speaker 1: fear of I'm not going to be able to use
Speaker 1: this in a very short while. I mean that that's
Speaker 1: for some of us, depending on how old our phone
Speaker 1: is and what brand it is, that might happen every day.
Speaker 1: And then you think, well, what do you extend that?
Speaker 1: What did this happen to me in my car? What
Speaker 1: if my car was telling me, hey, buddy, you need
Speaker 1: to find a charging station because if you don't find
Speaker 1: one in the next fifteen minutes, you're not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's the fear, right, And whether it's realistic or not
Speaker 1: doesn't matter so much as if the fear is there,
Speaker 1: that's a barrier. Yeah, but what if you didn't have
Speaker 1: to find a place to plug your car in in
Speaker 1: order to recharge it. So you're looking at a future
Speaker 1: of incredibly long extension cords. That is exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. No, I'm talking about wireless charging for electric
Speaker 1: vehicle inductive coupling. Oh yes, so we've talked about inductive
Speaker 1: coupling on the show before. We should do a real
Speaker 1: brief refresher on how it works. What's the concept here?
Speaker 1: All right? So the easiest way of looking at is
Speaker 1: think about one of those electric toothbrushes that has a
Speaker 1: little charging station and you put the you know, the
Speaker 1: toothbrush stands on top of it like it's a little
Speaker 1: just a little base, and then it charges that way.
Speaker 1: Doesn't plug into anything, there's no contacts or anything. You
Speaker 1: just have to have the one device on top of
Speaker 1: the other one and it charges. Here's what's going on.
Speaker 1: We've talked about electro magnetism a lot, this relationship between
Speaker 1: electricity and magnetism. If you run an electric current through
Speaker 1: a coil of wire, you generate a magnetic field, and
Speaker 1: the more coils you have, the bigger the magnetic field is.
Speaker 1: The more you amplify that magnetic field, you put a
Speaker 1: second coil of wire within that first magnetic coil wires
Speaker 1: magnetic field. The magnetic field will induce electricity to flow
Speaker 1: through that second coil of wire. So you've got the
Speaker 1: coil wire one, you run electricity through it generates a
Speaker 1: magnetic field. Coil wire two comes into into Within that
Speaker 1: magnetic field, electricity is induced to flow through the second
Speaker 1: coil of wire. Um if you were to do this
Speaker 1: with enough power, you could generate quite a bit of
Speaker 1: electricity running through that second coil. And if you connected
Speaker 1: that second coil to something useful like either an electric
Speaker 1: motor or preferably to a battery, you could have electricity
Speaker 1: power that or charge it in the case of the battery.
Speaker 1: So if you had a vehicle that had this inductive
Speaker 1: coupling kind of system in it, essentially it has a
Speaker 1: big coil running through it that then leads to the
Speaker 1: vehicle's battery. And then you had, you know, an infrastructure
Speaker 1: that had similar coils that have power running through it,
Speaker 1: generating this magnetic field. You could keep a charge running
Speaker 1: through your car's coil, thus continuously charging your battery. Pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: and this is something that actual research as are working on,
Speaker 1: like the idea of how you can design cars that
Speaker 1: can receive a charge, and design charging stations underneath roads
Speaker 1: that can charge cars without the car having to sit
Speaker 1: there right on top of the thing. Yeah. Now we've
Speaker 1: seen some where they have been designed where a vehicle
Speaker 1: just sits on top of it. Sure. One example would
Speaker 1: be like an electric bus, and when the bus pulls
Speaker 1: up to a bus stop where they know it's going
Speaker 1: to be stationary for some amount of time, pretty frequently
Speaker 1: underneath the road in the bus stop, there's a charging
Speaker 1: station and it it induces this current, uh, creates the
Speaker 1: magnetic field and recharges the bus's battery a little bit,
Speaker 1: right and uh, and so the bus doesn't have to,
Speaker 1: you know, come go offline throughout the day and have
Speaker 1: another bus come on while it charges. It's constantly charging,
Speaker 1: so it can last as long as it needs to. Sure,
Speaker 1: but ideally what you would be able to do is
Speaker 1: have roads that charge you whether you're moving or standing still,
Speaker 1: no matter where you are right, which means that you
Speaker 1: would have to have a series of these uh inductive
Speaker 1: coupling coils underneath the road. You couldn't just have it
Speaker 1: in one spot, because as soon as you moved down
Speaker 1: the magnetic field, you're no longer getting that electricity induced
Speaker 1: to flow through the coil of your vehicle. So you
Speaker 1: would have to have these lining the roads essentially, either
Speaker 1: underneath or you could do it on the side. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be directly under it. You just have
Speaker 1: to be within range of wherever the magnetic field is.
