Slotcar track that has been scaled up, so: arcing, dangerous, will wear, finicky as hell and impossible to change lanes without losing contact. Probably not the best idea but props for trying.
World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
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Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electrified rails on trains have been around much longer than parking stations. Plus batteries are the biggest problem (and most expensive) part of ecars, so this is a good idea to try out.
But those rails are on otherwise off-limit tracks and 'third rail' solutions are notoriously dangerous. This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too. It's basically a scaled up version of a slot car track.
> This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too.
Did you read the article? This is addressed.
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#13Slotcar track that has been scaled up, so: arcing, dangerous, will wear, finicky as hell and impossible to change lanes without losing contact. Probably not the best idea but props for trying.
I'd like to see how it works with a salted wet road too - do they turn it off?
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#14It would be cheaper and more easily scalable to fit more charging points in parking spaces at shopping centres, motorway service stations and so on. Why do we keep on inventing new complicated ways of doing things instead of standardising and exploiting the things that we already know work?
If electric vehicles only had to have a range of a few tens of km (similar to many existing plugin hybrids) they could be built dramatically cheaper. This would also be ideal for buses, lorries and similar.
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#15Slotcar track that has been scaled up, so: arcing, dangerous, will wear, finicky as hell and impossible to change lanes without losing contact. Probably not the best idea but props for trying.
I'd like to see how it works with a salted wet road too - do they turn it off?
They address that concern in the article. They said the voltage on the surface of the track is only 1 volt when the road is flooded with salty water.
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#16Slotcar track that has been scaled up, so: arcing, dangerous, will wear, finicky as hell and impossible to change lanes without losing contact. Probably not the best idea but props for trying.
I'd like to see how it works with a salted wet road too - do they turn it off?
Apparently they tested just that -
Säll said: “There is no electricity on the surface. There are two tracks, just like an outlet in the wall. Five or six centimetres down is where the electricity is. But if you flood the road with salt water then we have found that the electricity level at the surface is just one volt. You could walk on it barefoot.”
They also mentioned they turn off each segment if there is not a car on it. Each segment is 50 meters.
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#17And wet become fantastic skating slopes for motorcycles.
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
But those rails are on otherwise off-limit tracks and 'third rail' solutions are notoriously dangerous. This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too. It's basically a scaled up version of a slot car track.
> This system has the two rails closely spaced side-by-side so it may be a bit safer but in the presence of moisture it could be dangerous too. Did you read the article? This is addressed.
Yes, I did read the article, otherwise I would not have been able to write what I did, note that the title says nothing about how the electrodes from the car connect to the road. So you could have known that I had read the article. Yes, the article addresses it, no, the article does not address it in a way that gives me a good feeling about the safety of this system in the presence of moisture. It really doesn't take a lot of power to kill a person and even though you can ground-fault-protect the crap out of a setup like this the fact is that such measures can fail and if you start deploying it en-masse in a hostile environment they will fail in large enough numbers that it will not longer be safe.
Note how industrial power is hardly ever ground fault protected because the leakage currents in the standard setup are too high already to reliably detect a ground fault.
In other words: if the system delivers enough power to electrical cars to meaningfully affect their state of charge there is inherent danger.
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#19Why is this considered "the world's first electrified road for charging vehicles"? Compared to https://www.wired.com/2013/08/induction-charged-buses/ for example. Does induction based charging not count as electrified? Is it that the Korean one was for their buses only, not general passenger cars?
Re: World's first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to see how it works with a salted wet road too - do they turn it off?
Apparently they tested just that - Säll said: “There is no electricity on the surface. There are two tracks, just like an outlet in the wall. Five or six centimetres down is where the electricity is. But if you flood the road with salt water then we have found that the electricity level at the surface is just one volt. You could walk on it barefoot.” They also mentioned they turn off each segment if there is not a ca…
But will slugs be able to safely cross the road?