Up to 80mph might be a problem. People do speed and emergency vehicles sometimes go faster in emergencies.
My understanding is the federal government mandates specific requirements for road surfaces at those two speeds only. They are only requiring that when the roads are wet you must be able to maintain a certain level of traction to be able to stop going 80MPH within a certain distance. Sorta like how the NHTSA only requires that you do your front end collision tests at 30MPH... Obviously people get in accidents going much faster, but that is the minimum requirements.
From the link a few posts above this one, their statement was:
I assumed the "It was mere speculation" was refering to "10k per 12' by 12' will break even with asphalt", not about how much the prototype would cost. This interpretation might be faulty, though. At any rate, I don't believe they're factoring in the actual laying down of the road and are just going from the panel cost. But again, I could be mistaken here.
My gripes with the whole system could probably be summarized as:
- "under the road" seems like a worse place to put solar panels than "above the road"
- using glass and a lot of tech instead of an industrial waste product to build roads does not strike me as cheaper because...
- ...the argument of "lower maintenance cost" when we use high-tech tiles instead of asphalt to build roads seems like wishful thinking
Obviously, before this is done in a big way, it needs to be tested for feasibility, and to be fair there is (hopefully) little harm done in taking a section of road that has to be renewed anyway and plastering it with these devices. Then, in a few years, we should be able to see whether they are actually cheaper to operate than regular roadways. If they are that's great, and we should build more! But until the entire roadsystem is replaced, it's gonna be a while.
At the same time, one has to explore options like putting a solar roof above a similar road and checking what that does for longevity and energy harvest. My parents have solar panels on their Carport, and while open to all sides it does a good job in reducing the impact of weather on the vehicles parked underneath.
You may be right and I could be misreading it, but in any case, they have no clue how much it is going to actually cost to do this, so any price at this point is worthless and just a wild guess. I think what they were trying to get at, it hasn't been yet determined what the cost is to determine if it is cost effective or not. Which is why I agree that it would be worth scaling up enough to discover how cost effective it can be, and determine if this is something that can be done and something worth doing. My opinion is, you don't know until you try. I will be the first to call them out on their **** if something seems like it is off base and worthless, but as of right now I think it is really too early to complain.
Look at smart phones, for many years, you had a computer, a GPS, a phone, all these things that were separate, and then they tried to combine all these neat things into one product. It actually took many attempts before someone made it work correctly in a cost effective manner, in a nice presentable form factor, and as a marketable product. I look at this in the same way. And no, not everyone thought smart phones were a great idea... heck I still know people who think that smart phones are terrible and they would rather have all those separate products, rather than one product that is able to do everything, but master of nothing...
As I have said before, at this point, they already have their money, they even already have a couple customers lined up, let them go ahead and give it a go, and we will see what happens. If it turns out to be worthless, at least we know, and it was at least money that was better spent than some of the other crazy things people spend money on.
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Oh and re-solar carport, that works for parking lots and driveways, but would be impractical on the roads themselves. However, there is a pretty huge cost associated with that too since you have to build a structure that goes up over the air, able to withstand all the weather like wind and snow, and don't forget that you need to get someone up there to knock the snow off or else it won't be producing anything for you. And then, don't forget that you are still double paying since you have to still build the parking lot underneath... so for total cost comparison you would want the cost of the lot itself, and then the cost of the structure over top and the cost of the solar panels. If that ends up being cheaper than putting it in the roads, by all means, lets go forward with that.