Speaker 1: And of course the more power you are, the more
Speaker 1: coils you have, really the bigger the magnetic field. So
Speaker 1: if you do a lot of coils, you could have
Speaker 1: a pretty big magnetic field. We don't really know what
Speaker 1: that might do to everything else. Oh yeah, if you
Speaker 1: have a pacemaker you know, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: or or it may it may interfere with electronic devices
Speaker 1: in the vehicle itself. In fact, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: study that's going into you know, would inductive coupling interfere
Speaker 1: with other systems on the car, because obviously you don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen either. But there have been there's
Speaker 1: been research at Stanford, for example, about how how many
Speaker 1: would it take and how could a car continue to
Speaker 1: charge its battery even if it's moving at highways highway speeds.
Speaker 1: How much charge did they get on that experiment. Tim
Speaker 1: killer Watts is the amount of electricity they were able
Speaker 1: to to transfer over with percent efficiency. Yeah, of the
Speaker 1: electricity they were trying to transmit was actually working. So
Speaker 1: uh this was by the way, all done in computer simulation.
Speaker 1: Not practical. This was computer simulation. But they said, even
Speaker 1: moving at highway speed, that's not just like somebody dreamed it.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are scientists, they know what they're Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're actually you know, the numbers are adding up, is
Speaker 1: what we're saying. But you know, it could be that
Speaker 1: there's something that would interfere with that in a real
Speaker 1: world setting. Obviously you have to you know, you can't
Speaker 1: just rely that a simulation is a perfect, you know,
Speaker 1: a perfect representation of reality. But but it's promising because
Speaker 1: it could mean that if you had a highway that
Speaker 1: had these uh these devices in them are this essentially
Speaker 1: this series of of coils of wire underneath it, and
Speaker 1: you were driving electric vehicle, your vehicle would consistently being
Speaker 1: would consistently be charged as you drove into fact, there
Speaker 1: were people at the Stanford say you said, you could
Speaker 1: in theory take your car out of your garage at
Speaker 1: a low charge and when you come back home because
Speaker 1: of the roads being this way, it would actually be
Speaker 1: charged higher than when you left the house. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And there are a few things I want to say
Speaker 1: about this. One of them is that obviously this, like
Speaker 1: the solar roadways thing, would have to be a huge
Speaker 1: infrastructure investment. But somehow actually this strikes me as perhaps
Speaker 1: more worthwhile as a huge infrastructure investment than trying to
Speaker 1: turn our roads into solar grids. Well, for one thing
Speaker 1: you're talking about not you know, we don't know how
Speaker 1: much electricity such a system would generate with solar panels,
Speaker 1: right we we suspect it's less than what we're being
Speaker 1: told under the solar freaking roadways thing. Um, it's probably
Speaker 1: you know, because because of the multiple s as we
Speaker 1: brought up, So we don't know from an energy and
Speaker 1: economics perspective if it makes sense. However, getting cars off
Speaker 1: of gasoline would be huge, Right, So that's enormous. Already,
Speaker 1: being able to keep them charged and you know, indefinitely
Speaker 1: as long as they're on the road is huge because
Speaker 1: there's no need to um, but you don't have that
Speaker 1: fear anymore that you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: get to where you need to go. Yeah, there's actually
Speaker 1: Another thing that I think is sort of like a
Speaker 1: virtuous piece of feedback from this, which is that if
Speaker 1: you could have cars continuously charged as they move along
Speaker 1: the road, you could probably reduce the size of electric
Speaker 1: vehicle batteries, which is one of the biggest problems with
Speaker 1: electric vehicles as they are. I mean, what percent of
Speaker 1: the weight of an electric car right now is just
Speaker 1: its battery? And it's pretty big, right, and things are massive,
Speaker 1: And by reducing the weight, you don't need as strong
Speaker 1: of a of an electric motor to propel that vehicle.
