lol! Sad thing is, its not that hard. Run a series of PEX brine cooling loops through the damned roadbed, run a heat exchanger to a cold water well, and do a mini OTEC. Even if the efficiency sucks and is only 15%, its still going to beat the best solar electric tech out there.
@@Psibr1 So you propose to flood the entire roadways with not judt water, but saltwater as well? Yeah, fuck erosion, fuck friction. Who needs friction anyway? Not to mention the costs of shipping billions of tons of water to every roadway, not just salt water, but fresh too? Is this some kind of joke? Do you know how logistically impractical that is? Not to mention the sheer maintainence costs of maintaining that temp gradient between the roadway and the cold water reservoir. How will it beat the best solar electric tech? Current solar tech doesn't have to power itself, a bunch of LEDs, heaters, heat exchangers, computer chips, and a whole bunch of other gizmos and gadgets that all suck power from the already low power generation of a flat solar panel. Get a grip.
Even better idea: use nuclear fission and get a very low carbon electricity supply round the clock without the use of batteries, and in the entire process kill fewer people per kW en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#2014_IPCC,_Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#38f67ef6709b
In some places, like Canada, even roads made with concrete can be degrading after just a few years. (Winter + salt + semi-trailer trucks + etc...) So it's pretty easy to imagine what's going to happen if you put solar panels on a freaking road... What kind of dumb engineers can be approving this kind of stupid projects?!
To be fair, Same folks don't allow 2 strokes in towns or to be build anymore cause of the oils burn smoke . So, resources for dildo are now kind a limited ... Let's call it green tech !!!
I live a few blocks away from the inner harbor...I'm totally taking pictures!! Just embarrassing that the foundation got bamboozled into such a crummy idea, 100k could do so much more for the city.
WOW, I'd be so mad i'd be slapping signs everywhere,. What a waste of donation money for ANY city. I haven't been to the inner harbor, but it sounds higher class then the parts of MD i've visited. Very sad. 100k of real solar could do so much.
"successfully tested" It was! The test was successful. The result of the test was, that this is a ridiculously stupid idea, but the test itself was successful. They got a result, after all.
I wouldn't call it a stupid idea. The idea is pretty brilliant. The execution is a failure unfortunately. But remember everything takes time to perfect. It might have failed in its current incarnation, but whose to say that it doesn't spark alternate versions which are successful. There will come a time when we will have digital roadways which light up in the dark, thus eliminating the need for street lights. But it's probably more of a 50 year plan rather than a right now plan.
@@ivenstorm For the digital roadway idea, simply build a LED module similar to "cat eye" and placed near flat on the existing road to reduce bump. For power, either wiring underneath the road or has its own solar panel. The general idea of solar roadway though is objectively dumb. Why not put a solar roof or something by the side of the road where almost nothing blocking the way unlike the solar roadway can be easily blocked with vehicles, dirt, skidmarks, and scratches. Let's not forget the stress dealing with the weight of the vehicles that will inevitably break the solar roadway panels.
"has failed to meet expectations" why? it did exactly what we expected it to do: it failed. said it once, say it again: why not roof over parking lots and shit with standard solar panels instead? provides shade in the summer and produces juice.
Because the richer you are, the more money showered on you, the dumber you are. The stupid rich are too stupid to understand such a simple concept as you suggested.
The Solar Freakin Roadways idea is to put them under the cars. Being covered the whole day, while the cars get heated up with all the good sun juice, instead of shading the cars, thereby also reducing the power requirement to cool it down again using ac.
I just don't get why people thought this was a good idea. It's like someone sat down to answer the question "What is the absolute WORST place to put solar panels? Someplace where installation is expensive, regular maintenance will disrupt the most people possible, wear and tear will be astronomical, will have zero ability to tilt the panels for maximum efficiency, will have guaranteed debris and guaranteed extreme loading conditions. Then said "Let's do that."
When your interest in science stops at fancy ideas and glitzy technology. Scammers and dreamers get propped up by media desperate for clicks and science advocate internet personalities who can't do math.
- “Organic material from trees is damaging these panels!” - “Cut all the trees and pave everything with concrete and asphalt within a 50-meter radius!” - “Green energy, yay!”
essentially that's what the "environmentalists" today are doing in Germany with wind mills. They cut down forests and destroy the landscape to install them, then these things kill tons of birds and even more insects. Most of these wind mills will be a pile of trash before they even produced enough energy to make up for their production and installation. But "Yay! Green Energy!"
One of our nearby towns had made a wonderful decision serveral years ago: They have one of the biggest "Park and Ride" parking place around (for about 500 cars). it´s flat and the cars exposed to full sunlight most times...they came up with the idea to roof most of the place and put huge solar panels on top of it, some are angeled some are not... Cars stay way cooler (especially during summer:) and they´re having plenty of electricity to work with now...they also installed car chargers...
The trees might slow down the cars... but wait! We could put a glass roof over the trees and drive the cars on top of that. Also put solar panels on it and use them to run lights for growing the trees!
@JONOVID Cultural Marxism doesn't exist it was a conspiracy theory thought up by William S Lind. If anything the problem is actually capitalism, companies are only using thing like the LGBT movement as a way to gain more valuable PR and as a way to gain a quick buck for their lazily made products. ruclips.net/video/Wr3aDnEcipA/видео.html ruclips.net/video/9XD6ocNI1oE/видео.html ruclips.net/video/-3fywxJOLns/видео.html
Umm... I would have preferred the miniature thorium reactor for each house with enough power 🔋 to power the house for 5 - 20 years... Minimum. Heck, even an American car company had vision of a nuclear powered car! Back in the 1950's or 1960's....
If only they weren't so fucking expensive. Oh wait, right, you got to have a decent income a bit above what the worlds lowest paid workers earn to be able to afford solar panels without complaining about their price. So yeah, that's "rich" people privilegies to get free energy, because they are so poor and can't pay the monthly bills.
Thorium reactors turn radioactive waste into various other gems including electric current, so the only problem is ordering the waste on Amazon, and flooding the public utopia trying to find a market to dispose of your excess gems.
"Als vervolg op de pilot in Krommenie zijn begin maart 2019 in Spijkenisse en in de Haarlemmermeer pilots aangelegd voor zwaar verkeer. Na een week zijn deze pilots weer gesloten voor verkeer door problemen met de toplaag.[ Juli 2019 is er besloten om het project in Spijkenisse te stoppen, de solaroad is niet meer te herstellen De provincies Zuid- en Noord-Holland, TNO en bouwbedrijf Strukton staken 7 miljoen euro in het experiment." In the Netherlands a test for solar roads with heavy traffic was aborted after 1 WEEK because of problems with the surface of the solarroads. 1 WEEK. 7 million gone.
