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Americans will literally do anything to not build trains
Trains are amazing for small countries, or between cities. The problem comes when you take into consideration how spread out the US is. You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable.
EVs are not a perfect solution, by a long shot. And ideally we would move away from cars being ubiquitous in America, but that is many, many years off. It’s better to work towards that slowly than it is to say “well it’s not perfect so let’s just not.”
You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable. That’s because it’s designed for cars. We have huge parking lots designed for cars but nothing for public transport. Whenever I travel to NYC or Chicago, I can go anywhere in trains and buses. In my city, I can’t even get milk without driving to a store.
Oh pish posh. China is exactly as big as the US and you can get pretty much everywhere for a few bucks in high speed trains.
Trains are fantastic and the US should definitely be investing in them, it's a huge disadvantage and a national embarrassment that we don't have affordable and effective mass transportation.
China does a lot of stupid things, but their train network is admirable.
Truth
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isn't that exactly what trains were designed for and are best at?
You are correct. I can only assume that person got trains and trams mixed up.
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Trains famously bad at traveling long distances.
No, trains famously bad at “last mile” travel, except that in America it can be “last dozen miles” between a city big enough to have a station, and the place the person is going.
This is again a problem of America not investing in its transportation infrastructure, not a fault of trains.
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Just north of the us is a mainly freight railway system that spans the width of the continent...
Then there is this image in an article about that on Wikipedia
The spread out reasoning just seems silly to me on the basis of that literally being what trains were even for in the first place, going distances not suitable for horses. If it connects cities, that is also a start that shouldn't be passed on for being imperfect.
The only reason a car would be needed at all in north America is because of all the poorly designed car centric infrastructure that ends up not even being good for cars as demonstrated by the absolutely heinous traffic that only seems to get worse with every road "upgrade" I have ever seen the before and after of.
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There are tons of areas of the US that have the population density to support it, but still have horrible train service. We made deliberate decisions to favor highways over trains, and we can undo those decisions.
Why would highways be less susceptible to the "spread out" effect than trains?
Nationwide, sure. But localized I wish we would do better, given the population densities. California has a population density of ~100 people/km2. Not far off France at ~120/km2. Yet we still are mainly reliant on cars to get around.
California and France aren't that far off from total area from each other. Most of California's population is in a hand full of counties. As an example, LA has a population density 3 times that of Paris.
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EEVBlog, Dave, where you at? We need a debunking video. This smells like solar freakin' roadways.
I thought the same thing!
It's not as bad as solar roadways, but it's still a meh idea. It works, but it's not very efficient. You need coils of wire built into the road, which means replacing the concrete. Still need to upgrade the power grid to handle the load. If it's not 100% tax subsidized, then it has to track where you're car is in order to charge you properly.
It solves few problems and adds some of its own.
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Why occasionally plug in when you can lose roughly 50% efficiency and not. Such a boondoggle.
The point would not be to never plug in, but instead extend the drive time of an EV by using certain roads.
If on a full charge you get 250miles, but if you take a slightly alternative route and get 500 miles, you’re going to have much less resistance to EVs in any community that would be likely to use these roads.
You missed the 50% loss. Wasted energy. Means you have more infrastructure delivering electricity that isn't utilized. Means you have more production that isn't utilized.
And batteries already have a loss of up to 20% during charge from heating.
Sounds like the next step is to power it using renewables so that we reduce that inefficiency as low as possible
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Goddamn we can't even maintain the basic roads we have, much less a much more expensive and complicated one. It'll be obliterated by salt and snow the first winter and never work again.
I can just imagine all the tweakers tearing up the road to get at any copper wiring it might be using.
Financially or electrically?
Yes
Now when will the capitalism kick in and if you don't pay your monthly sub you don't get road charging
Why would you expect something like that to be free or even one-time payment?
Electricity definitely cost money even when the city or state pay for the infrastructure, which is really unlikely.
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There's a lot of details missing here. It sort of makes sense if you are parked on the street, but it says you can also get a charge while driving. How much battery capacity can you realistically expect to get driving down this stretch of road? Like within the limitations of physics. Maybe if the highway system had this installed but it would be outrageously expensive to replace it all. I also have major doubts that a universal standard would be agreed upon by all manufacturers and municipalities.
Money would be better spent installing more frequent charging stations, which I understand is already the plan.
You know what other form of transportation wirelessly recieves power? Trains.
Wirelessly?
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That sounds like it would be very inefficient and produce massive amounts of RFI.
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Kinda like F-Zero?
Charging keeps getting presented as a major hassle but it really really isn't. Trickle charge overnight is more than plenty for a day of driving.
This is America son, I can drive 11 hours a day and still be in the same state.
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Anyone else getting FZero vibes?
awesome so Robocop can charge while driving to a crime!
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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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