Speaker 1: I mean, and actually there's a lot of trickle down
Speaker 1: stuff here that would be of huge benefit. So factoring
Speaker 1: all that, and I agree, I think that this would
Speaker 1: be a more uh. I think this would pay off
Speaker 1: more than the solar roadways approach. I also think it
Speaker 1: would still be such an enormous undertaking that it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to imagine it happening. Unless we got to
Speaker 1: a point where, like it was, we were in a
Speaker 1: really bad situation then that we had to make this
Speaker 1: kind of decision. I wish that that weren't the case.
Speaker 1: I wish we would just say, oh, well, this is
Speaker 1: worth doing, let's do it now. And that will save
Speaker 1: us a lot of heartache in the future. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind obviously that however you generate your electricity may still
Speaker 1: be contributing to other issues, right like if it's all
Speaker 1: coming from coal firing plants. We've said this all the time,
Speaker 1: you have to look at the big picture. Well, but
Speaker 1: I mean, I think even coal is going to be
Speaker 1: better than just burning gasoline. But well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you would be you know, right now we're burning coal
Speaker 1: and gasoline, whereas if we'd moved to just burning coal,
Speaker 1: that might be slightly better. Um yeah, So I ideally
Speaker 1: what we would just do is all work on bicycles
Speaker 1: all day long, like that episode of Black Mirror, and
Speaker 1: get our power that way, right, all right, And that's
Speaker 1: all we do like that, That is our job, is
Speaker 1: just riding a bicycle all day long and buying stuff. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: one other thing we can talk about besides the possibility
Speaker 1: of creating these you know, these wireless powered or wireless
Speaker 1: powering roads where they're powering the actual vehicles were driving,
Speaker 1: is the idea of the smart road. So you remember,
Speaker 1: like we've you've seen the old videos from like the
Speaker 1: World's Fair from you know, a century ago, where the
Speaker 1: the idea would be that we would have these intelligent
Speaker 1: roadways that would take over for us. Like for those
Speaker 1: who haven't seen them. One of the first UH concepts
Speaker 1: of the the autonomous card computers three tall right, One
Speaker 1: of the one of the early concepts didn't have autonomous
Speaker 1: cars being autonomous. It was the roads that were autonomous.
Speaker 1: The cars were kind of passive. They would just get
Speaker 1: onto the road and the road would take you to
Speaker 1: where you needed to go. Now, I know some people
Speaker 1: still think of it that way, but I I tend
Speaker 1: to have been swayed away from the idea that the
Speaker 1: road itself or the infrastructure should be controlling the flow
Speaker 1: of traffic. Right. I think I've been persuaded that it's
Speaker 1: better to go at a car by car traffic decision
Speaker 1: making system. Well, especially if you talk about you know,
Speaker 1: a failure, a failure within one vehicle, If all the
Speaker 1: other vehicles are still you know, their own sovereign systems,
Speaker 1: they can compensate, they can get around the vehicle that's failed.