Dave, admit it: a few years from now, we'll look back and we'll all miss Solar Roadways, the con that kept on giving! Quick relief: Solar planes, solar dehumidifiers and solar panels covering the Sahara.
Did they ever stop to wonder what problem does this actually solve? Are we out of space for normal proper panel installations and we have to install them in such harsh environments?
Anyone tested that solar footpath with stiletto heels. That could be an epic fail, they open the pathway and first to walk on it is wearing heels and .... CRUNCH!
Like Mary Poppins would find a way to land on it with spike steel stilettos just once & that would also shatter... because the engineers would never plan on it and so the top glass would still be as thin as usual.
The engineers are just doing what they are told. Marketing or governments come in and tell them what they want build. Engineers come back and say "this won't work" but the idiot in marketing or government officials don't listen and demand the impossible.
@@mieszkogulinski168 Politicians can be clueless, uneducated and gullible. Engineers deal with facts and reality. They have a responsibility to speak the truth.
The worse part is, those panels look very innovative and seem like they'd be perfect for rooftop and walkway covers, because they lighter than regular panels and could be easily attached without special mounting hardware... What a waste... EDIT: I mean the thin solar panel rolls, not the bulky techno-trash by solar-freakin'-roadways.
@@AlienRelics I meant the thin solar panel strips on the roads that didn't have all that tech-tech trash. Those would be great for roof installations. The solar-freakin'-roadway design is trash in every conceivable way. Sorry for not being more clear in my initial post... I'll edit it to clarify.
Transparent concrete is a thing, it is used for façades to allow some light to go through by embedding glass fibers in regular concrete. It is about as strong as normal concrete, but only allows about 2% of the light to go through, so while useful in architecture, it is totally useless for covering solar panels with it. This thing must be something different.
As you said years ago... best solution is to put awnings over the roads with angled panels on top. That way you're still using the road space, but without needing to worry about the panels handling huge vehicle loads. Surely the shade could give an advantage to cars keeping them cooler to less AC equalling a little less fuel use, keep the roads dryer and safer.
Just remembered: a few years ago someone wrote a computer program to compute the most efficient solar panel, the design that came out was more akin to a tree in how it had optimized for every hour ... guess nature knows her stuff.
Some 35 years ago, I came up with solar roadways on a science-symposium as a prank. I'd never have thought anyone would take this serious. It is hillarious to see, that some people actually did.
It's just sad to see the amount of tax money that is pumped into this garbage. Imagine the amount of roof installations that could have been payed with this.
@@ernststavroblofeld1961 Sounds exactly like something a person who makes up bull shit in youtube comment sections to seem important to strangers would say.
11:50 ~ just putting the solar panels literally anywhere else has been what I've been trying to scream at the top of my lungs for as long as I've ever heard of Solar Freakin' Roadways.
I feel you mate. I had a friend on college that used to suport this. I told him multiple times why that was SO STUPID but he wasnt convinced.. note: we were at enginnering school!!! I suffer to this day
"literally anywhere else" does not mean cover the grass and flowers. how about on top of buildings instead? or above parking lots? hell, id love it if I could park my car in the shade!
Installing shade cover over the roads would probably cost just as much as Solar Freakin Roadways, and you'd get to drive in the shade. Think about it - before you say "but that's a lot of extra cost!!", solar roadway was pitched the same way. But even that's not efficient when you've already got existing roofs without solar panels. Governments ought to be covering every roof they own first!
25:30 "It's a disruptive technology". It really is! But only disruptive in the sense that you'll have to keep sat nav'ing around all the broken solar roadways.
@@nustada what kind of leftwing guy wants money for private companies wasted instead for the local community? Maybe educate yourself about leftwing movements instead on blindly hating on it.
I for one am extremely surprised. Not by this stupid idea's failure, but by the efficiency numbers mentioned in the articles reviewed by the video. Half of the energy output that was expected (easy to achieve when your target is low...)? 4% efficiency vs 14% for a proper commercial installation? I suspect that these numbers are either made up, or calculated from data conveniently obtained at the beginning of a steep downward trend, just after installation.
People got paid a ton to “engineer” this. I put “engineer” in quotes because, as you said, any sane engineer would have dismissed this idea long before even a single panel was installed.
I work nearby. I'll take a walk down and see if I can find it. They said 2018 spring opening but I don't remember seeing it last year when I went down past where they should be installing it.
EEVblog Update to Baltimore’s solar walkway: A short demo was done at Light City Baltimore, with an outdoor temporary setup done. There were plans for a permanent install in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, between the Rusty Scupper restaurant and the Harborview Towers... but per the Baltimore Visitors Center (who was coordinating the install) this has been mired in the negotiations. So for right now it’s a failure.
The problem is that there are cars driving over them messing them up. They should put them on top of the hyperloop and use the electricity generated to power the new and improved waterseer.
When I first saw this idea (glass as asfalt) I just imagine the schene after the first dump truck carrying gravel passes on that road. Small stones littering the glass panels, waiting to be crashed in by all the cars...
Coming soon, solar kangaroo paths! Ending the senseless and unnecessary death of so many kangaroos on public roadways, AND generating power at the same time! I probably shouldn't joke about crap like this, because some idiot might go and do it!
It would be better if you make spring-generator pathways for kangaroos. (every time they jump on the pavement it will generate power, but it will completely depend on how interested the kangaroos are in the pathways, cause if they don't (and I don't have high hopes that they will)... good luck with your zero-watt generator)
Made a whole lot of money and got away clean with it. They were the most successful of all these engineering scams that have been going around. (Some of that money was from tax payers.)
If you've seen how severely Chinese industry loads trucks to excess, frequently causing debris to fall overboard, it's no surprise that the surface of a solar road would get shredded this quickly. Well controlled EU roads were a best chance scenario for this technology and even there it didn't work out. On the other hand, good science tests hypotheses. And these experiments yielded a couple of results not expected at the beginning ... most of it was foreseeable, yes, but the dynamics of unplanned environmental factors was what interested me.
As someone in the construction and infrastructure field, I hope to never have to make one of these things. Been to Colas before and they definitely know their stuff, if they can't make it work, no one can, they must have been pulling their hair out on this project
Oh yes there is a lot to laugh about and I hope the whole world will laugh about us because we deserve it for letting tax money go there and in the pocket of our corrupted politicians.
