Never Mind Solar Cars...How About Solar Highways?

[bullet308]

Here 'ya go...

[bullet308]

Well, crap, that didn't go very well. Lets try this again, shall we?

http://www.upworthy.com/could-america-be-1-again-with-this-crazy-invention?c=ufb1

[mariush]

my 2 cents...

On the road, probably not.  As a roof about 5-7 meter above the road (15-20 feet?)  maybe.

on road : problem related to changing the surface friction, reflections (they cover that at around 1:20 in the video) if certain cells get broken they'd be hard to replace without interrupting traffic, issues with ice/snow during winter, with salt and whatever is used to prevent ice, issues with paint for road signs on the cells  bla blah

as a roof ... on one hand lower visibility for the drivers during the day, but on the other hand drivers won't have the sun in their eyes anymore.  less rain, ice whatever on the road ... theoretically, because actually covering the road may get the roads colder during the winters as whatever sun is there no longer heats them during the day.

Lack of light may be a non issue if small spaces are left between solar cells at certain intervals or if there's some led lightning used on the bottom of the solar cells.
broken panels could be easily replaced and cleaned using simple cranes by the side of the roads

[mariush]

You'd need high currents to charge capacitors that big in cars, and you'd get lots of sparks when the wire touches the "chicken wire" above. Not enough contact to actually transfer a lot of power without arcing and eating away the contacts, I think.

They did some experiments with buses in Shanghai.. yeah, here's a slide : http://www.slideshare.net/ResearchIndia/super-capacitor-buses-in-shanghai-5156990

See page 18 for results, which are not so promising... turns out all buses failed possibly due to overheating of the ultra caps due to the climate...

Otherwise, they were able run for 3 to 8 miles with a full charge at max speed of 44 Km/h , could charge half way in 30 seconds... You could argue a car is much lighter than a bus, but I don't know how much space the ultra caps in the bus take.