Speaker 1: Whereas if as a road system that fails, no one's
Speaker 1: going anywhere, right, So it's it's the difference between a
Speaker 1: you know, having your own battery power on your computer
Speaker 1: or having having to plug into a a building and
Speaker 1: if the building's power goes out and your your computer
Speaker 1: doesn't have a battery, then you're out too. But if
Speaker 1: you have a battery, you can keep going. Same sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Um and I I agree. I think that
Speaker 1: it is much better to look at making the car
Speaker 1: as smart as possible. But now we're starting to see
Speaker 1: some people kind of re explore the possibility of having
Speaker 1: smart roads where we have the Internet of things kick in,
Speaker 1: where it's maybe not built into the actual road itself,
Speaker 1: but it's all part of that road infrastructure. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can definitely see a sort of synergistic relationship between
Speaker 1: smart cars that are pretty smart on their own talking
Speaker 1: to an infrastructure. Mainly, what I would see the role
Speaker 1: of the infrastructure to be would be providing data, So
Speaker 1: the car would be making the decisions, but the road
Speaker 1: and traffic infrastructure might be feeding it information about what
Speaker 1: routes are currently clogged, um about you know, live updates
Speaker 1: on the timing for the stoplights coming up, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything from uh you know, dynamic traffic management to uh
Speaker 1: proces ably providing important information to emergency responders, or even
Speaker 1: to the vehicle so that the vehicles move out the
Speaker 1: way of the emergency responders. That kind of stuff makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense, and you could you could achieve a lot
Speaker 1: of that with vehicle to vehicle communications, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of study in that as well. It gets a
Speaker 1: little complicated seeing as how we have all these different
Speaker 1: companies trying to develop autonomous vehicles, so making sure that
Speaker 1: they can communicate with a common language is important. But
Speaker 1: having the infrastructure be part of that would just increase
Speaker 1: that versatility. Though then again, uh, not to poke too
Speaker 1: many holes in this, but uh, I think also you
Speaker 1: could just think about the internet as being the thing
Speaker 1: that provides the traffic data, like it wouldn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to be physical infrastructure in place around the area. I mean,
Speaker 1: traffic could upload data about the environment to the cloud,
Speaker 1: and then your car downloads from the cloud what the
Speaker 1: other cars have told. Is sure, but if you're what
Speaker 1: we're worrying about, like maybe the traffic system channeling traffic
Speaker 1: more efficiently, then you probably want to have some smart
Speaker 1: infrastructure there too. So so for highways, it's one thing.
Speaker 1: For surface streets where you want to get through a city,
Speaker 1: like let's you know, imagine again using the reversible lanes approach. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about how it's it's a dumb system.
Speaker 1: Dumb meaning that it's not dynamic or smart. It it's
Speaker 1: working on a timer. It's essentially, from this hour to
Speaker 1: that hour, allow two lanes of traffic to move in
Speaker 1: this direction, and from that hour to this hour, reverse
Speaker 1: that middle lane so that two lanes are are traveling
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction. That's it. It can't dynamically switch
Speaker 1: from one to the other even if conditions change. But
Speaker 1: a smart system, one that's working with the Internet of Things,
Speaker 1: would be able to do that. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the idea is that I think the these smart roads
Speaker 1: of the future will largely the roads themselves will still
Speaker 1: be asphalt, maybe with some of these other things that
Speaker 1: we've taught to about self healing materials or the the
Speaker 1: anti icing materials, but otherwise they'll just be what it's
Speaker 1: always been. But the the stuff around it, the censors
Speaker 1: and things that will be embedded into other parts of
Speaker 1: the road infrastructure, will make it a smart road. It
Speaker 1: just won't be a smart road, you know, it won't
Speaker 1: be like you dig up part of the road and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, here's where the brain was at least
Speaker 1: I hope not so the master control program exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was kind of this was a fun one. All.
Speaker 1: We've got a video episode coming up before too long
Speaker 1: that also explores this, uh, this concept, so make sure
Speaker 1: you check that out as well. And Joe, you wrote
Speaker 1: that one, didn't you. Yes, I actually have not finished
Speaker 1: writing it yet. I have finished, I haven't submitted my
Speaker 1: final draft, right, so it's it's it's in process, but
Speaker 1: it'll be uh, you know, Joe writes several of the
Speaker 1: episodes of Forward Thinking. I write some of them in Lauren, right,
Speaker 1: some of them, so it's, uh, this will be a
Speaker 1: Joe episode, So you'll have to check that out and
Speaker 1: see the amazing visual effects our team adds to this,
Speaker 1: because they're always they're always, they're always phenomenal. I always
Speaker 1: I love watching when our team comes up with with
Speaker 1: the animations and effects and stuff. But we'll definitely talk
Speaker 1: more about that in that episode. And if you guys
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of Forward Thinking, maybe there's
Speaker 1: a topic you want to know more about, send us
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