Tax pays interest on a loan that is taken out regardless. It's not tax money. It's just numbers accepted for value created by a system controlled by those who cannot be named.
Just put them on the sides of roads so they can be angled for efficiency and can track the sun and/or above parking lots to keep cars cooler in summer by blocking the damn sun!
It just beggars belief how so many people could actually think this is a good idea, there's absolutely no conceivable advantage to putting solar panels under roads, when there are so many better places to put them
It's crazy. There are comments here still defending Solar Roadways. The funny thing is, these defensive comments are based on emotion and not on the extremely basic scientific principles that make solar roads useless. It is rather disheartening to know that so many insanely stupid exists.
@nearcz Not if you put them on downhill slopes! Then you just utilize the energy that would otherwise be lost as heat during braking, provided that your braking isn't regenerative... (Still not that great of an idea though).
I just watched a Tom Scott YT video about a pavement-testing facility in France. The site actually has several test "tracks" and a quick cut to one not being currently tested showed something that looked remarkably like those hexagon-tile solar pavers.
I work in this industry in Ontario, Canada. I was first a technician who designed the asphalt and did various testing, then I got a job doing even more research on roads in provincial labs and now I am a QA inspector making sure the paving companies are following our specs when they build/re-pave our roads. All of these solar road initiatives, especially Solar Freakin' Roadways do NOT take in to account why we use asphalt or concrete on our roads... Wear and tear! These roads have to stand up to a LOT of punishment, primarily from large trucks and transports - cars actually do little to no damage, they're too small - and you still have to maintain high frictional properties for safety reasons (ie. shorter braking distances, less chance of hydroplaning, etc.). These companies make me laugh, shake my head and do a face palm. Why don't they ever consult experts in these areas?
What about doing something similar to solar panel 'shelters' in parking lots, but on a much larger scale. It would provide shade AND produce more electricity!
A lot of countries with large deserts without any nearby skyscrapers or trees to cast a shadow, wonderful places for a solar plant, and they prefer to put the cels on sidewalks. GENIUS.
Would it not have been easier to put poles up and build a canopy over the road. Protection from rain and snow for the drivers, angled to the sun, easier road lighting. The road could just be a road but the space above used to advantage.
Here in New Zealand after a major re surfacing of a road, the surface has started breaking up after just a few weeks. I think a solar road would probably last longer. Anyone got any money to spend??
I believe that grin is called colloquially a "shit-eating grin".. I'm 30 miles from there... I'll see what I can do. I hate going down to Baltimore because it's a completely hostile environment.
I get being giddy over the failure. A good I told you so is engrained deep in everyone. But wasn't it at least good someone was willing to do this for the hard data to point to so people can stop talking about it? Plus, all of the failure points are now concretely documented. My tax dollars didn't build it, so I'm happy they did it.
As Dave mentions, a LOT of tax dollars (and Euros, RMB, etc.) went into these ventures, mostly in the form of grants. So depending upon where you live your tax dollars likely did go into one, or more, of these projects. It would be well worth the hard data if something we genuinely did not know and could not have reasonably anticipated were learned from it and had the idea made even an iota of sense, fiscally, environmentally, or scientifically, to begin with. But the writing was on the wall long before these projects ever got off the ground and the results were all highly predictable and self evident and without third-party funding, both public and private, none of these businesses would ever have gotten off the ground as they would never pass the practicality test for real investors or banks with respect to a sound business plan. What we got out of it was millions of dollars that could have been spent on *real* and effective alternative energy projects or research being instead funneled into the pockets of a number of failed businesses who tied up engineers, development resources, and perfectly good money in a predictable boondoggle. I could start a company proposing that we simply detonate operational nuclear power plants as a “carbon neutral way of launching cargo into space”....just because the idea itself might result in cargo making it to space does not make it a good, wise, or remotely sound business plan nor does such begin to consider the negative consequences of such a proposal...and the negative side to a business plan is at least as critical, if not more so, than the positives! Solar roadways generated almost no power to speak of, cost a few orders of magnitude more to manufacture and install, and failed as a road surface even when subjected only to foot traffic as such the resources devoted to these projects had a substantial net NEGATIVE impact on the environment while being widely touted by their creators to be our salvation. Imagine how much net POSITIVE benefit there could have been had those millions and research hours instead been invested into more traditional solar panels or newer high efficiency solar panels, improved battery technology, or even more efficient inverters!
@@EEVblog Yeah, I get it. In the large scheme that's not much...and these weren't like whole city installations. I live in Seattle and they dupe tax payers for projects that are even more pointless than this on a daily basis. I mean, we all got a good laugh from this at least right? I guess I'm jaded and $2M seems small these days. I wonder what the monetary value religions dupe out of people worldwide on a daily basis tax free? At least solar energy has a basis in reality, even though driving on the panels makes no sense. Now this video exists. So the next time someone sends me a video of how turning the worlds roads into solar panels will solve all energy issues...I can send them here.
The really sad part is what all these debacles show us about decision-making for public investments such as roads. "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!" and "Never investigate alternative courses of action." I can't understand that when looking at the price tag for this, nobody in authority realised that building a normal road and a "traditional" solar power installation close by would be so much cheaper. Who could ever think that when deciding where to put solar panels, that the smartest thing was to put them onto the surface getting the worst possible treatment, and being obscured the most.
What you want is a north-south road and put the panels down the central reservation so they can tilt with the movement of the sun, keeping them efficiently aligned during the day.
Yes! The texture introduice a lot of losse from solar cell. And the cell don't follow the sun. I don't knon why ingeneer approuv this project. I'm french!. I paid for that Grrrrrrr!. It's Grrrr!
Jseb Tarot it’s sociology called “prisoner’s dilemma”. When signal noise lets you think you’re better than the rest of the world but the planet itself is forgiving nobody, it runs the most frequent challengers to their extinction first.
Just put the solar panels on roofs over freeways instead. It can even keep the road surface snow free! Cost of installation would probably be higher, but roi would definitely be more of a possibility.
It's baffling that multiple governments would believe this'd be a good idea. There's a reason why you normally elevate solar panels, it'll receive more sun that way and sensitive equipment really doesn't do well with the wear and tear of being driven or walked upon.
Hey Dave, I was doing the "Data Laugh" before you put it up, was really trying to keep a straight face, but the absurdity of that concept is just too silly not to laugh. Hey, here's an idea, if you want information on road conditions, or lights for lines and arrows, and such, how about putting the solar cells IN THE MEDIAN at a proper angle, and use them to power the lights, sensors,etc. Would probably at least produce more power per buck than the current idea. I mean, REALLY, solar cells that you drive over? The transparent aluminum idea sounds cool to me, and by taking the cells out of it, you might be able to make longer, wider panels since all they would have to do is support the vehicles. Anyway, thanks for the laughs!
Another great reason to stop paying the extortion money, whoop I mean taxes. As a technologist, the primary question to ask is, even if we can, should we? And in this case, not just NO, but HELL NO.
Dude is having a way better time making this video, than I am watching it. It's like a goddam laugh track on Big Bang Theory; the humor is superimposed.
3 года назад
"failed to meet expectations"? I absolutely met my expectations. ;-)
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
Classic Feynman
lol! Sad thing is, its not that hard. Run a series of PEX brine cooling loops through the damned roadbed, run a heat exchanger to a cold water well, and do a mini OTEC. Even if the efficiency sucks and is only 15%, its still going to beat the best solar electric tech out there.
@@Psibr1 So you propose to flood the entire roadways with not judt water, but saltwater as well?
Yeah, fuck erosion, fuck friction. Who needs friction anyway?
Not to mention the costs of shipping billions of tons of water to every roadway, not just salt water, but fresh too? Is this some kind of joke? Do you know how logistically impractical that is? Not to mention the sheer maintainence costs of maintaining that temp gradient between the roadway and the cold water reservoir.
How will it beat the best solar electric tech? Current solar tech doesn't have to power itself, a bunch of LEDs, heaters, heat exchangers, computer chips, and a whole bunch of other gizmos and gadgets that all suck power from the already low power generation of a flat solar panel.
Get a grip.
@@Psibr1 15% is a very, very, very conservative and unrealistic estimate.
@Steven Hawkins I'm confused, you're laughing about copying from websites, while copying from a website?
Bad Idea: Driving Cars On Solar Panels
Good Idea: Parking Cars Under Solar Panels
ikr, because they just couldnt put the panels on the verge of the road or make some kind of shelter or something
Or park cars on politicians?
Bad idea: Listening to fraudsters and the government.
Good idea: Listening to engineers.
Even better idea: use nuclear fission and get a very low carbon electricity supply round the clock without the use of batteries, and in the entire process kill fewer people per kW
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#2014_IPCC,_Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources
www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#38f67ef6709b
@@MartinE63
Nuclear power is an idiotic idea.
CO2-neutral or not. Carbondioxide is not nuclear power's biggest problem 😉😉
Most fragile means of producing electricity placed in the harshest location - what could go wrong? #greenWashing
You forgot an already marginal life cycle payback technology used in the most un-optimal way. Double whammy.
inb4 underground hidroelectric dams in the desert!
I think the award for most fragile goes to the batterizer.
Noise. But not even the psychics who heard this coming could have guessed why it seemed to be so frickking-loud.
In some places, like Canada, even roads made with concrete can be degrading after just a few years. (Winter + salt + semi-trailer trucks + etc...)
So it's pretty easy to imagine what's going to happen if you put solar panels on a freaking road...
What kind of dumb engineers can be approving this kind of stupid projects?!
I'M SHOCKED!!!
Oh wait...
I CAN'T be shocked...
There's no ELECTRICITY!!!
There is, but its 50% less electrifying
Lol
DC can’t be all that bad. If it was, criminals would’not be afraid of capital punishment with AC.
To be fair,
Same folks don't allow 2 strokes in towns or to be build anymore cause of the oils burn smoke .
So, resources for dildo are now kind a limited ...
Let's call it green tech !!!
Brice Larie I’m just going to go out on a limb and suppose that you’re either French or French-colonial.
I live a few blocks away from the inner harbor...I'm totally taking pictures!! Just embarrassing that the foundation got bamboozled into such a crummy idea, 100k could do so much more for the city.
Indeed. Please share with us!
Send this video to your mayor... lol
100k to battle all the rats would have been better!
WOW, I'd be so mad i'd be slapping signs everywhere,. What a waste of donation money for ANY city. I haven't been to the inner harbor, but it sounds higher class then the parts of MD i've visited. Very sad. 100k of real solar could do so much.
I bet it won't last more than a month.... there are some seriously out of control "children" down there.
"successfully tested"
It was! The test was successful. The result of the test was, that this is a ridiculously stupid idea, but the test itself was successful. They got a result, after all.
Yndostrui “Successfully Failed” -Microsoft meme 1998.
They successfully duped the French into giving them a huge paycheck.
I wouldn't call it a stupid idea. The idea is pretty brilliant. The execution is a failure unfortunately. But remember everything takes time to perfect. It might have failed in its current incarnation, but whose to say that it doesn't spark alternate versions which are successful. There will come a time when we will have digital roadways which light up in the dark, thus eliminating the need for street lights. But it's probably more of a 50 year plan rather than a right now plan.
@@ivenstorm For the digital roadway idea, simply build a LED module similar to "cat eye" and placed near flat on the existing road to reduce bump. For power, either wiring underneath the road or has its own solar panel.
The general idea of solar roadway though is objectively dumb. Why not put a solar roof or something by the side of the road where almost nothing blocking the way unlike the solar roadway can be easily blocked with vehicles, dirt, skidmarks, and scratches. Let's not forget the stress dealing with the weight of the vehicles that will inevitably break the solar roadway panels.
"has failed to meet expectations" why? it did exactly what we expected it to do: it failed.
said it once, say it again: why not roof over parking lots and shit with standard solar panels instead? provides shade in the summer and produces juice.
Because the richer you are, the more money showered on you, the dumber you are.
The stupid rich are too stupid to understand such a simple concept as you suggested.
The Solar Freakin Roadways idea is to put them under the cars. Being covered the whole day, while the cars get heated up with all the good sun juice, instead of shading the cars, thereby also reducing the power requirement to cool it down again using ac.
I just don't get why people thought this was a good idea. It's like someone sat down to answer the question "What is the absolute WORST place to put solar panels? Someplace where installation is expensive, regular maintenance will disrupt the most people possible, wear and tear will be astronomical, will have zero ability to tilt the panels for maximum efficiency, will have guaranteed debris and guaranteed extreme loading conditions.
Then said "Let's do that."
People trying to make a quick buck from the unsuspecting populace, aka a fraud.
When your interest in science stops at fancy ideas and glitzy technology. Scammers and dreamers get propped up by media desperate for clicks and science advocate internet personalities who can't do math.
@@frontiercat8568 this is the cancer of our population and times
Proof that all the critics of Solar Roadways were right. Would be better to just put solar panels on every rooftop in the nation.
I'm french, and I'm pretty pissed off to know how my taxpayer money is wasted in that sort of non-sense projects.
Think about how much money you saved not having the reports made about it.
Hopefully you're frustration is mitigated by the fact that your nuclear electrical generation industry is the envy of the world.
drmodestoesq don’t believe that you’re translated from the proper English to French will make any sense in the manner which you’ve used it.
@@HighestRank Good catch. I misspelled "your." Thank you.
Vote harder next time statist.
- “Organic material from trees is damaging these panels!”
- “Cut all the trees and pave everything with concrete and asphalt within a 50-meter radius!”
- “Green energy, yay!”
essentially that's what the "environmentalists" today are doing in Germany with wind mills. They cut down forests and destroy the landscape to install them, then these things kill tons of birds and even more insects. Most of these wind mills will be a pile of trash before they even produced enough energy to make up for their production and installation. But "Yay! Green Energy!"
One of our nearby towns had made a wonderful decision serveral years ago: They have one of the biggest "Park and Ride" parking place around (for about 500 cars). it´s flat and the cars exposed to full sunlight most times...they came up with the idea to roof most of the place and put huge solar panels on top of it, some are angeled some are not...
Cars stay way cooler (especially during summer:) and they´re having plenty of electricity to work with now...they also installed car chargers...
Makes too much sense.
which town?
@solaroid55 LOL!
solaroid55 solar frickin’ underground parking lots!!!
Now you see if they'd taken the output from these solar roadways and run them through a Batterizer things would be a lot different :-)
xjet Gotta get that 800% more power! :D
and they could have used wireless charging to transmit the power
Haha! Nice seeing you here Bruce :)
Nah, run all the cars through the hyper loop system, and save the wear on the solar panels.
Trade current for voltage is no longer mandated in today’s ultra efficient devices and batteries with high internal resistance.
I have a better idea: Let's make roads CO2-neutral by planting trees on them!
The trees might slow down the cars... but wait! We could put a glass roof over the trees and drive the cars on top of that. Also put solar panels on it and use them to run lights for growing the trees!
I have a better better idea CO2 is not a problem , Cultural Marxism is the problem
Actually, the space between lanes in one direction and the other, covered usually with grass, could be a good place for trees
like here:
www.google.pl/maps/@51.592229,20.9944767,3a,60y,315.24h,91.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svw0HHBlbJozS5s5ghLZvag!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
@JONOVID
Cultural Marxism doesn't exist it was a conspiracy theory thought up by William S Lind. If anything the problem is actually capitalism, companies are only using thing like the LGBT movement as a way to gain more valuable PR and as a way to gain a quick buck for their lazily made products.
ruclips.net/video/Wr3aDnEcipA/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/9XD6ocNI1oE/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/-3fywxJOLns/видео.html
This goes out to all the ‘power-of-positivity’ people who say :”Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”, & ended up hooked on drugs.
We Germans have a word for this: “Schadenfreude” 😂
wavemaker that just looks like one word but it’s two.
We do too, "vahingonilo". :)
"We" are doing the same shit, "wavemaker" or are you living on the moon?
Schitzenthinkin
@@ichbinderroboter *We Germans. WTF?
People need to put their time and effort into installing on roofs, and continue improving roof solar panel technology.
True, as a "donation" to a city, that money could give real help with commercial rooftop solar. It's just a PR stunt for that foundation.
Umm... I would have preferred the miniature thorium reactor for each house with enough power 🔋 to power the house for 5 - 20 years... Minimum. Heck, even an American car company had vision of a nuclear powered car! Back in the 1950's or 1960's....
Neon Rogue Wrong. Bears. Beats. Battlestar Galactica.
If only they weren't so fucking expensive. Oh wait, right, you got to have a decent income a bit above what the worlds lowest paid workers earn to be able to afford solar panels without complaining about their price. So yeah, that's "rich" people privilegies to get free energy, because they are so poor and can't pay the monthly bills.
Thorium reactors turn radioactive waste into various other gems including electric current, so the only problem is ordering the waste on Amazon, and flooding the public utopia trying to find a market to dispose of your excess gems.
And yet they're still installing them like crazy over here in the Netherlands.
Government is paying royally for it as well.
Hendrik Hendrikson
Our government is a document, and carries non cash, only debt.
I have never met a government with money, only the capacity to tax those that do.
"Als vervolg op de pilot in Krommenie zijn begin maart 2019 in Spijkenisse en in de Haarlemmermeer pilots aangelegd voor zwaar verkeer. Na een week zijn deze pilots weer gesloten voor verkeer door problemen met de toplaag.[
Juli 2019 is er besloten om het project in Spijkenisse te stoppen, de solaroad is niet meer te herstellen
De provincies Zuid- en Noord-Holland, TNO en bouwbedrijf Strukton staken 7 miljoen euro in het experiment."
In the Netherlands a test for solar roads with heavy traffic was aborted after 1 WEEK because of problems with the surface of the solarroads. 1 WEEK. 7 million gone.
I saw the thumbnail and just assumed it was thunderf00t.
I did too, then saw it was EEVblog, and was like, "oh, this should be better"
haha, me too. I guess his video will be up next.
I thought it was Thunderfoot as well.
I hope he puts out a video as well.
l cy Presbyterian much?
"Time flies when you're debunking solar roadways."
Loved that.
Dave, admit it: a few years from now, we'll look back and we'll all miss Solar Roadways, the con that kept on giving!
Quick relief: Solar planes, solar dehumidifiers and solar panels covering the Sahara.
Did they ever stop to wonder what problem does this actually solve? Are we out of space for normal proper panel installations and we have to install them in
such harsh environments?
Anyone tested that solar footpath with stiletto heels. That could be an epic fail, they open the pathway and first to walk on it is wearing heels and .... CRUNCH!
Walking in stiletto heels on normal asphalt road damaging surface as much as 50 000 typical compact cars...
The kickstand on my bike melts holes in most fresh blacktop.
@@HighestRank you should get a kickstand pad or jiffy coaster
Engineers' guide book, page 53: A) Ask Dave to do 10 minutes of calculations or B) spend millions of tax payers money on trial instead. (CHOOSE ONE).
someone is millions more rich, that's for sure
someone is millions more rich, that's for sure
someone is millions more rich, that's for sure
Holy moly...those politicians funding that scam should be jailed. That's not funny anymore (except for the clips with Data).
26:13 - Ironic that that live cam shows a perfectly good ROOF on the left!
Like Mary Poppins would find a way to land on it with spike steel stilettos just once & that would also shatter... because the engineers would never plan on it and so the top glass would still be as thin as usual.
The engineers involved in these projects should have their licenses removed for incompetence and fraud.
The engineers are just doing what they are told. Marketing or governments come in and tell them what they want build. Engineers come back and say "this won't work" but the idiot in marketing or government officials don't listen and demand the impossible.
*gets flashbacks of "The Expert", a short comedy video on youtube*
Not the engineers. Politicians.
@@mieszkogulinski168 Politicians can be clueless, uneducated and gullible. Engineers deal with facts and reality. They have a responsibility to speak the truth.
It's amazing what is concocted using the climate hoax scam, to generate big money by scaring the crap out of ordinary people with fear mongering.
Solar bike ways would work great in Australia because they never get used.
Dave I am basking in the incandescent glow of the efficacy of your PhD in 'I told you so' right now🤣
It's beautiful!
At this point it's so bright, it could power a solar panel 🤣
It could power a roadway
@EEVblog I live and work in Sandpoint, Idaho, and the whole Solar Panel thing is a complete economical failure, and a joke with the locals.
The worse part is, those panels look very innovative and seem like they'd be perfect for rooftop and walkway covers, because they lighter than regular panels and could be easily attached without special mounting hardware... What a waste...
EDIT: I mean the thin solar panel rolls, not the bulky techno-trash by solar-freakin'-roadways.
Only without the LEDs or other junk. In otherwords, reduce them to just what we use now for solar panels.
@@AlienRelics I meant the thin solar panel strips on the roads that didn't have all that tech-tech trash.
Those would be great for roof installations.
The solar-freakin'-roadway design is trash in every conceivable way.
Sorry for not being more clear in my initial post... I'll edit it to clarify.
@@InfernosReaper I figured that is what you meant, I just thought it was funny to point out that Solar Freakin' Roadways invented nothing new.
@@AlienRelics Sure they did. They created a whole new type of money pit to exploit the green tech enthusiasts
@@InfernosReaper Too true.
Transparent concrete is a thing, it is used for façades to allow some light to go through by embedding glass fibers in regular concrete. It is about as strong as normal concrete, but only allows about 2% of the light to go through, so while useful in architecture, it is totally useless for covering solar panels with it. This thing must be something different.
How is putting in solar roads sustainable? Simple! Install them and they'll be sustaining damage pretty much immediately.
As you said years ago... best solution is to put awnings over the roads with angled panels on top. That way you're still using the road space, but without needing to worry about the panels handling huge vehicle loads.
Surely the shade could give an advantage to cars keeping them cooler to less AC equalling a little less fuel use, keep the roads dryer and safer.
I would love to see what happens when a fully loaded semi has to slam on the brakes over this thing
Wouldn't shock me if they barred tractor trailers over that road due to the increased weight allowance in the EU. 😋
@@optiquest86 There's no electricity to be shocked with.
Just remembered: a few years ago someone wrote a computer program to compute the most efficient solar panel, the design that came out was more akin to a tree in how it had optimized for every hour ... guess nature knows her stuff.
I dont know whats funnier. The fails, or the Star Trek jokes
Chistian Moes what’s*
Wait...that wasn't Mark Zuckerberg?
I once walked over a broken solar panel and I was SHOCKED by the findings.
Some 35 years ago, I came up with solar roadways on a science-symposium as a prank.
I'd never have thought anyone would take this serious. It is hillarious to see, that some people actually did.
It's just sad to see the amount of tax money that is pumped into this garbage. Imagine the amount of roof installations that could have been payed with this.
@@MPnoir - Yees and tell me about the amount of tax money, that is pumped into military stuff in the Middle East, spoilsport.
Yeah, sure ya did champ. Sure ya did.
@@jennyanydots2389 - If you change your Tampax first thing early in the morning, you have time to actually do stuff during the day, my dear.
@@ernststavroblofeld1961 Sounds exactly like something a person who makes up bull shit in youtube comment sections to seem important to strangers would say.
When they say they laughed at the Wright brothers, they never say which Wright brothers.
11:50 ~ just putting the solar panels literally anywhere else has been what I've been trying to scream at the top of my lungs for as long as I've ever heard of Solar Freakin' Roadways.
I feel you mate.
I had a friend on college that used to suport this. I told him multiple times why that was SO STUPID but he wasnt convinced.. note: we were at enginnering school!!! I suffer to this day
we really ought to be installing solar panels on top of our solar panels.
Yes, lets widen the asphalt jungle with silicon jungle. Nobody needs no frigging grass or flowers anyway. We need to run more air conditioners.
"literally anywhere else" does not mean cover the grass and flowers. how about on top of buildings instead? or above parking lots? hell, id love it if I could park my car in the shade!
Installing shade cover over the roads would probably cost just as much as Solar Freakin Roadways, and you'd get to drive in the shade. Think about it - before you say "but that's a lot of extra cost!!", solar roadway was pitched the same way. But even that's not efficient when you've already got existing roofs without solar panels. Governments ought to be covering every roof they own first!
25:30 "It's a disruptive technology". It really is! But only disruptive in the sense that you'll have to keep sat nav'ing around all the broken solar roadways.
Solar failin' Roadways! Is a single person surprised? Anybody?
*crickets*
@@EEVblog Every leftwinger is surprised, they are not good at reality.
Bullshit - *I'm* a left-winger, and knew it was bunk the instant I heard about it. (And that was before Dave's first video about these things.)
@@nustada what kind of leftwing guy wants money for private companies wasted instead for the local community? Maybe educate yourself about leftwing movements instead on blindly hating on it.
I for one am extremely surprised. Not by this stupid idea's failure, but by the efficiency numbers mentioned in the articles reviewed by the video. Half of the energy output that was expected (easy to achieve when your target is low...)? 4% efficiency vs 14% for a proper commercial installation? I suspect that these numbers are either made up, or calculated from data conveniently obtained at the beginning of a steep downward trend, just after installation.
People got paid a ton to “engineer” this. I put “engineer” in quotes because, as you said, any sane engineer would have dismissed this idea long before even a single panel was installed.
I work nearby. I'll take a walk down and see if I can find it. They said 2018 spring opening but I don't remember seeing it last year when I went down past where they should be installing it.
Thanks!
EEVblog Update to Baltimore’s solar walkway: A short demo was done at Light City Baltimore, with an outdoor temporary setup done. There were plans for a permanent install in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, between the Rusty Scupper restaurant and the Harborview Towers... but per the Baltimore Visitors Center (who was coordinating the install) this has been mired in the negotiations.
So for right now it’s a failure.
The problem is that there are cars driving over them messing them up. They should put them on top of the hyperloop and use the electricity generated to power the new and improved waterseer.
“It is a good concept, but technology is not there yet” -predicted excuse
Yeah, it's almost like it's intentionally designed to fail.
When I first saw this idea (glass as asfalt) I just imagine the schene after the first dump truck carrying gravel passes on that road. Small stones littering the glass panels, waiting to be crashed in by all the cars...
Coming soon, solar kangaroo paths! Ending the senseless and unnecessary death of so many kangaroos on public roadways, AND generating power at the same time!
I probably shouldn't joke about crap like this, because some idiot might go and do it!
It would be better if you make spring-generator pathways for kangaroos. (every time they jump on the pavement it will generate power, but it will completely depend on how interested the kangaroos are in the pathways, cause if they don't (and I don't have high hopes that they will)... good luck with your zero-watt generator)
@@SkyCharger001 Funny thing is, we joke about this but there is probably someone out there that would take us seriously.
Narcisse CR Unfortunately it is.
Made a whole lot of money and got away clean with it. They were the most successful of all these engineering scams that have been going around.
(Some of that money was from tax payers.)
If you've seen how severely Chinese industry loads trucks to excess, frequently causing debris to fall overboard, it's no surprise that the surface of a solar road would get shredded this quickly. Well controlled EU roads were a best chance scenario for this technology and even there it didn't work out.
On the other hand, good science tests hypotheses. And these experiments yielded a couple of results not expected at the beginning ... most of it was foreseeable, yes, but the dynamics of unplanned environmental factors was what interested me.
good science tests hypotheses, first you have to use the scientific method to come with the hypothesis.
good science tests hypotheses, first you have to use the scientific method to come with the hypothesis.
As someone in the construction and infrastructure field, I hope to never have to make one of these things. Been to Colas before and they definitely know their stuff, if they can't make it work, no one can, they must have been pulling their hair out on this project
Tax money was spend. Nothing to laugh about. It's actually sad...
Oh yes there is a lot to laugh about and I hope the whole world will laugh about us because we deserve it for letting tax money go there and in the pocket of our corrupted politicians.
Tax pays interest on a loan that is taken out regardless. It's not tax money. It's just numbers accepted for value created by a system controlled by those who cannot be named.
I think it's pretty sad that money was wasted on a doomed project, as you said why not just build them alongside the road...
Instead of placing the panels below the feet why not keep above the head? Solar roofways?
But then you can´t even shred them to pieces with your bicycle! How boring...
We need more engineers on marketing departments. Absolutely hilarious!
Just put them on the sides of roads so they can be angled for efficiency and can track the sun and/or above parking lots to keep cars cooler in summer by blocking the damn sun!
Highway noise curtains, parking lot roofs..
What a great idea! Angle them on the sides of the roads so I can Evel Knievel myself into a building next to the highway.
It just beggars belief how so many people could actually think this is a good idea, there's absolutely no conceivable advantage to putting solar panels under roads, when there are so many better places to put them
It's crazy. There are comments here still defending Solar Roadways. The funny thing is, these defensive comments are based on emotion and not on the extremely basic scientific principles that make solar roads useless. It is rather disheartening to know that so many insanely stupid exists.
you know its funny when data laughs
The best place for solar panels, besides roofs, is parking lots. They could provide shade for cars and track the sun all day.
I'm ashamed of my country (France) :( (but thanks for the laugh, we deserve it)
I understand... I’m Dutch .... The bike part failed and what did they do...
marcelnl1979 sell the technical manual to the French?
This would work if the panels were covered in a thin layer of transparent unobtanium.
It would have made more sense to put heavy powerful magnets under cars and coil inductors in the ground.
@nearcz Not if you put them on downhill slopes! Then you just utilize the energy that would otherwise be lost as heat during braking, provided that your braking isn't regenerative... (Still not that great of an idea though).
@@thegoodhen Thats what electrical cars already do.
I just watched a Tom Scott YT video about a pavement-testing facility in France. The site actually has several test "tracks" and a quick cut to one not being currently tested showed something that looked remarkably like those hexagon-tile solar pavers.
I got a better idea, solar feakin rail roads! Where the rails are made with PV cells glued on top of the rails.
3800Tech at least that would be cheap...
I work in this industry in Ontario, Canada. I was first a technician who designed the asphalt and did various testing, then I got a job doing even more research on roads in provincial labs and now I am a QA inspector making sure the paving companies are following our specs when they build/re-pave our roads. All of these solar road initiatives, especially Solar Freakin' Roadways do NOT take in to account why we use asphalt or concrete on our roads... Wear and tear! These roads have to stand up to a LOT of punishment, primarily from large trucks and transports - cars actually do little to no damage, they're too small - and you still have to maintain high frictional properties for safety reasons (ie. shorter braking distances, less chance of hydroplaning, etc.). These companies make me laugh, shake my head and do a face palm. Why don't they ever consult experts in these areas?
Ok, so it didn't work out.
Let's just move on to nuclear roadways.
What about doing something similar to solar panel 'shelters' in parking lots, but on a much larger scale. It would provide shade AND produce more electricity!
Coming soon... To a Hyperloop near you, Solar Frickin Juicers!
A lot of countries with large deserts without any nearby skyscrapers or trees to cast a shadow, wonderful places for a solar plant, and they prefer to put the cels on sidewalks. GENIUS.
Oh man ! Baltimore is going to be the first in the world to have this amazing new technology !!
Rat-infested dump gets solar roadways, nice priorities.
@@MegaZsolti jesus christ!
The Terrible Animator *Yeshua
7:41 WHAT? How could a serious company that employs pavement engineers think this would work?
They laughed at Bozo the clown, too!
And Bagel Boss.
Poor short guy got tackled to the floor too. XD
Calling bullshit on the vapid flashmob “They”: Lots of people can’t stand clowns and ‘they’ even hate a few.
Would it not have been easier to put poles up and build a canopy over the road. Protection from rain and snow for the drivers, angled to the sun, easier road lighting. The road could just be a road but the space above used to advantage.
David Wilson yep, and the toll would cost like Disney World where they actually do that crap.
if only ANYONE could have predicted this >:
ya, who would have thought that, after all those people behind that idea were "engineers"
Here in New Zealand after a major re surfacing of a road, the surface has started breaking up after just a few weeks. I think a solar road would probably last longer. Anyone got any money to spend??
I believe that grin is called colloquially a "shit-eating grin"..
I'm 30 miles from there... I'll see what I can do. I hate going down to Baltimore because it's a completely hostile environment.
The only time Solar panels and roads should be put together is Solar Panels put in to power the lights on road signs.
I get being giddy over the failure. A good I told you so is engrained deep in everyone. But wasn't it at least good someone was willing to do this for the hard data to point to so people can stop talking about it?
Plus, all of the failure points are now concretely documented. My tax dollars didn't build it, so I'm happy they did it.
Solar Roadways duped *individuals* out of $2M for this boondoggle.
As Dave mentions, a LOT of tax dollars (and Euros, RMB, etc.) went into these ventures, mostly in the form of grants. So depending upon where you live your tax dollars likely did go into one, or more, of these projects.
It would be well worth the hard data if something we genuinely did not know and could not have reasonably anticipated were learned from it and had the idea made even an iota of sense, fiscally, environmentally, or scientifically, to begin with. But the writing was on the wall long before these projects ever got off the ground and the results were all highly predictable and self evident and without third-party funding, both public and private, none of these businesses would ever have gotten off the ground as they would never pass the practicality test for real investors or banks with respect to a sound business plan. What we got out of it was millions of dollars that could have been spent on *real* and effective alternative energy projects or research being instead funneled into the pockets of a number of failed businesses who tied up engineers, development resources, and perfectly good money in a predictable boondoggle. I could start a company proposing that we simply detonate operational nuclear power plants as a “carbon neutral way of launching cargo into space”....just because the idea itself might result in cargo making it to space does not make it a good, wise, or remotely sound business plan nor does such begin to consider the negative consequences of such a proposal...and the negative side to a business plan is at least as critical, if not more so, than the positives! Solar roadways generated almost no power to speak of, cost a few orders of magnitude more to manufacture and install, and failed as a road surface even when subjected only to foot traffic as such the resources devoted to these projects had a substantial net NEGATIVE impact on the environment while being widely touted by their creators to be our salvation. Imagine how much net POSITIVE benefit there could have been had those millions and research hours instead been invested into more traditional solar panels or newer high efficiency solar panels, improved battery technology, or even more efficient inverters!
@@EEVblog Yeah, I get it. In the large scheme that's not much...and these weren't like whole city installations. I live in Seattle and they dupe tax payers for projects that are even more pointless than this on a daily basis.
I mean, we all got a good laugh from this at least right? I guess I'm jaded and $2M seems small these days. I wonder what the monetary value religions dupe out of people worldwide on a daily basis tax free? At least solar energy has a basis in reality, even though driving on the panels makes no sense.
Now this video exists. So the next time someone sends me a video of how turning the worlds roads into solar panels will solve all energy issues...I can send them here.
The really sad part is what all these debacles show us about decision-making for public investments such as roads. "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!" and "Never investigate alternative courses of action." I can't understand that when looking at the price tag for this, nobody in authority realised that building a normal road and a "traditional" solar power installation close by would be so much cheaper. Who could ever think that when deciding where to put solar panels, that the smartest thing was to put them onto the surface getting the worst possible treatment, and being obscured the most.
Oh man i love that thumbnail! Data laughing- very clever!
Not clickbait, he's in the video.
Yes he is! Loved it DJ.
Very cool!
What you want is a north-south road and put the panels down the central reservation so they can tilt with the movement of the sun, keeping them efficiently aligned during the day.
Yes! The texture introduice a lot of losse from solar cell. And the cell don't follow the sun. I don't knon why ingeneer approuv this project. I'm french!. I paid for that Grrrrrrr!. It's Grrrr!
Jseb Tarot it’s sociology called “prisoner’s dilemma”. When signal noise lets you think you’re better than the rest of the world but the planet itself is forgiving nobody, it runs the most frequent challengers to their extinction first.
And of course French were being told at night that these devices would get up and help poor cobblers fix their shoes for nothing.
Narcisse CR 👍🏽 French nuclear power plants.
Just put the solar panels on roofs over freeways instead. It can even keep the road surface snow free! Cost of installation would probably be higher, but roi would definitely be more of a possibility.
Solar Roadways is like Top Gun 'Maverick', just refuses to die..
It's baffling that multiple governments would believe this'd be a good idea. There's a reason why you normally elevate solar panels, it'll receive more sun that way and sensitive equipment really doesn't do well with the wear and tear of being driven or walked upon.
Just wait until I get my Falcon onto that shit and disable the traction control. Spin those wheels.
It would be a better idea to put normal solar panels in the median or on the shoulder of the highway.
2:30 "Can you more Holdens?" "Boost your english."
I wonder if that was deliberate advert placement.
Halojen nobody Can More Holdens Than Most Aussies. It’s impossible.
@@HighestRank Yeah true. Us Kiwis try but we can barely even.
So, my question about Solar Freak'n Roadways, who is going to sue them first?
Hey Dave,
I was doing the "Data Laugh" before you put it up, was really trying to keep a straight face, but the absurdity of that concept is just too silly not to laugh.
Hey, here's an idea, if you want information on road conditions, or lights for lines and arrows, and such, how about putting the solar cells IN THE MEDIAN at a proper angle, and use them to power the lights, sensors,etc. Would probably at least produce more power per buck than the current idea. I mean, REALLY, solar cells that you drive over? The transparent aluminum idea sounds cool to me, and by taking the cells out of it, you might be able to make longer, wider panels since all they would have to do is support the vehicles.
Anyway, thanks for the laughs!
Surely there are better solar technologies to invest and spend time on?
There is a reason why we put solar panels on roofs...
It is disruptive technology, traffic is constantly being disrupted while emergency repairs are made to these roadways.
What really surprises me is not that this idea failed, but that they publicly admitted that it failed.
I'm 2 hours from the Baltimore Visitor Center and it isn't far from my favorite salvage yards. I could just swing by and get photos
Don't be surprised to see them selling the removed roadways/walkways as "souvenirs" on Kickstarter or Ideogogo.
They can't even be bothered to cleanly install the hexagonal modules at the exhibition!
Did you see how crooked the metal frames are installed?
Flat freeways are a apocryphal harbinger straight out of Revelations. You want to be held responsible for calling out the Antichrist?.
Another great reason to stop paying the extortion money, whoop I mean taxes. As a technologist, the primary question to ask is, even if we can, should we? And in this case, not just NO, but HELL NO.
Dude is having a way better time making this video, than I am watching it. It's like a goddam laugh track on Big Bang Theory; the humor is superimposed.
"failed to meet expectations"? I absolutely met my expectations. ;-)